Matthew’s story of Jesus greatly differs from Mark’s narrative. Although Matthew uses ninety percent of Mark’s gospel, he also includes Jesus’ birth and his resurrection, which is not a part of Mark.  Matthew gives new information to Jesus’ death. Matthew uses most of the same wording from Mark when telling of the death but also describes that when the curtain was torn and Jesus breathed his last, those who were holy were resurrected from the grave. Stories about the empty tomb were also fairly different. Matthew added on to Mark’s story of the women witnessing the empty tomb and the angel proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection by giving new information. He added that the women actually met Jesus shortly after and that when the priests found out about the empty tomb they paid the soldiers to lie and tell the people that Jesus’ disciples stole his body in the night. Jesus’ resurrection was only told about in Matthew. In this part of his story, Jesus tells the disciples to make disciples of all the nations by baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything that He commanded them.

Matthew includes these new additions to show Jesus as a human instead of just this magical man. The changes and additions gave you an explanation of where Jesus came from and even his ancestry. I think that Matthew included 28:11-15 to show that some people including the priests and soldiers were still denying Jesus’ resurrection and wanted to hide it from the rest of the people because of fear. I think it was important to include in the stories that Jesus’ disciples were aware of his resurrection and were given directions from Jesus himself to show that people had actually witnessed his afterlife and that he had given them authority to do these things.