Since Mathew is a gospel that used Mark as an essential source that has almost the entirety of Mark included in it, the most sensible approach to studying it is through the lens of redaction (editing). Because Matthew is nearly twice as long as Mark there must be a lot of editing and addition, as well as omission, that Matthew put into his gospel. Much of this length comes from the addition of Jesus, birth and resurrection. As we saw last week, Mark starts off his gospel by proclaiming the good news of Jesus the Messiah, the way that was prepared for the Christ, the Baptism of adult Jesus by John the Baptist, and then Jesus proclaiming the good news of the coming kingdom of God (Mark 1:1-15). Matthew, however, starts from a different point. He decided to include the genealogy of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, the visiting of the Magi, and the fleeing of Egypt (Matthew 1:1-2:23). Afterwards the narrative of Jesus’ life picks up at the baptism we see in Mark 1. In the body of Matthew we see many teachings and in miracles, teachings, and parables drawn from Mark, Q, and Matthew’s own sources. The passion of Jesus in Mark 15:33-41 is completely enveloped by Matthew 27:45-56 and nothing is changed besides instead of saying “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Mark 15:34) Jesus says “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani (Matthew 27:46), but both Matthew and Mark say that it means “My God, my God, why have  you forsaken me?” in reference to Psalm 22. Matthew did not change much, but he did add some details to the passion story. In 27:51-54 Matthew mentions that there was an earthquake that split rocks and opened tombs of dead saints. After his resurrection many of the saints rose, entered the holy city, Jerusalem, and appeared to many people. At the end of Mark we know that Jesus has risen and that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James saw the empty tomb, but did not tell anyone. In Matthew 28 we see the same thing, but they ran to tell the disciples and met with Jesus along the way, and that Jesus met with the disciples and commissioned them to spread the gospel. We also learned that chief priests devised a plan to spread word that the disciples stole. This very different from what we see in Mark and much more conclusive. Matthew fits better with the mold of ancient biographical writing style because of the information it holds. Where Mark lacked the genealogy and birth of the Christ and the post resurrection story, Matthew has both as well as expanding on Jesus’ adult life and ministry. Even though Matthew made more effort to write about Jesus’ life in a biographical writing style it still lacks his entire childhood.

-Bobby Fletcher