Religion and the Gospel of Matthew

Religion the Gospel of Matthew

There are a number of similarities between Helmut Koester's article, The Gospel of Matthew: Jesus as the New Moses, and that of Marilyn Moses, also entitled The Gospel of Moses. Both of these works examine the reason and purpose that the book of Matthew was written, and explore the impact upon the immediate surrounding community of Christianity. However, in order to best summarize these works, it is necessary to do so individually, in order to gain the best understanding of these articles.

Koester's article primarily focuses on the book of Matthew's portrayal of Jesus as being directly descended from Abraham and aligned with traditional Israeli law. This is a particularly important aspect of the Koester's article (and the book of Matthew), because it verifies the fact that Jesus's teachings and works are directly in accordance with the Israeli tradition which preceded his existence, and which most of the old testament was based upon.

Furthermore, the author emphasizes the fact that there was a significant amount of conflict as to which power had the true authority over the Israel people during the emergence of Christianity during the time that the book of Matthew was written. The Pharisees had emerged as a source of power that was not directly descended from that of the Torah and conventional Israeli authority. During the time of the writing of the book of Matthew, this group was claiming to be the true source of Jewish religion, whereas Matthew's Christian Jewish group was also claiming to be the true authority on this same subject. Therefore, the author made every attempt that he could to portray Jesus to be directly descended from the tradition of the law of the Torah (the first five books in the Bible that appear in the old testament) to emphasize the fact that it was his group, as represented by Jesus, that was the one that most adhered to Jewish tradition.

Subsequently, Koester claims that this reason is why Jesus is portrayed to resemble Moses within this book. The author states that Jesus preaches sermons on a mountain similar to Moses, and delivers five such sermons to parallel the five books of the Torah, to reinforce his true Jewish heritage. This final point of Koester's is the predominant viewpoint expressed in Marilyn Moses' article about the book of Matthew as well. Although the article begins her article by identifying when this particular book was written and gives some information regarding the author, she primarily focuses on the fact that Jesus' continuance of the Israeli tradition is at the heart of this manuscript, and that one of the ways which this idea is brought across is through his similarities with Moses.