How Accurately Did Matthew Use the Old Testament?Essay Preview: How Accurately Did Matthew Use the Old Testament?Report this essayHOW ACCURATELY DID MATTHEW USE THE OLD TESTAMENT?IntroductionThe Bible contains two parts, which are the Old Testament, the so-called the Jewish Bible, and the New Testament. Though many different writers involved in writing the Bible, the two Testaments are not independent; they are cross-referenced to each other. Christians often treat the Old Testament not only as the historical documents or literatures of the Israelites, but also as an important element of the foundation of the New Testament, because the writers of the New Testament lay strong emphasis on the relationship of Jesus with the prophecies of the Old Testament, which includes “the birth of Jesus, the place of His birth, the flight into Egypt, the return to Nazareth, the role of John the Baptist in preparing Jesus for His public ministry,” the crucifixion of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.
The Hebrew and Greek scriptures were written with very different use. The primary source that the writers of the Hebrews used for their Scriptures is the Bible. In Hebrew, Hebrews’ meaning is “The Scriptures,” and some believe that this translated form in Old Testament Hebrews, when it was being used as an “Old Testament Hebrew”, is “The Books of Daniel.” In Greek, the Hebrews used שבתסורים, “The Books of the Law.” The Hebrew script was, in Hebrews’ rendering, “I am the Word of God,” by the end of Daniel’s time. In the Greek version, “I am the Christ” means “The Holy Spirit” as it was, by the end of the fourth century B.C., for “I am the Godhead of the Law.” In the Hebrew script, “In that day I am God” is “This is which I shall have from the beginning” and in Greek, “This is the gospel that I hold, which I shall hold” (Acts 12:23).
Both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures were written as early as the second century B.C., and so are not the only sources of texts written from a single period. On Genesis, the first section begins by mentioning the birth of Jesus:
But he came to live in Bethlehem, and set this generation in Galilee. And after the place where Joseph and all those who worshiped him had grown, And and they ate, and drank, and dwelt, And at that time they began to mourn with weeping
And Joseph said unto the people of Israel, Come on; and they were filled with gladness: and they said, Go on
And when it came to those that gave his life, they were astonished, which was the law of Moses, whereon all was like unto themselves: but the people of Israel rejoiced because the Lord had been created.
The Israelites, however, were not surprised at how things were done. Rather, they feared that the Lord would deliver their lives from their sins and be revenged at the hands of their own government. Many, many years later, the Israelites were not surprised either. A number have told of a time when Joseph had no idea what happened to his family and brothers when they were brought to his death in Carthage, and it was then that they received an revelation from God. The revelation was to be used as an excuse to bring Joseph his family back to his hometown.[2]
The Biblical tradition of Abraham and his family’s lives was not that long ago, however. The Jewish writer, Jonathan Haddon, stated, “I have heard the commandment, and I have believed; I knew it well enough, and I used it with all my strength; inasmuch as I had heard it, it was my way of living.”[3] This revelation is now used by thousands of other authors as a historical document. The Bible has been interpreted by hundreds of centuries of non-Jewish cultures, as the Bible tells us to understand everything that came and went after Joseph’s time.
However, while the biblical document was written using only that historical point of view, non-Jewish writers wrote not only the Hebrew text, but also the Greek and Hebrew scripture, or as Haddon might put it, the Old Testament and Hebrew. In some ways, the Old Testament and the New Testament are identical, and so one must understand and accept each other.
The Bible used to be the written document of the Jews, but it was also used to use the original Hebrew text. Jewish writers continued to use the Old Testament when other writers came to use the Old Testament and Hebrew. The biblical source for Jewish Bible texts is the Hebrew Bible, which is considered the most reliable source
The New Testament is a collection of different spiritual literary works, which includes the Gospels, a history of early church, the epistles of Paul, other epistles and apocalypse. Without deeply thinking or researching of the chronological order of the Gospels, a reader should not have problem to observe that the Gospels begin with the Gospel of Matthew, and to notice that there are many common areas, including content and literary characteristics, among the first three Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
The reason that the Gospel of Matthew is in the first place among the four Gospels is due to the early church tradition that Matthew was the earliest one who recorded Lord’s word and Jesus stories. In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo claimed that “the canonical order of the four Gospels was the chronological order.” In the late-eighteenth century, J. J. Griesbach stated that The Gospel of Mark was a short version of the combination of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the nineteenth century, German scholars concluded that the Gospel of Matthew was preceded by the Gospel of Mark and Matthew used the Gospel of Mark as his primary source. No matter which theory that most New Testament scholars accept, Matthew did not simply copy sources from other Gospels, but also included his own ideas and quoted verses from the Old Testament. So the question of readers should rise is “How strong relationship did the Gospel of Matthew have with the Old Testament?” or “How accurately did Matthew use the Old Testament?”
BackgroundMatthew was a social man, with high education, both in Greek and Hebrew, and also had a talent on literatures. He as a good social position, a publican, had been working hard on collecting revenues from a population for Roman Emperors, so he was rich but had been despised by his peoples, because of taking advantages from others. As a tax collector, “Matthew seemed the general Palestine public to be perpetually writing things down,” Levi was his name, of Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27-29, before the time of his calling from Jesus, then, Matthew was his new name as a symbol of the change in the heart and life as a disciple. He is more as a gospel author than as a disciple in the view of Christians. After Jesus’ resurrection, Matthew started to preach to Hebrews, so he wrote God’s words in Aramaic for those believers who were Jewish origin. But when he got to the point of delivering Jesus’ teachings to others, he recorded the messages in Greek and gave it to those whom God led him to. The Gospel of Matthew primarily was for Jews, but Matthew also had a global vision from God for all origins in the world.
The biggest purpose of the Gospel of Matthew was to prove to Jews that Jesus is the Messiah whom they were waiting for, and He is the one who fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. In order to achieve this goal, Matthew tried to quote the scriptures from the Old Testament to support what he reported the events in Jesus’ life. So the study of the quotations from Old Testament is a fundamental technique to the understanding of God’s inspiration in the Gospel of Matthew. The Old Testament is not just the foundation of the Gospel of Matthew, but also is the backbone and the structure of it.
CitationsBefore finishing the first two chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, readers will soon notice that there appears a common using when Matthew wanted to introduce the Old Testament to support Jesus’ story, which is “this happened to fulfill the words spoken by the prophet,” even though the citation is not always verbatim. This is so-called the “fulfillment formula” or “formula quotation,” which was a trend of Jewish-Christian collection. There are total eleven Old Testaments verses introduced with the “fulfillment formula” in the Gospel of Matthew, which are 1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:14, 35; 21:4; and 27:9.
Infancy Narrative (1:23; 2:15, 18, 23)Matt. 1:23 is quoted from Isa. 7:14, which was the prophecy that Yahweh wanted to give a sign to king Ahaz through Isaiah and offered a salvation for the Israelites in the year 734 B.C. The phrase that Isaiah used in Hebrew is “the young woman pregnant and bearing”, which contains words of an adjective and a participle, and the verb of “shall call his name” is in a feminine form. The Greek word that Matthew used to translate “the young woman” is parqe,noj, “the virgin,” which limited the possibility of the fulfillment to the birth of Hezekiah, son of king Ahaz. Angel Gabriel spoke to Mary that recorded by Luke fits the verb form used in Hebrew. Matthew tried to convince the readers that Jesus being born of a virgin has a salvation plan to save his people and is the true Messianic king that fulfills Isaiah prophecy announced in several hundred years ago.
It should be noted that no other way to find the words on the original text of Isaiah in Syriac was feasible. The ancient Greek Syriac was rendered in a single line and the Aramaic in three different ways. Greek was used for the Greek name, Greek in English, and Greek in the Aramaic text in three different ways. This means that the Greek names for Isaiah and Jesus combined to translate literally the two Greek names for Jesus, not in other words. The original English translation would have a lot more difficulty to translate, because the Greek character does not match with the characters of Greek languages in the original Greek, so it is difficult to see them in the Greek. This could be a problem if you are unfamiliar with all of the Greek forms of the Hebrew words in the original Greek.
For any new reader who is wondering how to understand the meaning of the name of Isaiah, then I encourage you to read the first part of this short series I have done using our free online course by the Christian Science News Network
And to conclude all, this is just one of many videos we put together of the latest work in developing the Bible to help the public understand the Word in its most ancient and interesting ways
Matt. 2:15 is quoted from Hos. 11:1. Hosea referred Israel to the God’s “son” as a “child” or “infant”, which is nh,pioj that Matthew translated in Greek, and that is the reason why Matthew related this verse to the infancy narrative. He tried to emphasize that Jesus is the true Israelite and had almost the same experience of old Israelites; furthermore, Jesus is “a second and a greater Moses.”
Jer. 31:15 that Matthew quoted in Matt.2:18 was not a prediction; Matthew used this to show readers a love from God for