Matthew – The Instruction Manual
The Gospel of Matthew appears to the Western literary mind as a biography. Yet, one main problem exists; the First Gospel is not a Western piece of literature. It has been turned into one within your modern-day Bible.
Very little work has been done toward understanding the Gospel of Matthew as Hebrew literature. Now to those who’ve delved into this matter in depth, this may seem a callous statement. Rest assured, I know there are specialists. But I’m focusing on the mainstream of Christianity. Currently, it is haphazardly taken for granted that Matthew attempted to communicate as we do today, and that he attempted to give us simply a historical account of the life of Jesus. This, I’m certain, is a grievous error.
Each and every cogent author, when they write, is attempting to communicate to a certain audience. The intended readers are no doubt in mind when the author composes. The means and methods are also of utmost importance; just as one who is wishing to communicate to a group of Chinese naturally refrains from writing in Spanish. They will use conventions that their readers are familiar with; conventions that the readers even expect. The wise author would not use techniques that are unfamiliar to his intended readers. This simple idea should be elemental in our thinking, even considered primary before we ever seek to understand a piece of literature written in another time to another people in another language, with all that that entails.
The biggest error, among others, in handling Matthew today is a pervasive lack of understanding of the Hebrews’ normative methods of organizing their compositions. Matthew most assuredly did not use a Western outline.
How can one think that a Hebrew would adopt a method of organization that was not used by his own? Even a method that would have been foreign to him? But that is exactly how the majority of our exegetes and laity look at Matthew.
Certain Hebraic literary methods of construction have come under a good measure of scrutiny only over the last 150 years or so. Progress is being made.
Hebraic conventions now known to us as 
, parallelism, and dirge patterns have been found to be quite common in their ancient writings, and most pervasive within the Old Testament of the Bible.
Some would ask, ‘Does it really matter how they organized their material? Isn’t it still the same thoughts and ideas? Do we really need to know such details? Such scholarship?’
The answer from the other side of that question, from one who has for many years researched Matthew from a literary perspective, is a resounding yes! It’s not just a ‘good thing.’ It’s actually an imperative.
As I’ve previously mentioned, Matthew appears to the Western reader as a biography of Jesus. But when the literary structure is known, its real intent is then, and only then, revealed. It is a manual of instruction containing the original and in-depth teachings of Jesus Christ.
So you tell me, which would you rather have, a biography of Jesus or His original and indepth teachings?
The resting place, the repository, of the original curriculum of Jesus is indeed the Gospel of Matthew.
I’ll delve into Matthew’s core next.
Discipleship Curriculum 