We have been considering the Gospel of St. Matthew, the first book presented in the New Testament (NT) but definitely not the first book to be written by the early Church. I shared with you the fact that Matthew’s Gospel is an unique Synoptic Gospel in-so-far-as how it deals with the scribes and Pharisees. His language is stridently condemnatory of them because of their hypocrisy. Although this attitude is attributed to Jesus, it may be more the attitude of the early community as they began to struggle with the Jewish community and were even forbidden to worship in synagogues.
Matthew also interprets what happened in 70 CE when Rome destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. This appears in a detail in Matthew’s version of the parable of the wedding banquet. The destruction of the city of those who rejected the invitation to the wedding banquet – which occurs in the midst of gathering people for a wedding feast that remains ready, presumable still hot – is a detail added by Matthew to an earlier form of the parable. For Matthew, it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, a decade or so before he wrote his gospel.
Most seriously of all, with regard to its effects on subsequent history, a text in Matthew assigns primary responsibility for Jesus’ death to the Jewish people. To Mark’s story of Jesus before Pilate, the Roman governor, Matthew adds an episode. After Pilate concludes that Jesus is innocent, he washes his hands and declares, I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves. Then the people as a whole take responsibility for the death of Jesus. And not just Jews back then, but also their children – presumably forever. They are Christ-killers, a phrase used during the frequent and often fatal Christian persecution of Jews for many centuries. In fairness to Matthew, that term does not appear in his gospel. But some of his language did become the scriptural basis for Christian violence against Jews.
Why does the most Jewish of the gospels include such heightened hostility toward Jews? Historical contextualization provides the answer. Matthew wrote during a time of growing conflict between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews in the last decades of the first century. His community, composed mostly of Jews who had become followers of Jesus as well as perhaps a few Gentiles, was very much affected by it.
By this simple example we see how very important it is to not literally interpret the NT and demand that it be historically accurate, conveying the exact words of Jesus. The writers of the Gospels were believers in Jesus who were struggling to find their place in society. The intent of the Gospels: to stimulate belief in Jesus!