What Kind Of Book Is The Book Of Mathew History Law Etc..?

[Smetheleah]

The "Book" of Matthew is traditionally considered to belong to the genre of "Gospel." That said, it doesn't tell us much! Modern scholarship is revealing how broad and various that genre of literature was. According to most current scholars (and scholarship has a perennial habit of shifting) each of the "Synoptic Gospels" (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and the Gospel of John have a "theological agenda" different from each other with different perspectives on who Jesus of Nazareth, indeed, was. They are generally called "gospels," (Good News) because they are told from "inside" the Jesus Movement, and therefore try to "sell" him and his message. Who/what is the "he" and "his message" they were trying to sell? The answer resides in what one finds in the "theological mesage" that makes up the agenda behind the selection and arrangement of the materials related about Jesus of Nazareth in each.In short, 250 years ago, the answer given to your initial question by most believing Christians would have been simple: Matthew is a "Gospel," and Gospels are "the Good News that Jesus is the Son of God born on earth and the savior of all humanity." Today, after several "Quests for the Historical Jesus" (and the beginning of another), we are the beneficiaries of much more detailed scholarship. This "new scholarship" is not grounded in piety, but in an attempt to do "history." The result is that we are much less certain about how each author (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are titles ascribed to these writings later on in history--none of them is a "signed work, " and so authorship is, ultimately, unknown) saw Jesus--who each thought he was, and what his life and teaching meant to him or her (some think women were the authors of Mark and Luke). Clear as mud?