2. The structure of the Gospel

The Gospel according to Matthew ends abruptly, leaving the conclusion to the reader. The story of Jesus does not end because, after all, according to the intention of the evangelist, the story of Jesus continues in his community: "I will be with you always until the end of the world," says the Risen One. It is clear that from that moment on, the disciples move, live, work, speak, but it is the Risen Lord who works with them. The community with whom the evangelist Matthew worked, probably in the city of Antioch, received the gospel of the Twelve through Barnabas and reworked it; they continued to reflect on this apostolic preaching for many years.

And around the 80s, the definitive text was published, the one that we now know as the Gospel according to Matthew. But with regard to the other gospels, this is not the first. Ancient tradition has repeatedly stated that Matthew wrote first, but perhaps it was not in reference to the current text of Matthew, but to some of its predecessors, that is, to some text which had been composed earlier, and which served as the basis for a further redaction.

Still, it is the first gospel because it is first in the order that the New Testament series begins. It is the mature work of a school of Christian writers who lived in Antioch in the second part of the first century after Christ. It is the ripe fruit of a Christian community that reconsiders the preaching of Jesus, restructures the teaching of the apostles, and systematically organizes an authentic catechesis related to Christ and his church.

The text according to Matthew is, therefore, a mediation on the work of Jesus. It is important to recognize that ancient tradition has titled the gospels after a person's name, with the preposition ‘kata’ which in Greek means ‘according to.’ ‘According to’ the interpretation of, or mediated by… We read the Gospel according to Matthew, that is, we receive the Good News of Jesus Christ, which is Jesus Christ, but ‘according to’ the vision of Matthew. Therefore, it is important to value this human mediation.

The one Gospel of Jesus Christ has been handed down to us in four ways. The only one is interpreted by four disciples: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These mediations tell us about the importance of human thought, of community reasoning, of historical updating that transmits the unique teaching of Jesus and the presence of the risen Christ in the midst of his Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit that enables this intelligent reworking, adapted to new situations, applied concretely to the life of the disciples. The Gospel according to Matthew is, therefore, a great reworking of the apostolic tradition.

When we speak of gospels, as we try to define them, we must not fall into the banality of calling them the ‘Life of Jesus.’ It is not the life of Jesus; they are not biographies. The gospels are the written repository of apostolic preaching. Before the written text, there is the oral word. First of all, there is the Jesus event. At first it was preaching—wrote the great biblical scholar, Harold Rowley. But I would say, even better, in the beginning it was the man Jesus, his historical experience, his person and his life; the fact that he met men and women, that he had a concrete historical experience, culminating in his death and resurrection. We have the experience of these people at the beginning, an experience lived by many witnesses who became disciples of the only Master, and told their own experience.

They did not make religious theories, but narrated their experience of the encounter with the man, Jesus of Nazareth, recognizing that this man is the Son of God. They have slowly recognized Him as the Lord Himself. The divine 'I am,' as revealed to Moses on Sinai. Jesus is one with the God of Sinai.

They slowly understood and testified, and as disciples they narrated it many times to other people, so that others would become disciples. Therefore, the gospels, as written texts, are the repository of preaching.

First the apostles preached for many years, then slowly from their preaching, the writings were born. And it is very likely that short texts existed first, some parts, some simple narratives, collections of teachings, or parables, or episodes of what we could call miracles, or the primordial nucleus that is the story of the passion of Jesus until the tragic experience of death, the surprising discovery of the empty tomb, and the encounter with the Risen One. These parts were probably written separately, and were elaborated in different ways, taking into account the apostolic preaching.

The collection of these elements produced, little by little, the most complete texts. It is the job of the editors. The last author who compiled the text, in our case Mathew, is the one who did the last writing. He is not an author who wrote everything on his own initiative, rather, he collected pre-existing materials. But he compiled them with his own criteria, choosing what to put, and choosing how to put it, and this work makes the copywriter a genuine author who gives his own cut and maintains the distinct theology of Matthew, which is different from that of Mark, not in opposition, not antagonistic, nor contradictory, but different because Matthew is a different person from Mark. And the two, who are disciples of the only Master, have two ways of seeing, two different characters.

There are two different narrative styles, and this difference clearly emerges in their texts. Could everything have been put into one text? But this is not what the Church considered appropriate. There was an attempt in ancient times on the part of a certain Tatian to compose a work, putting together the four gospels: ‘Diatesaron’ = one of four. But it was not accepted. Recently someone has produced a ‘fused’ gospel, as if there was only one story, putting the four texts together. It is not correct; the four gospels are four different books, and they must be known, read, and loved distinctly. There is no need to merge them to build a hypothetical fifth gospel, the way we like it. We must learn to read the Gospel according to Matthew, recognizing its autonomy and not using it to reconstruct the story of Jesus, putting a piece of Matthew and a piece of Luke, and remake a new book.

We have to value the literary history of Mathew and see what the evangelist narrates and how he narrates it, and appreciate this literary text. Therefore, the last editor who put together the great anthology of apostolic preaching, which we call the Gospel according to Matthew, is a school of Christian learned writers, but also experts in the Judaic tradition, who probably reside in Antioch, the great capital of Syria, one of the first Christian churches in the Hellenistic world.

In this gospel, in chapter 13, at the end of the parabolic discourse, we find a kind of self-portrait of the evangelist, or the latter editor who definitively organized the written storehouse of the apostolic tradition. Jesus asks the disciples, “Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” Here's the 'autograph' of the last editor, a scholar who became a disciple of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Scribe’ is a technical term to indicate a letter expert. In Greek it is said ‘gramateus.’ ‘Grama = is the letter, not only the written letter but the figure of a literature scholar, the expert in literary culture, and in this case, of biblical culture.

The scribe is what we today would call the theologian, the biblical scholar, one who by nature is a teacher, who knows literature and teaches it to others, but here it is about a scribe who has become a disciple. We find the verb that marks the end of the first Gospel: 'walking.' Jesus says to the disciples, ‘Make disciples of all peoples’ ‘μαθητεύσατε’ = ‘mazetéuzate… to ‘discipling’ all peoples. And here, in the center of the Gospel, we find the reference to this very verb. In the original Greek, there is an aorist passive participle: ‘mazeteuzéi’ = ‘discipling.’ He is a scribe who has been transformed, and has become a disciple. By hearing the word ‘mazeteuzéi,’ one can recognize a possible allusion to Matthew. It is an allusion because Matthew in Hebrew means ‘Gift of God.’ ‘Matamía’ should be the original form, however, to the Greek ear, this symbolic allusion is possible. Matthew is the disciple, the ‘matzeteus,’ the ‘discipleshing,’ the scribe who has agreed to learn, to learn the theology of the kingdom of heaven, of which only Jesus is the Teacher.

In this way, the scribe turned disciple is the head of the family, the head of a household. This is the description of a person in charge of the early Christian community. He is a priest, a parish priest, head of a household, the oldest, the person in charge of a human group, a homeowner who has to provide for the maintenance and needs of the house, and have the means to support the family. This landlord's treasure contains new and old things. We notice that he puts new things first, old things second. It is an obvious reference to the Old and New Testaments, that is, to the tradition of Israel, the ancient heritage, which is still the inheritance of this family, but there are also new things: the novelties brought by Jesus.

His person is the novelty that does not abolish, or replace the old, but fulfills, accomplishes, brings to perfection what God promised and revealed. It becomes the integration of the heritage, and the head of the family takes out of his treasury new and old things. This head of the family, who is the scribe disciple in charge of the Christian community, drew up an orderly collection of apostolic preaching, and thus the Gospel according to Matthew is born, which has a particularly interesting structure, centered on five speeches.

In fact, in the course of Matthew's gospel, we have some verses that are repeated five times in the same way. At the end of the first great discourse, the discourse on the mountain, at the end of chapter 7, we find this indication: “When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” Notice that he mentions the teaching, and he refers to the scribes, but Jesus is new and different from the scribes—he has authority.

These are words that we have already found and that characterize the theology of Matthew, but we are interested in this expression: "When Jesus finished these words." The same formula is found again at the end of chapter 10: "When Jesus finished giving these instructions...." We find it too at the end of chapter 13: "When Jesus finished telling these parables." Then at the end of chapter 18: "When Jesus finished these speeches." We find it at the end of the gospel text, at the beginning of the passion, the first verses of chapter 26: “When Jesus finished all these words, he said to his disciples, ‘You know that in two days’ time it will be Passover.’” The fifth time the standard verse occurs, it brings them all together, which means: "All the discourses end here." This refrain allows the identification of five discourses.

The final editor compiled the teaching of Jesus in five large blocks, editorially organized, that is, with a desk literary operation, five anthologies of sayings, 'loguia,' words with which Jesus educates, forms and instructs his disciples. And he collected the first great discourses: placed on the mountain, in chapters 5, 6 and 7. The second talk about the Church sent on mission is chapter 10. The center, chapter 13, collects seven parables: the mystery of the kingdom. In chapter 18 there is the fourth discourse in parallel with the second: within the church, fraternal relationships. And the last discourse, in parallel with the first, chapters 23, 24 and 25: the break with the scribes and the Pharisees, and the eschatological announcement, the final fulfillment of the kingdom.

Five great discourses that determine the backbone, the skeletal framework of this evangelical body. Why five discourses? Probably because five are the books of the Law, and five are fingers of the hand. Therefore, of unity and integrity, which characterizes in the Jewish world the Law, the Torah, the Pentateuch, the five-fifths of the Law as the Jews say.

And Matthew, in a Jewish key and reinterpreted in a Christian way, proposes the new law of Jesus: the five discourses that make up the Christian Pentateuch. This scribe's treasure contains new things and old things. The disciple is learning the mystery of the kingdom of heaven.