Welcome to Gaia! ::

In a couple of weeks our Bible study will be starting up again for the year. This year we're focusing on the gospel of Matthew. When I get the materials and review some of the questions, I'll post what I think is relevant for discussion, but stay tuned for what I'm sure is going to be a very enlightening study.

Last night was the first lesson in our study this year of the Gospel of Matthew.

As some interesting background introduction before diving into chapter one, our instructor and priest (a world renowned Scripture scholar) commented on Matthew being unanimously recognized as the first canonical gospel written, at least by the church fathers. It wasn't until modern times that both the authorship and placement as the first gospel written was questioned. Modern biblical criticism has invented the concept that the gospel of Mark was written first and that Matthew used it and another document as a source for writing his document. There is no physical evidence of this other document, referred to as "Q" (coming from the German word quelle meaning source), which many more traditional scripture scholars consider nothing more than a fabrication or literary gymnastics. Having performed some literary gymnastics of myself back in my college days, I'm of the opinion that you can convince anyone of nearly anything if you try hard enough.

As far as authorship, the text itself never claims Matthew (or anyone else) as author, but this is a church teaching going back to the second century. Many of the non-canonical and/or heretical gospels go to great lengths to prove their authorship as from some important personage, but tradition forcefully places the authorship in this somewhat minor apostle's hand (inspired by the Holy Spirit, of course).

The canonical version accepted by the Church was written in Greek, but St. Jerome (the great creator of the Latin Vulgate) indicates that he had seen a version written in Hebrew. This isn't surprising considering the obviously Jewish/Hebraic audience of Matthew. He, like no other gospel writer, quotes heavily from the Jewish scripture apparently to prove to Jewish Christians that Jesus is the fulfillment of old testament prophecy. There are a number of analogies and phrases that make no sense in any language other than the Hebrew dialect of Aramaic. These are some of the reasons why it is believed that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic and later translated to Greek.

So why is there all this literary manipulation and modern questioning of the authorship, source, order and date of the gospels, things believed, taught and held firmly too for centuries. Our instructor believes this is part of a concerted effort to dumb-down the historicity of the gospel. If people can be convinced that the Bible isn't historically accurate, that it's only a story or analogy and not really true, then they may be convinced that Jesus isn't who the Church claims He is, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. It's an attack on our beliefs as Christians. It's persecution of a modern type.

I hope to transcribe more of my notes as the sessions continue. Please comment and join in the discussion!!

Yeah, well, I had hopes for the guild, but it looks like a tough go.

I'm not sure if your inane comments are really helping the situation either. If you'd like to get things going, maybe putting a bit more thought and actually participating in the discussion, rather than nearly random and meaningless interjections, might help the situation.

It's quite boring over here and I've very disappointed in that. I had hoped for more.