Intro to Matthew and Acts

Matthew

(The front side (recto) of Papyrus 1, a New Testament manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew. Most likely originated in Egypt around the third century A.D. Also part of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (P. oxy. 2)

The Gospel of Matthew is one of four gospels in the Bible and the first book of the New Testament. Matthew was one of the 12 apostles that were with Jesus throughout His public ministry on earth. Scholars believe that the book was written sometime between 50 and 70 A.D.

Matthew was a Jewish tax collector from Capernaum, who left his profession to follow Jesus. It’s not surprising that this gospel talks more about money than the others, or that this gospel gives special attention to his home town. Matthew gives a personal account of many miracles that Jesus performed.

Matthew writes to the Jewish people to persuade them that Jesus is the true Messiah that had been prophesied in the Old Testament.  In fact, there is over 120 references or quotations from the Old Testament in this one book.  It stresses how Jesus fulfilled Jewish prophecies. (By the way Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies spoken by different voices in the Old Testament over a period of about 500 years.)

Genealogy was a big deal to ancient Jews. Listed in Matthew 1 here among all these boring hard to pronounce names are four women from the wrong side of the tracks. Tamar was involved in a sandal, Rahab was a prostitute, Ruth was not an Israelite, and Bathsheba was involved in adultery.  What we can learn from even this tedious passage is that God can lift the lowest and place them in royal lineage, and that somehow God’s grace forgives the darkest of sins and reaches to the entire world not just the nation of Israel.

Acts

Acts was written by a physician named Luke, and functionally serves as volume 2 of a two volume work that completes his gospel account. Scholars believe that the two books, Luke and Acts, were divided as such because the scrolls upon which they would have originally been penned were only about 35 feet long. Luke and Acts are the second and third longest books in the New Testament and together account for approximately one fourth of its material.

The book spans the first thirty years following the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you take the most generally accepted date of Jesus’ birth to be 4 BC, that would place the events of Acts around 30 AD to 60 AD. Acts in every way continues the story of the Gospel account.  In the Acts account, Luke describes what Jesus continues to do and teach through His body, the church in spite of the great persecution.

We don’t know much about the occasion of writing, other than Luke clearly addresses both volumes to a person named Theophilus. The name Theophilus means “one who is loved by God.” Other than that, we really don’t know much about him or how he functions in relationship to the larger picture.  At the turn of the century, some scholars began to suggest that Luke-Acts was a trial brief prepared by Luke for the Apostle Paul’s defense in Rome. While that is a romantic notion, the truth is that we really don’t know.

We can be certain, however, of Luke’s meticulous writing style and attention to detail.   Luke was a first rate historian. The accuracy and thoroughness of his historical investigation has been soundly confirmed by archeology and modern historical research.  The only reasonable explanation for such details is that Luke was writing a first-hand eyewitness account of what he witnessed. All reasonable accounts point toward Acts being a first rate history of first century happenings. And if the Bible is proven true in the eyewitness historical accounts, we can have increased confidence in the eye witnessed theological accounts also. This wasn’t just an “academic exercise” for Luke: He wrote so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.  (Luke 1:4)

Robert