The Gospel of Matthew
Matthew Chapter 1: Overview
Matthew's Gospel opens (1,1) with an introduction to Jesus which stresses his human origins: that Jesus is Messiah, Son of David and Son of Abraham. More about that a little later.
The Gospel of Mark begins by making a proclamation of who Jesus is, that he is the Christ and the Son of God. This proclamation is good news and brings out his divine origins. I take this this as a statement of intent, a thesis which will then be proved by the story of the Gospel.
For both evangelists, it is clear from their Gospels that Jesus is divine as well as human. As we read we will be seeing a tendency for Matthew to highlight Jesus' divinity more than Mark.
What is noteworthy about the second half of Matthew's first chapter, 1,18-25, is that there is no mention of where Jesus was born nor when. That information is given only in 2,1 where we are told that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of King Herod.
Therefore we can read the second part of the chapter, 1,18-25, as a general statement which is anchored to neither place nor time. How this will affect our reading of the whole of chapter 1 will become clear in the next stage of our exploration.
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A book of Origins: Mt 1,1 and Mt 1,18
The key to my reading of Matthew's first chapter lies in the Greek word "genesis" which has much the same meaning in English. Verse 1 and 18 are the only two uses of the word in this Gospel. With these two occurences so close together, the evangelist could well have intended them to be read together and so it is better to use the same word in translation. Matthew will use the more usual terms for birth when it comes speaking of the birth of Jesus in 1,25 and 2,1 as well as 1,16. Translations however normally use "birth" in verse 18 despite the different word. This is certainly a possible translation of "genesis" though it gives the the wrong impression.
As for the first verse, many translations are little better than paraphrases. That must be a surprising way to open the Gospel.
Literally, the expression in verse 1 is "A Book of the Origins", biblos geneseos in Greek. "Origins" in the first verse refers immediately therefore to the ancestry which ultimately gave rise to this birth. The genealogy describes the human origins of Jesus, he is of the line of Abraham and of David.
Therefore, if we again take "genesis" in verse 18 as "origins" what follows in the second part of the chapter will be the divine origins of Jesus. Here we are told that he is conceived through the Holy Spirit, stated twice (1,18.20).
Read this way, chapter 1 becomes an introduction to the origins of Jesus, human (1,1-17) and divine (1,18-25). Much more is being related as we will see, but we will read Matthew's opening chapter with this as the fundamental theme.
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Matthew 1,1: Origins
The use of geneseos by Matthew in the first verse reminds us of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. The book of Genesis tells us about the origins of the world and of the chosen people descended from Abraham. Matthew is giving us a message about a new beginning and new origins which are now being undertaken by God through his son Jesus. This will be the underlying theme of the whole Gospel right up to the final commissioning of the disciples at the end of the Gospel.
It is as well to note too, even though this could not have been in the mind of the evangelist, that biblos geneseos are now the opening words of the New Testament. There is a sense in which the Gospel of Matthew is a new book of Genesis. In the origins of Jesus there will be a new creation and a new chosen people (the Church). This new creation will reach its fulfilment with the full authority given to the risen Christ (28,18).
As "Son of Abraham" Jesus is one of the chosen people of God, one of the great nation descended from Abraham (Gen 17,1-8). Indeed, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises which God made to Abraham.
In the genealogy which follows, only David is called "king" (1,6). Matthew wishes to establish that Jesus comes from the royal line of David and fulfils the promises of the prophet Nathan to David in 2 Samuel 7. Jesus has the right pedigree to be Messiah.
In the translations, Jesus is described either as Messiah or as Christ, sometimes with the article, sometimes without. My preference is for "Jesus the Christ". The Greek "Christ" has the same meaning as the Hebrew "Messiah", that Jesus is God's anointed one. My view is that "Messiah" carries a lot of Jewish expectations with it (as seen for example in 2,4) which where not fulfilled by Jesus. "Christ" is the Christian term which would have been used by Matthew's community. It describes Jesus as our saviour. Early on, Christ became a personal name for Jesus. Using the article, Jesus the Christ, reminds us that within the story of the Gospel, Christ is regarded as a title (see 16,16).
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