The Gospel according to Mark paints a stark and radical vision of who Jesus is in his despair at his death, an empty tomb, and silent women. The gospel’s final scenes lead a reader to abandon all hope of signs and face who Jesus is without any visible messianic signs.

If the authors of Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels figured out Mark’s schema, they abandoned it. For them there were signs aplenty. When Jesus refuses to give a sign (Mark 8:12), both the gospels of Matthew and Luke use the Q-gospel saying: “This generation is an evil generation. It demands a sign, but it will be given no sign—except the sign of Jonah!” (Luke 11:29; Matthew 12:39).

The authors of the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke edit Mark’s composition, amplify it, and invent new episodes. In the process, they take the narrative in new directions, making it a new story.

Editing

The author of the Gospel according to Matthew follows Mark’s story of Jesus’ execution very closely. The author repeats verbatim Mark 15:33–35 (=Matthew 27:45–47). Matthew has no apparent problem with Jesus dying on the cross with an expression of despair and abandonment. The author slightly edits Mark 15:35–37, “He’s calling Elijah.” Mark’s Greek is simple, paratactic (sentences are connected by “and”), with little subordination. Matthew lessens the paratactic, introduces subordination, making the style more elevated and smoother (Matthew 27:47–50). This edit is stylistic in nature, remaking Mark’s style into Matthew’s.

Amplification

Following Jesus’s death, the Marcan narrator notes: “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom!” (Mark 15: 38). Then follows immediately the centurion’s ambiguous confession or exclamation. Matthew picks up on the note about the temple’s curtain and amplifies it. Matthew 27:51 is from Mark: “And suddenly the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The rest is Matthean amplification: “and the earth quaked, rocks were split apart, and tombs were opened and many bodies of sleeping saints came back to life. And they came out of the tombs after his resurrection and went into the holy city, where they appeared to many” (Matthew 27:51a–53). This is a major amplification both in the number of signs—earthquakes, tombs opened, and dead saints brought back to life—as well as in time—from the moment of Jesus’ death to his resurrection. An apocalyptic scenario has broken fully out into the story.

This amplification fits with a major theme in Matthew’s gospel: the ekklēsia (community, gathering, church) is the true Israel. As the birth narrative stresses over and over, Jesus fulfills prophecy found in Israel’s Holy Writings. In the Sermon on the Mount, he appears as the new Moses. Jesus’ twelve disciples represent the twelve tribes of Israel. At the parable of the wicked tenants’ conclusion (Matthew 21:33–41), Jesus warns: “‘God’s empire will be taken away from you and given to a people that bears its fruit.’ . . . When the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parable, they understood that he was talking about them” (21:43, 45).

Matthew sees the Anointed’s community (ekklēsia) as the true Israel, succeeding an Israel that has failed to recognize what God is doing. John the Baptizer (11:12–14), Jesus, and his community are the true successors of the prophets. Jesus did not abolish Israel. “Don’t imagine that I have come to annul the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to annul but to fulfill” (5:17). This is not supersessionism, where the church replaces Israel, but it marks a major step in that direction. Matthew’s community is engaged in an intra Jewish debate, not a gentiles or Christianity verses Judaism debate. They have been thrown out of the synagogue—a major crisis for the community. This gospel argues that they are the true Israel, not those who threw them out of the synagogue.

“And beware of people, for they’ll turn you over to Jewish councils and flog you in synagogues. And you’ll be hauled up before governors and even kings on my account so you can make your case to them and to the gentiles.” (10:16–18, see also 23:34)

In the trial scene, “when Pilate could see that he was getting nowhere, but that a riot was starting instead, he took water and washed his hands in full view of the crowd and said, ‘I’m not responsible for this man’s blood. That’s your business!’” (27:24) This is part of the continuing effort of the gospel writers to shift the blame from the Romans, who actually executed Jesus, to the Judeans, who did not. Matthew in his effort to show that the Judeans are not the true Israel, invents one of the most damning and damnable statements in the New Testament. “In response all the people said, ‘So, smear his blood on us and on our children’” (27:25). Or in the language of the King James Version, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Regardless of your theology about the word of God, if there is any question about the gospel writers’ fallibility, this is prima facie evidence. The author of Matthew’s gospel made a colossal mistake.

God’s demarking the true Israel, the Anointed’s community (ekklēsia), comes to a head in the Matthean amplification of the splitting of the veil of the temple and resulting apocalyptic signs. Jesus’ death marks the point where the true Israel steps forward and the false Israel receives God’s judgment on its temple and by implication its people.

Editing

Following this apocalyptic amplification, the Matthean author edits the centurion’s exclamation into a confession. Mark’s had been simple: “When the Roman officer in charge saw that he had died like this, he said, ‘This man really was God’s son!’” (Mark 15:39). In Greek what the centurion sees is left ambiguous, but the SV translation probably is correct that what the centurion sees is how Jesus dies. The author of Matthew’s story edits out this ambiguity. “The Roman officer and those with him keeping watch over Jesus witnessed the sign and what had happened, and were terrified, and said, “This man really was God’s son” (Matthew 27:54). The apocalyptic amplification distances the centurion’s confession from Jesus’ dying words, lessening their impact. The centurion is no longer the man in charge, but one of those “keeping watch” and becomes a witness to the apocalyptic sign, the very signs the Gospel of Mark had denied.

Matthew’s editing and amplification makes Mark’s achievement clearer. Mark kept the narrative simple. The focus was on a reader confronting who Jesus is. By refusing all signs, a reader encounters Jesus’ identity where words fail because they have been stripped away. The titles have been made so ambiguous that a reader is left with experience alone, no reinforcements.

Matthew’s intent is different. In this gospel, Jesus’ identity is clear from the beginning. There is nothing ambiguous about it. Matthew’s concern is to demonstrate that the Anointed’s community (ekklēsia) is the true Israel. And this gospel centers that intent in the death scene. Israel has abandoned its Messiah.

Resurrection

The author of the Gospel of Matthew knows a version of the Gospel of Mark that ends at 16:8. No evidence indicates that the author knows any other resurrection stories. The author edits and amplifies Mark’s story and then invents new episodes.

The ambiguity of Mark’s story will not do. The editor edits it away. The editor’s finger prints are all over the story. As the women approach the tomb, there is another earthquake, again an apocalyptic sign. The young man becomes an angel who “rolled away the stone, and was sitting on it” (Matthew 28:2). He “gave off a dazzling light and wore clothes as white as snow” (28:3).

In Mark the women run away in fear and tell no one. In Matthew, they run “to tell his disciples” (28:8). But then Jesus meets them and “They came up and grabbed his feet and paid him homage (28:9). “Paid him homage” is a clear Matthean phrase, occurring thirteen times in this gospel, while only twice in Mark and three times in Luke.

“Jesus says to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Go tell my friends so they can leave for Galilee, where they will see me’” (28:10). For this author, it’s critical that the students get to Galilee for the story’s all important concluding scene.

We should pause to consider what has happened. The author has clearly edited and amplified the Marcan story. In the process the editor has created a story of the resurrected Jesus appearing first to the women, with no mention of Peter. In a gospel in which Peter was promised the keys of the kingdom (Matthew 16:19), he makes no explicit appearance in the Matthean resurrection narratives. The story of the first resurrection appearance to the women is an amplification of the Marcan account.

Commission

The amplification of the young man’s promise in Mark into both an angel and the resurrected Jesus repeating the command to go to Galilee indicates the importance of this final scene. The narrator opens the final story by announcing, “The eleven students went to the mountain in Galilee where Jesus had told them to go” (28: 16). Jesus’ instruction to the women in 28:10 made no mention of a mountain.

Upon seeing Jesus, his students “paid him homage; but some were dubious” (28:17). This comment by the narrator, clearly created by the author as “paid him homage” indicates (see above), is strange and jarring. At the narrative’s climax, some doubted what they were seeing? Who? How many? Why? A major theme of the narrative is the community’s mixed nature: it is made up of both good and evil. In the parable of the Wheat and Weeds (13:24–30), the owner tells the slaves not to try to weed the field because “you’ll uproot the wheat at the same time as you pull the weeds” (13:29). Only at the final judgment is the separation to be made. The final judgment depicted in Matthew 25, when the righteous and unrighteous are separated, both ask the same question, “Master, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you a drink?” (25:37, 44) Until the end, the righteous and unrighteous are unknown.

Ambiguity is not in the author’s stylistic toolkit, which is normally straight forward. But when it comes to the nature of the community, a major, maybe the major, theme of this gospel, ambiguity reigns. The community is made up of good and bad, and the community does not know who’s who.

The resurrected Jesus commands his students, “You shall go and make-students of all nations” (28:19 my translation). Getting the full resonance of the Greek into an English translation is difficult. “Make students” or “make disciples” as in traditional translations, is a verb in the Greek. Students is the correct translation because that is the normal meaning of the word in Greek. Moreover, Jesus is a teacher par excellence in this gospel—the new Moses, the Sermon on the Mount, five sermons in total are occasions of teaching. “Makes students” is a good translation, but “turn into students” might be better.

The meaning and resonance of “nations” is more difficult. Since there is nothing in the ancient world like a modern nation state, nation really gives the wrong meaning. SV uses “peoples” which hints at the “ethnic” aspect of the Greek ethne. But the Greek has a sense of “them, not us.” This sense is very strong in Matthew’s narrative. Ethne always denotes a sense of the other, often with negative overtones. Matthew 6:32 is a good example:

Don’t say, “What are we going to eat?” or “What are we going to drink?” or “What are we going to wear?” These are all things pagans seek (6:31-32).

I would suggest something like, “Go out and turn those other guys into students.” The author, in the person of the resurrected Jesus, sets as the mission for the Anointed’s community to turn those other peoples, those unclean nations, into their students just as Jesus had made them his students. But it goes yet deeper. Matthew’s community had been expelled from the synagogue and was searching for its place in Israel. The narrative has argued that they are the true Israel, not the Pharisees. They are the prophets’ true successors. They must leave their homeland, their native people, and not only go out among those other people, those lawless and unclean nations, but even more they must turn them into students of the Anointed. Just as Israel went into Egypt, and Joseph took Mary and her baby and fled into Egypt, so they must go into those other lands.

By editing and amplifying Mark’s narrative, and inventing new episodes, the author of the Gospel according to Matthew shaped a new narrative, a new gospel for a new day. The narrative shifted from “who do men say I am?” to the coming out of the Anointed’s community among those other peoples.

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