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Kenneth Humphreys

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An incorrigible plagiarist "makes the best of it"

"Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, but everyone translated them as he was able."

– Papias c. 135 AD (Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History III, 39.16)

The final draft of Matthew's Gospel (still unnamed) emerged sometime after the war of 135 AD.

In the aftermath of that devastating conflict, a Greek-speaking Jew, writing in the pagan city of Antioch, had been at pains to reassure the Roman authorities that his particular faith posed no threat to the imperium. The writer had fled 'fundamentalist' Jerusalem for the relatively enlightened pagan city of Antioch. He had with him an early version of 'Mark' and used this as the basis for his own story. His creation would eventually become known as 'Matthew.' He wrote for a Jewish audience, one still close to the ancestral faith. He thus has his hero say:

"I come not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them. Till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle shall pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" – Matthew 5.17,18.

Compare this to Paul's frequent references to the Law having been superseded by the 'risen Christ'! (Romans 7.4,6; Galatians 5.18; Ephesians 2.15 etc.). After 'losing' to Rome, no doubt all Jews felt defensive, and Matthew accommodates these sentiments.

At this point, the Christ story acquired the first of two (contradictory!) genealogies. Though ‘son of the creator god’, and presumably not really needing an earthly pedigree at all, Jesus none the less acquired a surrogate father, Joseph, and a lineage back to King David. Again, none of this is to be found in Paul’s writings but Paul is now dead.

In order to meet traditional Jewish expectations that the messiah would arise from the ‘House of David’ the writer prefaced 'Mark's' baptism story with an impressive genealogy. The author of Matthew also tried to tidy up the embarrassing theology of Christ’s baptism by the 'sinner' John the Baptist, by adding a ‘rationale’, absent from Mark:

"Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." – Matthew 3.15.

Some rationale!

But establishing a bona fides claim to messianic hopes of the Jews had to go hand-in-hand with toadying to Rome. Thus the writer rehashes the story of Pharaoh’s murder of male babies (found in Exodus 1.15,22) into Herod’s murder of male babies. Since Herod had died in 4 BC and the supposed Jesus had not been ‘born’ until the governorship of Quinirius (beginning in 6 AD) the validity of this mass murder is questionable, even before one considers the total absence of historical evidence. Yet the point was to blacken further the Jews (Christ-killers and baby- killers!) and distance Paulite Christians from them.

Copies his own calling?!

"Matthew", purportedly chosen by the godman as one of his intimate band of acolytes, even copies the story of his own calling, word-for-word, from the testimony of "Mark", erstwhile travelling companion of St Paul and a non-witness to the holy melodrama!

The only difference is that Mark calls his publican (tax collector) Levi son of Alphaeus not Matthew. Confusingly, later in his yarn, the author of Mark names Matthew as one of the twelve and not Levi. He also decides that it is a James who is "son of Alphaeus" (Mark 3.18). The authors of Luke and Matthew both agree that it is James who is a son of Alphaeus (Luke 6.15; Matthew 10.3) and fail to mention a Levi at all.

Oh well, it is all fiction.

"Fulfilling Prophecy"?

– An easy trick when you rewrite both 'prophecy' and its 'fulfillment'!

'Matthew', though building his story upon a copy of Mark, goes to great pains to add an element of his own: the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. On eleven occasions he introduces the formula "... this happened in order to fulfil what was said by the prophet ..." How better to convince fellow Jews that the god-man really had arrived, was in fact the chosen 'Jesus of Nazareth', than to show that his every word and deed had been presaged by the ancient Jewish oracles.

Matthew's task was to tease out new interpretations of the old scripture – wrenching his references completely out of context in fact – and juxtapositioning these 'quotations' with some pithy incident in the Jesus biography which he is fabricating. How can he get away with this duplicity? Because fortunately for 'Matthew' he was writing in Greek for a Greek-speaking audience, most of whom had no direct familiarity with Hebrew scripture but relied – if on any other source at all – on the Greek translation, the Septuagint. Matthew even misquotes freely from this secondhand source to serve his own purposes.

Faking the prophecy of a Virgin Birth: Famously, Matthew maintains that 'Isaiah' had prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin:

"Behold, a virgin will be with child, and will bring forth a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,"
– Matthew 1.23.

Matthew's source is the Septuagint (Isaiah 7.14). But the Greek-speaking translators of this version of Hebrew scripture (prepared in 3rd century BC Alexandria) had slipped up and had translated 'almah' (young woman) into the Greek 'parthenos' (virgin).

The Hebrew original says: 'Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel.'

Honestly translated, the verse reads: 'Behold, the young woman has conceived — and bears a son and calls his name Immanuel.'

The slip did not matter at the time, for in context, Isaiah’s prophesy (set in the 8th century BC but probably written in the 5th century BC) had been given as reassurance to King Ahaz of Judah that his royal line would survive, despite the ongoing siege of Jerusalem by the Syrians. And it did. In other words, the prophesy had nothing to do with events in Judaea eight hundred years into the future!

Yet upon this doctored verse from Isaiah the deceitful scribe who wrote Matthew was to concoct the infamous prophecy that somehow the ancient Jewish text had presaged the miraculous birth of the Christian godman.

Faking a prophecy of the city of birth: The 8th century BC Jewish sage 'Micah' writes about Assyrian invaders and a series of skirmishes in Samaria. He predicts (quite incorrectly as it turns out) that a ruler will arise from David's Bethlehem and conquer Assyria.

What does Micah actually say? The Massoretic (Hebrew) text of Micah 5.2, translated, says:

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah who is little among the clans of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be a ruler in Israel."

'Bethlehem Ephrathah' here refers to the clan who are descendants from a man called Bethlehem, the son of Caleb's second wife Ephrathah referred to in 1 Chronicles – it does not refer to a town at all!

Undeterred, Matthew subtly alters the quoted text in his own story (2.6):

"And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means the most insignificant of Judah, for out of you will come forth a ruler in Israel."

What Matthew has done is change the reference to a clan to a reference to a city – but who would notice!

Faking a prophecy of the hero's hometown:

The writer of Matthew started the deceit that the title 'Jesus the Nazarene' should in some manner relate to Nazareth, by quoting 'prophecy':

"And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." – Matthew 2.23.

With this, Matthew closes his fable of Jesus's early years. Yet Matthew is misquoting– he would surely know nowhere in Jewish prophetic literature is there any reference to a Nazarene. What is 'foretold' (or at least mentioned several times) in Old Testament scripture is the appearance of a Nazarite. For example:

"For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." (Judges 13.5)

Matthew slyly substitutes one word for another. By replacing Nazarite ('he who vows to grow long hair and serve god') with a term which appears to imply 'resident of' he is able to fabricate a hometown link for his fictitious hero.

Faking a reason for the trip to Egypt: Only Matthew tells the story of the holy family rushing off to Egypt to escape the murderous intent of Herod the Great. And yet Herod was a firmly established ruler who skillfully stayed on the winning side at Rome over four decades. He also had full-grown male heirs to succeed him.

The notion that Herod would be "afraid" that the baby of an obscure Nazareth carpenter would supplant him is laughable. According to Luke the blessed trio returned immediately to Nazareth without any concern for the wrath of the Jewish king. But the Egyptian connection is vital to Matthew's purposes – he has in mind a literary vignette in which Herod plays the part of "Pharaoh", infants are killed, and "Israel" (="Jesus") is rescued.

Matthew this time quotes the venerable "Hosea", though without giving his source:

"So he got up and took along the young child and its mother by night and withdrew into Egypt, and he stayed there until the decease of Herod, for that to be fulfilled which was spoken by Jehovah through his prophet, saying: 'Out of Egypt I called my son.' " (2.14,15)

Perhaps if Matthew had admitted that he was selectively quoting from Hosea 11.1 informed listeners would have known that the reference is not a prophesy at all. Hosea is lamenting the 'degenerate vine' of Israel of his own day, unlike the chosen people at an earlier time:

"When Israel was a boy, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."

"Israel" and "son" here mean the Jewish people. In other words, the connection of the Hebrew exodus with Jesus is completely spurious – but it makes a good story.

Faking a prophecy of Herod's (fictional) 'Massacre of the Innocents':

Here Matthew switches his source to 'Jeremiah', whose commentary is actually on the 6th century BC Babylonian captivity. At verse 31.15 the oracle says:

"This is what Jehovah has said, 'In Ramah a voice is being heard, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping over her sons. She has refused to be comforted over her sons, because they are no more.' "

Are Rachel's sons 'no more'? No, they are in Babylon and what's more God himself assures Rachel that they will be back in the very next verses:

"Hold back your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears ... they will certainly return from the land of the enemy. And there exists a hope for your future ... and the sons will certainly return to their own territory." (31.15,17)

Lifting the sage's words for his own story, Matthew juxtapositions Herod's 'crime' with the convenient 'Babylonian' wailing:

"Herod ... sent out and had all the boys in Bethlehem and in all its districts done away with, from two years of age and under ... Then that was fulfilled which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying: 'A voice was being heard in Ramah, weeping and much wailing; it was Rachel weeping for her children and she was unwilling to take comfort, because they are no more.' "  (2.16-18)

Predictably, neither Josephus nor any other source mentions the mass killing – and yet they detailed Herod's real crimes are at great length.

So cavalier is Matthew with his 'quotations' from the prophets that he even wrongly attributes one quote: in referring to Judas's "thirty pieces of silver" (27.3,10) he maintains that the prophecy of 'Jeremiah' had been fulfilled – and yet it is 'Zechariah' (11.12-13) who used the phrase!

Faking an Ass prophecy:

Matthew (21.4,5) throws in another "prophesy" from 'Zechariah' that the King will arrive at Jerusalem mounted on an ass (and actually misreads the quotation and brings along a colt as well!)

Zechariah actually says:

"O daughter of Jerusalem. Look! Your king himself comes to you. He is righteous, yes, saved; humble and riding upon an ass, even upon a full-grown animal the son of a she-ass." (9.9)

But he goes on to say:

"His rulership will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth." (9.10)

When was all this written? Quite late, possibly during the Maccabean period, and certainly not by the scribe identified as Zechariah, the author of chapters 1 - 8. What was being prophesied? Much of the book relates hostility to the vast empire of Darius the Great (522-486 BC). Darius was the suppressor of rebellion and conqueror of Egypt. He really did have an empire from "sea to sea." The scribe who wrote in Zechariah's name, prophesying with hindsight, certainly was not thinking about events two or three hundred years after his own time.

Rise And Shine

Having bulked out Mark's story of the god-man with "ancient prophecy" – in other words, with the "evidence" that would convince Jews who still had faith in the prophets – Matthew writes an altogether more exciting ending to the sacred biography.

The god-man's death is the catalyst for severe earthquake, the rising of many corpses that go off to Jerusalem (!!), guards on the tomb (an idea copied from Joshua), and a snowy white angel sitting on a tombstone. This angel instructs Mary Magdalene and the "other Mary" to quickly tell the disciples of the risen god-man, though before they can do so, JC himself puts in an appearance and repeats the instruction. Unlike in Mark, the women are ecstatic with joy, not filled with fear; and Jesus promises the disciples to be with them "always".

Significantly, Matthew devotes rather fewer words to the fabulous resurrection than to rebutting the idea that the disciples had simply stolen the body – a tale obviously popular among the Jews when the fable was written ("This saying has been spread abroad among the Jews up to this very day" – 28.15).

No doubt his keenness to add the "miraculous birth" preface had a similar motivation – to rebut Jewish slurs that if the Christian god-man had been born to an unmarried mother it was pretty scandalous origin.

Priestly Discourse

Matthew groups the main body of his fable into five chunks of priestly instruction, each ending with the same formula – "Now when Jesus had finished these words ..." (7.28;11.1;13.53;19.1.26.1). Each discourse emphasizes in some way the role of the Church in inheriting the promised 'Kingdom'.

"The Gospel of Matthew emphasized the Jewish festival calendar, and for this reason Matthew provided blocks of Christian teaching material to be used in preparation for or during the five great celebratory Jewish festivals of the year."

– Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p92/3.

In other words, in Matthew, we have a gospel for an embryonic Church, appealing primarily to a Jewish audience, and servicing its own need for a sacred text. The work is a pious fantasy, its hero a fabrication from his humble beginnings to his portentous end.

Related articles Home "Mark" – Bringing the Celestial Superjew Down to Earth   "Luke" – A Gospel for Credulous Pagans   "John" – A Gospel to Silence the Gnostics   "Saint Peter" – Linking Rome back to the Godman   Would they lie? – Copy and Glorify!   Non-Christian Testimony? – From the authentic pen of lying Christian scribes !! MAJOR SECTIONS Do you really think it all began with a sanctimonious Jewish wonder-worker, strolling about 1st century Palestine? Prepare to be enlightened.   Jesus – The Imaginary Friend Still holding to the idea that some sort of holy man lies behind the legend? Better check out... Godman – Gestation of a Superhero A closer look at the glib assertion that the Jesus story "got off the ground quickly and spread rapidly." What DID the Early Christians Believe? Many currents fed the Jesus myth, like streams and tributaries joining to form a major river. Sourcing the legend – The Syncretic Heritage of Christianity Much of the mythology of Christianity is a rehash of an older and even more transparent fabrication – Judaism. Jew Story – The Way of the Rabbi Human ingenuity and cunning is matched by mankind's equally monumental credulity and wishful thinking. Christianity's Fabrication Factory Church organisation, authority and membership preceded rather than followed the justifying doctrine. As the organisation and its needs changed so has the ‘Testament of God’ adapted accordingly. Dogma – The Word in all its Savage Glory From religious policeman to grandee of the church, from beast fighter in Ephesus to beheading in Rome, Paul's story has more holes than a swiss cheese.  St Paul the Apostle – Dead in the water? Orchestrated by ambitious Christian clerics, a cancer of superstition, fear and brutality was imposed across Europe. Heart of Darkness – The Criminal History of the Christian Church The Christian Heaven may have been a vain folly but the Christian Hell has been real enough. Hell on Earth – A Brutal Superstition Spreads Across the World Raised to the status of State religion the Christian Church reigned over the destruction of civilization. As the centuries passed religious barbarism grew ever more vicious. Winter of the World – The Terrible Cost of "Christendom" For two millennia Christianity's anti-sexual, puritanical doctrines have inflicted untold damage on the mental, emotional and physical lives of countless millions of people. Those SEXUALLY hung-up Christians – Loved-up With a Jewish father (stern patriarch) and a Christian mother (obsession with guilt and heaven) it is not surprising that Islam grew up a bit of a tartar. Islam's Desert Storm – 'Christendom' Reaps a Whirlwind Heaven help us. The richest, most powerful nation in history has a psychotic infatuation with Jay-a-sus the Lawd! The Christianizing of the Americas

Copyright © 2004 by Kenneth Humphreys.
Copying is freely permitted, provided credit is given to the author and no material herein is sold for profit.