FOUR PORTRAITS BUT ONE Y‘SHUA
So what portrait of Y‘shua is obtained from Matthew‘s Gospel? He certainly is human. As the teacher of
Israel, He repeats some of the great experiences of Israel itself. During His earthly life He leaves Egypt, goes
into the wilderness, is tempted on a mountain, is baptised in the Jordan and crosses it. Matthew plays down
some aspects of Y‘shua‘s humanity when compared to Mark. In Matthew, non-believers call Y‘shua ̳Rabbi‘
or ̳Teacher‘, a title with a human emphasis. But the disciples call him ̳Lord‘, the divine title. Peter confesses
Him to be ̳Son of God‘ as well as ̳Messiah‘. This is a lofty portrait, indeed.
Matthew has Y‘shua as the manifest presence of YHWH in their midst and much more clearly divine.
CONCLUSION
Matthew's Gospel presents us with a complex situation. On the one hand, we find strongly pro-Jewish
elements, essential to the identity of both Gospel and community. On the other hand, students read into the
Scriptures of Matthew's Gospel anti-Jewish elements, particularly the extraordinary invective of Chapter 23,
which is unfounded and in which I will explain in the exegesis. From Matthew's context: a small community,
recently separated from the synagogue, living in fear of persecution, struggling to forge identity from a
ruptured past, trying to hold to its Jewishness while affirming its Christian commitment and openness to
Gentiles.
We need to become more sensitive to the historical and sociological context out of which this text and other
New Testament texts have come. YHWH is not revealed in a vacuum but in the context of human experience
and struggle. We need also to broaden our understanding of the Judaism of Y‘shua‘s and Matthew's day,
and to realise how varied and changing the emerging picture is. We need to re-appropriate the Jewishness,
both of Y‘shua himself and of Matthew and Matthew's community: their reverence for Torah, their
indebtedness to Judaism, and their hope and love for Israel. We need to be more sensitive to how we use
the term 'Pharisee', expunging it from our vocabulary of insults and understanding the limitations of its
metaphorical use in Matthew's Gospel.
I would argue that in the final analysis, Matthew's Gospel is not anti-Semitic—certainly not as we would
understand that term today. Sometimes we have interpreted Matthew in an anti-Semitic way, and continue to
do so unthinkingly. But Matthew's Gospel is not racially prejudiced against Jews. Its anti-Jewish sentiments
arise from a very specific context that cannot be universalised and ought not to be imitated. In the end, the
message of the Gospel challenges any kind of prejudice, hatred or fear of others—even, perhaps especially,
of those to whom our lives are most closely bound.