Book of Matthew - Serious or Satire?

Could the Gospel According to Matthew have been purposely written as a satire or humorous writing and not a serious religious work?The Satire According to Matthew written by Kyle Williams describes the Book According to Matthew as a satire or humorous writing and not a piece that the author meant for his readers to take seriously.IMO, it is possible that the author of Matthew (80-100CE) did intend it as a satire or humorous writing. I would like to compare Matthew with the Book According to Mark (65-80-CE), the synoptic written first, and the Book According to Luke (80-130CE), the supposed investigative synoptic, written after Matthew.In the book "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel, expert Craig Bloomberg states: "It's important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous."Even though I agree that the synoptic authors are anonymous, I will be refering to the books by their traditional names. NOTE: This discussion is not about proving authorship. Please don't go there.Williams has the satire markers broken down into five categories:
The Genealogy, Double Vision, Phony Fulfillments, Zechariah, and General Nonsense.Genealogy
Mark carries no genealogy. Luke does not mention the women, which is normal. The women mentioned in the Matthew genealogy are rather questionable. An unusual group to bring forward and Luke didn't.We also find that the genealogy doesn't stack up to what is written in Kings and Chronicles. Four generations seem to be omitted.Luke did not support Matthew's genealogy. The point being that the investigator came up with different information and Matthew was trying to keep the numbers even.(I don't want to argue about which is correct, if either, since there is already an open thread for that: Luke and Matthew's genealogies)Double Vision
Several examples are given where the author has increased the number of participants in an event.Mark (5:9) has one demon possessed man named Legion and Matthew has two (8:28-34). Now Luke (8:30) who claimed to investigate for his writing agrees with Mark and not Matthew. So the author of Luke does not support Matthew's rendition.Phony Fulfillments
This brings up the ever popular virgin birth which was already fulfilled by Isaiah's son, which the Jews would know. (usage of the word almah, not up for debate-Don't go there)Mark didn't have the birth story and Luke downplayed the impression that there was no sex between Joseph and Mary. Luke also doesn't bring up the name Immanuel. So the investigator again doesn't strongly support Matthew.The prophecies brought out by Matthew don't hold water and aren't supported by the other two synopotics. (Out of Egypt 2:15, Nazarene 2:23, and Donkey Riding King 21:4-5.)Zechariah
This is being covered in another thread Matthew 27:9: Quoted from Jeremiah? so I won't go into it here.Conclusion:
Even though religious writings tend to have amazing stories within them, the author of Matthew brought up information that the Jews knew to be incorrect or could easily check.As I understand it there were several men who tried to present themselves as the messiah in those days (First Century CE). Unfortunately, presenting the wrong information wouldn't make the author's candidate for messiah very impressive.IMO, the author may have made these "mistakes" on purpose using ancient satire/humor to poke fun at the messiah craze.
__________________________________________Please put this in the Bible: Accurracy and Inerrancy Forum please since this discussion is looking at accuracy of the information in the Book of Matthew in relation to the OT, the other two synoptics, and known history.Edited by purpledawn, : Clean up

Why would an author who is presenting a messiah born of a virgin (no sexual relations) present a genealogy of a man who is not the child's biological father, especially one going through a cursed line and include women not so chaste? All of them women with stories in the Bible, so their history was conveniently known.From Abraham to King David (straight from the OT), Luke and Matthew agree, after that they took different branches.IMO, Luke the investigator probably presented a more correct genealogy for Joseph identifying which Joseph was supposedly the father of Jesus.Matthew seemed to be more intent on getting the numbers to come out right (Three groups of 14) and giving a genealogy that was guaranteed not to be believed even if the audience missed the point that the child wasn't Joseph's anyway.IMO, all of these are extremes that would show that the piece was done as satire or humorous writing.

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

quote:

---

Satire is usually written to amuse and entertain. Today you can achieve that by writing a book of satire, and having it published. But at the time of Matthew, that wouldn't be guaranteed to get you an audience.

---

Writers don't always write for a large audience or to be published. This author may have only been writing to amuse a small group.Matthew was written after Mark and the author had access to Mark or the same source as the author of Mark so he wasn't starting from scratch.Compare this section of Mark and the same section in Matthew and then Luke. I'm using NIV Mark uses the name Levi for the tax collector, but Matthew changes it to Matthew and Luke's investigative author changes it back to Levi.At the end of the excerpts we see that the author of Matthew added a line which isn't relative to the incident. Luke again sticks with Mark's rendition with a little embellishment.While first century circulation may not be as fast as we have today, no one says the writing spread quickly. Some things take time to catch on.Word of mouth usually starts the ball rolling.

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

quote:

---

Are you suggesting that there is no Messiah?

---

Are you suggesting that Jesus' messiahship hangs on the Book of Matthew?This is not about whether Jesus is the messiah, but about whether the biography written by the author of Matthew concerning Jesus was serious or intended as humor.

quote:

---

Why would an "anonymous" author choose to ridicule such a concept?

---

Someone who didn't believe that Jesus was the messiah.
Someone who didn't like the way people were creating messiahs.
Someone who found messiah literature ridiculous.Like I said earlier, there were several who had been brought forth as the messiah. More than likely each had their supporting info.Our author may have poked fun at everybody for all we know.

quote:

---

After all, it was not as easy to write a book back in those days!

---

Elaborate. What do you mean by difficult?Matthew isn't a very long piece of work.The author of Matthew seemed to have had access to written works: Mark, the Torah, prophets, etc. So he wasn't a run of the mill farmer. He was probably a scribe or someone used to writing. So he had access to writing materials.

quote:

---

To do so, one would have to have quite a deeply ingrained motive for doing so.

---

Why? It could have been a hobby, it could have been a bet. Maybe he was making a copy of Mark and went silly.Just because their mode of writing seems difficult to us, doesn't mean it was difficult for them.

quote:

---

I see two basic passions and motives as being possible.

---

How does what the writer wrote support your two motives?

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

So why would an author who is writing a serious religious biography present a messiah born of a virgin (no sexual relations) and present a genealogy of a man who is not the child's biological father, especially one going through a cursed line and include women not so chaste? All of them women with stories in the Bible, so their history was conveniently known.Considering that the author of Mark didn't have a birth story, the Matthew author did not really promote his messiah in the best light for the Jewish community.Luke the investigator seemed to tone down the virgin part and presented a more reasonable genealogy.It would make more sense to see the author's work as satire or humor instead of riddled with unintentional errors, IMO.

quote:

---

the demons are named "legion" not the man

---

You weren't supposed to notice that mistake. But as you noted, only one man housed the demons in Luke and Mark, whereas Matthew had two.Since Matthew's author pulled his information either from Mark or the same source as Mark, either the story of the demons was not real and the author had no problem changing the numbers or the author deliberately increased the number (as he did several times in his work) so that people understood his work was not a serious biography.

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

quote:

---

So he can present a genealogy designed to look impressive, with little concern that it would be checked. These days we have a technical term for that kind of writing. We call it a "snow job."

---

Now you've added another possibility to what I mentioned in Message 13If you look at the genealogy as a "snow job" then that presents a work that was possibly written to sway the pagans to the new religion and not the Jews.Of course it still could have been a satire written to poke fun at how the new religion was recruiting pagans since this was written between 80-100CE after the "christian" sect was separated from Judaism. The question is, can we discern which one it is?Satire, Serious, or Snow Job?

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

quote:

---

i'm not just trying to be obtuse here, but i really don't get this. i can understand why the double of donkey is funny, but i don't see the possession.

---

It is hard to say what struck the funny bone in the first century.Humor is another one of those things that culture and time can affect.One of those "You had to be there" kinda things. This message has been edited by purpledawn, 02-12-2006 08:19 PM

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

Did some more reading. Notice in Matthew the name of the region is Gadarenes and in Mark and Luke it is Gerasenes.I looked in Strong's and Gerasenes has a Hebrew origin, but for Gadarenes it just says it is another name for Gerazenes. This map has Gergesa close to the Sea of Galilee and Gadara further away to the southeast. I haven't found anything consistent on these two places or groups.So again Matthew uses a different name than Mark and Luke.Why did he use a different name? It may have meant something at the time, unfortunately we'll never know.Like I said, hard to know what was humorous a few thousand years ago.ABE: Map LinkThis message has been edited by purpledawn, 02-13-2006 06:39 AM

---

"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz