The Gospel according to Matthew; or, the church's book. The word "church" does not occur in Mark, Luke, or John, but it occurs twice in Matthew, most famously when Jesus says to his most prominent disciple, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail upon it" (16:18). A translation cannot really capture it, but we have here a rare instance of verbal playfulness in the New Testament, which was written in a language (Greek) where the word for Peter (Petros) is very close to the word for rock (petra): "You are Petros, and on this petra I will build. . . ."
The Catholic Church of course regards this passage as the commissioning of Peter as the first pope, the founder of the Christian Church. One can't help observing, therefore, that the narration of the incident continues with Jesus teaching the disciples that he "must suffer many things, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." The recently commissioned Peter doesn't care for it, and begins to remonstrate with Jesus, thereby eliciting a strong rebuke: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men" (16:23). To us outsiders, it appears to have taken about twenty seconds for the first pope to supply proof of his fallibility.
One difference between Matthew and Mark, its chief source, will be evident to anyone who grew up with one of those Bibles that print Jesus's words in red. There is comparatively little red print, either by volume or percentage, in Mark. But most of the red print in Matthew can also be found in Luke. The probable reason for this is that Matthew and Luke, in addition to following Mark, had in common a second source, often denoted Q by scholars, which must have been a collection of sayings and parables of Jesus. Matthew arranges this Q material into five separate discourses. Of the five, the most loved and quoted is the first, the Sermon on the Mount. It may well be that the five discourses are intended to parallel the Five Books of Moses, and that Jesus's first discourse is delivered from a "mount" in order to suggest the proclamation of a new law, the old having been delivered to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai.
The Sermon on the Mount is one of those texts that will sound familiar even to those who've never read it, for the same reason that a silly lady is supposed to have liked Hamlet "because it has so many famous sayings." It is in this discourse that Jesus says "Blessed are the meek" and "Blessed are the peacemakers"; where he tells his disciples to pray what is now universally known as "the Lord's prayer"; where he instructs those who have been hit on the right cheek not to respond in like manner but to turn to their foe also the left; where he lays out what everyone now recognizes as "the golden rule"; &c.
Despite its status, or maybe in part because of it, the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount has its detractors. Committed Christian moralists, perhaps guarding against the charge of hypocrisy, have edged toward admitting a certain impracticality--no one seems to think, for example, that Jesus would require us to turn the other cheek toward al-Qaeda. The celebration of meekness has contributed to the complaint that the whole religion will be attractive mainly to small souls too afraid to fight back--that the ethic of meekness, in other words, was invented to make a virtue of a fatal flaw. This criticism is associated most closely with the philosopher Nietzsche's repudiation of Christian ethics, and it seems to me that, in our time, it may be extended to the observation that a chastity rule will have the effect of attracting psychological cripples who have no interest in forming open, "normal" sexual relationships. And, as long as I've blundered into the topic of human sexuality, the Sermon on the Mount also includes the following problematic pronouncement:
You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. (5:27-29)
Yikes! You might think that morality is largely a matter of beating back your inclinations in order to make your behavior conform to basic ethical precepts, but Jesus flatly rejects the distinction between impulse and action. Moreover, the recommended remedy for having the inclination is--what to say? Let us only point out that anyone who followed through on it in an advanced country would soon find himself in the psychiatric unit of a hospital. We are back, it seems, at the question of practicality, without even having taken up the question of the golden rule, and whether Jesus's "positive" version of it is really to be preferred to, "Don't do to another what you wouldn't want done to you."
These questions, whatever their merits, are of no concern to the author of Mark. If the end of the world is at hand, you really do not need instructions on how to live in it. You don't need to found a church, either. The Gospel according to Matthew concludes with what is known as "the great commission"; Jesus, having been raised from the dead, appears to his disciples and says:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age (28:18-20)
Unlike in Mark, "the close of the age" is not imminent. The "church's book" was written later. The idea of the time of Jesus being the end time has to blunted, because time has passed and the end hasn't come. So the time of Jesus is instead a time for revelation and instruction. He taught his disciples and now they must teach others, making new disciples. There is time for human activity.
To come to a true understanding of the gospel narratives, it's necessary to drop the notion that they promulgate one true theology.
