Week 34 Matthew
I was thinking some more about Matthew’s list of OT names in chapter one.
I was wondering how much OT-related content Matthew had brought over into his gospel.
The simplest way for me to do that was to count how many times he quoted straight out of the OT. The editors of my bible already did some homework to help me. They typeset OT quotes using all upper case letters. Here’s an example: …for so it has been written by the prophet, AND YOU, BETHLEHEM, LAND OF JUDAH…
I got a sheet of paper and then started scanning through Matthew looking for upper case sentences. I wrote the references in a column on the left-hand side of the page. When I got to the bottom I started a second column at the top. Fifty references. I’m solid with the number 50 because I’m pretty sure I missed some. 50 OT references in 28 chapters rounds up to 1.8 OT references per chapter.
I noticed Matthew also dropped names: the Queen of the South, Solomon, Jonah, Elijah, Abel, Zechariah, Noah, who I guess he figured any reader would know about. Like knowing who George Washington was.
Two conclusions from the exercise:
Matthew used a bunch of OT material in his NT book.
If I haven’t read the OT I won’t get what Matthew is driving at as well as I could.
Note: quote from Matthew 2:5-6 (NASB)