Matthew’s Greek writing style comes out from the very first day’s reading. He writes like someone who spoke Hebrew as a first language, as we might expect, and does a lot of “callbacks” to the Hebrew Bible:
- “The genealogical record of Jesus the Messiah.”
- The book of Genesis separates major themes with the phrase, “These are the generations of [ ].” We find this in Genesis 2:4; 5:1, 10:1, etc. Mark and John do this in different ways too.
- “Look—”/“Get this—”
- Another feature of Hebrew is its attention-getter, historically translated as “behold.” However, the point is not to get someone to look at something, but rather to be sure they are listening. John does this often in Revelation, but not as often in his account of the gospel.
- “It is written.”
- While all the gospel accounts refer back to the Old Testament, Matthew is distinctive. In Mark and Luke, almost all references are in the context of someone speaking (Mark 1:2-3 is an exception). But in Matthew, he quotes scripture as though he’s writing a research paper! In the first four chapters (today’s reading), he does so six times when he’s not quoting someone, and at least another four times when he is.
Matthew writes in a Hebrew way to appeal to people who knew the Old Testament.
If you want to take part in the 90-Day Challenge to read the New Testament, you can download the PDF reading schedule here.
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