The Gospel of Mark's structure is so interesting to me. His structure is drastically different than the Gospel of Matthew, and I wanted to research more on these differences and overall structure. This research, though, lead me to realize that numbers are important, yet details are not.
Matthew’s use of numbers in his structure is also another key point in his organization, and a very important part of my interest in this gospel. He favors the number two, and during our class discussion, I found this so interesting. Why the number two? Another number, which was interesting to me, was the number 40. His parallelism with Moses’ 40 years in the dessert and Jesus’ 40 days is very important. By using the same number, he is directly showing the similarities between Moses and Jesus. He is portraying Jesus as the New Moses, which should have really impacted the Jewish Community at that time. His clear indication that he is addressing Jews makes understanding the stories he includes even more interesting. 40, though, is not just important to the relate Moses and Jesus, but as I recall from previous Bible study classes, it rained for 40 days and night during Noah’s time. Those reading Matthew’s gospel really could relate their past knowledge of the Old Testament to what they were presently reading.
Another important number is 12. When we spoke about the 12 disciples relation to the 12 tribes of Israel, I was very intrigued. How could it be that I was told there were 12 disciples my entire life, but that was just a symbolic number? At this point of the class, I started to think about the stages of faith development. I can see now that where I began this course and where I am now is drastically different. Something so minute, such as the 12 disciples really not necessarily being 12 all together, really impacted me. I see that details are not really that necessary. Would it not be nice if others realized this? Could it be, that if others realized that details are not so important but the message that is trying to be portrayed is, then would we all believe the same thing? Would there be different denominations, churches, groups, or would there be all just followers of Jesus’ message?
[1] J.E. Patrick, “Matthew's pesher gospel structured around ten messianic citations of Isaiah.” TS 60: 1 (2010), 43-5.
Patrick, James E., “Matthew's pesher gospel structured around ten messianic citations of Isaiah.” Journal of Theological Studies 60:1 (2010): 43-81.
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