My assumptions about the Gospel of Matthew:

• The Gospel of Matthew draws heavily on the Gospel of Mark; it is still the leading conclusion of study of the “Synoptic Problem” that Matthew has used Mark as one of its sources. Most of the Gospel of Mark appears within the Gospel of Matthew
• Another major source of Matthew is shared with the Gospel of Luke. This source is largely a collection of sayings and teaching of Jesus referred to as “Q”. This source is not unlike the recently-discovered Gospel of Thomas.
• While reading the Gospel of Matthew, even though we might have the feeling that we are on familiar territory, familiar to us from what we have read in Mark, Matthew deserves to be read as a story in its own right.
• Matthew has put together a new story using Mark and Q and some material that is unique amongst the Synoptic Gospels – e.g. Matthew’s nativity story.
• Before it stood alongside the other gospels in the New Testament, it stood alone. It deserves to be taken seriously and on its own terms, without reference to any other gospel.
• We need to treat it critically, i.e. using all our critical faculties.
• We encounter it first and foremost as a story; stories are good.
• All of the text of Matthew forms the story: we have access to everything.We don’t need to cut parts out because they are unhistorical.
• We may have access to history behind that story, but we may not. This is not a loss.
• The Gospel of Matthew is anonymous. For convenience we call the author as ‘Matthew’.
• The stories that make up the Story of this gospel developed over several decades.
• For a long time, people heard Matthew rather than read it.
• The world inhabited by Matthew is quite different to the one(s) we live in: we are separated from it by 2000 years, two languages and a social world that is strange to us. All of this strangeness and distance can be disguised when we read the Gospel as a part of a book written in 21st century English.
• The Gospel of Matthew is not objective: it is unashamedly biased towards its point of view of Jesus.