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St Matthew’s Gospel

Dear Friends,

I hope you’ve had a good Christmas and New Year and that our series looking at the music of the season has been both uplifting and enjoyable. Since the start of Advent our Sunday services have followed St Matthew’s Gospel and, for most weeks of this year, his will the Gospel we hear in church. Between tomorrow morning and Easter Week we will be reading through St Matthew together.

Matthew’s Gospel is the first book of the New Testament and for millennia Christians believed it was the earliest of the four Gospels. Now, most scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel was a source for Matthew – who repeats almost everything In St Mark. The editor of Matthew seems to have access to a body of material shared with the editor of St Luke but not known to the editors of either St Mark or St John. St Matthew’s editor also had his own sources around the birth of Jesus – the stories of the Magi and of Gabriel’s appearances to Joseph are only found in St Matthew.

The Gospel is concerned with showing how Jesus’ life and ministry was foretold in what we now call the Old Testament. Most scholars think the Gospel was written between AD 80 and 90 with a range of between 70 and 110 being mentioned. A minority think it was written before AD 70 which would make it the oldest Gospel. All these dates are at least 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. We have no idea who the editor was who drew these stories together – the earliest Church identified him as the Apostle Matthew but we simply have no idea who wrote it.

I hope you enjoy our read through and reflections on St Matthew.

On a general house keeping note…I receive several emails a week asking to change your email address – please just use the link, below, marked “update your preferences” to change your address. If you find you haven’t received a Daily Devotion please do check in your Spam folder – if it’s there please add this address to your contacts list as that helps your email programme know you want these emails. If you find you’ve been accidentally unsubscribed you can always pop yourself back on via devotions.urc.org.uk – you can catch up with old ones there too.

best wishes

Andy