About ten years after Mark wrote his Gospel, Matthew used Mark’s Gospel to compose a new Gospel. In fact, more than 90 percent of Mark appears in Matthew— often word-for-word, but also often generally simplified and summarized. So what was Matthew up to? Why did he even bother? Well, brilliant as Mark is, Matthew was facing a new situation. Though he stood in the same events, he was looking at a different horizon.
Writing just before the Roman legions destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Mark was specifically addressing an audience in Palestine that was, at that very moment, hard-pressed to join the Jewish Revolt. With six legions amassed against Jerusalem and famine and civil war raging inside its walls, it was clear that unless God intervened, the Romans would indeed destroy the Holy City and God’s House once and for all. But many prophets were saying he would indeed finally act! When would the light would dawn, except in darkest night?!
But were they right? What side to choose??
“Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I Am’ and will deceive many. . . . do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. . . . the good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations” (Mk 13.5-10). The destruction of Jerusalem will come, but will not be the end, because God’s reign has to be extended to the whole world.
By contrast, Matthew’s audience is not faced with any pressure to join the Jewish Revolt; he’s writing in Antioch in Syria ten years after it was suppressed, and the Temple’s destruction is already a fact of the past. For him what’s relevant about that disaster is how it’s led to the now-ongoing spread of the Good News to “all the nations”— just as Jesus said— of which Antioch is an example. He’s rewritten Jesus’ speech on the destruction of the Temple in Mark to address the troubles and persecutions that the Church is facing in this new context. If Mark wrote about “the beginning of the good news” (Mk 1.1), Matthew is writing about how it spread to the world— but not quite in the same way as Luke will, in another ten years or so.
Also, Mark is all but entirely narrative— an action thriller, if you will— and the apostolic generation is rapidly dying out. Matthew apparently wanted to include more of Jesus’ teachings, which apparently existed in some form but not as part of a formalized “Gospel” (remember, so far there’s only one Gospel, and that’s Mark). So he adds the sermon on the mount and a ton of other teaching material— making the book half again as long— and, while doing so, shifts some of Mark’s episodes or sayings around a bit to bring out some of his own didactic emphases. There’s no disrespect to either evangelist in pointing this out. This is only to describe the literary relationship between the two writers and their Gospels.
When it comes to Mt 24— Jesus’ discourse on the destruction of the Temple— Matthew describes that destruction in terms of Old Testament prophecies. Mark, of course, has already done this in his chapter 13, and indeed Matthew’s audience still needed (as we still need) to understand that catastrophe properly— i.e., in terms of how it fit in to the grand sweep of Israel’s history. So, as far as that goes, much of Matthew’s version is drawn word-for-word from Mark, and where it isn’t, Matthew has mostly just smoothed out Mark’s rougher Greek. But he does makes some tweaks, because he’s interested in Jesus’ announcement of the Temple’s destruction not just as a historical curiosity (“Oh look, Jesus predicted it, gee wasn’t he divine!”)— but as something directly helpful for his own audience.
Mark tells of how, right after Jesus left the Temple for the last time, he sat on the mountain opposite it (readers should have in mind Ez 11.22-23, the moment God abandoned the Temple in the OT), and announced its destruction— “not one stone will be left on another” (13.3). At this, the disciples ask, “When will these things be? And what will the sign be, when all these things will be ended up (synteleisthai συντελεῖσθαι)?” (13.4) (I’m using “ended up” because there are three words in play here, telos and synteleisthai (v.) or synteleia (n.), but translations say all kinds of things— “end”, “fulfill”, “complete”, “finish”— but we need to hear how they echo each other. So: end, and end up.) The disciples’ question in Mark is about the Temple’s destruction, very pressing to Mark’s audience, and when they ask how things will be “ended up”, they’re referring to what Jesus has just said about the end of the Temple, not to the end of the age.
Matthew rewrites this— “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your parousia and of the end-up of the age?” (24.3).
Parousia (παρουσία) does not mean “coming”, much less any “second coming”, but the presence or residence (literally, the being-near) of the emperor in a given city. Our Bible translations are simply wrong to translate parousia as “coming”! Matthew does not talk about any “second coming”; at the end of his Gospel, Jesus does not ascend to heaven but reassures his disciples, “I am with you all days, even unto the ending-up of the age (synteleias tou aionos συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος)” (28.20— using the same phrase as here in 24.3). We find the story of the ascension and the promise of a “coming [again]” only in Luke 24.51 and Acts 1.11, and Luke uses eleusetai ἐλεύσεται, not parousia. In the New Testament, the ascension belongs to Luke’s specific narrative and theology. Of course, the Church later reflects on all the Gospels at once and speaks from all of them together in the light of her living experience of the living Christ, but that’s not yet the case inside the Gospels— the four different narratives are only in the process of being written. So, in Matthew, the disciples are asking, What will be the sign of your residence as King? And the ending-up, on the other hand, is not that of the Temple, as in Mark, but, specifically, that of the present age as a whole. In fact the destruction of the Temple had turned out not to be the end of the world— just as Jesus had said— but then, how will it end?
So, changes: Where Mark’s Jesus said, “they will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them” (13.9)— Matthew’s Jesus doesn’t mention synagogues, but only that “they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake” (24.9).
Matthew does use Mark’s saying about witnessing before synagogues, but he puts it into Jesus’ instructions to the Twelve, as he sends them out for the first time (10.17-18). In that context, Jesus warns them, “They will hand you over to councils and scourge you in their synagogues; you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations” (10.18). In Mark’s version of this commission (6.7-11), there is no mention of being handed over or scourged, or of governors and kings— but persecutions by both civil and religious authorities are the reality that Matthew’s Christians are facing. So when Matthew’s Jesus gives the Twelve their commission, he does so in a way that will culminate at the end of the Gospel with a command to teach “all the nations” (28.19-20).
Even inside the speech on the destruction of the Temple, where Mark’s Jesus does say, “the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations” (13.10), Matthew’s Jesus emphasizes, “this good news of [God’s] reign will be proclaimed in all the inhabited [earth] as a witness to all the nations, and then the end (telos τέλος) will come” (24.14). By adding mention of the “end” here, Matthew again ties the speech not only to the disciples’ initial question about the “ending-up of the age” (24.3), but also to the final horizon of Gospel, when the risen Messiah tells his disciples, “make disciples of all nations. . . . and behold, I am with you always, to the ending-up of the age” (28.19-20, cp 24.3). In Mark, Jesus told the disciples that wars and earthquakes would not be the end, because the good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations (13.5-10). In Matthew, Jesus talks about the end as something that happens after the good news is proclaimed. Same thing, but the perspective has slightly shifted.
Again, Matthew heightens the evangelical implications of the persecutions, by inserting into Mark’s account of Jesus’ speech the words, “If they say to you, ‘Look, he’s in the desert!’— don’t go out; or ‘Look, he’s in the inner rooms!’— don’t believe it; for as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the parousia of the Son of Man be” (24.26-27). The parousia of the Son of Man will be like lightning shining from east to west, obvious to the whole world, and not some secret teaching by a separatist sect. What will this look like?
Well, we see the same missional emphasis with mention of “the tribes of the earth” in 24.28-30, amid a dazzling tour-de-force that describes the Son of Man “coming (erchomenon ἐρχώμενον) on the clouds in power by referring all at once to Dn 7.13–14,18, Is 13.10, Ez 32.7, Jl 2.10,31, 3.15, and Zc 12.10,14. After he “comes in power”, then “he will send his messengers (angeloi ἄγγελοι) with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his chosen from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (24.31). Now, if you want to know what Matthew thinks what the Son of Man’s coming in power is about, read Daniel 7.13-14,18, where the Son of Man comes up to the throne of God and is given dominion over all nations, along with Mt 26.64, where Jesus tells the High Priest, “from this moment (ap’ arti ἀπ’ ἄρτι) you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven”, along with and 27.27-53, his enthronement. That Jesus said his crucifixion was the coming-in-power of the Son of Man was of course already what Mark had reported, but Matthew underscores it with his expression, “from this moment”. Just in case you missed the point! And the “messengers” that he sends out to the ends of the earth? Those would be those whom the risen Son of Man charged to “Go . . . . and make disciples of all the nations” (28.19).
Deflates a lot of misunderstandings, doesn’t it. Oh well.
Mark has the Jewish Revolt in mind; Matthew, the mission of the Church to all the nations. Each is dealing with the prominent fact of Church life in his own circumstances. And you see (I’m now responding to someone whose challenge inspired this post), paying careful attention to the actual Text— which is all that scholars try to do, really— does in fact help you to understand the “discrepancies” in the Bible without resorting to explanations like, “Matthew lied”, or “Mark got it wrong”. All four Gospels are perfect, and there are no “contradictions”. We ought to know that if we come up with answers like tht, we’re either asking the wrong question, viewing the matter in the wrong framework, or we haven’t dug deep enough. The very idea that the Gospels could be “wrong”—!!