The Special Material in Matthew’s Gospel

The precise question addressed by this chapter is: To what extent does the in Matthew's Gospel provide historically reliable information about Jesus of Nazareth? The goal, therefore, is not to explain or interpret all of the special material found in Matthew's Gospel, but to survey special material that could potentially yield historical information about Jesus. Special in Matthew refers to any elements of the Gospel without parallel in Mark or Luke. This chapter rapidly surveys examples of special material in Matthew that at least have a potential for providing information about the historical Jesus, using some of the recent commentaries on Matthew's Gospel as a sampling of scholarly opinions. A primary conclusion of the survey is that the special material in Matthew yields relatively little historical information about Jesus that is not already derived from analysis of Matthew's primary sources, the Gospel of Mark and Q. Keywords:historical Jesus; Luke; Mark; Matthew's gospel; Nazareth; special material