Appearances of the risen Jesus in Matthew’s gospel

In my previous post I explained why the gospel of Mark does not depict any appearances of the risen Jesus. In this post I move on to Matthew’s account of the resurrection appearances.

The gospel of Matthew presents two brief accounts of appearances of the risen Jesus. Both can be directly tied to particular interests of the author, indicating that they are his creation, although it is possible he knew something about Mark’s ending and adapted it to fit his own purposes. The possibility is more likely for his account of the second appearance, in which Jesus appears to his disciples in Galilee as the angels in both Mark and Matthew say he will.

In the first appearance, described in just a few verses, Jesus appears to the women on their way from the empty tomb to convey the angel’s message to the other disciples. (Mt 28:7-10) As I argued earlier on my page about the empty tomb, Matthew’s main purpose in creating the women’s encounter with Jesus is to slip in an appearance near the site of the tomb to establish that his body was resurrected and not stolen by the disciples, an accusation explicitly expressed in his gospel. He may have known that there were reports of multiple appearances of Jesus, as Paul recounts in his letter to the Corinthians (“he appeared to more than five hundred”), and so did not think an appearance to two women followers would be out of bounds for his story.

After he describes the chief priests bribing the guards to lie that Jesus’ disciples had stolen his body, Matthew abruptly jumps to Galilee with “the eleven disciples”—presumably the twelve apostles appointed by Jesus earlier in the gospel minus his betrayer Judas. This is the second, and final, appearance of the risen Jesus in Matthew’s gospel:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mt 28:16-20)

Jesus appears at a mountain, a traditional site of divine self-revelations such as to Moses on Mount Sinai; a favorite Matthean theme is that Jesus offers a new covenant for all people that goes beyond the covenant God established with the Israelites through Moses. Jesus’ instruction to his disciples to teach what he commanded echoes Moses delivering God’s commandments to the Israelites. (Deuteronomy 31:11-12; see also Mt 5:1, 21-48, from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”) The disciples worship Jesus, as the women had, emphasizing Matthew’s belief that Jesus had been exalted to a divine status, which is why Jesus can claim “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The part of the verse in which witnesses doubt what they see is grammatically unclear and probably best interpreted as “some worshiped him, but some doubted,” perhaps a commentary on the responses of Matthew’s contemporaries the proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection. It has also been suggested that it expresses wavering belief, as when Peter tries to walk on water and begins to sink (Mt 14:29-31). (Licona, 2010: 360-361) Matthew is the only author in the Christian scriptural canon to use the Greek word “distazo” for doubt, which he uses in both passages. (Catchpole, 2000: 42)

The risen Jesus commissions the eleven to “make disciples of all nations” (literally “all peoples”). Another Matthean theme is his endorsement of the Christian mission to the gentiles. This activity was controversial among Christians at the time of Paul decades earlier, but by Matthew’s time he is comfortable indicating Jesus’ approval for the mission by reworking several passages from Mark’s gospel. (Catchpole, 2000: 43-52) Jesus’ command to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” uses a Trinitarian formula that suggests theological development in the understanding of the relationship between God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, and thus may be an early alteration of Matthew’s gospel by a copyist. Note though that the relation and relative status of the three is not spelled out in any explicit sense; rather the three are all brought together in endorsing baptism into the community of faith. Jesus then promises to be with his disciples “always,” until “the end of the age,” which ties back to a prophecy at the beginning of his gospel referring to Jesus as Emmanuel, or “God is with us.” (Mt 1:22-23) Matthew’s gospel ends at this point. He does not mention Jesus giving the disciples the power to forgive sins, as Jesus does in Luke and John (Lk 24:45-48; Jn 20:22-23), although Jesus himself is shown exercising this power during his life. (Matt 9:2-8) I wouldn’t make much of this difference, as Matthew probably understands the power to forgive sins as implicitly given to the disciples in Jesus’ commission.

Unlike the early appearance tradition recounted by Paul, Matthew does not mention an initial appearance of the risen Jesus to Peter. Instead he appears to those who came next in Paul’s chronology, “the Twelve” (minus Judas). I doubt Matthew knew much about the details of the appearances of Jesus reported by Paul. Instead he composed a brief collective experience focusing on Jesus’ commission to the apostles to announce God’s new covenant to “all peoples,” as the focus of the Christian mission had shifted decisively outside of Judea due to the war with Rome in 66-73 C.E.

References

Catchpole, David. (2000). Resurrection People: Studies in the Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels. Darton, Longman, & Todd.

Licona, Michael R. (2010). The Resurrection of Jesus. InterVarsity Press.