Note: This should
have been posted at the start of our Matthew Studies Series.
This study was conducted over the course of two years and
these notes are a compilation of the handouts prepared for the Friday Night
Bible Study of the En Gedi Hospitality House in Mountain Home, Idaho. It is an ongoing ministry of Cadence
International to the military community at Mountain Home Air Force Base so it
is to these young men and women who patiently shared in the fruits of this
study week after week that they are gratefully dedicated.
In preparation for this study, I used only a Bible – mainly
the English Standard Version—but I compared the text to many other translations
as well as to the Greek text and when I was finished with a passage, I
sometimes consulted a few commentaries or reference books to compare certain
points of interpretation. But the
finished product was my own.
My method of study involved reading and re-reading the text
according to the Bible study method I learned from Dr. Howard Hendricks being
careful to “bombard the text” with questions as Prof would say and then
consider answers that came to mind or I had heard before in my seminary classes
and books I had read. But I also began
to utilize a method proposed by Dr. Abraham Kuruvilla as a basis for sound
homiletics. In this method, we try to
discern “what the author is doing with what he is saying.” In other words, seeking clues in the text
itself that speak to the lesson that the author considered to be of primary
importance in his recording the sacred words imparted to Him by the Holy
Spirit.
There have been those scholars over the years who have
scorned the idea that we moderns can “psychoanalyze” or in any way truly
discern the “intention of the author.”
But eventually this idea of intentionality became an important piece in
what became known as the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. And more recently, Dr. Kuruvilla has refined
this idea as a crucial part of his method of preaching the Word of God. I have taken his ideas and methods and
applied them to teaching as well as preaching.
I recognize that there are truly wonderful intertextual studies
that go beyond the purposes of a single biblical author but for teaching
through the Bible book by book, this new method has been the most satisfying
tool I have found. I still ask questions
that consider the observations made by other Biblical authors that may affect
my understanding of a passage but in the end, I seek to understand why Matthew
presents his material in the way that he does it albeit somewhat differently
from the other gospel authors. This will
not offer a complete picture of everything we wish to know or even everything
that is revealed in the Bible. I have
attempted to address some theological (as well as gospel harmonization) issues
as they surface in a more intertextual manner but for the most part I have
confined myself to Matthew’s pedagogical outline.
This study does not primarily make an appeal to the
scholarship of great teachers of the past or even more current notions although
at times I interact with these ideas (often without naming the scholar) because
it is the teaching and interpretation we wish to apprehend—not personalities
and human authorities to which we too often cling to more tenaciously than the
Word itself. For the purposes of this
study, it is usually enough to simply discuss an idea that is “out there” and
attempt to see if this is a good fit for what Matthew is talking about. This will limit the use of this book by students
who are trying to glean bibliographic information. Hopefully, it will more than make up for that
shortcoming by shining a light on the “message of the book” according to
Matthew.
© 2018 Eric Thimell
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