MATTHEW'S WITNESS

I watched a program on PBS the other night which claimed the Torah was the combined work of four different groups of "scholars," all working towards creating the Jewish religion. According to the "experts," they took bits and pieces of other Middle East belief systems, added a few myths here and there, and convinced the Jews God had chosen them as His people. Simply stated, the documentary hypothesis says the Torah can be divided into identifiable sources: the Jahwist (J) dating to as early as the 10th century B.C., the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D), and the Priestly source (P), dating to the 8th to 6th centuries. It actually made me want to throw something through the TV!

It reminded me of the liberal professors who taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary when I attended back in the 1980's. They were convinced that the New Testament Gospels were written in a similar fashion. According to their theory, Matthew and Luke copied most of their Gospels from Mark, and the rest came from a mysterious document known as "Q." It seems odd to me that Matthew would have to have Mark's help, when Matthew was with Jesus during His ministry and Mark was not. This theory seems to prefer to credit the source of their material to "Q" rather than to the Holy Spirit, Who is responsible for every word, jot, and tittle of our Bible. It was Matthew who wrote, being used of God, to connect the prophecies concerning Israel's coming Messiah, with Jesus of Nazareth, and Matthew is the only Gospel writer who used the phrase, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken …." He included it when discussing:

The Virgin Birth (1:22-23; Isa. 7:14).

The Son of God coming out of Egypt (2:15; Hos. 11:1).

The Prophet from Nazareth; the "root of the stem of Jesse" (2:23; Isa. 11:1).

The Light unto Zebulun and Naphtali (4:14-16; Isa. 9:1-2).

The Taker of our infirmities and sicknesses (8:17; Isa. 53:4).

The Servant of God's choosing (12:17-21; Isa. 42:1-4).

The Speaker of parables (13:35; Ps. 78:2).

The Borrower of the colt, the foal of an ass (21:1-5; Zech. 9:9).

The One whose garments they parted (27:35; Ps. 22:18).

The Word of God rightly describes those who would deny the Holy Spirit's inspiration as the source of the Bible when it says, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Rom. 1:22)!