Because of the tight relationships among the Synoptic Gospels, the contribution made by any one of them must be evaluated in light of the contribution made by all three. If Matthew suddenly disappeared, much of its material would still be found, more or less intact, in Mark and Luke. In that sense Matthew cannot be said to make the same sort of independent contribution that Hebrews or the Apocalypse does, for example.
But the Synoptic Gospels as a whole make an irreplaceable contribution. Alongside John, they constitute the foundational witness to the person, ministry, teaching, passion, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Nor are the three Synoptic Gospels to be seen as merely redundant testimony. Each provides its own slant, together providing a kind of stereoscopic depth that would otherwise be almost entirely missing. And at a secondary level, each provides a window onto the life of the church at the time each was written. But this window, it must be insisted, is never transparent: it is at best translucent, and the shadows one sees through it have to be interpreted with some care.
Within this framework, we may highlight some of Matthew’s emphases, and therefore some of the peculiar contributions this gospel makes to the canon.
1. Matthew preserves large blocks of Jesus’ teaching, in the discourses already enumerated. Doubtless that was one of the major reasons this gospel was so popular in the early church. However they came to be preserved in this form, there can be no doubt that the church would be greatly impoverished without the sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s list of parables, his version of the eschatological discourse, and so forth.
2. Matthew complements the other gospels, Luke in particular, by giving an alternative account of Jesus’ virginal conception, cast in Joseph’s perspective. Quite apart from other stories in the birth narrative of which there is no other record (e.g., the visit of the Magi, the flight into Egypt), the whole account is strongly tied to the antecedent revelation in what we now call the Old Testament.
3. More generally, Matthew’s use of the Old Testament is particularly rich and complex. The most noticeable peculiarity is the number of Old Testament quotations (variously estimated between ten and fourteen) found only in Matthew and introduced by a fulfillment formula characterized by a passive form of plēroō. These “formula quotations” are all asides of the evangelist, his own reflections (hence the widely used German word for them, Reflexionszitate ), and characteristically they adopt a text form rather more Semitic and rather less like the LXX than most of the other Old Testament quotations in Matthew. The precise significance of these features is disputed. What is clear is that Matthew’s appreciation for the links between the old covenant and the new is characterized by extraordinarily evocative nuances. For instance, his notion of prophecy and fulfillment cannot be reduced to mere verbal prediction and historical fulfillment in raw events (though it sometimes includes such a notion). He employs various forms of typology and a fortiori arguments and adopts a fundamentally Christological reading of the Old Testament. Thus, Jesus’ temptations, for instance (Matt. 4:1-11), are in some sense a reenactment of the temptations confronted in the wilderness by the Israelites, God’s “son” (Exod. 4:22-23)—except that Jesus the Son of God is entirely victorious in them because he is determined by God’s Word.
4. In the same way, Matthew’s treatment of the law is especially suggestive. Although many think Matthew internalizes the law, radicalizes it, subsumes it under the love command, absolutizes only its moral dimensions, or treats it (in Pauline fashion) as a schoolmaster that conducts people to Christ, it is better to utilize Matthew’s own category: Jesus comes to “fulfill” the law (Matt. 5:17). In Matthew’s usage, that verb presupposes that even the law itself enjoys a teleological, prophetic function.
5. Matthew’s gospel is foundational not only as one looks backward to the Scriptures of the old covenant but as one looks forward to what the church became. The later debates on the relation between Israel and the church find much of their genesis in Matthew, John, Romans, and Hebrews. Not a little of this debate, as far as Matthew is concerned, has focused on his treatment of the Jewish leaders.
6. Finally, there are shadings to Matthew’s portrait of Jesus—surely the heart of his gospel—that are unique. It is important to say, again, that much of what is central in Matthew’s thought in this regard is not unique: it is not just in Matthew that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Servant of the Lord, and so forth. Whatever special coloring these titles take on in Matthew, their semantic overlap with their usage in other gospels is even more striking. Nor is it justifiable to try to isolate one Christological title as that which explains or hermeneutically controls all the others in this gospel. But having entered these caveats, Matthew’s shadings are important. He may achieve such shading by associating a particular title with some theme, as when he repeatedly links “Son of David” with Jesus’ healing ministry (and he is not alone in this association). He may also do it by introducing titles of which the other evangelists make no mention, as when he insists that Jesus is Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).