Universal Mission: The Climax of Matthew's Post-Resurrection Account by Agbara Benjamin Ogechi;

Author:Agbara, Benjamin Ogechi;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang Copyright AG
Published: 2018-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Four: Exegesis of Matthew 28

Mathew 28 is the last chapter in the Gospel and ends with a climactic character. In Matthew 28, the author narrates the events that followed the resurrection. It is a direct follow up to the story of the events of the arrest, condemnation, crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. The text is referred to in this study as the post-resurrection account of Matthew. This is because it talks about the aftermath of the resurrection and not the account of the resurrection.534 Even without any claim of an eye witness account as to the way the resurrection of Jesus took place, the faith in the event was overwhelming and fundamental in the early church. Francis Wright Beare notes that the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus was a cardinal element of the apostolic gospel from the start.535 Daniel Harrington also observes that the New Testament does not give any account of Jesus’ resurrection. Rather, what we have are the stories of the empty tomb and the appearance of the risen Jesus. Yet from the Christian perspective the resurrection of Jesus is the presupposition not only of these stories but of the entire New Testament.536 The view of Harrington is based on the statement of Paul: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14). Markus Vinzent holds that what is important to him is not the historical question of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead. The important questions for him are: What role did Christ’s resurrection play in early Christianity? When, to whom and why was it important to confess the risen Christ? How did this tenet impact on Christian writings, on the ← 161 | 162 → New Testament and the creed as one of the foundational beliefs on which Christianity and all its churches rest?537 These questions are important and are not overlooked in the present study. Faith in the resurrection of the Jesus is a major theme in the text. The present chapter of the study is not concerned about the theology of the resurrection538. But the concern of this study in this chapter is an exegesis of the text (Matt 28) as it is received.

The text begins at the tomb and ends on the mountain in Galilee. Even though there are different scenes in the text, they are united in proclaiming the events that followed the resurrection of Jesus. There is a tendency to separate the events at the tomb and the appearance in Galilee as two independent events. But in this study, it is treated as a unit. In this chapter, a dispassionate analysis of the entire chapter is made, considering it as a unit that took off from the experience of the women at the tomb and climaxed at the command of Jesus to his disciples to make disciples of all nations. In making the exegetical analysis of the text, the following issues are considered: the Greek text, delimitation, context, genre, structure and content analysis.

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