God with that power. He was depicted as one who's every action was oriented towards doing the will of God. It is a standard that Matthew gives to nobody else. First of all, Matthew was a Jew who was convinced that the messiah had come. Many of his writings were Jewish, for that reason. However, he took issue with Jewish leadership and the blinding methods they used. He used this perspective and wrote anti- Jewish versus. Matthew respected and looked positively upon Jewish Law and much of the Oral Torah. He did not like what was going on in Yavneh, though. The way the rabbis there were defining these laws was not consistent with how he saw the law. He saw the Pharisees as hypocrites who did not have his perspective on what was going on in the world. For this reason, he rejected the emerging authority of the rabbis at Yavneh. He was also afraid of those who claimed his own heritage but were leading the Jewish people blindly. The purpose of Matthew’s gospel was to, “tell the story of how the coming of the Messiah has inaugurated a new phase in the history of God’s people and to explain how they were expected to live in that new age.” (Barr) Luke saw the death of Jesus as another step in an upward progression to glory for Christ. It was a necessary occurrence in order to fulfill the scriptures. It was the will of God that Jesus died upon the cross. Jesus’ death was a victory over evil. He sees things differently than the other Gospel writers. Rather than Jesus being abandoned by God on the cross, He is said to hand his spirit over to God. This shows God’s presence and acceptance of the event. Luke saw Jesus’ death as a triumph over death in the resurrection.All four Gospels held that Jesus was innocent. Luke, however, pushes the envelope further than the others do. Luke held that Roman authorities agreed that Jesus was innocent. These authorities included Pilate, Herod, and...
