(March 16, 2022 at 10:09 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: In fairness, the Gospel of Matthew at the very least was written as propaganda. Admittedly, not by the ruling regime, but more for them. A lot of details were added to appease the Romans and absolve them of any wrongdoing in this case, and the long-standing political tensions between the people of Judea and the Romans are barely touched upon beyond the reference to how much the Jews hated the taxes and how they supposedly hated Jesus.
From the fact that they had Joseph and Mary travel to his hometown [read: that of a distant ancestor from a millennium prior] for a census [one that apparently happened… when Jesus would have been a teenager] showed them to be good Roman citizens, and the way they place blame on the Crucifixion squarely on the Jews (even though anyone who knows anything about how the Jews approached capital punishment in this age should be able to see why it doesn’t make any sense to do so) and portrays Pilate, who IRL was notorious enough for his cruelty that the Emperor Tiberius had to recall him back to Rome for being too harsh as a thoughtful man, reluctant to kill Jesus and literally washing his hands of any responsibility for doing so.
I've always heard that Luke was the "Roman" gospel and Matthew was the more Jewish document (ie. more siding with the Jews and condemning the Romans than trying to blame the scribes and Pharisees for Jesus' death).
