If -- You were Matthew

What would be a next section in the gospel?

Remember you have a copy of the gospel of Mark
and are largely basing your gospel on his.

However you are writing for a Jewish based community
who have been pushed out of the synagogue.

So you are "tweaking" Mark's gospel to suit your own readers.

Also you have access to other traditional sayings of Jesus
which scholars call a Q source.19


If you are encouraging people to put a focus on the spirit of the moral law
rather than its external rules and regulations you would need to ask

  • What sort of qualities does a person need to do this?
  • Should each paragraph of a text on this subject explain a particular quality?
  • How could paragraphs be divided up?
    • Could they include something about time? Remember understanding of the natural law is mainly based on observations of cause and effect which happen over time.
    • Could they include a key word about doing something? Remember accountability about keeping laws is based on the evidence of doing (or failing to do) something rather than thinking about it.
    Could the use of present participles (..ing words) divide up such a text into paragraphs?
Have a (quick) look at Matthew's use of present participles in the following text.
Then you could move on to a page where paragraph "breaks" are suggested.


Section C