Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Mathew–1—by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Introduction
Saint Thomas and the Gospel of Matthew
When Saint Thomas returned to Israel after spending some years in northern India, his fellow-disciple Saint Matthew gave him a copy of the Gospel he had written in Aramaic. (It was Saint Luke who translated the Gospel of Saint Matthew into Greek.) Taking it back with him to south India, Saint Thomas taught his disciples from it, and it became the fundamental holy scripture of the Ishanni (Saint Thomas) Christians. Actually, the only two “Christian” writings considered authoritative by the Ishannis for many centuries were the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Thomas. This was because the Essenes–to whom Saint Thomas, like Jesus, had originally belonged–considered that the Hebrew texts of what we now call the Old Testament had been corrupted and could not be completely trusted as guides in spiritual life. The other four Gospels and the epistles of Saint Paul and the other Apostles were also considered not to be of absolute authority by the Ishannis, although they would read them and extract from them what they felt was true. Following the example of Jesus and Saint Thomas, they based their spiritual study on the Vedic Upanishads and the Buddhist Sutras in addition to the two gospels of Matthew and Thomas.
The context of our study
When studying the Gospels we have to keep in mind these three things:
1) We are only being given fragments of Jesus’ teaching–fragments that seemed the most significant to the authors, but nonetheless only fragments. Because books had to be handwritten, and because the Christians were vegetarians and therefore would not use animal skins that could be made into huge, long scrolls, but rather only used papyrus which was greatly limited in its length, the evangelists were constrained to write as economically (briefly) as possible. So the Gospels had to be short, and only what seemed to the evangelists the most salient of Jesus’ words could be set down.
2) Jesus’ was speaking to people completely without a background in just about any subject, and who were utterly devoid of a background in metaphysical or spiritual thinking. (Just take a look at the Old Testament and see why.) Even simple symbology was totally beyond them–including the apostles who always took Jesus’ words literally, and even at the very moment of His ascension still thought the Kingdom of God was going to be a restored and empowered Israel. (See the first chapter of Acts.) “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” was no doubt said a lot of times and to all of them in turn. Consequently He had to speak in an incredibly elementary way and “dumb down” his teachings to a virtually aboriginal level. This is simply the fact, and why Jesus later told the king of Kashmir: “I was born in the land of the barbarians (mlecchas) where there is no truth.” (So much for the idea that Jesus was a “son of Israel” and based His teachings on the Hebrew scriptures–which he only quoted to refute his opponents, but never as a basis for His sermons.) Therefore in the Gospels we mostly have teachings given (usually in vain) to thoroughly unqualified and spiritually incompetent people.
3) Jesus’ was teaching totally within the context of what He had learned in India from both Hindus and Buddhists as the Eternal (Sanatana) Dharma. That is why a Saint Thomas Christian priest once remarked to me: “You cannot understand the teachings of Jesus if you do not know the scriptures of India.” This is because Jesus was attempting to teach the Dharma as a missionary to the West, and Who was martyred by those He sought to teach, thus demonstrating the truth of His own advice to His disciples: “Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” They certainly did.
Although there are profound metaphysical/spiritual principles in even these fragments of Jesus’ teaching, we cannot “mine” them out of their earthly forms unless we approach them in the same context within which He gave them: that of Sanatana Dharma, the wisdom of the sages of India, chief among them being Gautama the Buddha.
The translation
In this commentary I will be using The New Testament: An Expanded Translation, by Kenneth Wuest since it presents the more philosophical side of Jesus words. To do this, it is extremely literal, sometimes so much so that the English is awkward, but it extracts the full meaning of the Greek wording. The esoteric understanding, of course, will be up to us.
1) John 14:9
[Go back]
2) See The Christ of India. [Go back]
3) Matthew 7:6 [Go back]
