Matthew 2 CJB: did Matthew err to represent Yeshua like Moses?

 

^{Updated, Dec 8, 2025}

Guide: CJB emphasis in bold (CJB online), text in green; NKJV in magenta ; https://www.chabad.org/torah-texts/ in sky blue; and my comments in yellow. I may use endnotes to cite outside literature or extensive comment.  

My continually improved statement about Genesis 1:26-28 is at the end of this.

I perceive that Paul’s letters to early churches preceded the 4 gospels and refute Genesis 1:26-28; thus, Matthew is a late reporter of the Christ construct. I prefer Yeshua’s civic influence and discourage Pauline arrogance.

For people who have not considered Yeshua, the Galilean political philosopher, I recommend focus on discovering and practicing goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior; in other words, civic integrity.

Some commenters perceive Matthew 2 as presenting Yeshua like Moses, especially regarding recognition by the God. However, goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior was present in the beginning of time, so Yeshua was recognized billions of years before Moses. Making Yeshua like Moses seems a travesty. A list of 36 references, at https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Not-Knowing-About-Christ, does not include John 18:37, wherein Yeshua says he came to express the truth.

In the story of Yeshua’s birth are many epiphanies. In Luke 2, lowly shepherds are the first to celebrate. In Matthew 2, kings from the East announce the newborn Jewish king to Herod, who connects the Messiah. In John 1, the birth is lessened by the beginning. Yosef, protective father, moved from Judah to Galilee. Yeshua’s circumcision seems in conflict with his adult baptism. The intense political and spiritual conflict is clarified when Herod has infant boys slaughtered.

T.S. Eliot perhaps expresses a “born again” conversion from Unitarianism to Anglo-Catholicism in his poem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_of_the_Magi. It seems conflicting: “this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death”. My discovery, through 45 years with UBC, especially Nomads, convinced me I had always been under Yeshua’s civic influence, a totally joyous epiphany, if I may use that term. While I am happy to study Yeshua’s influence, I encourage others to simplify their pursuit of goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior.

A map for Yeshua’s time, 4 BC, shows east of Bethlehem the NW middle of the Dead Sea, which is fed by the Jordan River. East of the Dead Sea is ancient Perea, rugged mountain country and land of Herod the Great. South of Perea is ancient Nabate, Bedouin Arab inhabited and now Yemen. North of Perea is ancient Decapalis, including Philadelphia now Amman, the capital of Jordan. Further north is Damascus, now the capital of Syria.

The Matthew 2 text, CJB:

^2:1 After Yeshua was born in Beit-Lechem in the land of Y’hudah during the time when Herod was king, Magi from the east came to Yerushalayim ² and asked, “Where is the newborn King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” [John 18:37 NKJV, “I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”]

³ When King Herod heard of this he became very agitated, and so did everyone else in Yerushalayim. ⁴ He called together all the head cohanim and Torah-teachers of the people and asked them, “Where will the Messiah [the Christ] be born?” ⁵ “In Beit-Lechem of Y’hudah,” they replied, “because the prophet wrote,

⁶ ‘And you, Beit-Lechem in the land of Y’hudah,
are by no means the least among the rulers of Y’hudah;
for from you will come a Ruler
who will shepherd my people Isra’el.’” ^{Micah 5:1, “And you, Bethlehem Ephrathah-you should have been the lowest of the clans of Judah-from you [he] shall emerge for Me, to be a ruler over Israel; and his origin is from of old, from days of yore.”}

⁷ Herod summoned the Magi to meet with him privately and asked them exactly when the star had appeared. ⁸ Then he sent them to Beit-Lechem with these instructions: “Search carefully for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had listened to the king, they went away; and the star which they had seen in the east went in front of them until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ Upon entering the house, they saw the child with his mother Miryam; and they prostrated themselves and worshipped him. Then they opened their bags and presented him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² But they had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they took another route back to their own country.

¹³ After they had gone, an angel of Adonai the Lord appeared to Yosef in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and escape to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you to leave. For Herod is going to look for the child in order to kill him.” ¹⁴ So he got up, took the child and his mother, and left during the night for Egypt, ¹⁵ where he stayed until Herod died. This happened in order to fulfill what Adonai had said through the prophet,

“Out of Egypt I called my son.” ^{Hosea 11:1-2, ““For, when Israel was young, I loved him, and from Egypt I called My son. The more they called to them, the more they went away from them; to the baalim they would slaughter sacrifices, and to the graven images they would burn incense..”}

¹⁶ Meanwhile, when Herod realized that the Magi had tricked him, he was furious and gave orders to kill all the boys in and around Beit-Lechem who were two years old or less, calculating from the time the Magi had told him. ¹⁷ In this way were fulfilled the words spoken through the prophet Yirmeyahu,

¹⁸ “A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and lamenting loudly.
It was Rachel sobbing for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no longer alive.” ^{Jeremiah 31:14(15), “So says the Lord: A voice is heard on high, lamentation, bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, she refuses to be comforted for her children for they are not..”} [I don’t accept the notion of prophecy fulfilled by one incident. Killing babies was common.]

¹⁹ After Herod’s death, an angel of Adonai appeared in a dream to Yosef in Egypt ²⁰ and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to Eretz-Yisra’el, Israel for those who wanted to kill the child are dead.” ²¹ So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went back to Eretz-Yisra’el. ²² However, when he heard that Archelaus had succeeded his father Herod as king of Y’hudah, he was afraid to go there. Warned in a dream, he withdrew to the Galil ²³ and settled in a town called Natzeret, so that what had been spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he will be called a Natzrati. [There is no reference for this prophets’ claim.]

[Genesis 1:26-28, chabad.org:

I read Judeo-Christian literature to consider and apply perhaps 5500 year old Sumerian political philosophy, religiously referenced by Semite (pre-Israel) scribes of 3900 years ago. Genesis 1:26-28, in my paraphrase, proposes civic integrity:  

Female-and-male-human-being may and can choose to practice the power, the authority, and the responsibility to pursue goodness and constrain wickedness on earth. Civic citizens may and can develop statutory justice.

I call this the Sumerian Perception. Political and religious philosopher Yeshua affirmed Genesis 1:26-28, contributing ideas, e.g., in each Matthew 18:18 (no peace-power above humankind), Matthew 19:3-8 (mutual spousal-loyalty and unity not to be divided), Matthew 5:48 (in good behavior, pursue personal perfection, which also affirms Deuteronomy 18:13), Matthew 19:4-6 (don’t divide/lessen goodness), John 10:34 (humans who resist and avoid wickedness are gods facing death, as in Psalm 82:1-7), and in other direct dialogue, such as “go and sin no more”. Psalm 82 says nothing about resurrection or blood sacrifice but mimic’s Sumer’s idea of protecting poor people from wicked people.

Discussion

I think Genesis 1:26-28 informs humankind to flourish in goodness rather than accommodate badness and allow evil. Quoting chabad.org below,

And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."

And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth."

Accepting the power, the authority, and the responsibility to have dominion over life on earth is human being (verb). Reliable human-beings discover and practice goodness-which-motivates-good-behavior.

Sumer-polytheism holds that 3 goddesses and 3 gods -- Namma, An, Ki, Enki, Ninhursag, and Gestu – both created and activated existence. A list of major Sumerian gods and relations to primitive opinion about the beginning follows:

	Name	Gender	Earth or Psychology Feature	Power	Offspring
1	Nammu	goddess	primeval waters	creation	An and Ki
2	An	god	sky	universal authority, kings	gods,godesses
3	Ki	goddess	earth		gods,godesses
4	Enlil	god	wind, air, storms	creator,father,care-judge	Nanna & Utu
5	Nanna	god	moon	light,divine justice	plants
6	Utu	god	sun,justice,truth,morality	light,divine justice	plants
7	Inanna	goddess	love,beauty,eros,justice,war	left the underworld
8	Ereshkigal	goddess	death,doom	Underworld
9	Enki	god	water,male fertility,wisdom	Prophesied Great Flood	civilization.art
10	Gula	goddess	healing	Doctors	surgery
11	Ninhursag	goddess	mountains,rocky ground	royal guardian	wildlife
12	Gestu	god	blood of humankind	intelligence

The pronoun and plurality change in Genesis 1:26-28 may be an artifact of the ancient scribe’s confusion if not weakness in transitioning primitive polytheism to the monotheistic opinion. Genesis 1 marks discovery by polytheistic Sumer civilization, which I call “The Sumerian Perception” and transitions to a Semitic-speaking faction’s pursuit of monotheism, which leads to Israel’s Hashem then on to Christianity’s blood sacrifice in Christ, appropriately the Judeo-Christian Perception

Note: unlike chabad.org, quoted above, using “God”, OJB uses “Elohim” in Genesis 1 and 2, excepting “G-d” in 1:24-31. V 27 seems to equate the two entities. Septuagint uses “ὁ θεὸς”, or “God” throughout Genesis 1. I use the phrase, “whatever constrains human choice”, hoping to express religious humility to whatever the god is.

Again, since theism is a human construct, I use the phrase, “the god, whatever it may be”, to express objection to any doctrinal God yet reserve humility to ineluctable evidence and remaining unknowns about that which constrains the consequences of human choices. Make no mistake, I write opinion, only-because I do not know the ineluctable truth.]