Does God reveal Himself through dreams? Does God communicate something throughout dreams? Why do people dream about God? What do dreams have to do with the New Testament? In history, many people have confirmed that they have been dreaming about God and that God sends them a message throughout their dreams. Based on different documents in the bible there is one Gospel that shows how God reveals Himself through dreams, this is the Gospel of Matthew. To understand more about what the role God plays in dreams and how this has been seen throughout history, this research is going to talk about how this gospel demonstrates the role of God revealing Himself through dreams, what is the role that dreams play in the New Testament, and how these dreams affected history. According to scholars, there is no evidence of who the author of the Gospel of Matthew, most scholars believe that the one who wrote this Gospel was Matthew the Disciple, but there is not enough evidence that prove this theory. The Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek but throughout time people decided to translate it into different languages because of this the meaning of each translation is different, this plays an important role because the wording on each translation gives a different meaning to the text and can be interpreted in different ways. The Gospel of Matthew is one of the synoptic gospels together with the Gospels of Mark and Luke, the Gospel of Matthew is the first one to appear in the New Testament. Scholars are unsure about when the Gospel of Matthew was written but scholars claim that it was around 70 C.E. In the Gospel of Matthew, the author presents dreams as a means of revelation. This Gospel contains many dreams and each of them has a purpose and a meaning for why God decided to show this revelation to people. This Blog is going to focus on the six dreams in the Gospel of Matthew; 5 dreams are focused on the time of Jesus’ infancy and there is 1 more dream at the time of Jesus’ passion. The first Dream that appears in the Gospel of Matthew is Joseph’s first dream (Matthew 1:20-24), the second dream is Wise Men’s Dream(Matthew 2:7-12), the third dream is Joseph’s Second Dream(Matthew 2:13), the fourth dream is Joseph’s Third Dream( Matthew 2:19-21), the fifth dream is Joseph’s Forth Dream ( Matthew 2:22), and the last dream in the Gospel of Matthew is Pilate’s Wife’s Dream (Matthew27:19).
To begin with, scholars have been thinking about the way these dreams develop in the Gospel of Matthew, so scholars have been trying to identify what is the role of these dreams, especially how these dreams develop in the gospel. As is known, based on scholars there is a connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and as is being said by many scholars like Compton, and Justin in the article “Dreams, Visions, and The Doctrine Of Revelation” there is a record by the church that contains instances of dreams and visions and as it said by Compton “both Old and New Testament- are filled with dream and visions accounts”(pg.1) . A perfect example of this is Genesis and the Matthean dreams because based on the article by Gnuse, Robert “Dream Genre in the Matthean Infancy Narratives”, Joseph dreams in Genesis is a primary source for the literary inspiration (pg.98).
Through time many scholars have been having a difficult time identifying what is the difference between a dream and a revelation, or if there is a connection between these two. The way scholars defined dreams in the Gospel of Matthew is very different, the way Mollett in the article “Reading Dreams; and audience-critical Approach to the Dreams in the Gospel of Matthew” says that “ The primary understanding of dreams… connected humanity with the will of the divine” (pg. 404), this shows that throughout dreams God connect with people more easily because is hard for humans to communicate with God in another way, but as Mollett continue saying in this article the dreams that ancient have is very different to the dreams that people have today. (pg404) . Based on scholars and the research that has been done the dreams in ancient are era different from the dreams in the modern era, Viljoen in the article “ The significance of dreams and the star in Matthew’s infancy narrative’ says “ Furthermore, the concept of dreams…with the modern view of dreams” (pg.845)this show that based on scholars dreams in ancient were very different to the dreams from today’s date, that’s why is being difficult for scholars to understand how dreams in the Gospel of Matthew don’t correlate with the way dreams are formulated in today era.
The way scholars analyze the dreams in Matthew is very different, some scholars use formulas to identify what the dreams in the Gospel of Matthew say, and other scholars must view them in a sociological way to identify why the dream happens on that occasion. To understand, Dadson explains in the article that the context Matthean’s dreams are read is in a “large Greco-Roman Literary context of dreams” (pg.220). Mollet argues in his research that the way to look and why the way God revealed Himself through dreams is by understanding different characteristics “understanding the social and literary… communication takes place” (pg. 405-406). In addition to this Gnuse, Roberts in the article “Dream Genre in Matthean infancy narrative” says that there are different categories in which scholars identify or analyze the dreams in the Gospel of Matthew “Classified dreams into three types…impurity brought upon the dreamer” (pg.99) . This shows that even for scholars there are different ways of analyzing the Matthean dreams and there is not a right way to analyze them, there is more than just look at the dream, scholars also must look for the situation in which the dream appears, the audience that it is intended and the way the author writes the dream. Another way that scholars analyze the way dreams are presented in the Gospel of Matthew is by the way the author wrote the Gospel, as it is said by Gnuse in the article “ Dream genre in the Matthean infancy narrative” There are ways that the text is interpreted by scholars and the way the author words the text can affect the intention of the dream, the way Gnuse show this in his article is by saying “ The theophany… only once to a vision” (pg.101).
Six dreams appear in the Gospel of Matthew, five dreams during the infancy of Jesus and one dream during the passion of Jesus. Joseph’s dreams scholars see that there was a relationship between these dreams because they have similar ways when they happened, Joseph dreams are Joseph’s first dream (Matthew 1:20-24) “But after he had to consider this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘ Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”, Joseph’s second dream (Matthew 2:13) “ When they had gone, an angel of the Lord… for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him”, Joseph’s third dream (Matthew 2:19-21) “ After Herod died, an angel… take the child’s life are dead”, and Joseph’s fourth dream (Matthew 2:22) “ But when he, heard… he withdrew to the district of Galilee”. The way scholars look at these dreams is that all of Joseph’s dream has the same formula, the same meaning that the author is giving on these dreams, Viljoen in his article talks about how these dreams correlate with each other and they function in a similar way “An angel of the Lord appears… described in the following narrative” (pg.847) as Viljoen talks about in this quote is that something similar occurs in every dream for Joseph, an angel appears and give instructions to Joseph about what to do. In the article by Compton “ The Dreamer of Dreams: Dreams, Visions, and The Doctrine of Revelation” he mentions another way in which these dreams are similar is about what God tells Joseph to do “God is acting providentially to guide Joseph, Mary, and infant Jesus”(pag.18) this show how in this article Compton mention that these dreams God is guiding them so that the prophecy of Jesus is fulfilled as Compton continue saying on his article “God is especially guiding Joseph in the fulfillment of the New Covenant promises”(pg.18).
Even if these fourth dreams occur in similar situations there is one difference in each of these stories but at the same time, there is also a similarity which is the language that the author of the Gospel of Matthew uses in the text for each of these dreams. As is mentioned by Gnuse “Dream genre in the Matthean infancy narratives” the way that the author uses the vocab is similar in each of these fourth dreams is that “Behold is an introductory particle to the dream message “in each of the dreams the way the author of Matthew introduces the text is by starting with “behold”. The difference in these passages as mentioned by Gnuse is the “Verbal form of appear…. report has undergone complex redaction” (pg.111) it is this quote that the way the author of the Gospel of Matthew wrote these passages led to an issue if these dreams happened or where the author of the Gospel of Matthew took the information from.
The other two dreams that appear in the Gospel of Matthew are the Wise Men’s Dream (Matthew 2:7-12) “And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route” and Pilate’s Wife’s Dream (Matthew 27:19) “While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s seat… because of him”. These dreams are different from the other fourth dreams because as Compton said, “the messages communicated by them are not key covenant information” This shows that even though these dreams appear in the Gospel of Matthew they don’t have a big impact on salvation. The only meaning of these dreams as mentioned by scholars is that God is glorifying Himself and protecting the wise men and Pilate’s wife’s dream just talks about how Jesus is the Messiah and is innocent.
The way the dreams in the Gospel of Matthew impacted the New Testament is that it led to an understatement of how God reveals Himself through dreams and this makes a belief that dreams are divine revelations. It impacted history because it showed that as God reveals himself in the Gospel of Matthew will happen again at one point in history. The way these dreams impacted the point of view about the Gospel of Matthew is that most of the people who read this Gospel get to the conclusion that God revealing Himself to people and guiding people leads to the fulfillment of the Old Testament, and this led to the belief that Jesus is the Messiah. These dreams made an impact in history and other religions because they made people from other religions believe what was in the Gospel of Matthew this made them convert to Christianity and the audience from the Gospel of Matthew believes that God reveals Himself through dreams to guide people to salvation. The way these dreams impact society today is very different from the way that they impacted society at that time because as it is shown in research the way dreams were seen in ancient history is different from the way people look at dreams today, in ancient history people believe that these dreams were narrated and contribute to the history of salvation because people didn’t have enough understanding about dreams it was easier for them to believe in these dreams, but in today’s society it is different because there are people who are educated and is doing research about how these dreams impacted the history of salvation and impacted the Gospel of Matthew.