GMatthew's "Kingdom of Heavens (Plural)," the "Heavens" of Hebrews, and Paul's "Third Heaven"

[gryan]

From another thread: "Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?"
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7703

A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.

Only Matthew speaks of kingdom of the heavens, exactly like Thomas. Although Matthew does speak of kingdom of God as well, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Five times does Matthew speak of kingdom of God, making him a perfect turning point.
And no one in the entire NT ever speaks of kingdom of the heavens, not even of kingdom of heaven (singular) even though all bible translations have the latter, in their eager to let dogma prevail over literal text

I had not known that!

I had however taken note of 1) Paul's "third heaven" --implicitly the third of multiple "heavens" (cf Dutero-Paul, 1 Thessalonians 1:10, "His Son from the heavens, whom He raised out of the dead," and Ephesians 4:10, "all the heavens")--which, 2) arguably, might be "echoed" in Hebrews (14:4): ..."we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus..."

I would assume the community of scribes and mystics that produced GMatthew was steeped in the writings of Paul/Hebrews, but was selective in what they appropriated, since they were not in love with much of what Paul said about the law and the supposed power "made perfect weakness." Because what is that but an "infirmity" in need of a cure: "This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases (Mtt 8:17)” "Infirmity" in their view, was not something to boast about! They did, however, have compassion for the "sick," thus Matt 25--"I was sick and you cared for me."

Thoughts?

[hakeem]

I would assume the community of scribes and mystics that produced GMatthew was steeped in the writings of Paul/Hebrews, but was selective in what they appropriated, since they were not in love with much of what Paul said about the law and the supposed power "made perfect weakness." Because what is that but an "infirmity" in need of a cure: "This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases (Mtt 8:17)” "Infirmity" in their view, was not something to boast about! They did, however, have compassion for the "sick," thus Matt 25--"I was sick and you cared for me."

Thoughts?

Actually the author of gMatthew was steeped in the writings of gMark or his sources because he gobbled it all up. There are chunks of texts in chapter after chapter from gMark that are found in gMatthew.