As a child, I can clearly remember seeing a book on a bulging, buckled shelf that was entitled “Good news for Modern Man”.
It struck me as different from the repeatedly reached for “The Spy’s Guidebook” or “The Enchanted Wood”, and its pages were gilt-edged, so it looked cool, if not a little scary!.I had no idea that it was the New Testament.
The tome’s title, it turned out , was descriptive, as it contains the prescriptive of the gospels (well, the four approved ones!) or “God Spells” from the middle English, which translates as “Good News” (Spells sounds a-lot cooler though).
Matthew,Mark,Luke and John were the -men-who wrote these. I emphasise -men-as that is what they were.Men with pens so to speak.There is huge debate amongst scholars as to whether the quartet with the quills even knew Jesus.
The closest we can probably get to an eye witness account, and again, I need to emphasise a word-probably-here is Matthew.
The assumed author was a tax collector by profession and Matthew’s book is the only one that mentions a “temple tax”.
This means that we have good reason to believe that this Matthew (Levi) is Matthew the Apostle.
Today’s featured poem, here on Behind the Lines, is a reflection on reading and studying the Book of Matthew and where it may have came from.
A study of man as God’s ghostwriter so to speak.
Tomorrow, we go from man writing about God, to a poem dedicated to the man who said “God is Dead”,
See you then,
Algo.
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Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 