I’m reposting here an argument that appeared in November, 2001, which received little in the way of meaningful rebuttal. Perhaps RWC and other die-hard inerrantists on this forum will be able to show why we shouldn’t believe that Matthew’s claims are ridiculous.
Here it is:
The author of the Matthew “gospel” was by far the most unreliable of the Bible’s writers, as evidenced by his appalling lack of understanding of the Old Testament and his willingness to imagine that it was filled with prophecies of the coming savior.
One of the more ridiculous prophecy-fulfillment attempts by Matthew concerns a speech he says Jesus made about the family unit. Matthew's source for this story is the book of Micah, in which a decayed society and its corrupt rulers are described in disparaging terms:
The godly have been swept from the land…For a son dishonors his father, a daughter rises up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man's enemies are the members of his own household. (Micah 7:2-6)
Matthew must have only half-remembered what the passage above was about because he mistakenly took the Micah passage to be a prediction of something that would occur when the savior came to earth; he evidently also wrongly thought that Micah was describing something a savior would bring to pass. Thus, presumably without thinking about it too hard, he wrote a story which describes Jesus wanting to turn family members against one another:
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--a man's enemies will be the members of his own household." (Matthew 10:34-36)
This is preposterous; was not Jesus supposed to be infinitely kind? Even if he was only just ordinarily kind, he certainly would never have wished to turn daughter against mother.
Which is more likely? That Matthew was right in his interpretation of Micah, and Jesus really did say these words, or Matthew was wrong, and that this is a false story manufactured from misunderstood or misremembered Old Testament stories, foolishly thought by Matthew to be prophecies of the coming messiah?
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"