Editing Gospel of Matthew (section)

===Structure: narrative and discourses===
Matthew, alone among the gospels, alternates five blocks of narrative with five of discourse, marking each off with the phrase "When Jesus had finished"{{sfn|Turner|2008|p=9}} (see [[Five Discourses of Matthew]]). Some scholars see in this a deliberate plan to create a parallel to the first five books of the Old Testament; others see a three-part structure based around the idea of Jesus as [[Messiah]], a set of weekly readings spread out over the year, or no plan at all.{{sfn|Davies|Allison|1988|pp=59–61}} Davies and Allison, in their widely used commentary, draw attention to the use of "triads" (the gospel groups things in threes),{{sfn|Davies|Allison|1988|pp=62ff}} and [[Richard Thomas France|R. T. France]], in another influential commentary, notes the geographic movement from [[Galilee]] to Jerusalem and back, with the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee as the culmination of the whole story.{{sfn|France|2007|pp=2ff}} An 'eleven' sectioned structure is also recognized, where the sections alternate between narrative and teachings in a 1,2,3,4,5,C,5',4',3',2',1' arrangement (and the parables of the Kingdom take central place). In this reading, the sections comprise 'fourteens' of units of text, where in the first and last units of the gospel the writer provides these numbers, 'threes', 'fourteens' and 'eleven', as a reading check.<ref>Palmer, David G, 2023, ''Challenging New Testament Scholarship: The Texts in Full and in Detail'', Ceridwen Press, Church Gresley, ISBN 978-1-9161068-5-7</ref>