Matthew 28:19-20 (Stanley Porter-"Linguistic Analysis")

For Further details, see Stanley Porter, Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015).

A number of NT scholars doubt the authenticity of Matthew 28:19-20. For instance, some writers categorize the Great Commission as an appearance story that the early Christians made up; they conflate the account with similar narratives and fail to recognize the uniqueness and canonical status of Matthew's concluding words.

Others hurriedly just quote the passage, then move on without exegeting the text; still others deal with elements of Matthew 28 but fail to explain the account in terms of its larger grammatical structure. On the other hand, Stanley Porter feels that Matthew 28:19-20 has something important to teach Christians, especially once readers understand its grammar and place within a larger context.

While Porter doesn't seem to be impressed with many of the commentaries produced about the Gospel of Matthew, he finds three works to be worth commending: D.A. Carson's commentary, R.T. France's work which supplies a thorough account of Matthew 28:19-20, and Grant Osborne's commentary, a book described as being useful and proceeding in traditional verse-by verse format.

Despite commending these works, Porter still finds unwelcome tendencies in them such as the tendency to focus on word-level or phrase-level analyses to the neglect of clauses/clause complexes. Hence, Porter offers a linguistically-informed reading that employs resources from OpenText.org: he subsequently analyzes Matthew 28:19-20a in terms of the structure, Adjunct–Predicator–Complement–Adjunct–Adjunct.

The book explains each of these technical terms and Porter makes three areas of syntax his focus: "the semantics of finite and nonfinite forms of verbs, the temporal relations of participles to finite verbs that can be indicated through syntactical ordering, and the nontemporal relations that can be indicated at the clause level or above, in part through syntactical ordering."

Porter offers a number of critical remarks when analyzing the lexical-grammatical aspects of this Matthean verse, particularly when he discusses Daniel Wallace's treatment of "the Great Commission." He aims criticisms specifically at how translators customarily have rendered Matthew 28:19-20 with the exception of Robert Gundry's version: “Going, therefore, make disciples of all the nations.”