St. Matthew Chp. 13-22

There were various pieces (verses) within St. Matthew’s Gospels that called my attention, because of their similarity to the Analects. It seemed to me that some of the things told and taught by Jesus, are alike to some of the Analects’ fundamentals.

The citation just below refers to the Analects’ idea of ‘gentlemen’. I can conclude that both The Master and Jesus, define a gentlemen to be the same thing;

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. (15:11)

Told by Jesus, he is meaning to say that a rich man (that has the chance to be good nourished, therefore, the things that goeth into his mouth) is not a gentlemen. Rather a gentlemen is said to be one for what he says, whether he speaks sagely and does really mean it, and he is meaning for others to listen and perhaps ponder or learn over what he says.


Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. (19:19)

It was easy to find, while skimming through the Analects, pieces of text relating to loving your elders and respecting them, as to remain by their side, always until death. So this citation above, that Jesus declares, is the same thing. Respecting your father and mother, and loving your neighbour (which might represent the people that live within your community), loving them as you would love yourself.


And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (19:24)

This last piece, though, can be said to be unlike the Analects, for one bit. We can say that Jesus is against the rich, since they shouldn’t have more than the others, which is unfair. Jesus says that the rich will never be able to enter Heaven—it is completely impossible, since supposedly harder than fitting a camel through a needle’s eye—because as being able to posses more things, he/she should give to the others, until he/she is not rich or superior in economics standards, and then he/she will have less, but the others will have a bit more.

But, never in the Analects what it stated that a gentlemen couldn’t be rich. Recalling the Analects essentials (rightness above all, intelligence, modesty, practices ritual), certainly a man could have these qualities, and still be rich, yet a gentlemen.

When we finished the Old Testament and started The Analects, never did I think these two sources would relate in some way, and it was probably because the vocabulary and language in which they were written in was simply different. Now, I am surprised that I found a similarity, which surprisingly, it didn’t turn out to be ‘rare’; I would have expected for Jesus and The Master (the two ‘leaders) to have sort of the same ideas about life and action.