Why did Matthew quote the old testament over 60 times?

Answer 1

The first gospel to be written was Mark's Gospel, written anonymously around 70 CE and later attributed to the apostle Mark. Within a few years it seems that the gospel presented in Mark needed an update. The authors of both Matthewand Luke undertook this task, each in his own way. One of the requirements seems to have been to show that the gospel was both historically true and the fulfilment of the Old Testament. Luke's approach was largely to add material as historical background, very likely from the works of Josephus. Matthew's approach was to add frequent references to the Old Testament, seeking to show that Jesus was both prefigured and prophesied in the Old Testament.

In one well-known instance, in which Matthew's author claimed that Isaiah 7:14 prophesied that a virgin would give birth, the Hebrew scriptures did not even contain those words - this is only to be found in the Septuagint, a flawed, early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. The actual Hebrew text refers to "the young woman" and the the young woman in question did indeed bear a child a few verses later. The author of Mattheweither did not know the Hebrew text, or believed that his intended audience would only check against the Septuagint, not the original text.