Matthew the Evangelist

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MATTHEW THE EVANGELIST

MATTHEW THE EVANGELIST , traditionally the author of the first canonical gospel, which bears his name. His exact dates are unknown, but the gospel was probably written in the last quarter of the first century, possibly in Syrian Antioch.

The name Matthew appears in every list of the twelve disciples of Jesus (Mt. 10:3, Mk. 3:18, Lk. 6:15, Acts 1:13). In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus calls him from his toll booth and his role as a despised tax collector to be a disciple (9:9–10), and in that gospel's list of the Twelve he is called Matthew the tax collector. Otherwise, Matthew does not appear in the gospel narratives or in the rest of the New Testament.

Mark 2:13–14 and Luke 5:27–28 relate the calling of a tax collector whose name is Levi, rather than Matthew (in Mark 2:14 he is called the son of Alphaeus; cf. "James the son of Alphaeus" in all the lists of the Twelve). Otherwise, the stories are quite similar, and in each case the call is followed by Jesus' eating at table with tax collectors and sinners and saying that he has come to call not righteous people, but sinners. (Tax collectors were regarded as egregious sinners, because the government sold the right to collect taxes to private entrepreneurs, who then realized as large a profit as possible at the expense of the public.)

The tradition of Matthean authorship of the first gospel has been questioned by critical scholarship for significant reasons. Matthew the tax collector turned disciple would have been an eyewitness of the events he narrates. Yet the close relationship between the narrative attributed to Matthew and that of Mark, which is generally accounted to be earlier, suggests that Mark was the principal narrative source. The fact that Mark was written in Greek (not Jesus and Matthew's native Aramaic) by someone who was not one of the Twelve makes it unlikely that the apostle Matthew would have relied upon it. Moreover, the gospel attributed to Matthew seems to have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem in the Roman War (70 ce; cf. Mt. 22:7), rather late for an apostolic writing. Quite possibly the name Matthew has been substituted for Levi in the call story of the first gospel, in which he is also singled out as the tax collector in the apostolic list.

Ancient church tradition, nevertheless, unanimously ascribes the gospel to the apostle Matthew. The fourth-century church historian Eusebius cites Papias (bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor during the first half of the second century) who wrote that "Matthew collected the sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he was able" (Church History 3.39.16). Later church authorities attribute a gospel to Matthew, agreeing that it was written in Hebrew. Matthew is frequently said to have preached among Hebrews. Interestingly, modern gospel criticism continues to see a pervasive Jewish or Jewish-Christian dimension in Matthew's gospel, whether in its tradition or intended audience. The statement of Papias concerning Matthew's collection of Jesus' sayings has sometimes been taken to refer to an earlier source (which can be discerned in Matthew and Luke and is usually called Q by biblical scholars) rather than to the present gospel. This interpretation avoids the difficulties of attributing the gospel to the apostle directly and helps to explain why the name of a relatively obscure disciple became attached to the most prominent gospel, but it remains at best a plausible conjecture.

Legends about Matthew grew in time. He is said to have worked among Gentiles in remote lands toward the end of his career. He came to be revered as a martyr (although tradition is not unanimous on this point), and he is commemorated in the Western church on September 21. However, we know nothing for certain of his career or fate. Since the second century Matthew has been represented in Christian symbolism as a winged man, said by Irenaeus to represent the humanity of Christ.

Bibliography

Aside from the New Testament the most important primary source is Eusebius's Church History, which brings together earlier testimony of Christian writers on the origin and authorship of the Gospels. The most convenient edition is the two-volume "Loeb Classical Library" text and translation of Kirsopp Lake, J. E. L. Oulton, and Hugh J. Lawlor (Cambridge, Mass., 1926).

The most important testimonies of patristic authors are collected in The Gospel According to St. Matthew, edited by A. H. McNeile (London, 1915), pp. xxx–xxxii. For a concise statement of the modern, critical view of Matthean authorship, see Werner G. Kümmel's Introduction to the New Testament, rev. ed. (Nashville, 1975), pp. 119–121. Raymond E. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament (New York, 1997), pp. 208–212, also rejects ascription of the Gospel of Matthew to the disciple of Jesus, although he does not dismiss Papias's attribution of a sayings collection to Matthew. The same is true of W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1985)., p. 17, who think there may be a connection between the collection and Matthew's Gospel.