A. Who was Matthew and did he compose the Gospel of Matthew?

The Gospel of Matthew has no information within the narrative itself that associates its composition with a named author. It therefore should be considered an anonymous account. All of the four Gospels in our modern Bibles have a title, in this case – The Gospel of Matthew. However, these titles were not included in the original autographs (the original writings) of any of the four Gospels. These titles were placed at the beginning of each Gospel in the middle if the second century (130-160 A.D.) by the second century churches. They attached these titles to the four separate documents because they had a long standing tradition attached to each of the Gospels that associated these named authors – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with these individual narratives.

According to Matthew 9:9, Mark 2:14, Luke 5:27, Matthew (also called Levi) was a tax collector. He explicitly refers to himself as a “tax collector” in Matthew 10:3 and he is without question one of the twelve disciples. His name is found in all four New Testament apostolic lists as either Levi or Matthew. Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13.Since the internal narrative of the Gospel of Matthew does not identify its authorship, we need to look at the external evidence from early church history and see if we can find the evidence as to who the author of this Gospel really was. There are a number of sources that provide us with information on the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew.

Papias: (60-130 A.D.)

Papias, an early second century church leader and an associate of the apostles, wrote regarding the Gospel of Matthew as recorded by Eusebius – “Matthew complied the oracles in the Hebrew language: but everyone interpreted them as he was able.” – Ecclesiastical History 3:39.

Irenaeus: (125-202 A.D.)

Irenaeus, one of the most important early church fathers stated regarding Matthew–“Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.” Against Heresies 3.1.1There are scholars who question these statements of Papias and Irenaeus regarding Matthew writing his Gospel in Hebrew when what we have in the manuscripts of this Gospel is written in Greek. I personally believe far too much is made of this. Matthew or some other unknown writer certainly could have translated these Hebrew narratives into Greek and even combined them with other traditional sayings that we find in Mark and Luke without destroying the substantial eyewitness nature of Matthew’s Gospel.

Justin Martyr: (100-165 A.D.)

Justin Martyr, although not specifically mentioning any of the New Testament writings by name, refers to them and quotes from various passages by stating “it is recorded” or when quoting from one of the Gospels he calls them “the Memoirs” or the “Memoirs of the apostles”.

He quotes Matthew 2:1 – “…when a star rose in heaven at the time of his (Jesus) birth, as is recorded in the Memoirs of his apostles, the Magi from Arabia, recognizing the sign by this, came and worshipped him.” – Dialogue with Trypho 106.4Justin Martyr clearly refers to Matthew’s Gospel as one of the ‘memoirs of Jesus’ apostles’ indicating that the author (Matthew) was an apostle.It appears that during the period of the early church, the Gospel of Matthew may have been the most popular or widely distributed of the four Gospels and was considered to have been written first.

Clement of Alexandria: (150-215 A.D.)

Eusebius records Clement of Alexandria, – “In the same books, Clement has included a tradition of the earliest elders regarding the order of the Gospels, namely that those with the genealogies (Matthew and Luke) were written first….” Ecclesiastical History 6:14.

Origen: (184-253)

Eusebius, the 3rd century church historian quoted Origen as stating – “Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism” – Ecclesiastical History 6:25.

Augustine: (354-430 A.D.)

The great church theologian, Augustine, related that his understanding of the information regarding the order of the Gospel narratives was:“Now, those four evangelists whose names have gained the most remarkable circulation over the whole world, and whose number has been fixed as four are believed to have written in the order which follows: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John.”

“Of these four, it is true, only Matthew is reckoned to have written in the Hebrew language; the others in Greek. And however they may appear to have kept each of them a certain order of narration proper to himself, this certainly is not to be taken as if each individual writer chose to write in ignorance of what his predecessor had done” – St. Augustine, The Harmony of the Gospels, 2.

The current view regarding the priority of the Gospel of Mark places Mark as the first composed narrative. It is the most popular view among present day New Testament scholars.This is based on the internal evidence that the large percentage of Mark’s Gospel is included in Matthew’s Gospel (approximately 90% of Mark is included in Matthew). While I certainly respect these scholars (liberal and conservative) and would defer to them on many matters, this is one concept that does not seem to me to have sufficient evidence.

The external evidential testimony of the second century fathers has more credibility than the passing predominate views and theories of scholars who look to the internal evidence of the documents and then propose theories to account for their findings. I believe that Matthew was written in Hebrew, later translated into Greek and that it was the first Gospel written. This is based on the traditions and understanding of the early second century – fourth church fathers as noted above.The most important point here is not the order of composition but rather the fact that this Gospel was attributed to the disciple of Jesus named Matthew by the early second century church leaders.

The use of his quoting from the Old Testament Scriptures and demonstrating fulfilled prophecy regarding Jesus (over 60 times); the presentation of Jesus the Son of king David and the Son of Abraham; the reference to Jerusalem as the holy city and the city of the great King; the emphasis on Jesus’ Messianic qualities and the present and future establishment of His Kingdom are all distinctive to this Gospel. This is what the early church fathers were referring to when they described this Gospel as being written to the Hebrews and the internal evidence demonstrates this fact. Based on this external and internal evidence, the best evidence points to Matthew the disciple and eyewitness of Jesus as being the author of this Gospel.