II. DATE
II. DATE
The testimony of antiquity is unanimous that the author of this Gospel was Matthew the apostle and that this was the first Gospel to be written. If this is accepted, the Gospel will have been written quite early. After examining the evidence from the patristics, France concludes: “Altogether, then, the patristic evidence seems unanimous that Matthew was written not later than the early sixties.”27
But modern scholarship finds this conclusion more than a little difficult. It is generally held that this Gospel shows evidence of dependence on Mark (the passages common to the two Gospels are such that it is highly improbable that Mark used Matthew). Since Mark is thought to have been written not before about A.D. 65, this means that Matthew would be dated at the earliest in the 70s. This evidence would be stronger if Mark could be dated with certainty.28
Many scholars find evidence for a somewhat late date in the use of expressions like “until now,” “until today” (11:12; 27:8; 28:15). But it is fairly countered that such expressions might well be used of something that happened twenty or thirty years ago, which would still enable us to date the Gospel in the 50s or 60s. Again, Matthew has a number of references to the destruction of Jerusalem, from which it has been concluded that he wrote after that city had been overthrown. Similarly it is suggested that the reference in the parable to the king who sent his armies and burned up the city refers to the destruction of Jerusalem (22:7).29 But those who speak so confidently of this verse as referring to the fall of Jerusalem usually overlook the fact that the city was not in fact burned. Josephus tells us that the temple was burned (War 6.249–50), but he does not speak of the city as destroyed by fire.30 Some expressions in Jesus’ eschatological discourse are also said to reflect the overthrow of that city (e.g., 24:15–19). But all these references are general and point to the kind of thing that was common when armies captured cities, so that they scarcely amount to more than predictions that Jerusalem would be destroyed. And with the continuing strife between Jewish hotheads and the Romans, together with the well-known Roman attitude toward rebellion, to forecast that Jerusalem would be destroyed, and more specifically that it would be burned, would require no supernatural insight. We should not overlook Jesus’ “immediately” (24:29); it is curious that Matthew should be reporting without qualification that Jesus said the end of the age would follow “immediately” after the destruction of Jerusalem if he is writing after the city has fallen.31
The references to the church (16:18–19; 18:17–18) are adduced as pointing to a development that must have taken time to bring about. To which it is countered that there is no indication of any significant development of church order; the organization presupposed in these passages is of the simplest sort and does not require anything more complex than is revealed in the Pauline letters. Unless we read later ideas into them, the references do not demand anything beyond the primitive Palestinian communities from what we know of them. So with the allegation that the apostles are highly reverenced and that the writer softens or omits derogatory references. Paul insisted on the dignity of an apostle at a date earlier than any usually adduced for any of the Gospels. It has been suggested that the appearance of false prophets (7:15, 22) indicates a late date, but once again Paul shows that false prophets made their appearance quite early.
With this we should take the anti-Jewish tone of some parts of the Gospel (cf. 8:10–12; 21:43; 23, etc.). This is said to be the kind of thing we might expect in the period from A.D. 85 on, when the Jewish authorities were excluding Christians from their synagogues. Not as much is known about this process of exclusion and its precise dating as is sometimes claimed, but in any case the situation reflected in this Gospel is not that of a definite break. Rather, it is the sort of thing we would expect when different kinds of Jews were arguing with one another, with the messianic Jews still hoping that other Jews would come to see things their way. Acts provides evidence that from quite early days orthodox Jews took action against Christians (Acts 4:1–3, 17–18; 5:40; 13:50, etc.).
Some aspects of this Gospel do point to an early date. Thus it was clearly the favorite Gospel in the early church, but it lacked the prestige of a center like Rome or Ephesus and there was no suggestion of a Peter (as in the case of Mark) or other outstanding figure behind it; Matthew was always a comparatively unimportant apostle. Again, the Judaic elements in the Gospel would have discredited it if it had appeared when the separation between church and synagogue had progressed beyond the early stages. We should not miss the point that the references to the destruction of Jerusalem are all forward looking and therefore should be taken to point to a time before it occurred. Some interpreters point out that there is no reference to the Pauline epistles, whereas it might be expected that a late writing would show knowledge of, for example, the list of resurrection appearances (1 Cor. 15:5–8). It has further been pointed out that Matthew’s story of the temple tax (17:24–27) implies that it is proper for Jewish followers of Jesus to pay that tax. This would apply before A.D. 70, for during that period the tax went to maintain the temple at Jerusalem. But after that date the Romans insisted that, while the tax must be paid by all Jews, it was to be used for the support of idol temples. It is not easy to see why the story should be included without qualification if it was written after A.D. 70. Matthew refers to the Sadducees 7 times (as many as all the other books of the New Testament put together; Mark and Luke have the term once each). This reflects the time before A.D. 70; after that date we hear little of the Sadducees. Jesus’ warning against flight in winter or on a Sabbath (24:20) reads strangely if the flight had already taken place. Gundry gives further indication of an early date when he points out that this Gospel evidences in its quotations a “working upon the Hebrew text of the OT,” for after the church broke from the synagogue “access to Hebrew scrolls must have been difficult.”32 J. A. T. Robinson argues that there was probably a “proto-Matthew” (reflected in some parts of the Didache) and that this was later enlarged. He says, “The final stages of the three synoptic gospels as we have them would then have occupied the latter 50s or early 60s.”33
From all this it is clear that there is little hard evidence to determine the date of this Gospel. Most modern scholars date it somewhere in the period from the 70s to the 90s, but there is good reason for seeing it as appearing before A.D. 70, perhaps the late 50s or early 60s. We can scarcely be more definite.34