Iv. Authorship
IV. AUTHORSHIP
The external evidence is unanimous that the author was Matthew, one of the twelve apostles. Thus Irenaeus says, “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church” (Adv. Haer. 3.1.1). According to Eusebius, Origen held that Matthew was the first of the Gospels to be written and that it was written in Hebrew (Eccl. Hist. 6.25.4), and Eusebius himself held that Matthew, having first preached to Hebrews, wrote his Gospel for them “in his native language” when he was on the point of leaving them (Eccl. Hist. 3.24.6). Eusebius also refers to the writings of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis c. 60–130 (so ODCC), and says that according to Papias: “Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could” (Eccl. Hist. 3.39.16).39 Eusebius denies that Papias was a hearer of the apostles, but the passage he quotes from Papias to show this says that that worthy proposed to set down “all that I ever learnt well from the presbyters.” He goes on to speak of “the words of the presbyters, what Andrew or Peter or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, had said,” and further, “what Aristion and the presbyter John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying” (Eccl. Hist. 3.39.3–4). Papias is claiming that he had information from people who had heard a number of the apostles, and he speaks of two disciples as still speaking. Papias is thus an early witness. Irenaeus says that he was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp (Adv. Haer. 5.33.4).40
Gundry devotes a good deal of attention to the statements of Papias, which he dates before A.D. 110 and which he understands to mean that “John the elder and apostle ascribes the first gospel to the Apostle Matthew.”41 Gundry denies that we should understand Papias to be saying that Matthew wrote in Hebrew; rather, in describing Matthew, “ ‘a Hebrew dialect’ means a Hebrew way of presenting Jesus’ messiahship.”42 Not everyone will be convinced by Gundry’s argument, but at least he makes it clear that Papias does not rule out Matthean authorship of our first Gospel as decisively as some critics hold. Rather, he should be understood as strengthening the evidence for Matthew as the author.
A puzzle is posed, on the one hand, by the fact that there is widespread agreement in antiquity that Matthew was an early Semitic writing and, on the other, by the fact that the Gospel we have must be regarded as originally written in Greek, not as a translation. This may be why some scholars hold that our Greek Matthew is not a translation of a Hebrew or Aramaic original but a new recension of it.43
It is widely agreed by critical orthodoxy that this Gospel was not written by Matthew or for that matter by any close personal follower of Jesus. It is pointed out that the writer makes use of earlier written documents, such as Mark and Q (the symbol to denote a source containing the matter common to Matthew and Luke but not in Mark). M is also included to denote the matter peculiar to this Gospel, which is also understood as coming from a written source. Attention is also drawn to the omission of words and phrases that seem to belittle Jesus or to emphasize the limitations of the Twelve. These are important considerations and must be given due weight.
There remains the fact that in ancient tradition this book is universally ascribed to Matthew. To name anyone else as the author is to affirm that the name of its true author was forgotten within a comparatively short time (about 50 years?) and another name substituted, especially since Matthew was not, as far as our information goes, especially prominent either among the Twelve or in the early church. Accordingly, there seems to be no reason for assigning to him such an important writing unless in fact he wrote it. But against Matthean authorship it is pointed out that just as ancient tradition is unanimous in saying that Matthew was the author, so is it unanimous in saying that he wrote it in Hebrew. Now this Gospel is written in good idiomatic Greek, and there is no indication that it was translated from a Semitic original.44 If the tradition was wrong about the book’s being a translation, it is argued, it could also be wrong about its author. It could, of course, but the one does not necessarily imply the other. Perhaps Matthew wrote a Gospel in Aramaic that later was lost. Or perhaps one of the sources that lie behind this Gospel was in Aramaic.
It is routinely pointed out that none of the ancient MSS of this Gospel says that Matthew was the author. This argument should be looked at more closely than it usually is, despite the fact that it is almost universally accepted by modern scholarship. It takes no note of the fact that, whether in ancient or modern times, few books give any indication of authorship beyond the title page (other than autobiographies or books in which the author plays a prominent part). The title page indicates the author quite clearly, and there is no reason for repeating the information anywhere else in the book. Now none of the oldest MSS of this Gospel has been preserved with the title page intact, but from the earliest ones that do have it onward the book is invariably ascribed to Matthew. This point is of greater weight than is usually recognized. We must face the fact that throughout antiquity it is accepted that Matthew wrote this Gospel and that there is no other name in the tradition.45
This argument is sometimes supported by the fact that Matthew was a tax collector46 and therefore would necessarily have had literary skills. He would certainly have had some experience in writing and would have known Greek, but we can scarcely go beyond that, as far as his occupation is concerned.47 An objection to Matthew as the author is that an apostle would not have used the work of one who did not belong to the apostolic band, namely Mark. To that two things could be said. One is that while it is likely that this Evangelist used Mark’s Gospel, we must bear in mind that this has never been proved beyond any doubt and that some great names are ranged against the view. The other is that no reason appears to be adduced to rule out an apostle’s using the work of a nonapostle.48 Why should this not happen? In an age when authors seem to have copied from one another far more than they do today there seems to be no objection to the view, provided that Matthew thought the source reliable. And he would be especially ready to use it if he was aware of the tradition that Peter was associated with Mark in the writing of his book.49
In the last resort it appears that the authorship of this Gospel will remain in dispute. In my opinion there is more to be said for the apostle Matthew than recent scholarship commonly allows and more for Matthew than for any other candidate. But the evidence certainly falls short of complete proof, and in the end divergent views will continue to be held.50