Matthew
Matthew’s Position Among the Gospels
As a Gospel, Matthew is an ancient biography, and the information treated in the in general also applies to Matthew. But just as other ancient biographies differed from one another even when they described the same person, so do the four Gospels. Of the four Gospels, Matthew is the most carefully arranged by topic and therefore lends itself most easily to a hierarchical outline. Along with John, Matthew is also an emphatically Jewish Gospel; Matthew moves in a thought world resembling that of the emerging rabbinic movement (the circle of Jewish sages and law-teachers) more than do the other Synoptic Gospels. (Our sources for rabbinic Judaism are later than the NT, but later rabbis avoided early Christian writings, so the frequent parallels—sometimes even in sayings and expressions, for which see, e.g., ; ; , ; ; ; —presumably stem from concepts, customs and figures of speech already circulating among sages in the first century.)
Authorship
As noted above, the traditions of the Gospels’ authorship are very early. Works as large as Matthew’s Gospel were major literary undertakings. As suggested for the Gospels generally, in a work this size, authorship would be one of the last matters forgotten. That observation would surely be particularly relevant for Matthew’s Gospel, which seems to have enjoyed popularity right from the start. Matthew was the early second-century church’s favorite and most-cited Gospel.
Some raise questions about the ancient tradition in the case of Matthew. One reason for these questions is that the earliest tradition about Matthew’s Gospel (from a very early second-century church father named Papias) is that he wrote in Hebrew and that other Gospels, probably including Mark, drew on this work. Most scholars agree that our current Gospel of Matthew was not written in Hebrew, nor does it appear to be mostly translated from Hebrew. Most scholars, moreover, believe that our current Gospel of Matthew makes use of Mark’s Gospel, casting doubt on Papias’s apparent suggestion that Matthew wrote first (although it is possible to interpret Papias differently).
If Papias was wrong about some details, why should we trust him on others? This is a legitimate concern. Nevertheless, some other factors may mitigate the concern. First, some scholars believe that even if Papias does not properly describe our current Gospel of Matthew, he preserves some genuine information; possibly Matthew wrote a collection of Jesus’ sayings (fitting the meaning of Papias’s word here) in Hebrew or Aramaic, on which others (including Matthew’s later Gospel in Greek) drew. Second, people are usually more apt to be correct about the simple fact of a document’s authorship than about the circumstances of its writing. So even if Papias was partly or largely wrong, if he knew anything at all about these works written just a generation before him, he likely knew about their authorship.
Another objection that some raise against the traditional belief that Matthew wrote this Gospel is that Matthew, who was one of Jesus’ disciples (; ; ), would not need to depend on Mark’s Gospel, since Matthew was an eyewitness of most of Jesus’ public ministry. Ancient approaches to eyewitness sources differed somewhat from modern approaches, however. Thus when the historian Xenophon writes an account of events in which he participated, he nevertheless depends heavily on an earlier-published work by another author, because the other work was already in wide circulation. By the same token, Matthew could have been an eyewitness and nevertheless used Mark because its wide circulation (or its association with Peter) made it a standard work. None of this proves that Matthew wrote this Gospel. It does, however, call into question the conviction with which some scholars dismiss that early tradition.
Provenance and Date
There is no consensus and no certain means of resolving Matthew’s precise setting or date. Some general considerations may be relevant. Because Matthew, more than any other NT document, addresses Jewish concepts closely paralleled in the emerging rabbinic movement, the common scholarly view that he wrote from the Roman province of Syria (which included Judea and Galilee) makes good sense. Some scholars also find similarities between Matthew and other documents from early Syrian Christianity.
Because Matthew wrote in Greek, which dominated in Syria’s urban centers, rather than Aramaic, which dominated in rural areas, Matthew’s core audience might have been located in an urban setting. Many scholars thus suggest that Matthew writes especially for Antioch in Syria. Antioch had a large Jewish community, one of the few Jewish communities not devastated by the Judean war; it also was an early Christian center of mission to Gentiles (; ; ).
Ultimately, what we can be sure of is that Matthew wrote especially to Jewish believers in Jesus in the eastern Mediterranean world. Whatever specific “core” audience he may have envisioned, as the author of a major literary work Matthew probably hoped that his Gospel would circulate as widely as possible.
Matthew’s date is also a matter of much debate. If Matthew was the first Gospel writer, he probably wrote before Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70. A larger number of scholars, however, believe that Matthew made use of Mark’s Gospel, and many thus date Matthew after 70. On this view, it is not surprising that Matthew must urge his Jewish Christian audience to bring the message of the kingdom to Gentiles—many Jewish followers of Jesus at that time would have felt little love for the people who destroyed their holy city and enslaved many of their people. Nevertheless, even before 70, tensions were building toward that climax, so a similar background could be relevant on either dating.
A majority of scholars think that Matthew writes after 70 also because of allusions to the destruction of the temple and the holy city. In possible contrast to Mark’s more ambiguous relationship between Jesus’ warning of the temple’s destruction and the promise of his return, Matthew seems to distinguish the two events (compare with ). (Some also point to .) Such features could well suggest a post-70 date. Nevertheless, it seems clear from the earliest sources (including some shared by and thus earlier than Matthew and Luke) that Jesus himself did predict impending judgment on the temple (; , ; ; cf. ).
In the end, the specific question of date may be a moot point. (Indeed, some scholars think that Matthew and/or his assistants expanded the Gospel in subsequent editions at different times.) Because the Gospels are primarily concerned with events that have already occurred in the past, the time they describe is more crucial than the time in which they wrote, although the latter is helpful for considering why the different writers emphasized some particular themes.
Background
Only rarely can scholars studying ancient documents pinpoint precise dates for those documents. One does not need to know exact dates or locations to reconstruct the general setting of such works, however.
As will be clear from the following study notes on Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew addresses an audience comfortable with traditional Jewish forms of speech. For example, one need only compare Mark’s pervasive “kingdom of God” with Matthew’s usual “kingdom of heaven” to see that Matthew prefers traditional (and emphatically) Jewish formulations.
Because Jewish thinking took many forms in different parts of the ancient world, it is valuable to be more precise in this case. Whereas Jewish people who liked apocalyptic literature would particularly appreciate Revelation, Jews in the Diaspora would appreciate Hebrews, and groups such as the Essenes might appreciate John’s Gospel, Matthew often moves in a more “rabbinic” world. That is, the views and arguments of teachers and interpreters of the law, who came to be called rabbis, are very relevant to Matthew’s Gospel. Most of the sources from which we know rabbinic thought are later, but they offer numerous parallels to Matthew’s ways of handling Scripture and intimate understanding of Pharisaic debates with Jesus (e.g., see notes on ; ). Because Jesus was himself a sage and engaged in discussion, and often debate, with Pharisaic teachers, Matthew continues to engage a world within which Jesus himself moved. ◆
Quick Glance
Matthew, also called Levi
Audience:
Greek-speaking Jewish Christians
Date:
Between AD 50 and 90, perhaps in the 70s
Theme:
Matthew presents Jesus as the Jewish Messiah sent by God to fulfill OT prophecy.