Why Matthew Didn't Write Matthew: Part One
Across the theological spectrum, few scholars today are convinced of the traditional authorship of Matthew’s Gospel. The majority view is that the Gospel was originally anonymous and only later attributed to the disciple of Jesus.
But what are the reasons for this widely-held perspective?
In this post, I want to briefly highlight several reasons why it is the case:
1. The earliest attribution of the Gospel to Matthew is late.
The first evidence that the Greek Gospel is quoted and referred to as a work of Matthew is in the late second century, in the writings of Irenaeus.1
This late dating is a problem for Matthean authorship as this was a time when many early Christians — of all varieties — were attributing their literature to the earliest disciples of Jesus. This lent their texts apostolic authority.
It may not seem like Matthew would have been the obvious choice. Yet neither were other disciples, who receive their own Gospels, such as Thomas, Philip, and Judas.
And as I shall go on to suggest, the name Matthew was probably not plucked out of thin air. There was a relatively early Church tradition that Matthew had written something in Aramaic or Hebrew. Significantly, however, this tradition does not describe Matthew as writing the Greek Gospel we have today.
In short, there is no good, early evidence connecting Matthew to the Greek text.
2. The Gospel’s opening sentence has the function of a title.
The most common objection to the late attribution of the title, ‘The Gospel according to Matthew’ is the impracticality of a text circulating without a title.
How would Matthew’s text be distinguished from other similar texts, such as Mark? The great New Testament scholar, Martin Hengel, supposed that the Gospels would have have had the titles attached to them very early on to avoid confusion.2
Yet there are at least two problems with this Hengel’s scenario. The first is that we know other texts circulated quite happily without titles, most commonly in biblical literature (which Matthew tries to imitate)3 as well as other Greek texts.
The second is that Matthew already possesses possess a title. As prolific Matthean commentators, Dale Allison and William Davies, have argued in detail, its opening sentence, (‘The book of the genealogy…’ 1:1) likely functioned as a general title.4
3. The Gospel does not read as an eyewitness account.
Perhaps the most important reason to doubt Matthean authorship, however, is that the text does not read as an eyewitness account from a disciple of Jesus.
To begin with, the Gospel takes over almost the entirety of the Gospel of Mark (600 of Mark’s 660 verses.) This is not the move one would expect a highly literate eyewitness to make, especially since Mark was not an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry.
The changes Matthew makes to Mark also do not bear the hallmarks of an eyewitness. Take, for instance, the story of Matthew’s own ‘call.’ This story is almost entirely the same as its (earlier) narration in Mark, but with one crucial difference: the author of Matthew changes the name ‘Levi’ to ‘Matthew.’
As conservative Bible scholar, Richard Bauckham, suggests, this is a very peculiar way to tell the story of your own call. For Matthew to take-over Mark’s account and to change the name Levi to another Hebrew name (signalling a different figure) is the most impersonal way Matthew could recall the moment he began to follow Jesus.5
On the other hand, we can easily discern a reason why the author of Matthew made this change to Mark: Levi was alone among Jesus’ disciples to receive a Markan call story but not to be a member of the Twelve. Thus, as a member of the Twelve, Matthew “may have seemed a good a name as any” to substitute this lesser disciple - especially if it was known that Matthew himself was a tax-collector.6
There are still further ways that Matthew does not read as an eyewitness source, and very little in it which suggests an eyewitness account.7 We note, for instance, the ways in which Matthew depends upon oral and written sources (such as the material shared with Luke, known as ‘Q’), or how Matthew fills in the gaps of Jesus’ birth, relying on tropes from Graeco-Roman infancy narratives.8
We might also point to curious inaccuracies in Matthew, such as its misreading of Zechariah’s Hebrew parallelism (9:9) as referring to two separate donkeys (21:7); its penchant for ‘special effects’ of a seismic variety (27:51-53; 28:2); and its apocalyptic narrative of a mass resurrection at Jesus’ crucifixion (27:51-53).
Why, then, the Gospel of Matthew?….
The Gospel does not read as an eyewitness source; its incipit likely functioned as its original title, and the earliest evidence for Matthean authorship is late.
Why, however, was it attributed to Matthew specifically? And how do some modern apologists try to defend the view that the text was written by Matthew?
I answer these questions in parts two and three, available to all paid subscribers. If you would like to subscribe to my Substack for this content, see the link below.
See Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, which is populated with quotations from Matthew.
See Martin Hengel, Studies in Mark, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 1985), ch.3.
See Roland Deines, “Did Matthew Know He was Writing Scripture? Part 1” EJT, 22 n.2 (2013): 101-109; idem. “Did Matthew Know He was Writing Scripture? Part 2” EJT, 23 n.1 (2014): 3-12.
See the magisterial commentary, W.D. Davies, Dale Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 150-154.
On Levi and Matthew as different persons, see Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 110.
See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 111-112.
Some might deem it significant that the apostle Matthew nowhere identifies himself as the author. Yet this silence is weak, for other ancient biographers often do not disclose their identity or sources. As Helen Bond notes, “even when the author knew his subject, or was a witness of events, there is often a curious reluctance to mention this fact.” See Helen K. Bond, “Was Peter Behind Mark’s Gospel?” in Peter in Early Christianity, eds. Helen K. Bond, Larry Hurtado (Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2015), 55.
See, for example, Richard C. Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity. Routledge Studies in Religion 44. (London: Routledge, 2015), 122-129
The problems are solved when we realize that those who edited and expanded Mark's gospel, to make "Matthew's gospel", continued to give Mark the credit, but used his Semitic name, Matthew. We know that they liked to call him "Matthew" consistently because they changed "Levi" to "Matthew". The author of Mark's gospel would have needed a Semitic name for use in Palestine, because Roman names there would have created opposition. We know of no first century Jesus follower who used a Roman name in Palestine. The names Mark and Matthew sound somewhat similar. Compare Saul/Paul, Silas/Silvanus, Joseph/Justus, Jesus/Justus, Titus/Timothy, and others. Note also that Mark's gospel is the most likely to have been written by someone who collected taxes for Herod Antipas, for, of the synoptics, it is least negative towards Antipas and tax collectors (John mentions neither). Mark did not need to explain that Levi was Matthew because his audience (presumably) knew his names, just as they knew Alexander and Rufus. The authorship of Mark's gospel by Mark/Matthew explains why there is a strong ancient tradition that Matthew wrote first. The Herods had connections with Rome and this would explain why Mark (if indeed he was Matthew, who collected Herod's taxes) likely went to Rome (to escape from the sicarii?). Compare Herodion in Rom 16:11.
What do you make of the possibility that Matthew relied so heavily on Mark because even though Mark wasn't an eyewitness, its putative source (Peter) was, and he deferred to the chief apostle's authority in recounting certain events which also spared him from having to reinvent the wheel?