Papias’ descriptions of gospels of Mark and Matthew? 📜
Eusebius of Caesarea’s Church History, book three, chapter 39. Eusebius’ work dates to the 4th century, so Papias’ original work, presumably titled Expositions of Oracles of the Lord, was available to Eusebius while he was writing his history and he copies down a portion of it and summarized the rest. Here, Eusebius quotes Papias:
Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely… So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.
As far as I can tell, this is all that Papias wrote on the matter. You can find a reconstruction from the fragments we have here; the book from Eusebius here. One quick note on dating: Eusebius dates to the 4th century, but we think Papias wrote his work in the early 2nd century.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0125.htm, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm
Elsewhere in Eusebius’ Church History, book two, chapter 15, another story of the origins of Mark are told:
And thus when the divine word had made its home among them, the power of Simon was quenched and immediately destroyed, together with the man himself. And so greatly did the splendor of piety illumine the minds of Peter’s hearers that they were not satisfied with hearing once only, and were not content with the unwritten teaching of the divine Gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, a follower of Peter, and the one whose Gospel is extant, that he would leave them a written monument of the doctrine which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease until they had prevailed with the man, and had thus become the occasion of the written Gospel which bears the name of Mark.
- And they say that Peter — when he had learned, through a revelation of the Spirit, of that which had been done — was pleased with the zeal of the men, and that the work obtained the sanction of his authority for the purpose of being used in the churches. Clement in the eighth book of his Hypotyposes gives this account, and with him agrees the bishop of Hierapolis named Papias. And Peter makes mention of Mark in his first epistle which they say that he wrote in Rome itself, as is indicated by him, when he calls the city, by a figure, Babylon, as he does in the following words: The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, salutes you; and so does Marcus my son. (1 Peter 5:13 forgery 1-peter )
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Audience 📜
In Matthew Henry’s massive commentary on Matthew, he argues that the book of Matthew is written to a Jewish audience. Because of this, Matthew pays special attention to prophecy fulfillment and uncovering the truth behind who the Pharisees really are. Matthew, written in the later part of the 1st Century AD, was written for a Jewish audience. Matthew tries to make a lot of connections to Judaism, such as listing the genealogy of Jesus, giving him a royal Jewish bloodline. He also establishes legitimacy as “king of the Jews” by having the three wisemen visit Jesus, as this does not happen in any of the other four gospels. Jesus is also born in the town of Bethlehem in Matthew’s narrative, which is historically important to Jews as David’s home so it fulfills an old Jewish prophecy. (It’s honestly likely one of the reasons why traditional authors were quick to arrange gMatthew to be the first gospel).
Matthew’s literacy 📜
https://ehrmanblog.org/was-the-author-of-matthew-matthew-for-members/
The author of the Gospel of Matthew (as we continue to call it) cannot be traced earlier than about 180 CE. It is not found in Justin, who lived in Rome in 150 CE and who quotes the Gospel – along with Mark and Luke – without indicating who wrote them. And the evidence of Papias (120-140 CE) is more than just ambiguous: he actually does not appear to be referring to our Gospel of Matthew when he says that the disciple Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language.
I want to give two reasons for thinking that the Gospel was not in fact written by Jesus’ disciple Matthew (and at every point it needs to be remembered that the Gospel does not claim to be written by Matthew; quite the contrary, not only is it anonymous: it speaks of Matthew as one of the characters in the story in the third person).
FIRST point. According to the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 9), Matthew the tax-collector was a Palestinian Jew. As such, his native language was Aramaic. That makes it highly unlikely that he could have written this book.
To begin with, apart from the books written by the extremely highly literarily elite Josephus, we don’t have any literary books composed in written Greek by any Palestinian Jews of the first century. Zero. And as I will be showing in a moment, this book was certainly composed in Greek.
Relatedly, as I have stressed before on this blog, the vast majority of Palestinian Jews in this period were illiterate – probably around 97%. The exceptions were urban elites. There is nothing to suggest that Matthew, the tax collector, was an urban elite who was highly educated.
Frankly, I think that whether Matthew knew Greek is a red herring, because the question remains why an alleged apostle of Jesus would need to borrow so much of his Gospel from the Gospel of Mark. Also, only the Gospel of Matthew calls the tax collector Matthew; Mark and Luke call him Levi:
Mark 2:14:
14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Luke 5:27:
27 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”
Matthew 9:9:
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Additionally, when the list of apostles is given, Mark and Luke mention Matthew and make no refence to Levi and Matthew being the same person (cf.what’s said of Simon/Peter and the sons of Zebedee):
Mark 3:16-19:
16 So he appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); 17 James son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); 18 and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Cananaean, 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
Luke 6:13-16:
13 And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: 14 Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, 15 and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, 16 and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.
Also striking is that Luke’s list says that James is the “son of Alphaeus,” the same designation of Mark 2:14’s Levi. If Levi is really Matthew, and if he is also the son of Alpheus as is James, it seems like quite an omission to not list them as brothers (as was said of Simon and Andrew and of James and John) or to clarify that there were two separate men named Alphaeus who had apostles for sons. And not even Matthew’s list of the twelve says that Matthew and Levi are the same (Matthew 10:1-4).
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Matthew’s (alleged) misunderstanding of Zech 9:9 speaks against apostolic authorship 📜
According to Meier (Law and History in Matthew’s Gospel, pp16-8), the evangelist Matthew’s alleged misunderstanding of parallelism in Zech 9:9 is supposed to speak against his being Jewish. In response, Davies and Allison (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, p28) think this conclusion too strong.
Mark 11.3 is a statement of Jesus to the disciples about procuring the donkey, and reads
καὶ ἐάν τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ τί ποιεῖτε τοῦτο εἴπατε ὁ κύριος αὐτοῦ χρείαν ἔχει καὶ εὐθὺς αὐτὸν ἀποστέλλει πάλιν ὧδε
This is translated:
If someone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’
But here’s the Matthean version of the verse (21.3):
καὶ ἐάν τις ὑμῖν εἴπῃ τι ἐρεῖτε ὅτι ὁ κύριος αὐτῶν χρείαν ἔχει εὐθὺς δὲ ἀποστελεῖ αὐτούς
So the first part of what had appeared in Mark here — the actual interrogative of the hypothetical person who’d question the disciples: “why are you doing this?” — is abbreviated in Matthew. All Matthew has is “[i]f someone says something to you…”; no actual question. All well and fine; the gist of the idea is still here.
But Matthew then reframes the second part of Jesus’ statement to make it say something very different. Instead of Jesus telling them to reassure the hypothetical person that “the Lord” would immediately (εὐθὺς) send the donkey back (αὐτὸν ἀποστέλλει πάλιν) after using it, Jesus makes a prediction that upon the hypothetical person being told that “the Lord needs it,” the person would immediately acquiesce in releasing the donkey (+ colt) to the disciples.
Even though it’s a very different idea, though, the terminology used here is still extremely similar to Mark’s, to where it’s obviously not a coincidence: compare Mark’s εὐθὺς αὐτὸν ἀποστέλλει πάλιν (“immediately he [=Jesus] will send it back”) and Matthew’ εὐθὺς ἀποστελεῖ αὐτούς (“immediately he [=the donkeys’ owner] will send them [the donkey and colt]”).
But if the idea in Matthew here is that the owner is acquiescing to the disciples’ and “releasing” the donkeys into their temporary custody, the use of the verb ἀποστέλλω for this — by itself and with no other qualifier — is just impossibly unfitting. By contrast, the use of the verb in Mark makes perfect sense, because ἀποστέλλει πάλιν means precisely “send back.” But yeah, if Matthew is trying to say that the owner would acquiesce and lend or “release” the donkeys to them or whatever, ἀποστελεῖ αὐτούς is just extremely unusual language for this. It’d be like if you told me that you knocked on your neighbor’s door to borrow sugar, and instead of then saying that they just “gave” you the sugar, you said that they “sent it forth” to you.
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Why couldn’t Matthew have been written first? 📜
In basic terms, the text of Matthew seems to feature a number of continuity errors that look like the result of an author copying a text.
Anyways if it was written first, a ton would have to have been removed by other authors. For example, look at Matthew’s crucifixion darkness:
Not only does he have the sun darkened, but he has earthquakes and the dead walking such that even non-believers saw them.
So do Mark and Luke take Matthew and go “meh, earthquakes and the walking dead – boring, let’s cut both those things – but man, that sun being darkened? That’s going in for sure?”
As I’ve looked more deeply into the Synoptic problem, I think the academic theories are often over-simplified (for example, a lot of commenters have posted Goodacre’s stuff on editorial fatigue, but there’s a problem in how that’s discussed as an artifact of composition that’s readily apparent in Luke’s sower parable — which I’ll get around to writing a post on one of these days). I think theories that more strongly consider post-composition cross-document editing will turn out correct.
But that perspective is only really useful in tackling the context where there’s similarities. Where there are unique parts, it’s a challenge to make the case that aspects were removed, especially by two different authors (early Luke has different wording for the crucifixion darkness than either Mark or Matthew, so if Matthew was first, it’d be unlikely that only Mark removed the earthquakes and walking dead and Luke simply copied from Mark – both authors would likely have had to have independently removed both those things.)
So for our crucifixion darkness single example, we have three possibilities:
Matthew was later and copied from an earlier source, adding in the earthquake and walking dead at composition
Matthew was first and both Luke and Mark removed the same 2 out of 3 things later at composition
Matthew may or may not have been first, originally only had the crucifixion darkness, and a later editor added in the earthquakes and walking dead.
Personally the first seems most likely, followed by the third as possible, and far less likely is the second.
My favorite example for the sake of comparison is the Olivet discourse between Mark and Matthew. In Mark, the disciples only ask Jesus about the destruction of the Temple and in his response Jesus adds in all this stuff about the parousia of the Son of Man, as if the two were connected. Then Matthew rephrases the disciples’ question, so they ask about these two things separately. Then he adds a bunch of parables to the Olivet discourse that all have the theme of eschatological delay, specifically the Master’s coming being apparently delayed. Then he tops all that off with a lengthy description of the coming of the Son of Man and what that would mean in terms of eschatological judgment (which is never spelled out in such detail in Mark but is more assumed).
The Markan version that has the closest parallel to Daniel 12:6-7 (Theodotion), with πότε, συντελέω, and πάντα ταῦτα shared between the texts. The Matthean version drops the πάντα from πάντα ταῦτα and uses the nominal form συντέλεια in place of the verbal συντελέω. So Mark is closest to the underlying intertext. But what I was referring to was the insertion of a new question τί τὸ σημεῖον τῆς σῆς παρουσίας that inquires separately on the coming of the Son of Man. The redactional nature of this question is confirmed by the fact that σημεῖον is then added to the description of the coming of the Son of Man in Matthew 24:30 (= Mark 13:26), and that παρουσία is a non-Markan term but which also occurs in the parabolic material added to the Olivet discourse (see 24:27, 37, 39).
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“Minor Agreements” :tm~1:
The minor agreements are used as arguments against the Q hypothesis, not against Markan priority. They aren’t changes to Mark, as such, they’re just little additions that are not in Mark at all. Probably the most cited example is the “who struck you thing.”
This is Mark 14:65:
Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took him and beat him.
Matthew 26:67-68:
Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Messiah. Who hit you?
Luke 22:63-65:
The men who were guarding Jesus began mocking and beating him. They blindfolded him and demanded, “Prophesy! Who hit you?”
Both Mark and Luke add “who struck you?” (the same five Greek words, tis estin ho paisas se – lit. “Who was it who struck you?”) , but if you look at all three passages, those are the only words that are the same and I would point out that Mark and Luke still agree against Matthew about Jesus being blindfolded and Mark and Matthew agree against Luke about Jesus being spit on. The Synoptics are a tangled mess sometimes. Q proponents have proposed a number of explanations for the minor agreements, including the hypothesis that Mt and Lk were using an earlier version of Mark, both were referencing an oral tradition, both were coincidentally completing or explicating Mark ( that is maybe Mark said “prophesy” and they were both spelling out what Mark meant). To me it looks like “who struck you” could have been originally part of Mark and accidentally dropped somewhere. Hitting someone and just just saying the word “prophesy” doesn’t make a ton of sense all by itself, but even if that was the original reading, “Who struck you” is the obvious implication and it’s not far fetched that two copiers might add the same clarification.
There could have also been a tradition in Q that had a lot of overlap with that pericope from Mark and there are other proposals as well, but the minor agreements are all about whether Luke knew Matthew, not about Markan priority. Mark Goodacre, the most prominent opponent of Q , accepts Markan priority no problem.
The nativity stories raise another issue. The two accounts in Matthew and Luke differ extensively from each other in their narrative construction (Matthew’s being a Moses/exodus midrash with Herod taking the role of Pharaoh, while Luke’s showing influence from the Hannah story with no elements from the Moses midrash and with the setting of the census also mentioned in Acts). Then they began to agree with each other closely at the point where Mark begins, with the ministry of John the Baptist. Then at the other end, the two gospels agree closely through the passion narrative until they reach the point in which Mark ends where they began to differ wildly again, with Matthew giving resurrection appearances only in Galilee (with foreshadowing) and with Luke giving entirely different resurrection appearances only in Jerusalem (dropping the Markan foreshadowing), where Jesus also ascends to heaven. So the two gospels disagree with each other to the point of having independent stories right where Mark begins and right where it stops it’s narrative. The most natural explanation for this is Markan priority. As for John, it is debated how much John is independent from the Synoptics. It also has Jerusalem-only resurrection appearances (aside from the appendix or epilogue in ch. 21 which comes from the final redaction of John, which might parallel the Gospel of Peter and which differs markedly from Matthew’s Galilean epiphany story) but entirely different ones from Luke. And instead of a nativity account, it has a prologue that is focused on the incarnation of the divine Son rather than the story of the birth itself. It might know none of the other gospels or it might know only Mark or perhaps even just a common passion narrative; opinions differ because of the unique characteristics of the Fourth Gospel.
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Did the author of the Gospel of Matthew know Hebrew? 📜
From Blackwell:
The Greek of Matthew is a more polished Semitic Greek than one finds in Mark. The Matthean author ’ s language has been affected also by the Greek translation of Hebrew sacred texts, sometimes characterized as “ synagogue Greek ” (Luz 1989 : 49 – 73). Certainly the author displays a number of linguistic features that indicate Semitic infl u- ence. There are Hebrew and Aramaic idioms and parallel sentences typical of Hebrew poetry ( parallelismus membrorum ). Themes occur that are developed through the nar- rative. The writer likes certain numbers and numerical groupings. Doubling and the number two occur very frequently: two disciples (21:1); two brothers (1:2; 4:2, 18, 21; 6:24; 20:21, 24); two masters (6:24); two demoniacs (8:28); two men and two women (24:40, 41); two sons (20:21; 21:28); two witnesses (18:16; 19, 20); two robbers (27:38); two great commandments (22:40); two tunics (10:10); two sparrows (10:29); two fi sh (14:17, 19); two hands and two feet (18:8); two eyes (18:9); two talents (25:15, 17, 22). He duplicates signifi cant words in a section, such as “ angel of the Lord ” (1:18 – 2:23) or “ righteousness ” (5 – 7). There are also different accounts of essentially the same story, or “ doublets, ” such as two accounts of two blind men (9:27 – 31; 20:29 – 34). He likes the number three, as well: three days (12:40; 15:32; 26:61; 27:40) and three nights (12:40); three measures of wheat (13:33); three booths (17:4); three denials (26:34).
According to Ehrman:
(https://ehrmanblog.org/did-matthew-write-in-hebrew-did-jesus-institute-the-lords-supper-did-josephus-mention-jesus-weekly-readers-mailbag-july-9-2016/)
There was a long tradition throughout early and medieval Christianity that maintained that Matthew – commonly called the “most Jewish” of the Gospels – was written in Hebrew (or Aramaic). Given its heightened Jewish concerns (see, for example, 5:17-20, verses found in no other Gospel), wasn’t it probably written to Jews in their native language? There are two preliminary points to be made. First, a number of scholars doubt if Matthew, or his community, was Jewish. It is widely thought, instead, that Matthew portrays a Jesus who insists that his followers keep the Jewish law precisely because they were not accustomed to doing so, that is, that they are gentiles who have entered into a Christian community and are just learning that this community needs to follow the dictates of Scripture. Second, even if Matthew and his audience were Jewish, that would not be evidence that he wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic. Very few people wrote in Hebrew at this time, since the language of Palestine was Aramaic (a closely related language). But there is little to suggest that Matthew’s Gospel was written in Palestine or to Aramaic speakers. Few Jews outside of Palestine spoke Aramaic, and Jewish literature from outside (think Josephus, or Philo) was written in Greek. There are compelling reasons for thinking Matthew wrote in Greek as well. Here is one. Since the 19th century it has been widely thought (on very convincing grounds that I won’t go into here) that Matthew used as one of his sources for his stories about Jesus the Gospel of Mark. That would explain their massive word-for-word agreements in places. But Mark was certainly composed in Greek. Matthew therefore had to use a Greek version of Mark. He copied it in places. In Greek. As a consequence, he must have been writing in Greek as well. There’s no other plausible explanation for his verbatim alignments with Mark.
Dr. Stephen D. Cook adds this insight on his blog:
Richard Longnecker has pointed out that in the Gospel of Matthew the evangelist’s own quotations of the Old Testament usually follow the Hebrew reading, whereas the citations by Jesus “are strongly Septuagintal”. This raises the interesting question of why Matthew would make his own translation from the Hebrew at times while using the Septuagint Greek translation when quoting the words of Jesus, especially since it is hardly likely that Jesus himself taught in Greek. The most likely explanation in my view is that Matthew was using several sources when writing his gospel…[M]any scholars believe that Q was written in Greek. Jesus’ quotations from the Old Testament in Q appear to be from the Septuagint. If this theory is correct then it would explain why Matthew’s quotations of Jesus’ sayings follow the Septuagint (he was simply copying directly from his Q source) while his own quotations from the Hebrew Bible were his own translation. This argument presupposes that Matthew wrote his gospel in Greek, which is the view of many New Testament scholars, although there are some who believe that Matthew wrote originally in Hebrew or Aramaic and his gospel was later translated into Greek. Either way, there is strong evidence that Matthew used at least two sources for his quotations from the Old Testament: when Jesus was quoting the Bible the quotations came to Matthew via a Greek source which drew on the Septuagint, and when Matthew was quoting Scripture directly he drew on his own knowledge of the Hebrew Bible.
In Lincoln’s book criticizing the virgin birth, he also points to Matthew 2:15, which quotes Hosea 11:1 with the phrase “Out of Egypt I called my son.” The Masoretic Text uses the singular “son”. In contrast, the LXX uses the plural “sons.” Matthew chose to go with the Hebrew version in this case because the singular “son” was a better fit for Jesus.
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Information Ultimate 📜
It is the near-universal position of scholarship that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent upon the Gospel of Mark. This position is accepted whether one subscribes to the dominant Two-Source Hypothesis or instead prefers the Farrer-Goulder hypothesis.
It is also the consensus position that the evangelist was not the apostle Matthew. Such an idea is based on the second century statements of Papias and Irenaeus. As quoted by Eusebius in Hist. Eccl. 3.39, Papias states: “Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” In Adv. Haer. 3.1.1, 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.” We know that Irenaeus had read Papias, and it is most likely that Irenaeus was guided by the statement he found there. That statement in Papias itself is considered to be unfounded because the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek and relied largely upon Mark, not the author’s first-hand experience.
Herman N. Ridderbos writes (Matthew, p. 7):
This means, however, that we can no longer accept the traditional view of Matthew’s authorship. At least two things forbid us to do so. First, the tradition maintains that Matthew authored an Aramaic writing, while the standpoint I have adopted does not allow us to regard our Greek text as a translation of an Aramaic original. Second, it is extremely doubtful that an eyewitness like the apostle Matthew would have made such extensive use of material as a comparison of the two Gospels indicates. Mark, after all, did not even belong to the circle of the apostles. Indeed Matthew’s Gospel surpasses those of the other synoptic writers neither in vividness of presentation nor in detail, as we would expect in an eyewitness report, yet neither Mark nor Luke had been among those who had followed Jesus from the beginning of His public ministry.
J. C. Fenton argues (The Gospel of Saint Matthew, p. 12):
It is usually thought that Mark’s Gospel was written about A.D. 65 and that the author of it was neither one of the apostles nor an eyewitness of the majority of the events recorded in his Gospel. Matthew was therefore dependent on the writing of such a man for the production of his book. What Matthew has done, in fact, is to produce a second and enlarged edition of Mark. Moreover, the changes which he makes in Mark’s way of telling the story are not those corrections which an eyewitness might make in the account of one who was not an eyewitness. Thus, whereas in Mark’s Gospel we may be only one remove from eyewitnesses, in Matthew’s Gospel we are at one remove further still.
Francis Write Beare notes (The Gospel according to Matthew, p. 7):
But the dependence of the book upon documentary sources is so great as to forbid us to look upon it as the work of any immediate disciple of Jesus. Apart from that, there are clear indications that it is a product of the second or third Christian generation. The traditional name of Matthew is retained in modern discussion only for convenience.
The author is an anonymous Jewish-Christian. Eduard Schweizer writes (The Good News according to Matthew, p. 16):
The Jewish background is plain. Jewish customs are familiar to everyone (see the discussion of 15:5), the debate about the law is a central question (see the discussion of 5:17-20), and the Sabbath is still observed (see the discussion of 24:20). The dispute with the Pharisees serves primarily as a warning to the community (see the introduction to chapters 24-25); but a reference to leading representatives of the Synagogue is not far below the surface. Above all, the method of learned interpretation of the Law, which “looses” and “binds,” was still central for Matthew and his community (see the discussion of 16:19; 18:18). Preservation of sayings, such as 23:2-3, which support the continued authority of Pharisaic teaching, and above all the special emphasis placed on the requirement not to offend those who still think in legalistic terms (see the discussion of 17:24-27), shows that dialogue with the Jewish Synagogue had not broken off. On the other hand, a saying like 27:25 shows that the Christian community had conclusively split with the Synagogues, even though hope for the conversion of Jews was not yet totally dead.
Schweizer joins most scholars in favor of a Syrian provenance for the Gospel of Matthew (op. cit., pp. 15-16):
As the place of origin, Syria is still the most likely possibility. On the one hand, an association with Palestinian Judaism and its interpretation of the Law is clearly discernable; on the other hand, a full recognition of the gentile world and the admission of pagans into the post-Easter community are accepted facts. The destruction of Jerusalem plays some role; but it was not experienced firsthand, and the exodus of Christians from Jerusalem is perceptible only in the tradition borrowed from Mark, not in Matthew himself. . . But Syria is suggested by the major role assigned to Peter, esepcially his authoritative interpretation of Jesus’ commands as referring to new situations (see the discussion of 16:9); for according to Acts 12:17 Peter had left Jerusalem. He was certainly in Syrian Antioch, as we know from Galatians 2:1 ff.
Larry Swain has summarized the evidence by which we locate Matthew in Antioch (e-mail correspondence):
- Patristic testimony re: Jerusalem, while deemed incorrect has a negative value of demonstrating that noone thought Matthew came from anywhere else except the East.
- It is doubtful that it would have been accepted so early and so widely unless one of the larger, more important churches sponsored it. Since Rome, Ephesus, Alexandria, and Jerusalem all have very important reasons against them, that leaves Antioch.
- Peter’s status in Matthew accords with his standing in Antioch, said to be the first bishop there. Not a strong argument on its own, but it fits the pattern.
- Antioch had both a large Jewish population as well as being the site of the earliest Gentile missions, Matthew more than the other gospels reflects this duality.
- Only in Antioch did the official stater equal 2 didrachmae, Matt 17.24-7.
- The two texts which seem to refer to Matthean tradition (in the one case to the text of Matthew in the other case possibly to the text, but more likely to M material) are the letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch and the Didache whose provenance is also Syria or northern Palestine thus placing Matthew fairly firmly in those areas at the end of the first century.
- We know that in the third century there was a school in Antioch which claimed to go back to ancient times which had several OT textual traditions available, if the tradition is true, then this accords with both the Matthean citations of the OT as well as the “Matthean School” tradition; particularly since members of this Antioch school are said to have known Hebrew and Greek, which again points out a strong parallel with the author of Matthew.
- There are some strong similarities between the Lucianic text of the Hebrew Bible and Matthew’s citations of OT texts in some instances. Lucian lived and worked in Antioch and is believed to have worked with an Ur-Lucianic text, i. e. one of the above mentioned OT traditions to which author Matthew had access.
- One of the concerns within the Matthean text is a conservative approach to the Torah which again accords well with Antioch as well as Palestine.
- The text also seems to be concerned to react against some of the material coming out of Yavneh, which again places it in an area which Yavneh had some influence, thus northern Palestine and Syria, and Antioch.
- The community described in Matthew has usually been understood as a wealthy one, which rules out Palestine after the war of 70.
To set the terminus ad quem, Ignatius of Antioch and other early writers show dependence on the Gospel of Matthew. Dependence on Mark sets a terminus a quo for the dating of Matthew, which should be assumed to have been written at least a decade after the gospel upon which it relies. Several indications in the text also confirm that Matthew was written c. 80 CE or later.
J.C. Fenton summarizes the evidence for the dating of Matthew as follows (op. cit., p. 11):
The earliest surviving writings which quote this Gospel are probably the letters of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, who, while being taken as prisoner from the East to Rome about A.D. 110, wrote to various churches in Asia in Asia Minor and to the church at Rome. Ignatius refers to the star which appeared at the time of the birth of Jesus, the answer of Jesus to John the Baptist, when he was baptized, and several sayings of Jesus which are recorded only in this Gospel (12:33, 15:13, 19:12). It seems almost certain that Ignatius, and possibly the recipients of his letters also, knew this Gospel, and thus that it was written before A.D. 110. But how long before?
Here we cannot be so certain. But it is possible that we can find evidence that Matthew was writing after the war between the Romans and the Jews which ended in the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in A.D. 70. See, for example, 22:7: The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city; and compare also 21:41, 27:25. Similarly, Matthew’s Gospel contains a strongly anti-Jewish note running through it, from the teaching not to do as the hypocrites do in Chapter 6, to the Woes on the scribes and Pharisees in Chapter 23; and this may point to a date after c. A.D. 85 when the Christians were excluded from the Jewish synagogues. It is worth noting here that Matthew often speaks of their synagogues (4:23, 9:35, 10:17, 12:9, 13:54), as if to distinguish Christian meetings and meeting places from those of the Jews, from which the Christians had now been turned out.
Beare offers the following to date the Gospel of Matthew (op. cit., pp. 7-8):
It is generally agreed that it was written after the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of Titus (AD 70), and the widespread acquaintance with it which is exhibited in all the Christian literature of the second century makes it difficult to place its composition any later than the opening decade of that century. If the Sermon on the Mount can be regarded in any sense as ‘the Christian answer to Jamnia. . . a kind of Christian mishnaic counterpart to the formulation taking place there’ (Davies, Setting, p. 315), this would indicate a date a few years before or after the turn of the century.
Concerning the knowledge of the fall of Jerusalem that the author evinces, Schweizer writes concerning Matthew 22:7 (op. cit., p. 418):
The wrath of the host is mentioned by both evangelists, but it is impossible to conceive of the king coming with his army not only to slay those who had been invited but to burn down their city (not “cities”), and doing all this while the feast stands ready for the newly invited. The parable deals with ordinary citizens, who buy fields and use oxen, not with men who rule entire cities. After his punishment, furthermore, the verdict of the king in verse 8 is pointless. Verses 6-7 are thus clearly an interpolation in the narrative, which earlier passed directly from verse 5 to the wrath of the king (beginning of vs. 7), and then to verse 8. Here the events of A.D. 70 – the taking and burning of Jerusalem by Roman armies – have colored the language of the parable.
There is one final piece of evidence that may establish the terminus a quo for the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 23:35, Jesus is made to say, “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” In the parallel verse of Luke 11:51, the reference is to the Zechariah (son of Jehoiada) whose murder is recounted in 2 Chr 24:20-22, which is the last murder recounted in the Old Testament and which also caught the eye of the rabbinic writers for being such. Q theorists consider the Lucan form to be primary (Kloppenborg, Excavating Q, pp. 81-2); the author of Matthew has understood the identification to refer to one Zechariah, son of Barachias. The murder of this individual occurred in 67 or 68 and is described in Josephus, Jewish Wars 4.335. Unfortunately, it is also possible that this refers to the OT prophet of the same name.
There is widespread agreement that Ignatius betrays knowledge of Mt 3:15 in Smyrn. 1:1. This example of certain dependence is offered by Wolf-Dietrich Kohler, Georg Werner Kummel, Clayton N. Jefford, and the Biblia Patristica. Of this, Massaux writes (The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, v. 1, p. 89):
. . . (τον χυριον ημων) . . . βεβαπτισμενον υπο Ιωαννου, ινα πληρωθη πασα διχαιοσνη υπ αυτου.
. . . Our Lord was . . . baptized by John in order that all due observance might be fulfilled by him; . . .
Undoubtedly, this passage recalls Mt. 3:15: Christ responds to the Baptist who is astonished to see him come to him in order to be baptized: αφεσ αρτι ουτως γαρ πρεπον εστιν ημιν πληρωσαι πασαν διχαιοσυνην.
Of all the evangelists, only Mt. furnishes this motive for the baptism of Jesus: it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness. The same words of Ignatius are found in Mt. The use of the phrase ινα πληρωθη πασα διχαιοσυνη corresponds so typically to the character of the first gospel, where διχαιοσυνη plays such an important role that it would be unreasonable to refer to another writing.
Moreover, the apocryphal gospels give a totally different motive for the baptism of Jesus. So it is that, according to Jerome, the Gospel according to the Hebrews notes a certain reticence on the part of Jesus to be baptized, since he is not a sinner. In the Gospel according to the Ebionites, the sequence of words is different, and the word διχαιοσυνη is missing. The Predicatio Pauli, on the other hand, mentions that, urged by his mother and almost against his will, Christ allowed himself to be baptized. Let me add finally then, when Eph. 18:2 states that the motive for Christ’s baptism is the purification of the water by his Passion, Ignatius himself confirms my point of view. Indeed, if he did [not] show a literary dependence on Mt. in the text which I am analyzing, I do not see why he would give here a different motive from the one he states in Eph. 18:2.
Ignatius also shows knowledge of Mt 10:16 in Polyc. 2:2. Massaux argues (op. cit., pp. 90-91):
Φρονιμος γινου ως οφις εν απασιν χαι αχεραιος εις αει ως η περιστερα.
In all things be wise as the serpent and at all times be as simple as the dove.
Only one single text in the entire New Testament, Mt. 10:16, uses these two comparisons and joins them as does Ignatius of Antioch: γινεσθε ουν φρονιμοι Ως οι οφεις χαι αχεραιοι ως αι περιστεραι.
All of Mt.’s terms are present in the text of Ignatius, who merely changed the Matthean phrase to the singular as the context demanded – he is writing to Polycarp – and inserted εν απασιν in the first clause and εις αει in the second.
The passage is lacking in Lk. 10:3, which is parallel to Mt.’s narrative in which the metaphor is inserted.
There are two passages in Ignatius that show knowledge of Mt 15:13, and these are Trall. 11:1 and Phld. 3:1. Massaux states (op. cit., p. 88): “Of the evangelists, only Mt. recalls this saying of Christ. I find here, as I did in Ignatius, the word φυτεια related to the Father.”
Other passages in which there are allusions to Matthew in the letters of Ignatius are: Eph. 5:2 (Mt 18:19-20), 6:1 (Mt 10:40; 21:33-41), 10:3 (Mt 13:25), 11:1 (Mt 3:7), 14:2 (Mt 12:33), 15:1 (Mt 23:8), 16:2 (Mt 3:12), 17:1 (Mt 26:6-13), 19 (Mt 2:2, 9); Magn. 5:2 (Mt 22:19), 8:2 (Mt 5:11-12), 9:1 (Mt 27:52); Trall. 9:1 (Mt 11:19); Rom 9:3 (Mt 10:41-42, 18:5); Phld. 2:1-2 (Mt 7:15), 6:1 (Mt 23:27), 7:2 (Mt 16:17), Sm. proem (Mt 12:18), 6:1 (Mt 19:12), 6:2 (Mt 6:28); Pol. 1:1 (Mt 7:25), 1:2-3 (Mt 8:17).
Thus, Kummel argues to date the Gospel of Matthew in the last two decades of the first century (Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 119-120): “Even if, indeed, Mk and Mt originated in different regions, precisely in his reworking of Mk Mt shows so clear a development of community relationships and theological reflection (see, e.g., 18:15 ff and 28:19) that a date of writing shortly after Mk seems less likely than a time between 80 and 100. A date of origin after 100 is excluded by Mt’s having been used by Ignatius.”
Until the latter half of the eighteenth century, the apostolic authorship of ‘the Gospel according to Matthew’ seems to have been generally accepted. But questions and doubts began to arise from different points of view in the examination of what were regarded as the relevant documents; and it would be a reasonable assessment of the general opinion of current scholarship to say that, whilst it may be agreed that Matthew is probably in some sense behind the Gospel that bears his name, there are few, if any, who would claim for him complete responsibility for the work. Yet, in the second, third and fourth centuries of the Christian era, the authorship of Matthew was not merely unquestioned: it was repeatedly and positively affirmed. These affirmations, however, have been subjected to close scrutiny, and even the basic declaration of Papias of Hierapolis, a declaration that belongs to the earlier part of the second century, has been used to refute the claim to apostolic authorship. It is the purpose here to examine the early evidence again, in the hope of finding some solid ground in the critical morass where so many seekers are apt to lose their way.