RP 3: The Authorship of the Gospel of Matthew

Katie Wilmouth

RELI 124-08

February 24, 2010

The Authorship of the Gospel of Matthew

The first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, is a synoptic gospel that provides an account of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Certain details of Jesus’ life, especially those pertaining to his infancy, can only be found in this Gospel. The consensus among scholars is that the Gospel of Matthew was written after 70 A.D. because the text contains allusions to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. As with all of the other gospels, the authorship of Matthew is questioned. Although no author is stated in Matthew, church tradition has ascribed the book to the apostle Matthew the Levite. It was not until the eighteenth century that the question of authorship became an issue. Given that Matthew does depend heavily on the Gospel of Mark, some scholars no longer believe that the author was one of the twelve apostles.

“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him” (Matt 9:9). Matthew, who is also identified as Levi, was the son of Alphaeus. He is believed to have lived on a main trade route near Capernaum. While many of the Apostles were fisherman, Matthew was a Jewish tax collector who was appointed by the Roman government. Tax collectors were expected to be able to write in a form of shorthand, which essentially meant that Matthew could record a person’s words as they spoke, word for word. This has led many followers to believe that the words of Matthew are not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but should represent an actual transcript of some of Jesus’ sermons. Tax collectors were despised because of their reputation of being unfair and dishonest. The Jewish population considered tax collecting to be a great sin because it paid tribute to someone other than God. Jews saw Matthew as a criminal because by working for the Roman government, he was considered a traitor to God. Jesus called him from his life of social injustice to a life of Gospel missions. His acknowledgement as an apostle displayed the grace and forgiveness of God in the hearts and lives of sinners (Graves). Matthew taught how the grace of God extended to all sinners. The church tells us he died a martyr in Ethiopia.

Today, most scholars agree that the apostle Matthew was not the author of the Gospel of Matthew. The true author copied extensively from the Gospel of Mark, where an eyewitness would have told the story from his point of view. It is also doubtful that a tax collector would have the kind of religious and literary education needed to produce this Gospel (Reid). Scholars prefer to describe the author as an anonymous Jewish Christian, writing towards the end of the first century. He was writing for a predominantly Jewish Christian community and had extensive knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures and a concern for Jewish tradition and the role of Law (Reid).

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew provided us with some of the most memorable passages in Scripture, as well as some of the most difficult sayings and teachings of Jesus. “You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. But is anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matt 5:38).

Works Cited

Graves, David E. "Author of Matthew." Crandall University. Web. 24 Feb. 2010. .

Reid, Barbara E. The Gospel According to Matthew (New Collegeville Bible

Commentary. New Testament). New York: Liturgical, 2005. Print.

The Man Behind the Words

Katie Wilmouth

RELI 124-08

February 3, 2010

The Man Behind the Words

Believed by most contemporary scholars to be the earliest of the Synoptic Gospels, the text of the Gospel of Mark does not specifically identify any certain person as its author. The title “The Gospel According to Mark” was not even originally affixed to this document. It was not until the second century when early Christian communities needed to differentiate the gospels from each other, that names were attributed to them. A number of people in the New Testament are named Mark and anyone of them could have potentially been the author of this gospel.

The name “Mark” was popular in the first-century Mediterranean world, not only among the Greeks and Romans but also among the Jews (Borg 13). There would have been a strong desire to associate this gospel with someone close to Jesus, but none of the disciples or other prominent early Christians was named Mark. Thus there is no apparent reason why second-century Christians would name this gospel “Mark” unless somebody with that name had written it (Borg 13). Tradition has it that a companion and interpreter of the disciple Peter wrote down the Gospel According to Mark. His name was Mark, and was identified with “John Mark” in Acts.

According to Eusebius, a fourth-century Christian historian, Mark wrote his gospel in Rome, shortly after the execution of Peter around the year 64. Eusebius cites a tradition going back to a second-century bishop and martyr named Papias (Borg 13). While the text of Papias no longer exists, it was quoted by Eusebius, “ Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. For he had one purpose only-to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it” (Porter and McDonald 286). Papias’ claims were based upon information he heard from John the Presbyter. However, Papias is not an entirely trustworthy source. Even Eusebius had doubts about Papias, a writer who evidently felt entitled to embellish his works.

In the past half-century, scholars have become skeptical of the Rome-Peter theory acquired from third-hand information. There is evidence that Mark died before Peter, a contradiction to the tradition that Mark wrote down Peter’s stories after his death. Some scholars believe that the Gospel of Mark contains mistakes concerning Galilean geography and customs. This would mean that the author was not familiar with the geography of that area and its customs, unlike Peter (Porter and McDonald 286). Even if Mark did not rely on Peter as a source for his material, there are still reasons to believe Mark wrote his gospel in Rome. Mark calculates time by a Roman method and his language contains a number of “Latinisms”-loan words from Latin to Greece-which would suggest an audience mote comfortable with Latin than in Greek (Cline).

Today scholars seek to deduce what we can know about the gospel’s author from internal evidence within the gospel itself.

Works Cited

Borg, Marcus J. Conversations With Scripture: The Gospel of Mark. Harrisburg: Morehouse, 2009. Print.

Cline, Austin. "Authorship of Mark's Gospel: Who was Mark who Wrote the Gospel?" Agnosticism / Atheism - Free Inquiry, Skepticism, Atheism, Religious Philosophy. Web. 03 Feb. 2010. .

Porter, Stanley E., and Lee M. McDonald. Early Christianity and its Sacred Literature. New York: Hendrickson, 2000. Print.