Who Wrote Matthew?
First in a Series on the Authors of the Synoptic Gospels
Who wrote the Synoptic Gospels - the first three books of the New Testament? This article kicks off our series looking at Matthew.
The first four books of the New Testament are widely recognized as the leading ancient sources on the life of Jesus Christ. Embraced by the early Christian church since at least the beginning of the second century A.D. and formally canonized in the fourth, the Gospels are the best known and most controversial of the New Testament documents.
Of the four Gospels, the first three are strikingly similar in format and style. The fourth, John, stands apart as unique and is perhaps the most controversial. For this reason, this article (the first in a series) will focus on the first three, known as the Synoptic Gospels.
Who wrote the Synoptic Gospels? Their titles bear the names of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but did those men actually draft them? Modern scholarship has called this previous assumption into question, with some going so far as to say that the men whose names adorn the books were long since dead.
This series will argue for traditional attribution – namely that Matthew, Mark, and Luke actually wrote the Gospels that bear their names. The author invites those who disagree to register their comments in the discussion area.
Ground Rules
Some ground rules must be established when exploring this question. This author proposes the following:
First, while false attribution was not unheard of in the early Christian community (the Gospel of Thomas, not part of the canon, is an example of this), it is unfair for biblical critics to simply make the assumption that the canonical Gospels were misattributed and shift the burden of proof to those who hold to traditional authorship.
Second, anti-supernaturalism as a bias must be set aside. An example of this is the assumption that Matthew (or at least the 23rd chapter) had to be written after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, because Jesus simply could not have prophesied the destruction of the Temple. The author of Matthew had to put that in later.
An even more glaring example of this is the belief among literary scholars that mythic traditions take one or two generations to evolve, thus an assumption is made that the Gospels, which proclaim Jesus’ deity, must have been the byproduct of this evolution. Ergo, the Gospels were written and compiled at least a generation or two after Jesus’ life. Such an assumption is philosophical and prejudicial.
With these concerns in mind, let us then proceed with an objective mind.
The Gospel Sources
The early Christian tradition, articulated most notably by the famed theologian Augustine, is that the Synoptic Gospels were written in the order in which they now appear in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Post-Enlightenment scholarship challenged this assumption, and today mainline and liberal scholars embrace the view that Mark was the first Gospel written.
In addition, mainstream biblical scholars hold that Mark based his Gospel on a source document known as “Q.” There is absolutely no evidence for any Q document, but literary analysis of the Synoptic similarities along with Jewish rabbinical tradition (namely the practice of keeping records of rabbinical teachings) support the hypothesis. New Testament scholars have since added two additional sources: “L” and “M” – for which, once again, there is no hard evidence. These are assumed to be strains of mainly oral tradition.
The authors of Mark (first) and then Matthew and Luke are assumed to have utilized these various sources in putting together their Gospel accounts.
Matthew
Who wrote the Gospel that first appears in the New Testament canon, the Gospel of Matthew? Doubts about Matthew’s authorship stem largely from the fact that New Testament scholars now widely believe that Mark was written first. Would Matthew, an actual eyewitness of Jesus’ life, rely on the writing of Mark, who was not an eyewitness?
This skepticism, of course, assumes that Matthew primarily utilized Mark, yet this theory of Synoptic Gospel inter-connectivity has never been conclusively established, certainly not to a degree that would have the author of Matthew actually dependent on Mark’s Gospel. Thomas Jefferson utilized George Mason’s Virginia Constitution when writing the Declaration of Independence, but utilization does not equate to absolute reliance. No historian would argue that Jefferson was helpless in his task of authoring America’s independence document absent Mason’s handiwork. Accordingly, even if Matthew had Mark’s Gospel at his disposal, it hardly discredits the notion that the apostle himself wrote the Gospel of Matthew.
The strongest evidence attesting to Matthew’s authorship is the fact that four ancient sources, not counting the title itself, specifically attribute the Gospel to Matthew, the disciple of Jesus. Those sources are Papias of Asia Minor, Irenaeus of Gaul, Pantaenus, and Origen of Alexandria and Caesarea, all significant leaders or writers in the early Christian community. Moreover, the Gospel of Matthew was in wide circulation in the early church, and was circulated as an account written by Matthew, with no apparent question or contestation.
This author therefore concludes that, in the face of this very strong evidence from early history, Matthew, the disciple of Jesus Christ, is the author of the first Gospel in the New Testament canon.
Our next article will look at the next two Synoptic Gospels: Mark and Luke.
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