Loading...In my previous post we took the first step in understanding the Gospel of Matthew, grasping its major themes and emphases. It is also important to situate the book in its own historical context. For that we need to know something about the author, the approximate time he was writing it, and why he appears to have taken on the task. In short: Who, When, and Why?
We start with the “who.”
Our oldest full manuscripts of the Gospel call it “According to Matthew.” These manuscripts date from around 375 CE, and so were created about three hundred years after the book was in circulation. We wish we had earlier manuscripts to help us gauge when it was first called this. This designation (“according to Matthew”) is obviously not the original title. When I write a book, I don’t title it “According to Bart.” I give it a title. Whoever wrote this book either gave it a title that is lost (that seems unlikely), or simply published it anonymously (which happened a good deal in the Bible, both Old and even the New Testaments). When readers later started calling it “according to Matthew” they were indicating who, in their judgment/opinion, was its author. That would happen when there were a number of anonymous Gospels floating around with different versions of Jesus’ life, and readers would want to know “whose version is this?”
Long before any of our surviving manuscripts of the book were produced it was thought that Jesus’ disciple Matthew had written an account of Jesus. The first reference is in a church father named Papias, who around 130 CE indicated that Matthew had produced a book of Jesus’ sayings in Hebrew. That does not describe our Gospel – which is a full narrative, not a list of sayings, and which was not written in Hebrew but Greek.
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Dr. Ehrman, the facts that you present in posts like these are surely considered heretical by today’s Christian Nationalists. If you are targeted by such increasingly empowered groups, how much are you prepared to risk to continue publishing your blogs, courses, books, etc. – your job, your pension, your liberty, your life?
Don’t know. I take a day at a time.
USA Christian nationalists ARE NOT Christian- they don’t follow Christ! Dr Ehrman knows the Bible & early Christian church far better than almost all Christians!
Christians need to mind their own relationship with God before others!
Dr Bart Ehrman; Both Matthew in a nutshell and Matthew who, when, why are wonderful. So much information. I’ve learned more here in these two posts than in any church. Why may I ask did the author fail to assign their name? Were they afraid of Roman persecution? Was the Catholic Church established at this time? Were any of the original disciples still alive working with a early church father or someone with the ability to write such a book like Matthew?
My guess is that the author was writing for his local Christian community and they all knew who he was. There was no Catholic Church in any recognizable sense for seeral centuries. And I doubt if any of Jesus’ own disciples could have been alive in 80 CE or so….
Good summary. I lean towards the first half of the 70-110 window between Mark and Ignatius because of the imminent eschatology in Matt 10:23; 16:28. But theological progression is less precise for dating since different circles at different times express different theology that’s not necessarily linear in development. And we also don’t know if Matthew as we know it today was published all at once, or were parts added at several stages before the initial copy behind the manuscript tradition became mostly fixed. Intriguingly, Irenaeus says the Ebionites used Matthew but thought Jesus was begotten from Joseph.
We can go a little earlier with tangible evidence for gospel titles in P66 and P75. P4 has a stand-alone fragment, “Gospel according to Matthew,” but too tiny for any accompanying text. But like you said, even these papyri don’t take us back to the origins of these titles being used, which was probably when the four were collected together and started circulating as a set.
Fwiw, I suspect Mark 1:1 and Matt 1:1 were probably the intended titles for those two books, but for uniformity and brevity, “Gospel According to [name]” quickly became standard with four-Gospel codices to easily distinguish one from another.
Dr. Ehrman,
Greetings and hope this message finds you well. I was hoping you could give me the name of a good book on the early Church Fathers. I have read your book on this subject and was hoping to find something like a survey type of book of Church Fathers from the second century to St. Augustine. Thank you for all that you do and enlightening people like me.
Were the words, “and upon this rock I will build my church” plausibly written for churches of Jewish Christians founded by Peter in Syria? Was the gospel of Matthew written by Mark, the interpreter of Peter, who ordered his material thematically, not in order?
Where can I find scholarship on the literacy of tax collectors?
How do scholars infer that almost certainly the author of Matthew lived and wrote from outside the land of Israel? What are the clues that lead to such an interesting conclusion?
Dr Ehrman, could the author of Matthew have been part of a Christian community in the way that we think the author of John was?
Dear Bart, I’d like to ask some questions unrelated to this post.
I, evangelical-raised, am starting to question my faith after discovering Orthodox Christianity. I was discouraged by reading online about people leaving the faith because they question the fact that Christianity split into 3 (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant). Some of them were unhappy being Orthodox but they couldn’t believe in Protestantism either as its only around 500 years old.
I’m struggling about my faith, which of Orthodoxy, Catholic and Protestant I will eventually choose, and if I stay Protestant, what kind of faith I will subscribe to (Lutheran/Calvin) or will I be able to be a non-Calvinist Protestant (though that sounds even younger than 500 years old?)
I’d like to ask:
1. Have you written anything about this topic? and what do you think about the claims of Orthodoxy being closest to the early Christianity?
2. Was Metzger a Calvinist? This is just me asking for reassurance and really struggling of what to believe but I find hope in reading your stories about him, that I could find some inconsistencies in the Bible but still choose to believe in it like Metzger did
Thank you so much for sharing your life journey and being honest
How do we know that the manuscript written around 375 CE is a truthful copy of the original “Matthew’s document”?
Are you asking whether we know that the wording in this manuscript is exactly word-for-word the same as the original? The answer is no, absolutely not. IT’s not really a debated issues since this manuscript has obvious mistakes in it, as do all manuscripts. But it does appear to be one of the best manuscripts we have. If you’re interested in knowing about all that, it’s the topic of my book Misquoting Jesus.
Dating of Gospel of Mathew (comment 1)
Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius all believed the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (or Aramaic), then later translated to Greek. Papias indicated a logia gospel If so, then quotes in Didache that match Greek Matthew Gospel much more likely were quotes from original Hebrew “logia” Gospel. Epistle of Barnabas also had quotes of Jesus (Barnabas 4:14/Matt 22:14) only found in Greek Matthew which suggest to me, that in that time in early 1st century Papias’s hebrew logia gospel of Mathew had been wide spread. I have no doubt, that such early sayings gospel of Mathew in Hebrew ane also the “Gospel of the Hebrews” mentioned by Papais may have been a key source in our greek Gospel of Matthew, and “why”it is called the “Gospel” of Mathew. The “fact” that the Greek Mathew has Judas hanging himself, and Papias portraying a totally different account cements for me, that Papias did not have any Greek Matthew. Although I first believed in a “Q” source my own research has led me away from a Greek source as there were many other sources to draw from.
Dating of Gospel of Mathew (comment 2)
Continuing from my previous comment, due to the reasons expressed plus a multitude of other reasons, I cannot see where the present Greek Gospel of Matthew we have could have been written prior to 135ce.In fact I even have some suspicion that the Greek “Luke” we have (or Marcion’s Gospel) could have proceeded the Greek Matthew. I’m heavily leaning to a date past 135ce following the Bar Kokhba revolt where the Jews were banned from Jerusalem and most surviving jews forced out of Judea relocating to primarily Greek speeking centers. The 2nd generation going forward of these displaced Jews would have little use of Aramaic/Hebrew gospels,thus a need for Greek Gospels became paramount and the copying of those past Hebrew/Aramaic writings were no longer of any use. I accept that the early church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna as well as the Didache contain quotes from the cannon Gospels, there were plenty of other sources that could have contained those quotes, The cannon Gospels were written as polished Greek Biographys thus not just Greek translations of proceeding Hebrew texts. Those texts were the Source..
Hi Bart, new blog member…what is the process to assign a year to a text? For example, where do you get 375 CE? Do the authors write the year? Thanks!
Such an enjoyable read, thank you so much!
I have 2 questions (it’s been so long since the last time I asked one, so you can permit it ):
1. What is your response to those who say that Matthew did not identify himself as the writer of the Gospel out of humility? I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this explanation, but here in Greece I can remember people saying that since I was a little kid. (Here most [orthodox] Christians would rather fall under the fundamentalist rubric.)
2 (and more significant). If Q is the oldest Christian source and it says nothing about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, is it plausible for one to deduce that maybe Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection narratives were later intentions?
3 (OK, I cheated). Do you agree with me that it’s a tad arrogant to call youself “orthodox”? I mean, I’ve always thought that growing up in Greece given the etymology of the word .
“he was probably Jewish, given his overarching concerns to stress to his readers that they were not to abandon the Jewish law but to keep it.”
Ok, but some passages in Matthew are the most antisemitic in the entire New Testament. I can’t figure out how a Jew could write Matthew 23:31-33 or Matthew 27:24-26.
“And it almost certainly could not have been written later than 100 CE because it appears to be known to the author of the non-canonical book the Didache, which was written about then, and that appears to quote Matthew’s text word for word in places.”
Why not the other way around? Matthew based on the Didache!
Take, for instance, the last ‘chapter’ of the Didache—the one about the ‘last days.’ There are a lot of ideas and expressions that we also find in Matthew.
So we have:
“For in the last days, FALSE PROPHETS and seducers shall be MULTIPLIED, and the SHEEP shall be turned into WOLVES, and LOVE shall be turned into HATE; and because LAWLESSNESS abounds they shall HATE EACH OTHER.”
(Didache 16:3-4)
Alternatively, to use an analogy from a certain movie, as a member of Judean People’s Front, he was openly opposed to and willing to write nasty things about the People’s Front of Judea. 2000 years later, in a very different context, this looks like blatant anti-semitism.
My students will be watching the movie this semester. Fantastic!
“And then many will fall away and betray one another and HATE ONE ANOTHER. And many FALSE PROPHETS will arise and lead many astray. And because LAWLESSNESS will be increased, the LOVE of many will grow cold.”
(Matthew 24:10-12)
“Beware of FALSE PROPHETS, who come to you in SHEEP’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous WOLVES.”
(Matthew 7:15)
Who came first?
It’s interesting that while in Matthew, those passages are presented as Jesus’s own words, in the Didache, they are not.
Did the Didache’s writer take Jesus’s words from Matthew and present them as if they were not? Or was it Matthew who put the Didache’s signs of the end times into Jesus’s mouth?
How late could the canonical Matthew have been written?
One thing about Matthew that has always intrigued me is how well-fitted it is for countering Marcion’s ‘heresy.’ Very well-fitted indeed.
Hi Bart,
Isn’t it weird that one of the main themes in Matthew’s gospel is that “Jesus is for the Jews” and that the “Jews for Jesus need to follow the scripture to the letter”,, then this theme was totally and dramatically overturned at the last two lines (28:19-20) of the last chapter of this Gospel!
Have you ever seen a dramatic-shift in a main theme that was overturned just at the last line of the last chapter of any of the ancient books?
Furthermore, in these two last lines, Jesus is commanding his disciples to baptize people in his Father’s name and his name and the name of the holly spirit, but Jesus has never been attributed to baptize anyone during is missionary!
Isn’t this weird!
Furthermore, from a historical perspective, the blessing by the trio (The Father, the Son and the Spirit) was introduced to the Christian world at the time of Justin (about 150 AD), but it is here in this Gospel at the last two lines of the last Chapter of it.
Would all the above provide a good argument that these two last lines (28:19-20) were not part of the original Gospel??
In Matthew 22:1-14, the King represents God, inviting guests to a wedding banquet symbolizing the end-time utopia. This motif is common in Jewish eschatology, depicting God’s reunification with creation. Given this understanding, it’s unlikely the early Christian community associated Jesus’ prediction of the Temple’s destruction with this parable. The Temple’s destruction in 70 AD didn’t usher in the end-time utopia.
The persecuted slaves represent prophets, including Jesus, mistreated by the Jewish aristocracy. The King’s armies represent the angelic host accompanying God’s final judgment. The reference to fire alludes to the purifying fire associated with God’s judgment.
The parable’s focus on God’s final judgment on violent leaders is consistent with pre-70 AD Qumran community predictions:
“from the day of the gathering in of the Teacher of the Community until the end of all men of war who deserted to the Liar there shall pass about forty years.” (4Q265-73, The Damascus Document)
Given Jesus’ conflicts with the High Priest, these predictions could be seen as wishful thinking rather than a prophecy after the event. The parable’s themes and motifs are consistent with pre-70 AD Jewish prophetic literature, theology, and eschatology.
I think you have an interesting point, Charrua. The author of Matthew not taking pride in being Jewish sounds atypical.
As Dr. Ehrman awesomely points out, *Jewishness* is the selling point here.
Is Jesus acting Jewish? (touching the unclean, no strongman traits.)
The Herods in power aren’t Jewish. Zealots and Sicarri arise when they want ethnic representation back, like the Hasmoneans (Jewish/Nabataean marital alliance, btw.) Ituraeans want Galilee back. This is challenging the flow of commerce THRU the ancient crossroads to the ports.
Enter 1/4 Jewish Agrippa, through the female Hasmonean line Mariamne. Luckily, the Pharisees made royal succession through the maternal line legal.
Jesus might be cosplaying Ea/Enki/Hayya — preserved in Mandaean as Hayyi. The first healer god via his 8 medicinal plants mneumonic, the Sumerian word for physician connected to water is loaned into Akkadian.
Enki’s the Creator God in Genesis too, imo.
“God of the Ruler” is a title of DuShara, the god of Galilee’s queen Phaesalis, and look at his horned cap, extra-curlies, astral symbol friends and bathing complex — it’s so Ea/Enki/Hayyi coded. Eblaites avoided using names, and that’s how Ea becomes Hayya, it means The Living (God).
As always, a great article. I’m curious about your statement that there are good arguments against the existence of Q. Do you have an author or book to recommend on that?
I have a question. When the 27 books of the New Testament were compiled, did any early church fathers believe that there was a contradiction between the understanding of the law in the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Matthew? I am referring to the orthodox faction, not those designated as heretics.
Bart..
What do you think about how Jesus is portrayed in all of the canon gospels as a mosaic figure as well as the linkage of his crucifixion and resurrection over the passover… Do you think the crucifixion story is a contruct in the quest to create a legacy of Jesus as the new moses, rather than a remotely true story? Because if is really a true account, then that adds weight to whether Jesus is actually who the Gospels make him to be. Sent by God to be the New Moses…. I find the sermon on the mount/plain an allegory of Moses on the mount bringing down the tablets.
The Essenes are the most logical sect to create this construct of Jesus based on readings from the dead sea scrolls.. If so.. then could Jesus’s interactions with John the Baptist also be an Essene construct inserted into the Gospels since John is widely speculated to be Essene?
Lastly.. Since the texts of the dead sea scrolls was not widespread until the 1990s.. Do you think that will substantially change the mainstream scholarship view of the Gospels?
Matthew certainly portrays Jesus as the new Moses, yes. But the crucifixion certainly does not appear to be a Mosaic image. We do not have any historical evidence to connect Jesus with the Essenes, let alone a Gospel with them.