Gospel of Matthew

“ We have every reason for accepting the statement that as early as [Pg 145] the founding of the church in Rome (45-50) the Apostle Matthew had begun the work of compiling the Precepts of Jesus, in a form serviceable to the object of "teaching men to observe all things whatsoever he had commanded." Our present Gospel of Matthew, however, is neither this work nor a translation of it; for the only three things told us about the apostle's work are all irreconcilable with the characteristics of our Matthew. ”

“ Then we are embarrassed by the testimony of Irenæus, Origen, Jerome, and other Christian Fathers that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, while there are indubitable internal evidences that this Gospel, as we have it, was written in Greek and by a Greek, and not a Jew, and that it is really a theological treatise written by some partisan for ecclesiastical reasons, and that if Matthew ever wrote a Gospel, it has been unfortunately lost or purposely destroyed. ”

“ After the ascension of Christ, he was at Jerusalem, and received the Holy Ghost with the rest of the disciples on the day of pentecost.
Matthew, with Andrew, Peter, and the two sons of Zebedee, are the only disciples whose call is particularly mentioned. It is uncertain when, where, or how he died. There does not appear to be any clear evidence, in the writings of the primitive fathers, that he suffered martyrdom.
St. Matthew's gospel is generally allowed to be the most ancient part of the writings of the New Covenant. ”

“ The apostles all died without knowing that Matthew was their benefactor to such an extent that, when he went forth to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom after the beginning of the persecutions, he was practically penniless.
When these persecutions caused the believers to forsake Jerusalem, Matthew journeyed north, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and baptizing believers. He was lost to the knowledge of his former apostolic associates, but on he went, preaching and baptizing, through Syria, Cappadocia, Galatia, Bithynia, and Thrace. ”

“ The Connexion of our Greek Gospel of Matthew with the Apostle whose name it bears.—The earliest reference to a writing by Matthew occurs in a fragment taken by Eusebius from the same work of Papias from which he has given an account of the composition of a record by Mark (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 39; see Mark, Gospel of St) . The statement about Matthew is much briefer and is harder to interpret. In spite of much controversy, the same measure of agreement as to its meaning cannot be said to have been attained. ”

“ And I will remark here, that men who seem to lay an uncommon claim to reason, ought to make use of it when arguing on such momentous subjects. What difference would it make whether St. Matthew wrote his gospel before, or after the destruction of Jerusalem, as it respects the prophecy which Jesus delivered concerning it? You allow St. Matthew to be an honest man. You do not doubt then but Jesus did deliver such a prophecy before his death, which was certainly before the destruction of the city. ”

“ To infer an historian's ignorance from his silence is a short and easy, but a rash, method. Matthew has nothing to say of our Lord's appearances in Jerusalem, except in regard to that of the women in the early morning of Easter Day. But it does not follow that he was ignorant of these appearances. Imperfect knowledge may be the explanation; but the scope and design of his Gospel is much more likely to be so. It is emphatically the Gospel of the King of Israel, and it moves, with the exception of the story of the Passion, wholly within the limits of the Galilean ministry. ”

“ If there is one thing more characteristic of the apostles in their after life than any other, it is their self-forgetfulness—their self-effacement, we may say. Where does Matthew ever say a word about the sayings or doings of Matthew? Even John, who was nearest of all to the heart of the Saviour, and with Him in all His most trying hours, can write a whole gospel without ever mentioning his own name; and when he has occasion to speak of John the Baptist does it as if there were no other John in existence. ”

“ Matthew write the Gospel attributed to him? And if he did, how can he have suffered a 'legendary' miracle to 'creep into' his narrative? The same question," you add, "applies to the Gospel of St. John. If these two Gospels, as they stand, were written by Apostles, that is, by personal disciples of Jesus and eye-witnesses of the events they profess to describe, then there is no alternative; either Jesus wrought miracles, or the Apostles lied. No eye-witness can err as you suppose some one (I know not whom) to have erred, by interpreting metaphor as though it were literal statement. ”

“ Matthew was written by an Apostle or by an eye-witness of Christ's life, and there is very much evidence tending to shew that such a supposition is extremely improbable.
Even if we grant that parts of the Gospel were composed by an Apostle, it by no means follows that the whole was. There was a very natural tendency, in the earliest days of the Church—when the traditional Gospel was as it were everybody's property and had not yet acquired the authority of Scripture—to make the tradition as full, as edifying, and as correct, as possible. ”

“ At all events, we now have a well-attested Greek Gospel; and we are not likely to discover in it, or anterior to it, traces of an Aramaic original written by St. Matthew." (Bible Treasury, p. 124.)
6. Apparent Aim of Matthew: "The aim of this Gospel is to show that the Messiah promised in the Old Testament has appeared in Jesus of Nazareth—in a form, however, which led to his rejection by the Jews and their consequent rejection by him, to the eventual emancipation and salvation of the Gentile nations (chap. xxviii: 19, 20) . ”

“ Moreover, the identity of the Matthew who is said by Papias to have written the words of the Lord with the evangelist Matthew is not certain, as the latter drew from Greek sources, and the tax-gatherer whom Jesus calls (Mark ii, 14) , and in whom we are supposed to have the author of the gospel, was not named Matthew, but Levi, son of Alphaeus, and seems not to have been identified with the apostle Matthew until a later period. [5] That is what theologians call “a sound tradition”! ”

“ Matthew does not tell us that the prayer in the Garden was answered; but we see it as we follow the Son of man along the dolorous way. If He shrank from taking up the load of human sin, He does not flinch in carrying it; and amid all He has to bear at the hands of sinners, He maintains His dignity and self-possession.
When the armed men approach, He goes calmly out to meet them. Even the traitor's kiss He does not resent; but only takes occasion to make one more appeal to that stony heart, "Comrade," [33] He says, " (do) that for which thou art come" (see R.V.) . ”

“ In other words, even the most conservative of the critics do not claim that the Gospel of St. Matthew is anything more than an enlargement, elaboration or development of Matthew's earlier writings, written many years before the elaboration of the present "Gospel." The more radical critics take an even less respectful view. This being the fact, it may be readily seen how easy it would have been for the latter-day "elaborator" to introduce the then current legend of the Virgin Birth, borrowed from pagan sources. ”

“ It is a composite work in which two chief sources, known in Greek to the author of our present Gospel, have, together with some other matter, been combined. It is inconceivable that one of the Twelve should have proceeded in this way in giving an account of Christ’s ministry. One of the chief documents, however, here referred to seems to correspond in character with the description given in Papias’ fragment of a record of the compilation of “the divine utterances” made by Matthew; and the use made of it in our first Gospel may explain the connexion of this Apostle’s name with it. ”

“ For you have of your own, sin alone; and for that ought you to weep, and not for aught else.' Matthew said: "O master, you have confessed before all Judea that God has no similitude like man, and now you have said that man receives from the hand of God; accordingly, since God has hands he has a similitude with man." Jesus answered: 'You are in error, O Matthew, and many have so erred, not knowing the sense of the words. For man ought to consider not the outward [form] of the words, but the sense; seeing that human speech is as it were an interpreter between us and God. ”

“ TERTULLIAN. Matthew, i.
"There is, first of all, Matthew, that most faithful chronicler of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord; for no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the fleshy original of Christ, he thus begins, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David the son of Abraham.'" (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xxii.)
"It is, however, a fortunate circumstance that Matthew also, when tracing down the Lord's descent from Abraham to Mary, says, 'Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus." (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xx.) ”

“ As we have a certain work preserved, and no other, pretending to be Matthew's, it is highly probable that what Matthew contributed to the Church is that Gospel. A fictitious one would be less likely to be preserved than a real one, though we are asked to believe the contrary. Our author suggests that if we had the original writings we should find them minus the miracles, which is altogether inconsistent with what he has said about the prevalence of miraculous notions among the Jews at the time. ”

“ It is manifest that for every reason the Gospel of St. Matthew should occupy the foremost place. "To the Jew first" is the natural order, whether we consider the claims of "the fathers," or the necessity of making it clear that the new covenant was closely linked to the old. "Salvation is of the Jews;" the Christ of God, though the Saviour of the world, had [4] been in a very special sense "the Hope of Israel," and therefore it is appropriate that He should be represented first from the standpoint of that nation. ”

“ It is only fair to admit that these instances, in which Matthew heightens, once by insertion and once by omission, the Jewish coloring in a story taken from Mark, tell against the theory generally advocated by the writer, that the Judaistic features of Matthew’s Gospel are referable to his source, and the universalistic features to Matthew himself. ”

“ The choice of a mountain in the north was moreover suitable as signalising the setting aside of Mount Zion and Jerusalem as the seat of empire. From this point of view we can see still another reason why St. Matthew, the Evangelist for the Jew, should mention the formal [442] inauguration of the new kingdom in the north. The rejection of the Messiah by His own people had gone very deeply to the heart of the author of this Gospel. He certainly never obtrudes his feelings, even when they are strongest, as is most strikingly apparent in his calm record of the Passion itself ”

“ THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
(Mt xv, 14; Lk vi, 39)
This is another instance of a saying which occurs in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain but outside of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Matthew has apparently inserted it in the midst of a discourse against the Pharisees, the rest of which he has taken from Mark. The sayings in Matthew and Luke are not identical. If the saying stood in Q, and Matthew removed it from its Lucan connection to its present position in his Gospel, this was certainly a very unusual procedure with him. ”

“ MATTHEW, GOSPEL OF ST, the first of the four canonical Gospels of the Christian Church. The indications of the use of this Gospel in the two or three generations following the Apostolic Age (see Gospel) are more plentiful than of any of the others. ”

“ Mark upholds the religion of Matthew until we come to the fifteenth and sixteenth verses of the sixteenth chapter, and then I strike an interpolation put in by hypocrisy, put in by priests who longed to grasp with bloody hands the sceptre of universal power. Let me read it to you. It is the most infamous passage in the Bible. Christ never said it. No sensible man ever said it.
"And He said unto them" (that is, unto his disciples) , "go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." ”

“ His Gospel confirms the implications of the prologue. It is the longest and most carefully arranged of all the Gospels. The distinctively Jewish ideas or institutions which are prominent in Matthew are omitted or else explained; hence there is nothing which would prove unintelligible to a Greek. The book of the Acts of the Apostles, dedicated to the same patron, is virtually a continuation of the third Gospel, tracing, in a more or less fragmentary manner, the history and growth, of the early Christian Church, and especially the work of Paul. ”

“ The circumstances of the times, as alluded to under the last inquiry, afford much light on the immediate object which Matthew had in view, in writing his gospel. It is true, that common readers of the Bible seldom think of it as anything else than a mere complete revelation made to all men, to lead them in the way of truth and salvation; and few are prepared for an inquiry which shall take each portion of the scriptures by itself, and follow it through all its individual history, to the very source,――searching even into the immediate and temporary purpose of the inspired writers. ”