MATTHEW, St. The Gospel of, has been more strongly attacked with respect to its genuineness than any of the other three, both by external and internal arguments.
The most ancient testimony concerning Matthew's Gospel is that of Papias, who, according to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. iii. 39), wrote as follows:—"Matthew wrote the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, but everybody interpreted them according to his ability." Doubts of different kinds have been raised whether this testimony could refer to our Greek Gospel of St. Matthew. These doubts were particularly brought forward by Schleiermacher in the Studien und Kritiken, 1832, Heft 4; whose opinion was adopted by Schneckenburger, Lachmann, and many others. According to these critics, the apostle wrote only a collection of the remarkable sayings of Jesus; which collection was put into an historical form by a Greek translator. Dr. Lücke has shown, however, that the testimony of Papias may be considered as referring to our Gospel of St. Matthew. Those who deny the genuineness of this Gospel allege that in none of the Fathers before Jerome do we find any statement from which we could infer that they had seen the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew; and that consequently we may consider as a mere conjecture the opinion of the Fathers, that our Gospel is a Greek translation of a Hebrew original. Jerome, in his Catal. de Viris Illust. (cap. iii.), reports that the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew was preserved in the library at Cesarea, where he took a copy of it; and in his commentary on Matt. xii. 13, he says, that he translated this Hebrew Gospel into Greek. Accordingly, Jerome's statement respecting the Evangelium secundum Hebræos may be taken as a confirmation of the account of Papias, that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. If this be the fact, the question must arise whether our Greek Matthew is a correct translation of the Hebrew. The words of Papias seem to imply that in his days there was no Greek translation in existence; a circumstance which has induced many critics to question his account, and to suppose that the original text was Greek. Such is the opinion of Erasmus, (Golampadius, Calvin, Beza, Lardner, Guerike, Harless, and others. It is by no means improbable, however, that after several inaccurate and imperfect translations of the Aramaean original came into circulation, Matthew himself was prompted by this circumstance to publish a Greek translation, or to have his Gospel translated under his own supervision. It is very likely that this Greek translation did not soon come into general circulation, so that Papias may have remained ignorant of its existence. On summing up what we have stated, it appears that the external testimonies clearly prove the genuineness of the Gospel of St. Matthew. The authenticity, indeed, of this Gospel is as well supported as that of any work of classical antiquity. Not only was it early in use among Christians, but the apostolic fathers, at the end of the first century, ascribed to it a canonical authority. (See Polycarp, Epist. c. ii. 7; Ignatius, Ad Smyrn. c. vi.; Ad Rom. c. vi.; Clemens Romanus, Epist. i. c. xvi.; Barnabas, Epist. c. iv.)
With respect to the internal arguments brought against the authenticity of this Gospel, it has been alleged that the representations of Matthew have not that vivid clearness which characterizes the narration of an eye-witness, and which we find, for instance, in the Gospel of John, and even in Mark and Luke; that he omits some facts which every apostle certainly knew. For instance, he mentions only the last journey of Christ to the passover at Jerusalem; and seems to be acquainted only with Galilee as the sphere
of Christ's activity. It is further objected, that he relates Matthew. unchronologically, and transposes events to times in which they did not happen; for instance, the event mentioned in Luke iv. 14-30 must have happened at the commencement of Christ's public career, but Matthew relates it as late as ch. xiii. 53, sq.; that he embodies in one discourse several sayings of Christ which, according to Luke, were pronounced at different times. He falls, it is asserted, into positive errors; for he seems not to know that the real dwelling-place of the parents of Jesus was at Nazareth, and that their abode at Bethlehem was only temporary; and disagrees with Mark in his account of the withered fig-tree, and in the time assigned for the purification of the temple. These circumstances have led Strauss and others to consider the Gospel of St. Matthew as an unapostolic composition, originating, perhaps, at the conclusion of the first century; while some consider it a reproduction of the Aramaean Matthew, augmented by some additions; and others call it an historical commentary of a later period, made to illustrate the collection of the sayings of Christ which Matthew had furnished. (Comp. Sieffert, Ueber die Echtheit und den Ursprung des ersten Evangelii, 1832; Schneckenburger, Ueber den Ursprung des ersten Evangelii, 1834; Schott, Ueber die Authentizität des Ev. Matth. 1837.)
To these objections it may be replied, that the gift of narrating luminously is a personal qualification of which even an apostle might be destitute, and which is rarely found among the lower orders of people; that an argumentum à silentio must not be urged against the evangelists. The raising of Lazarus is narrated only by John; and the raising of the youth at Nain only by Luke; the appearance to five hundred brethren after the resurrection, which, according to the testimony of Paul (1 Cor. xv. 6), was a fact generally known, is not recorded by any of the evangelists. In the next place, there is no reason to suppose that the evangelists intended to write a chronological biography. On the contrary, we learn from Luke i. 4 and John xx. 31, that their object was of a more practical and apologetic tendency; and it is now generally admitted that, with the exception of John, the evangelists have grouped their communications more according to the subjects than according to chronological succession (comp. Kern's Abhandlung über den Ursprung des Evangelii Matthæi, p. 51, sq.; Köster, Ueber die Composition des Ev. Matth. in Pelt's Mitarbeiten, Heft i.; Kuhn, Leben Jesu, t. i., Beilage.)
Again, if the evangelist arranges his statements according to subjects, and not chronologically, we must not be surprised that he connects similar sayings of Christ, inserting them in the longer discourses after analogous topics had been mentioned; for these discourses are not compiled by the evangelist, but always form the fundamental framework to which sometimes analogous subjects are attached. It depends, moreover, entirely upon the mode of interpretation, whether such positive errors as are alleged to exist are really chargeable on the evangelist. The difference, for instance, between the narrative of the birth of Christ, as severally recorded by Matthew and Luke, may easily be solved without questioning the correctness of either, if we suppose that each of them narrates what he knows from his individual sources of information. If these arguments should still appear unsatisfactory, they may be supported by adding the positive internal proofs which exist in favour of the apostolic origin of this Gospel. 1. The nature of the book agrees entirely with the statements of the Fathers of the church, from whom we learn that it was written for Jewish readers. None of the other evangelists quotes the Old Testament so often as Matthew, who, moreover, does not explain the Jewish rites and expressions, which are explained by Mark and John. 2. If there is a want of precision in the narration of facts, there is, on the other hand, a peculiar accuracy and richness in the reports given
Matthew, of the discourses of Jesus; so that we may easily conceive why Papias, a parte posteriori, styled the Gospel of Matthew λόγος τῶν κυρίων, the sayings of the Lord. Some of the most beautiful and most important sayings of our Lord, the historical credibility of which no sceptic can attack, have been preserved by Matthew alone (Matt. xi. 28-30; xvi. 16-19; xxviii. 20; comp. also xi. 2-21; xii. 3-6, 25-29; xvii. 12, 25, 26; xxvi. 13); and above all, the Sermon on the Mount, of which negative criticism grants that Luke's account is defective as compared with Matthew's, and that Luke gives as isolated sentences what in Matthew appears in beautiful connection. In short, the Sermon on the Mount, according to Matthew, forms the most beautiful and the best arranged whole of all the evangelical discourses. It may also be proved that in many particulars the reports of several discourses in Matthew are more exact than in the other evangelists; as may be seen by comparing Matt. xxiii. with the various parallel passages in Luke. Under these circumstances, it is surprising that the genuineness of this Gospel has not yet met with more distinguished advocates. The most important work in defence of the genuineness of Matthew is that of Kern, Ueber den Ursprung des Evangelii Matthaei, Tübingen, 1834. Next in value are Olshausen's Drei Programme, 1835; and the two Lucubrations of Harless, 1840 and 1843. Even De Wette, in the fourth edition of his Introduction, p. 170, has ascribed only a qualified value to the doubts on this head. With regard to the date of this Gospel, Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen state that it was written before the others. Irenæus (Adv. Har. iii. 1) agrees with them, but places its origin at the time when Peter and Paul were at Rome. Even De Wette grants (Einführung, sect. 97) that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem.
Among all the German commentaries on the first three Gospels, the best is that of Olshausen, English translation, Edinburgh, 1847. (On the whole subject of this article, see An Introduction to the New Testament, by Dr S. Davidson, vol. i., London, 1848.)