CHAPTER 9
INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL AS SEEN BY MATTHEW
For as long as the four Gospels of the New Testament have been collected together, the Gospel of Matthew
has been the first Gospel. Even before there was a New Testament, there was a collection of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. That was usually the order and Matthew was always first. There have been several
explanations as to why. The most common explanation throughout church history was simply that Matthew
was the first Gospel to be written. This view is no longer widely accepted as true. It is more likely that
Matthew appeared first in the collection of the Gospels for two reasons.
First is that Matthew is structured as a teaching Gospel. Matthew presents the great blocks of teaching
by Y‘shua collected and organised in a way that could be easily learned and remembered, more so than
the other three Gospels.Second, and most important once the New Testament was formed, Matthew provides a bridge from the
Old Testament to the New Testament.Matthew has always exerted great influence in the Christian church as the first Gospel in the New
Testament. Much of the traditional view of Christ and his ethical teachings have come from Matthew‘s
presentation of Y‘shua and his message. The story of the wise men who visited Y‘shua at his birth is found
only in Matthew. The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of teaching in Matthew 5-7. The Great
Commission forms the climax of this Gospel. The only Gospel to use the word "church" is Matthew, and
twice the power of binding interpretation is given in this Gospel. In the history of the medieval church,
Matthew was especially important; for it provided the scriptural foundation for those who taught the alleged
supremacy of the pope as Peter‘s successor as bishop of the church at Rome. In the area of Y‘shua‘s
teaching, no other Gospel has been as influential as Matthew has.
With the rise of modern understandings of history in the last two hundred years, certain questions have
become important for the study of biblical books. These questions include: Who wrote the book? When?
Where? Why? What kind of literature is the writing? Knowing the answers to these questions can increase
our understanding and appreciation of the message of each book of the Bible. Unfortunately the answers to
such questions are not always clear or easy to discover. Scholars often disagree about the answers and
some are ready to give up the search. However, what we can learn will be helpful.
WHO WROTE MATTHEW?
As far as we know, the original copy of Matthew had no indication of who the author was. Sometime during
the second century A.D. the ascription, "According to Matthew‖, began to appear at the beginning of the
Gospel. However, nothing in the body of the Gospel tells us who the author was.
The earliest reported claim that Matthew was an author was that of Papias, an early church leader who died
around A.D. 130. We do not have the writings of Papias, but the church leader Eusebius from the fourth
century quotes Papias. This quotation states that Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew dialect and
everyone translated them as best they could. Whether the "sayings" Papias was talking about were the
Gospel of Matthew as we now know it is debated. Some scholars believe that Papias‘ "sayings" were a
collection of teaching by Y‘shua that was used by the author of the first Gospel.
WHEN WAS MATTHEW WRITTEN?
Two centuries ago, when people began asking about the date biblical books were written, the question often
had implications about the reliability of the information in the book. People assumed that the closer to
Y‘shua‘s own life that a Gospel was written the more likely it was to be historically accurate. The longer the
time between Y‘shua‘s life and the Gospel, the less accurate the story would be. With such thinking, people
who argued that Matthew was written in A.D. 90, say, were seen as attacking the reliability of Matthew‘s
portrait of Y‘shua by those who thought Matthew was written in A.D. 50.
Such a concern no longer dominates the discussion about the date of the Gospels. We now recognise that
an author writing in A.D. 90 who had correct information could easily be "more correct" than an author writing
in A.D. 50 who had poor information or who wanted to distort the picture of Y‘shua. As a result, the effort to
establish the date of Matthew is now built on historical evidence, rather than on theological bias.