The most common view of the date of the writing of Matthew is that is was written between A.D. 75 and 90.
This conclusion is based on the evidence of interest in Jewish issues in the Gospel. There are many aspects
of Matthew that indicate it was written in the context of Jewish people, mentioned below. It appears that
the author wants to address Jewish believers in Christ who were finding it hard to maintain their faith
in Christ and their own Jewishness. That would not have been a problem early in Christian history. Up
until at least A.D. 60 or 65, the majority of Christians were Jews rather than Gentiles and all the leaders of
the church were Jewish. "Persecution" of Christians by Jews was a matter of one group of Jews persecuting
another group of Jews (which happened frequently in that period of history). At least four major religious
groups co-existed in Judaism at that time. Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Nazarenes (as the Jewish
followers of Y‘shua were called) all considered themselves to be the true Jews, but they to an extent
tolerated the existence of the other groups.
In A.D. 66, Jewish revolutionaries in Galilee revolted against the Roman Empire. The war spread throughout
Palestine. The evidence is not clear, but it appears that the [Jewish] followers of Y‘shua in Palestine refused
to join the uprising against Rome and that they moved out of Jerusalem and Judea to an area east or
northeast of Palestine. By A.D. 70, Jerusalem had been burned to the ground and the Temple had been
totally destroyed. The Roman Empire nearly destroyed Judaism as it had been known. The only survivors in
terms of religion were the remnants of the Pharisees and the Jewish followers of Y‘shua.
Banned from Jerusalem by the Romans, the remaining Pharisees moved to Galilee to rebuild Judaism.
These Pharisees concluded that the lack of Jewish unity before the war had caused their problems. They
determined to rebuild Judaism without the diversity of religious views that had existed before. Since the
followers of Y‘shua had not supported the war and since that group had accepted so many Gentiles into it
that they (the Gentiles) were fast becoming the majority, the Pharisees decided to exclude "Nazarenes" from
their synagogues.
They used a variety of methods to accomplish this goal. The most notorious was a re-writing of the
synagogue worship liturgy to include a curse on the heretics (which meant the followers of Y‘shua).
Obviously this turn of events between A.D. 70 and 90 made it increasingly difficult to remain both a Jew and
a follower of Y‘shua. There was pressure on Jewish believers in Christ to abandon their faith in Him. It is the
match between the historical developments in Judaism in A.D. 70 to 90 and the concern of Matthew to show
the Jewish connections to Y‘shua that lead most New Testament scholars to date Matthew between A.D. 75
and 90.
There is also a minority of scholars who argue that Matthew was written in the 60‘s (usually they opt for the
early 60‘s). Recently a small portion of a manuscript has been discovered that two scholars studying it claim
to be a fragment of Matthew‘s Gospel. They also claim that it can be dated in the A.D. 50‘s. There is
presently considerable debate in the community of New Testament scholars as to whether the methods used
by these two were valid methods and whether their conclusions were correct. Should further investigation
support their conclusions, the argument presented above could not be true and another explanation for the
picture Matthew presents of his readers would need to be developed.
The debate about the date of Matthew is not a debate over the historical reliability of the Gospel. It is an
effort to best understand the circumstances in the early church that this Gospel addressed. The better we
understand those circumstances, the better we will understand the logic of the Book, and the better we will
be able to hear and apply its message to our own circumstances.
WHERE WAS MATTHEW WRITTEN?
The discussion about the place where Matthew was written is much more subdued than that about
authorship and date. For one thing, no one has questioned the spirituality of another based on that person‘s
view of the place where Matthew was written. Such questions have arisen over interpretations of authorship
and date. More importantly, there is less evidence internally (within the book itself where the date evidence
arises) or externally (outside the book as in Papias‘ comments) about the place of writing.
It is generally assumed that Matthew was writing for people who lived near where he wrote. Because the
"Nazarenes" who fled Jerusalem and Judea as the Jewish war broke out moved northeast into Syria; and
because Antioch in Syria was an early center of Jewish Christian faith, Syria is the most commonly
suggested place for the writing (and audience) of Matthew. Some scholars argue for Antioch specifically, but
most feel "somewhere" in Syria is as precise as we can ever determine. There have been scholars who
argued that Alexandria in Egypt was the place of the writing of Matthew, but this view has never been widely
accepted.