HistoricalChristian.Faith

Matthew

Matthew is the apostle the church remembered as a writer. Where most of the Twelve are names in a list and nothing more, Matthew is called from a toll-booth in a scene the Gospels tell three times — and then, from the second century on, is credited with the first Gospel, “composed in the Hebrew tongue.” Two puzzles sit at the head of his story. The first is his name: the man Matthew’s Gospel calls “Matthew” at the receipt of custom is called Levi in the very same scene by Mark and Luke, so that the church has had to ask whether Matthew and Levi are one man under two names. The second is his book: Papias’s famous notice that “Matthew put together the oracles in the Hebrew language” launched a tradition — repeated by Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome — of a Semitic original behind our Greek Matthew, and a long modern argument over what Papias could have meant. Of his life after Pentecost almost nothing firm survives: the traditions scatter him to Ethiopia, to Parthia, to Persia, and cannot agree whether he died a martyr or in his bed. This page is a history of what was remembered and claimed about Matthew, set out earliest source first: the Gospel notices, Papias on the Hebrew oracles, Clement’s hint that Matthew was not martyred, Jerome’s Latin summary, the wandering mission-traditions, the medieval legend of Ethiopia, and the modern scholarship that grades them all. This is a biographical tradition-timeline: its “witnesses” are the datable sources that report on Matthew, and the contested questions — was he Levi? was his Gospel first written in Hebrew? was he martyred? — are weighed on their own argument pages below rather than settled by assertion. For the shared ladder of sources and how far to trust each rung, see the apostles hub.

Related doctrines: The apostles — see also the apostles (overview) · Simon Peter · Andrew · James, son of Zebedee · John, son of Zebedee · Philip · Bartholomew · Thomas · James, son of Alphaeus · Thaddaeus / Jude · Simon the Zealot · Judas Iscariot · Matthias · Paul

Timeline

The New Testament (c. 30–90)

The New Testament names Matthew in all four lists of the Twelve, and tells one story about him: his call. As Jesus “passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him” — a tax-collector, a publican, left his toll-booth at a word. Matthew’s own Gospel alone adds the detail that he was a publican when it lists him among the Twelve: “Matthew the publican.” Mark and Luke tell the identical call-scene — the same booth, the same words, the same rising and following — but name the man Levi, “Levi the son of Alphaeus” in Mark, a “publican, named Levi” in Luke, who then makes Jesus “a great feast in his own house.” Whether Matthew and Levi are the same man is the first question his tradition raises. Of his life after the call the New Testament says nothing.¹

Papias on the Hebrew oracles, and the patristic chain (c. 125, reported c. 325)

The earliest word about Matthew’s book is a single sentence of Papias of Hierapolis (c. 125), preserved by Eusebius: “So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.” From this seed grew a unanimous patristic tradition of a Semitic Matthew. Irenaeus (c. 180): “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.” Origen (c. 230, via Eusebius): the first Gospel “was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle… for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language.” Eusebius himself: Matthew, “who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue.” And a striking corollary: Eusebius reports that Pantaenus, travelling to “India” about 190, found there the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, left by the apostle Bartholomew. What Papias meant by the “oracles,” and whether a real Hebrew Matthew ever stood behind the Greek, is weighed below.²

Clement of Alexandria: a hint that Matthew was not martyred (c. 200)

Against the later martyr-legends stands an early and awkward note. Clement of Alexandria (c. 200), discussing what it means to “confess” Christ, quotes the Valentinian Heracleon’s observation that not all the saved confessed with the voice before the authorities — “of whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others,” who confessed instead by their lives. The passage implies that Matthew was not put to death for the faith — the earliest datum we have on how his life ended, and it points away from martyrdom. (It also, incidentally, lists “Matthew” and “Levi” as if two men — a wrinkle for the identity question.) It is a slender and second-hand thread, but it is early, and it sits at odds with everything the medieval church would later say.³

Jerome, On Illustrious Men (393)

Jerome, opening his catalogue of Christian writers, gives the compact Latin summary that fixed the Western picture of Matthew. He identifies the apostle without hesitation: “Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and aforetimes publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain.” Jerome adds that “the Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day” in the library at Caesarea, and that he had been permitted to copy a text of it used by the Nazarenes of Beroea — a claim that entangles the “Hebrew Matthew” with the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews. In four lines Jerome asserts both contested points as settled fact: that Matthew is Levi, and that his Gospel was first written in Hebrew.⁴

The mission-field and the apostle-lists (uncertain date, mutually dependent)

Where Matthew went after Judea, the tradition cannot decide. The line that reached the Greek historians sends him to Ethiopia: Rufinus and Socrates Scholasticus, expanding Eusebius’s scheme of the apostles’ allotted regions, assign “Ethiopia” to Matthew, and it is Ethiopia that the medieval West would inherit. But the apostle-lists — the late, mutually-copying Greek and Latin catalogues of where each apostle preached and died — scatter him widely: to Parthia and Persia, to Macedonia, to the cannibal “man-eaters” on the Black Sea, dying variously by the sword, by fire, or in peace at Hierapolis. No consistent memory survives; the mission-field of Matthew is church legend of low evidential value, not history.⁵

The Golden Legend (c. 1260)

Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend gathers the full medieval romance of Matthew in Ethiopia: the apostle confounds two sorcerers, Zaroes and Arphaxat, and their serpents; he raises the son of King Egippus and converts the land; he consecrates the king’s daughter Iphigenia and her virgins to God; and when the next king, Hirtacus, wishes to marry her and is refused, he has Matthew struck down at the altar — the martyrdom the Latin church settled on, and the source of his emblems, the angel and the sword or spear. It is late hagiography, twelve centuries after the events, weaving the apostle-lists and lost Acts into a single tale; but it is the form in which the West received Matthew the martyr of Ethiopia.⁶

Modern scholarship

Critical study leaves Matthew’s biography thin and his book contested. On the man: that the tax-collector of the call-story is the apostle Matthew, and that Matthew is the Levi of Mark and Luke, is the majority view and probably right — the scene is one scene, told thrice — though it rests on harmonizing two names and cannot be proved. On the book: few today think our Greek Matthew is a translation from a Hebrew original, since it demonstrably uses the Greek Mark and the Greek Old Testament; the debate is instead over what Papias’s “oracles” (logia) were — the canonical Gospel, a lost sayings-source, a collection of messianic proof-texts — and whether the whole “Hebrew Matthew” tradition is an inference from that one ambiguous sentence, later confused with the Gospel of the Hebrews. On his death: the martyr-tale is late and legendary, and the earliest hint (Clement’s) actually points to a natural death; Sean McDowell, grading the apostolic martyrdoms, rates Matthew’s among the least secure. What can be said is modest: a Matthew was numbered among the Twelve, called from a toll-booth; the church early and unanimously named him the author of its first Gospel; and everything about his later mission and end is tradition, much of it late.⁷

Arguments

Was Matthew the tax collector the same man as Levi? (assessment: plausible)

The Matthew–Levi identity is the stronger of the Gospels’ two great apostle-identity questions. In its favour: it is not an argument from silence but from a shared scene — Matthew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5 tell one call-narrative, the same toll-booth, the same “Follow me,” the same rising and leaving all — with only the name changed, so that the man Matthew’s Gospel calls Matthew is the man Mark and Luke call Levi; and Jerome and the mainstream tradition simply equate them. Against: “Levi” never appears in any list of the Twelve, the identification is an inference the evangelists never state, and one early list (Heracleon’s, in Clement) names Matthew and Levi as if two men. The majority and probable view, but turning on a two-name identification that cannot be pressed to proof. Plausible.⁸

Was Matthew’s Gospel first written in Hebrew? (assessment: contested)

The Hebrew-Matthew question pits a unanimous patristic tradition against the internal evidence of the text. For: Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome all affirm that Matthew wrote first in Hebrew (or Aramaic) for Jewish believers, and Jerome claims to have handled a copy; the witness is early, wide, and consistent. Against: our Greek Matthew reads as a Greek composition, not a translation — it incorporates the Greek Mark almost verbatim and quotes the Greek Septuagint — and Papias’s key word, logia (“oracles”), is ambiguous enough to mean a sayings-source or a book of proof-texts rather than the Gospel we have. A genuinely open dispute between patristic testimony and source-critical analysis. Contested.⁹

Was Matthew martyred in Ethiopia? (assessment: weak)

The Ethiopian martyrdom — Matthew cut down at the altar by King Hirtacus — is the standard Western account of his death, and it does not hold up on its evidence. It is attested only late: the developed story is that of the Golden Legend and the apocryphal Acts behind it, a millennium after the events, resting on apostle-lists that cannot even agree on his mission-field (Ethiopia, Parthia, Persia). More tellingly, the earliest surviving hint of how Matthew died — Clement of Alexandria’s report, c. 200 — places him among the apostles who did not die by martyrdom. Late, inconsistent, and contradicted by the one early witness. Weak.¹⁰

Sources