Demolishing Triablogue: Matthew did not write the gospel attributed to him

This is my reply to an article by Jason Engwer of Triablogue, entitled

Did Matthew Write The Gospel Attributed To Him?

Saturday, May 25, 2013

This is a typical way of downplaying the significance of Matthew's gospel:

The arguments for such downlplaying that you now cite to, are often made by Christian scholars.  Just wanted to make sure your readers didn't get the false impression that its only atheists who argue that way.

When the reader is told that Matthew likely authored a Hebrew original and the Hebrew is the only one the church fathers refer to until 4th century Jerome, many of the "evidences" for "Matthean authorship" of canonical Greek Matthew lose force.  After all, its a bit more complex than just whether Matthew wrote something in Greek.  We can relate Matthew to canonical Greek Matthew in a way that does reasonable justice to the external evidence, but without thereby showing Matthew was the sole author.  If there is more than one person involved in the authorship of canonical Greek Matthew, then the historical value of 'Matthew's' resurrection testimony wanes somewhat accordingly.  You don't just say "some parts of my affidavit were updated and modified by anonymous third-parties and translated into a different language" and yet expect others to think the document correctly represents everything you alleged in your original.

"We do not know the name of its author: the title found in our English versions ('The Gospel according to Matthew') was added long after the document's original composition.

 The author's failure to do what most NT authors and 1st century historians did, and include his name despite his audience already knowing it, is significant, and justifies the skeptic to say such authorial intent likely also expresses the allegeldy 'divine' intent...which means you might be acting contrary to the will of God in pushing Matthew's authorship.

It is true that according to an old tradition the author was none other than Matthew, the tax collector mentioned in Matt 9:9. This tradition, however, arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published, and scholars today have reasons to doubt its accuracy.

Exactly how "early" that gospel was attributed to Matthew, cannot be known.  All you can do is find an earliest church father from around 125 a.d. mentioning a gospel of Matthew or "memoirs of the apostles" and triumphantly conclude that an interval of 80 years between Jesus' crucifixion and such early patristic reference is too trivial to justify fear of the gospel titles being the result of rumors.  The more you speak that foolishly, the more you justify apostolic authorship of the earliest non-canonical gospels.

For one thing, the author never identifies himself as Matthew, either in 9:9 or anywhere else.

So that under your own theory that this gospel was inspired by God, the best theory to expalin why the author didn't identify himself is beause god didn't want him to. Wow, I guess it never occurred to you that pushing Matthew's authorship might be contrary to the will of god.

Also, certain features of this Gospel make it difficult to believe that this Matthew could have been the author. Why, for example, would someone who had spent so much time with Jesus rely on another author (Mark) for nearly two-thirds of his stories, often repeating them word for word (including the story of his own call to discipleship; 9:9-13)?

That's called the Markan priority theory, one that I adopt, along with the majority of Christian scholars, and that alone is sufficient to justify concluding that such theory is "reasonable" even if not "guaranteed truth".  That is, your trifles against Markan priority do not foist any intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to either refute your objections or admit Markan priority loses.  Under your stupid trifling demeanor, nobody could ever be reasonable to write a book defending any bible scholarly opinion, because the necessarily limit to the size of the book necessarily means they'd have to avoid dealing with certain objections.

And why would he never authenticate his account by indicating that he himself had seen these things take place?

Maybe because, like many Christian scholars explain about Paul's anonymous authorship of Hebrews...he was scared that putting his name on something would cause his intended audience to turn away?  It's what we call "provide things honest in the sight of all men" and "it is not you but god who giveth the increase".

…Since he produced his Gospel in Greek, presumably for a Greek-speaking community, he was probably located somewhere outside Palestine…

That's weak since Greek was spoken also in Palestine.

Matthew, an anonymous Jewish leader of the Christian community (assuming that his strong literary skills, indicative of a higher education, gave him a place of prominence there), penned a Gospel narrative to show that Jesus was in fact the Jewish messiah, who like Moses gave the law of God to his people." (Bart Ehrman, The New Testament [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 114-115, 132) 

Ehrman doesn't know that the title of the gospel wasn't added until "long after" the document's composition. See, for example, Martin Hengel's discussion of the gospel titles in The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000). Hengel gives a series of reasons why the titles probably would have been included early on.

Except that even conservative inerrantist Christian scholars, despite how they could profit from such trifling, nevertheless stick with saying the gospel titles were probably added later.  For example, Craig Blomberg argues:

Strictly speaking, this Gospel, like all four canonical Gospels, is anonymous. The titles, “The Gospel according to X,” are almost certainly not original. It is doubtful that four early Christians would all choose this identical wording and far more probable that the documents were given these headings in order to distinguish one from the other only when they were first combined into a fourfold collection. The diversity of ways in which these titles are phrased among the existing manuscripts (“According to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew,” “The Gospel according to Matthew beginning with God,” “The Holy Gospel according to Matthew,” “From the [Gospel] according to Matthew”) reinforces this supposition.⁶¹ Probably these headings were first added some time in the late first or early second century. But apart from these ascriptions, nothing in the actual text of the Gospel ever specifically discloses its author.

61 For the Greek titles and manuscripts in which they occur, see Allison and Davies, Matthew, 1:129, n. 90.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 43). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

If Engwer chooses to disagree with Blomberg, that's fine but then the skeptic could correctly trivilaize Christianity by observing that NOT EVEN WHEN YOU ACCEPT JESUS, ADOPT INERRANCY AND EVENTUALLY BECOME A LEGITIMATELY CREDENTIALED RESPECTABLE CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR WHO SPECIALIZES IN THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE GOSPELS, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE GOSPEL TRUTH.

For example, after more than one gospel was circulating, the gospels would need to be distinguished from one another.

Not if they were originally written for separate communities, as most scholars believe was the case.  What you are talking about wouldn't be a concern until the church began to collectively desire to canonize several gospels.

When critics like Ehrman suggest that Matthew used Mark as a source, they don't seem to realize that their argument in that context works against their argument that Matthew wouldn't have had a title until "long after" its composition. If the author of Matthew knew of Mark and thought so highly of the document as to use so much of it, then he and his earliest readers would have wanted a way, probably multiple ways, to quickly and easily distinguish each gospel from other documents in general and from other gospels in particular.

Or maybe Matthew was intended to 'correct' Mark (which I've shown he usually does) and produce something better so as to allow for tossing Mark in the trash, in which case there can be no rational motive to carefully distinguish the authors.

A title would allow people to quickly and easily distinguish one gospel from another.

In the later period when some of the gospels started gaining authority beyond their originally intended audiences, yes.

That would be important, for instance, in church services in which gospels were being read, a context in which quickly and easily distinguishing among the gospels would be desirable.

Only by assuming the Matthew author intended for his people to use Mark alongside his own production, when in fact his corrections to Mark make it reasonable to suppose he intended to supplant Mark.  The church Matthew intended to write for is thus left with one single updated gospel.

Furthermore, both private and public libraries used titles to distinguish one work from another.

Yes.

And so on. If you read Hengel's book, you'll see that there are multiple reasons why the gospels probably would have had titles applied to them early, most likely during the first century, when apostles and their contemporaries were still alive.

Well gee, then why did Jerome say "many" in the early church thought Gospel to the Hebrews was "authentic Matthew"?

“There is a Gospel,” he says, “which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, which I lately translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek and which is called by many the authentic Gospel of Matthew”. [1]

[1] Commentary on Matthew 12:13, from Orr, J., M.A., D.D. (1999). The International standard Bible encyclopedia : 1915 edition (J. Orr, Ed.). Albany, OR: Ages Software.

Does the presence of the word "authentic" reasonably imply that those "many" knew of inauthentic gospels being credited to Matthew?  Does the word "authentic" reasonably imply those "many" did some type of investigation and concluded GoH was more likely authored by Matthew?  Or do your common-sense sounding arguments suddenly become Stupid of the Year whenever they can be used to support apostolic authorship of gospels that aren't in your favorite collection?

See my quotations of Richard Bauckham and Martin Hengel here, and read their books for further information.
How does Ehrman allegedly know that the tradition of Matthean authorship "arose some decades after the Gospel itself had been published"? The earliest extant report of that tradition is in Papias, writing in the early second century about information he attained at an unknown earlier date. But the timing of the earliest tradition report extant today need not be equivalent to the timing of the earliest tradition.

True, but that kind of trifle doesn't foist an intellectual obligation upon a skeptic.  All you are doing is bleating about possibiltiies.  If a skeptic doesn't accuse you of taking an illogical position, you have no business citing to bare possibilities.  You either show that your own preferred possibility has more probability than the skeptical theory, or you lose the debate.  FUCK YOU.

Think of the absurdity of the situation implied by Ehrman. Not only did people wait until "long after" Matthew's composition to give the work a title, but they also waited until "some decades" later to start claiming that Matthew wrote it.

There's nothing absurd about that under the other Christian theory that the Matthew-author wrote for a specific congregation.  We would expect such congregation to use his gospel for at least two decades, never seeing any need to place a title on it.

 Yet, attribution of the document to Matthew was universal and was corroborated by a diverse series of non-Christian sources from the second century onward.

It was also "universal" that Matthew wrote first, a theory now discredited by most Christian scholars, who hold to Markan priority.  It would also be reasonable for a skeptic to conclude the "universal" attribution to Matthew was little more than later church fathers blindly following Papias.

Is that sort of early and widespread acceptance of Matthean authorship better explained by Ehrman's scenario or a traditional Christian view?

Gee, what best explains the fact that "many" in the early church took GoH to be "authentic" Matthew?  Was it possible for "many" in the early church to be deceived about gospel authorship?  If so, how many wrongful opinions had to be held by "many" before one opinion wrongfully achieved the status of orthodoxy?

Why would a document that circulated anonymously for decades become universally accepted as Matthean, with corroboration from non-Christian sources, leaving no trace of dispute?

Fallacy of loaded question, Jerome documents the dispute by saying "many" viewed GoH as "authentic" Matthew.

To make matters worse for Ehrman, he claims that the author of the gospel was a "leader" with "prominence". But this prominent leader's work circulated anonymously? Why?

I don't have to answer that question, as I don't agree with Ehrman on the point.

And his identity was universally forgotten and universally replaced with Matthew's identity so early?

No, most likely Matthew wrote a sayings-source in Hebrew, and an anonymous scribe was later responsible for translating it into Greek and adding narrative.  That way, the work is called "Matthew", but only because Matthew had limited relation to the contents.

I'm reminded of Donald Guthrie's reference to "those modern schools of criticism which have peopled early Christian history with a whole army of unknown writers, whose works attained as great a prominence as their authors obtained obscurity." (The Logos Library System: Deluxe Collection [Oak Harbor, Washington: Logos Research Systems, 1997], New Testament Introduction)
Ehrman asks us to solve problems of his own creation. Reject his dubious assumptions, and you won't have to face his contrived problems.

I've done rather well justifying skepticism in light of your defense, even assuming Ehrman was wrong.

He suggests that if the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel, he would have identified himself as an eyewitness. Why think Matthew didn't identify himself by a document title or an oral report of authorship that accompanied the book's circulation, for example?

Because skeptics try to prioritize any theory that can be based on evidence, instead of on a theory that requires manufacturing evidence out of thin air.  There is no historical evidence that Matthew identified himself by document or "oral report" (gospel preaching doesn't require the preacher to give his name, only the gospel), nor that any such thing accompanied the book's circulation.

I've addressed the issue of Matthew's use of Mark's gospel here. Under my view, a "word for word" (as Ehrman puts it) repetition of Mark wouldn't be a problem.

But it remains reasonable to say we don't expect a person with their own first-hand experiences, to depend so heavily upon a non-eyewitness source for documenting these.

And I don't see how skepticism suffers in the least by admitting Matthew authored an original in Hebrew.  We can agree on that, except that I think the Hebrew original was mostly "sayings", not narrative, and I agree with inerrantist Christian scholar Craig Blomberg that an anonymous scribe later reworked the entire thing in Greek.

But if he wrote only an Aramaic precursor to the Gospel, then any Gentile Christian could have been responsible for Greek Matthew as well, though interestingly the tide of scholarship is again strongly returning to a Jewish Christian as the author of the final form of this Gospel, even if many remain reluctant to identify the apostle as the specific Jewish Christian, Matthew.

...When all the evidence is amassed, there appears no conclusive proof for the apostle Matthew as author but no particularly cogent reason to deny this uniform early church tradition. Were the Gospel not written by him, the church surely chose a rather strange individual (in light of his unscrupulous past by Jewish standards) as a candidate for authorship. Without any ancient traditions to the contrary, Matthew remains the most plausible choice for author. This author, at least of an original draft of this book (or one of its major sources), seems quite probably to have been the converted toll collector, also named Levi, who became one of Jesus’ twelve apostles (cf. 10:3; 9:9–13; Mark 2:14–17).
But again we present these conclusions tentatively.

Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Page 44). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Engwer continues:

But is Matthew 9:9-13, a passage Ehrman singles out, actually a word for word repetition of Mark 2:14-17? No.

Doesn't have to be word-for-word.  Under Markan priority, they are similarly worded because the Matthew author is copying off of Mark.  Since it would be absurd to suppose Matthew himself wished to depend upon a non-eyewitness to tell the reader about Matthew's own calling to discipleship, it's reasonable, even if not infallible, to say the Matthew-author is not Matthew himself.

In fact, scholars often point to differences among the parallel Synoptic accounts as evidence for Matthean authorship or as a potential explanation for how a mistaken Christian belief in authorship by Matthew arose. (E.g., Matthew 9:9 refers to "Matthew", whereas Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 refer to "Levi".

Some church fathers thought Levi and Matthew were separate apostles, so it might be reasonable to conclude that Mark's "Levi" was originally supposed to be somebody different than "Matthew", despite the tendency of most Christains to automatically equate them.

Matthew 9:9 humanizes the individual by referring to him as "a man" rather than more formally referring to his ancestry [Mark 2:14] or referring to his despised employment as a tax collector [Luke 5:27].

I'm not seeing the point.

Matthew 9:10 refers to "the house" rather than "his house" [Mark 2:15, Luke 5:29], and "the house" is more natural coming from the house's owner.)

Bauckham doesn't think the switch to "the house" implies Matthew is the author:

Mark sets this scene in “his house,” which some scholars take to mean Jesus’ house, but could certainly appropriately refer to Levi’s house. In Matthew’s Gospel, the same passage follows the narrative of the call of Matthew, but the scene is set simply in “the house” (Matt 9:10). Thus this Evangelist has appropriated Mark’s story of the call of Levi, making it a story of Matthew’s call instead, but has not continued this appropriation by setting the following story in Matthew’s house. He has appropriated for Matthew only as much as Mark’s story of Levi as he needed.
...If this explanation of the name Matthew in Matt 9:9 is correct, it has one significant implication: that the author of Matthew’s Gospel intended to associate the Gospel with the apostle Matthew but was not himself the apostle Matthew. Matthew himself could have described his own call without having to take over the way Mark described Levi’s call.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 108-109

If conservatives of Dr. Bauckham’s caliber are not convinced by the way fundamentalists spin the evidence to make Matthew into a gospel author, it’s a pretty good argument that the evidence for Matthean authorship is weak at best. If there was any legitimate way to spin the evidence to favor authorship by an apostle, somebody with Dr. Bauckham’s great learning and fundamentalist assumptions about the gospels as eyewitness testimony would surely have done it.  This doesn't prove Bauckham is correct, only that the skeptics who choose to adopt his point here are not unreasonable to do so.

Engwer continues:

If Matthew 9 is distinctive enough to be part of the explanation of the authorship attribution of the document, as seems to be the case, then so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that Matthew just repeated Mark.

Nah, Markan priority is pretty solid, especially if Eta Lineman and W. Farmer are the best the fundies can offer in rebuttal.

And so much the worse for Ehrman's claim that the author of the document didn’t make any effort to identify himself.

Just not the level of effort we'd expect of a person who was "amazingly transformed" by viewing the resurrected Jesus.

The author makes a lot of references to financial matters, including some unique to his gospel (e.g., 17:24-27, 18:23-35). In a passage about taxes that the Synoptics have in common (Matthew 22:19, Mark 12:15, Luke 20:24), Matthew uses more precise terminology than what's used by Mark and Luke. Those characteristics would make sense if the author were a tax collector.

Correction, if the author OF THE HEBREW ORIGINAL were a tax-collector.  I'm more dangerous to fundies than the average skeptic, because I avoid the extreme position that Matthew is completely detached from the gospel and allow that his influence likely appears in the canonical greek version, being based as it was on the earlier shorter Hebrew version.

And a tax collector's work would give him reason to know Greek.

It would also give him a reason to know why it is important to state his name and testify to what he himself observed, something the Matthew author never does.

So would various cultural factors involved with living in first-century Israel and various factors involved with being a prominent leader in a messianic movement.

Yes, apostle Matthew had something to do with the canonical Greek version.  But that hardly justifies automatically insisting that denial of Matthew's authorship is unreasonable.  There were two authors, and Matthew had the least influence on the Greek version.

As an apostle, Matthew would have had good reason to travel outside of Israel, so his presence outside of the nation wouldn't be a significant problem for Matthean authorship.

Except that according to Paul, the original Jewish apostles wished to disobey the Great Commission and limit their evangelism efforts to Jews alone:

 9 and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. (Gal. 2:9 NAU)

Engwer continues:

Along with those who hold a traditional view of Matthean authorship, Ehrman acknowledges that the author probably was a Jew and that his gospel is of a highly Jewish character. Whether the author was outside of Israel at the time when he wrote doesn't have much significance in the context of authorship. The author was a Jew, and a Jewish apostle would have had reason to travel outside of Israel.

A position that can be reasonably disputed on the basis of Galatians 2:9.