Demolishing Triablogue: Skeptics are reasonable to complain that Matthew doesn't testify of his own faith

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

Why Doesn't Matthew Say More About His Conversion?

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

In another thread about Matthew's authorship of the gospel attributed to him, a commenter wrote:

Hi Jason, the first person I heard use Mt 9:9-13 to challenge Matthean authorship of The Gospel According to Matthew was Richard Bauckham. It has long troubled me. The external evidence highly favors the view that the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel attributed to him, but it seems so counterintuitive that Matthew would use Mark’s account of his own conversion rather than write his own. That is the one place you would expect him to pen his own unique account. You rightly point out that Matthew did not copy Mark verbatim, but the differences are so miniscule (no greater than in most other places where Matthew uses Mark) as to be relatively insignificant. Minor changes to Mark’s account of Matthew’s own conversion is not what we would expect at all. It’s the most personal element of his story. He adds lots of non-Markan material throughout the rest of His gospel on matters he may not have even witnessed Himself, so why use Mark’s version of his own conversion story rather than telling his own story in his own way with a lot more detail? It doesn’t seem probable and counts against Matthean authorship in my mind. How do you reconcile this?

You can find a collection of some of my material on Matthean authorship linked in a post here. Steve Hays has written some posts on the subject as well, like here. Here's my response to the commenter quoted above:

See my earlier article I linked above, the one here. If Matthew delegated the composition of his gospel to one or more other individuals, then it’s not a matter of what Matthew wrote. It's a matter of what others wrote on his behalf, with his approval of the final product.

Except that you have no fucking clue whether Matthew ever did "approve" of any such thing, or simply walked away, trusting his friends to 'get it right'.

That was a common practice in the ancient world, and it's common today (ghost writers, group authorship, editorial assistants, research assistants, etc.).
However, even if Matthew hadn't operated that way, where did Mark's account of Matthew's conversion come from?

You elsewhere accept as true the patristic accounts that say Mark is a record of Peter's preaching, so your own answer would (or should) be "Peter's preaching".

If it came from Matthew (with or without intermediaries), which is a reasonable scenario, then why think the account found in Matthew's gospel should differ more from the account found in the gospel of Mark?

Yes, IF IF IF he got the story from Matthew, we wouldn't expect significant changes.  That's a pretty big if.

But then maybe we would expect an apostolic author who was "amazingly transformed" by seeing the risen Christ, to wish to say something about his own personal experience...just like we rationally expect all serious Christians to testify.  So since nothing of the sort shows up in the gospel called "Matthew" that can be reasonably counted against Matthean authorship.  Especially if it was written in 55 a.d., which means Matthew still doesn't want to give his personal input even after 20 years of developing the Jesus-sayings and traditions.

You suggest that Matthew should have included "a lot more detail" about his conversion. Why?

Because most serious Christians have a personal testimony which they wish to tell, and this is consistent with most of the NT authors.

And because he would know that leaving his own personal details out might cause readers to wonder whether he was "amazingly transformed".  The reasonablenes of these concerns cannot be trashed merely because it's always going to be "possible" that an amazingly transformed person might have their own reasons for not giving their personal testimony. You don't win the historiography debate by positing mere possibilities.

He wasn't writing in a modern American context, in which individualism, writing lengthy accounts of your experiences, and such were as popular as they are in our culture.

But desire to write of one's own personal religious experience isn't limited to modern America.  Read acts and the pastorals.

Even the vast majority of liberal scholars think that Paul wrote several of the letters attributed to him, yet Paul didn't provide "a lot more detail" about his conversion in those letters, including the letters where his conversion is mentioned.

But Paul still provided some personalized details about his life and commission.  That's more than Matthew.

And Paul's conversion was in some ways more significant than Matthew's.

When you forget that Matthew allegedly was hand-picked by the real earthly Jesus and studied under him for three year of real-world time, yes.  But some people would insist that the sheer improbability and absurdity of Paul's "partially empirical" experience on the road to Damascus is completely unworthy of serious attention.  Paul has precisely nothing but a vision and his own desire to hold apostolic office independent of the original apostles.  At least Matthew allegedly had authority that wasn't this controversial.

If Matthew was asked to compose a gospel in response to the popularity of Mark's gospel, which I think is most likely what happened,

Sounds like Matthew denied Mark's sufficiency and inerrancy. 

then the people who approached Matthew about writing a gospel probably would have been people who already knew a lot about him, including his conversion. Besides, he was writing a biography of Jesus, not a biography of Matthew.

Paul wasn't writing a biography of Paul in any of his letters, but we still expect, and receive personal details from him.

For me the issue is less why Matthew follows Mark's version of Matthew's "calling", and more an issue of whether Matthew's lack of personal stories and lessons makes it reasonable to assume the author had no such stories to tell.