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.

Demolishing Triablogue: Early interest in gospel authorship doesn't make skeptics unreasonable

Jason Engwer of Triablogue tries to make Matthew's authorship of the gospel now bearing his name more reasonable than the skeptical position that says the author is anonymous.  I respond to each of Engwers points.

There would have been early interest in who wrote the gospel.
It's common today to claim that the gospels initially circulated anonymously, even for as long as several decades.

And the fact that even conservative Christian apologists like Mike Licona aren't willing to make a case for Matthew's authorship (see here), nor consider his resurrection testimony "bedrock" (see here) is sufficient, standing alone, to render reasonable the skeptic who says apostle Matthew's connection to the gospel now bearing his name is tenuous at best, which is more than sufficient to justify asserting the author to be anonymous.

Here's something I recently wrote on the subject in the comments section of an old thread:

In that sort of atmosphere of concern for named authority figures, distinguishing among sources, and trying to discern who wrote documents like the gospels, it's far more likely that the gospels were circulating with authorial attributions than that they were circulating anonymously.

Except that the authors were allegedly Jews who lived in a religious climate that approved of anonymously and falsely authored scriptures.  See the OT Pseudepigrapha and Intertestamental literature.  They were quite capable of blindly trusting something merely because it was religious.

There would have been a high degree of interest in the gospels' authorship well before the second half of the second century.

Perhaps among Christians.  I don't see any non-Christians of that period would have cared.

And thank you for helping increase the probability that Matthew authored the heretical "Gospel to the Hebrews".

And early belief in their traditional authorship attributions provides a far better explanation for the prominence of the gospels and how little dispute there was about their authorship.

And thousands of early Christians could seriously believe false rumors about the apostles. See Acts 21:18-24.

In closing, I suggest that people think about the context of early Christianity and whether it was a setting in which the gospels are likely to have circulated anonymously for nearly a century.

Most historians that wrote in the 1st century named themselves, including most NT authors, so the Matthew-author's choice to leave his name out was deliberate, and under your own belief that this gospel is inspired by God, it is therefore God's intent to refuse to name Matthew.  For all you know, trying to prove Matthew's authorship would be against the divine will.  But if you discovered any such thing, no problems, just become a Calvinist.

Christianity wasn't a philosophical system of ideas that were being promoted independently of authority figures.

Then apparently you never heard of apostle Paul.  For all his talk about Jesus, he infamously shows so little interest in the historical Jesus' teachings and requirements that it is reasonable to conclude Paul was a heretic.

Rather, it was a system founded on the authority of named individuals, starting with Jesus and going on to the apostles and other individuals who were named (Matthew 10:1-3, Mark 3:13-19, Ephesians 2:20, etc.).

Except that from what's written, the authority consisted of a live person.  The whole notion that god intended for any of this crap to be written down, is missing from the bible. So for all you know, Christianity died out when the original apostles did.  If the Roman Catholic church can live strong fro 2,000 years while being heretical, so can any cult, including one started by Jesus.

Luke's gospel opens with a reference to the significance of eyewitnesses (1:2), a concept that requires distinguishing among sources (differentiating between those who were eyewitnesses and those who weren't), which would include distinguishing among the authors of written sources.

Except that he doesn't tell the reader that he also copied from Mark, a non-eyewitness.  Luke doesn't declare that he relied on anything other than eyewitnesses.

The fourth gospel expresses an interest in authorship, its own authorship with the implication of concern about authorship more widely (John 21:24).

Which justifies drawing conclusions about the fact that none of the synoptic authors express any such concern.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  You cannot simply say John's interest in authorship shows his objectivity, while the synoptic authors who do less can be equally objective.

Ferguson raises doubts about whether Papias was discussing the authorship of the canonical gospels or the authorship of other documents instead, but there was a concern about authorship of gospels or similar documents either way.

That's hardly relevant; the point is that there are good arguments for saying Papias wasn't testifying to the Matthean authorship of what we today call canonical Greek Matthew.

And Papias cited an earlier source (the elder, probably the apostle John), who likewise was interested in authorship issues.

Hearsay within hearsay, which is probably why most conservative Christian scholars refrain from pushing Matthew's authorship and allow liberality.

The same can be said about the authorship concerns expressed in the dispute between Marcionism and Christian orthodoxy. I've cited other sources in the same timeframe, prior to the late second century, with similar authorship interests.

Your general comments about authorship interest from the earliest period do a wonderful job of increasing the probability that other early gospels that didn't make it into the canon (GoH, Thomas) were authentically authored by apostles.  When you start in with your predictable trifling about how the non-canonical gospels are "different" and "worse", we yawn and wonder how much longer we'll have to wait for you to recognize that apostolic gospel authorship doesn't really mean anything if skepticism of Jesus' resurrection can shown reasonable.

Demolishing Triablogue: The Weakness Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

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

The Strength Of The Evidence For Matthew's Authorship

Friday, December 20, 2019

If the gospel attributed to Matthew was written by him, then that's a good line of evidence for the historicity of what he reports about Jesus' childhood.

Which is like saying an eyewitness report is good evidence for the historicity of some alleged event.     That's not "good", that's merely "slightly better than hearsay".

But since objections to the arguments for Jesus' resurrection are weighty and powerful, it hardly matters whether Jesus was the son of God.  Failure is failure, no matter how bright your clothes are.  And failure justifies others to draw certain conclusions.

Matthew's gospel and other early sources (e.g., Acts 1:13-14) put the apostle in contact with people who knew a lot about Jesus' background, such as Jesus himself, his mother, his brothers, and the people of Nazareth.

And Jesus' own immediate family members did not find his miracles the least bit compelling. Mark 3:21, 6:4 and John 7:5.  I've seen how you Triablogue types jump around like fleas on a dog trying to "account for" these verses while trifling that Jesus' miracles were still real.  Keep dreaming.

You think the author of Mark got his material from Peter, who was associated with Mary and other apostles, yet Mark attributes no miracles to Jesus' birth.  Whatever people were wondering about in Mark 6:3, that verse doesn't equal "Jesus was magically conceived."  But Jason Engwer specializes in squeezing blood out of turnips.  So Mark's disinterest in a birth of Jesus that you think was legitimately miraculous and which also testified in favor of Mark's own theme of Jesus as Son of God, is YOUR problem.

What you aren't going to do is prove the unreasonableness of the skeptic who cites Mark's silence on the virgin birth as a justification to accuse Matthew and Luke of lying.

But even conservative scholars don't say much about the evidence for Matthean authorship of the gospel,

Probably because they recognize a trap when they see it.  After all, being conservatives, they would more than likely make a big deal out of Matthew's authorship if they thought doing so could come across as serious argument.

and the few arguments they bring forward don't get developed much.

Probably because they recognize that the evidence in their favor is not very strong and easily falsifiable.  Papias this, logia that, and let's move on.

Here's a collection of articles on the evidence for Matthew's authorship.

I'll start a new blog piece to answer those.

Reply to Jonathan Morrow's defense of Matthew's authorship

This is my reply to an article by Jonathan Morrow entitled

How Do We Know Matthew Was the Author of the Gospel of Matthew?

3 Reasons Why Matthew Was Not A Forgery of the Early Church

We live in a culture that has questions about the Bible. And that’s OK–because questions, if the goal is truth, will lead to a stronger faith.

But it could also be 'bad', as questions, where the goal is truth, can also lead to apostasy, such as becoming an atheist...or at least giving up on bible inerrancy and adopting a less extreme form of biblical inspiration.  And since questions logically impede one's decision for Christ, the failure to repent immediately upon hearing the gospel, was believed by the gospel authors to automatically signal the hearer's assured condemnation: 

 18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (Jn. 3:18 NAU)

 Apparently then, those who hold off accepting Jesus, because they have "questions" are defined in the bible as being under the present condemnation of God, thus implying their basis for questioning arises from their rebellious spirit and not an honest desire for knowledge.  As a fundamentealist yourself, you need to rework the part of your article that renders questions "ok" or "permissible".  Or become a liberal and deny the fantatical position espoused in John 3, supra.

I have seen this time and again. (But how we question the Bible is critically important)

But as Christians we also are called to respond to challenges which threaten to undercut our faith (Jude 3; 1 Peter 3:15).

 Those bible passages legitimately raise the objection as to why we should assume there is any Holy Spirit conviction going on when a Christian makes argument to defend the faith.  Crediting the convicting to the Holy Spirit here is about as gratuitous as the attorney who tells the jury "There's lots of evidence in favor of my client's innocence, but the only way you can appreciate its force is if the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to it."

And in case you haven’t noticed, the Bible is a BIG target so there are lots of challenges!

    Our goal is to say (and defend) what the Bible says—no more and no less.

Then this article is going beyond your stated goal, as you admit that the proposition that Matthew authored the gospel now bearing his name, is not technically made IN the bible.  So perhaps you could have spent God's precious time more efficiently by scrapping the defense of something that isn't even "biblical" and defending something that is biblical, but which skeptics viciously attack, such as Paul's credibility.

The Skeptical Challenge of the Authorship of the Gospels

Skeptics like to raise doubts and new “hidden” or “lost” information about the Gospels. Why? Because that is where all the information about Jesus is. And if you can undermine confidence in biblical authority there, then that weakens the overall authority of Christianity. Why? Because Christianity rises or falls with Jesus.

 On the contrary, like Mormonism and other obviously false cults, Christianity rises or falls based on how successfully the local upstarts can convince the laity that their claims about ancient historical events are true.  Given that most people's eyes turn into question marks when asked to spell "historiography", I'm not surprised that false claims about what happened in history are still capable of deceiving masses of people.  I suppose that if everybody had the level of knowledge about historical methodology as professional historians possess, the number of people who go around pushing the resurrection of Jesus as a true historical event would be similar to the number of professional historians who go around pushing the resurrection of Jesus as a true historical event.

Here’s the basic argument of the Bible skeptic meant to raise doubt:
    “Did you know that we don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew? In fact, this Gospel is anonymous–(i.e., there is no formal claim to authorship within the document itself). The early church for political reasons wanted to exclude certain writings it didn’t like and so used an Apostle’s name (i.e., Matthew) to generate authority so this version of Christianity could win.”

 Then you are very close to misleading your readers, as you are merely refuting a very superficial type of gospel authorship skepticism.  It would be akin to me "refuting Christianity" by showing how stupid it is to allow people to play with live rattlesnakes in church.  That might refute those particular Christians, but would hardly operate to successfully broad-brush Christianity proper as false.  So when you refute the retarded skeptic whom you are quoting, you aren't refuting the serious scholarly skeptics, whose arguments you don't even get near touching in this article.

One of the new challenges in this generation is that arguments like this used to stay locked up in stuffy ivory towers. The effect was that everyday Christians never encountered them. Enter social media and youtube. Now these “sophisticated” arguments are available for the masses. And in our culture with a general distrust of authorities, conspiracy theories are then off and running.

How do we respond?

3 Reasons Why the Apostle Matthew Wrote the Gospel of Mathew

New Testament Scholars like Darrell Bock, D.A. Carson, and Michael Wilkins (among plenty of others) have done a lot of excellent work.

 So have other conservatives like Craig Blomberg, who specifies he is setting forth his case for Matthew's authorship "tentatively":

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…Without any ancient traditions to the contrary, Matthew remains the most plausible choice for author…But again we present these conclusions tentatively. Little depends on them.

New American Commentary
Blomberg, C. (2001, c1992). Vol. 22: Matthew, p. 43

 Given Blomberg's status as a world-authority on the gospels, and his status as a fundamentalist or conservative who accepts biblical inerrancy, and his prior books about the historical reliability of the gospels, his admitting to presenting his case for Matthean authorship "tentatively" would be alone sufficient to reasonably justify the skeptic to strike this gospel from the list of alleged resurrection "eyewitnesses".  If you were on trial for murder and the prosecutor's only evidence against you was an affidavit whose authorship had generated just as much scholarly disagreement as exists in the case of Matthew (i.e., there's no reliable way to tell which parts are from the eyewitness and which parts were added or changed around by later and anonymous redactors), and if the prosecutor admitted to the jury he was only "tentatively" arguing that the alleged eyewitness was the real author of the affidavit, wouldn't you ask the court to drop charges on the grounds that there is simply no way a reasonable jury could find an affidavit of such questionable "authorship" sufficient to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

Yeah, you would.

Here is just a short summary of the evidence for why we can be confident that Matthew, wrote the Gospel of Matthew, even though this Gospel is technically anonymous.

(1) First, regarding Matthew, “there is no patristic evidence that anyone else was ever proposed as the author.”

That's called the argument from the uniformity of tradition.  But many scholars insist that the only reason the tradition is uniform is because the later fathers were doing little more than repeating what 2nd century Papias said, which, if true, robs your argument of force, since in that case its not 10 ancient guys testifying to the same thing independently, it's one guy's opinion being cut and pasted by 9 other guys.  Guthrie:

 This evidence points to an unbroken tradition that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew, and advocates of any hypothesis which disagrees with this must suggest an adequate explanation of so consistent a tradition. The usual explanation is that later Church Fathers were merely reiterating Papias’ original mistake, or at least confusion, over what Matthew originally wrote in Aramaic.

Guthrie, D. (1996, c1990). New Testament introduction.
Series taken from jacket. (4th rev. ed.). [The master reference collection].
Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press.

 

And indeed, if Papias is everything you think he is, you will never disconnect his influence from the later fathers who mention Matthew's authorship.  Would we not expect the later fathers to gain much of their knowledge about such issues from the fathers who preceded them?  

 Morrow continues:

 (2) Second, Papias, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, and Origen all affirm Matthean authorship.

But the fathers who mention the language Matthew wrote in, never say it was Greek, they always say it was Hebrew.  If it is historically true that Matthew authored a second original in Greek before he died, you would expect the later church fathers, who desire to tell the reader the language Matthew wrote in, would have no less desire to mention the Greek than the Hebrew, especially in their own day when the Hebrew was archaic and the Greek version of the gospel was mandatory for preaching.

(3) Third, the literary evidence reveals that Matthew was the most popular Gospel in the earliest period of the church and it was circulated widely.

 Lots of early Christian works enjoyed popularity despite authorship you'd say was non-apostolic authorship.  Shepherd of Hermas, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel to the Hebrews, etc.  

2 Objections to Matthew as Author

There are two common objections to his authorship.

Then you need to up your game.  I have more than 300 separate objections to Matthew's authorship.  I'm surprised that you completely avoid dealing with the obvious objection:  Papias' unreliability and the fact that his famous statement can just as easily be translated and understood in a way that significantly distances Matthew from the Greek gospel now bearing his name.

First, it is argued that Matthew, an apostle himself, would not have relied so heavily upon Mark, who was not an apostle, when composing his Gospel.

 And since you cannot find any 1st century examples of a true eyewitness author depending as heavily upon hearsay accounts as Matthew depended on Mark, this skeptical objection's force is not abated by anything you argue below.  Unless you can defeat Markan Priority and the Two-Source Hypothesis, your apostle's extensive quoting hearsay accounts to tell the world what he himself experienced, remains authentically unexpected.  If you saw a car accident along with your grandma, what would you tell the police when they asked you to make a staement?  Would you refer them to somebody else's edited version of your grandma's version?  Obviously not.  The fact that you saw it yourself means you either give your own version, or the cops become reasonable to be suspicious of your claim to be an eyewitness.  It really is that simple.

But since we have very good evidence that Peter stands behind Mark’s Gospel, Matthew would have had no issue utilizing the recorded testimony of Peter.

You are assuming Peter is "the" source behind Mark's gospel, when in fact even conservative Christian scholars think Mark's sources included far more than just the notes he allegedly took during Peter's sermons:

 Furthermore, the traditional units betray little evidence of being simply mental or written notes based on Peter’s preaching from his first–hand witness, a conclusion that impugns part of Papias’s testimony but does not necessarily disparage the veracity or the value of the traditional units.... Consequently, for the most part, one can only speak generally and tentatively when seeking to delineate between tradition and redaction. This conclusion does not dispute Mark’s use of traditional materials or the availability of multiple sources, but it does mean that one cannot precisely reconstruct or always identify the exact content of his source or sources.

Guelich, R. A. (2002). Vol. 34A: Word Biblical Commentary : Mark 1-8:26.
Word Biblical Commentary (Page xxxiv-xxxv). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Furthermore, you haven't solved the problem:  there's not much difference between the problem of an alleged eyewitness author extensively using hearsay, and an alleged eyewitness author making extensive use of the hearsay version (Mark) of another's (Peter's) alleged eyewitness account.  Once again, if the author of Matthew was an eyewitness apostle, we would no more expect him to hide behind the hearsay version of another eyewitness's version, than we'd expect him to hide behind a purely hearsay version.  Matthew's extreme reliance on Mark remains inconsistent with what we'd reasonably expect of a real "eyewitness", especially if his memory recall was magically put into turbo-mode by "divine inspiration", another assumption about Matthean authorship that fundies insist on, and which they likewise cannot reasonably demonstrate.

The other common objection is that the Greek is too good to have been written by Matthew. However, Matthew was likely trilingual (Aramaic, Greek, and Latin) by growing up as a Jew in the region of Galilee, and as a tax collector he would have been required to know Greek well.

 None of my objections to Matthean authorship argue from the goodness of the Greek.  Dismissed.

Does it Matter if Matthew is the Author?

Yes.  The only resurrection testimonies that come down to us today from the NT in first-hand form would be (generously assuming traditional authorship) Matthew, John and Paul.  So the more reasonable skepticism of Matthew's apostolic authorship is, the more reasonable skeptics are to strike Matthew from this list of witnesses.  Reducing thecase for Jesus' resurrection from 3 witnesses to 2 witnesses is profoundly injurious, given that you need every last bit of evidence you can possibly get your hands on anyway.

I'm gonna change my life and start focusing on invisible issues of sophistry and theology, leading me into possibly psychologically harmful relations with "fundies", because the case for that religion draws from TWO "eyewitnesses" supplemented by a smattering of equally problematic hearsay? 

I don't think so.

Let me make one last point: Our goal is to say (and defend) what the Bible says—no more and no less. In the case of Paul writing a letter that bears his name, we are compelled to defend his authorship as a matter of biblical integrity. However, when it comes to the four Gospels, there is no one specifically to defend (i.e., because it is technically anonymous).

 Which is another argument against apostolic authorship of Matthew.  The example from Paul and most other NT authors is that the author is willing to say IN the document what his name is.  So the Matthew author's unwillingness to do so is not subject to only one reasonable interpretation (i.e., maybe his audience already knew who he was, he didn't need to repeat the obvious.  Well gee, Paul's churches knew who he was, but by divine inspiration still felt compelled to "state the obvious" anyway).  It is just as reasonable to conjecture that the apostolic signature doesn't appear in Matthew because the author wasn't an apostle.  Or Matthew wrote it, but like lukewarm Christians today, might have wished to help the church in some way, but was reticent to just dive headfirst into the role...reasonably suggesting he was something less than "amazingly transformed", thus impeaching to some degree his statements about Jesus rising from the dead.

You also fail to mention that among the late and contradictory accounts of Matthew's death, several give no hint that it was anything more than an uneventful natural death, no implication he was "martyred"...also suggesting he became disenchanted with the whole business, and, while remaining a part of the movement, stopped being the Jesus-freak he once was, also hurting the credibility of his resurrection testimony.

Finally, the Matthew-author quotes no more speech from the risen Jesus than what would take about 20 seconds to recite orally.  If Acts 1:3 is true and this risen Jesus taught Matthew and the other 10 disciples things concerning the kingdom of God over a period of 40 days, that sounds like the risen Christ had far more to say than 20 seconds worth of speech...even if the actual speeches happened less often than 8 hours per day for each of the 40 days.  So the shockingly short quote of the risen Jesus in Matthew either suggests the author's knowledge of the risen Christ's sayings was far less than what we'd expect for "Matthew", or, the risen Christ didn't say much more than what Matthew records, and Acts 1:3 is exaggerating historical reality.

I say that the Matthew-author's obviously intense desire to quote the pre-crucifixion Jesus' sayings at length is reasonably expected to manifest itself also in the case of the post-crucifixion Jesus' sayings.  The author's belabored obsession with the pre-crucifixion Christ contrasts sharply with "his" far shorter account of the post-crucifixion Jesus, reasonably justifying skepticism, either in that the resurrection narrative wasn't authored by the same obsessed person who wrote the bulk of the gospel, or it was the same apostolic author, but he lost much of the zeal for his faith before authoring the resurrection chapter, and that's why he appears to care far more to document the pre-crucifixion than the post-crucifixion Jesus.

The reasonableness of those skeptical theories cannot be overthrown merely because you can always dream up some sort of logically possible theory that favors bible inerrancy or tradition.  You either show your theory to be more reasonable than mine, or you lose in your attempt to "defeat" the skeptical view.  

If you think my skeptical views can be reasonable, I wouldn't really hit you this hard.  But since you appear to be a fundamentalist, which thus implies you think any and all skeptical theories of gospel authorship are devilish attacks upon the wordagawd, you cannot afford to allow for theories opposite to yours to be the least bit reasonable...all that would do is involve you in helping the devil mock the Christian faith!.  

So you either demonstrate my theories to be unreasonable, or you fail to demonstrate that my theories are unreasonable.  You don't demonstrate a skeptical theory to be unreasonable by merely pointing out that your own opposite theory is reasonable.  Reasonableness can often be equally present in two conflicting theories, such as when reasonable educated mature respectable members of the jury hear the exact same evidence and are unable to agree on the verdict.  Only a fool would pretend that this is always because there is some mentally defective or dishonest person in the jury that is being unreasonable.  Evidence is not usually so perfect in quality and quantity as that.

If I cannot demonstrate your theory to be unreasonable merely because my own contrary theory is reasonable, then fairness dictates that YOU aren't showing my theory to be unreasonable merely because your own contrary theory is reasonable.  I'm keenly aware of the epistemological "shortcuts" fundies typically employ in their clever efforts to make it seem the only reasonable theory is the theory favoring biblical inerrancy/reliability. 

As a thought experiment, let’s say it was somehow discovered that Andrew wrote what we now know as the Gospel of Matthew in the 1st century? Would that mean that there is an error in the Bible? Actually, no, because no claim of authorship was technically made in this document (the same logic would hold for the book of Hebrews)

 Then you are admitting there are more important issues that you could have devoted God's precious time to defending, than who authored the gospel now bearing Matthew's name.

So the bottom line? We have good reason to believe that Matthew is the author of this Gospel.

And you've now been given several justifications for saying skepticism of Matthew's authorship is reasonable.