The gospel does not contain any details about its exact time of writing, therefore the opinions in regard to that vary considerably. The name Matthew can be traced back to various Hebrew names: Matthija, Matthitja, Mattanja or Matthai, which all have the same meaning - 'gift of the Lord'. Another noteworthy fact is that Matthew is only called 'Matthew the tax-gatherer' in the list in Matthew 10:3. While on this occasion Luke calls him 'Levi, the tax-gatherer' and Mark 'Levi, the son of Alphaeus', he is called 'Matthew' only in our gospel. All three synoptic gospels - so called because of their similarity - tell us about his calling ( Matthew 9:9 ff, Mark 2:13 ff, Luke 5:27 ff). The name of the author, Matthew, is listed in all lists of apostles at the seventh or eighth place ( Matthew 10:2-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:13-16, Acts 1:13). The text of Matthew's gospel is now generally viewed as Greek original, and not as a translation. On the other hand it is possible that at the beginning there was a collection of the words of Jesus in Aramaic, but this remains a theory if not confirmed by text findings. But both arguments miss out that the Holy Scriptures have been written by men, who were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit Who led them in their writings with regard to contents as well as form (cf. The reason for the assumption that the apostle Matthew could not have been the author of this gospel is that an eye witness could not have written like this, and that it is unthinkable that an apostle would have based his writings on the work of a non-apostle like Mark. They believe that the writer was no apostle, that he wrote the gospel in Greek and based it on two sources: the gospel of Mark and a so-called 'Logia Source Q', which only exists in theory.

The view of the more recent scholars is that the gospel was neither written by Matthew nor in Hebrew or Aramaic. Papias (ca 65 - 150 AD) writes: 'Matthew has written these words (Greek logia) in the Hebrew language, but everybody translated them as best they could.' The interpretation of this is not easy, and there have been various explanations.

But this tradition also says that Matthew's gospel was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. But right from the beginning the Christian tradition confirms that the apostle Matthew is the author of this gospel. There is only one good news of the great work that God had accomplished by His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, but in His wisdom it needed four different men to make this news of salvation known to the world in written form.Īs in most books of the Bible, the name of the author is not mentioned in Matthew's gospel. The heading of the first book of the New Testament is in most manuscripts 'Gospel according to Matthew'.

Greek interlinear bible matthew 5