Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew?

[McCulloch]

William Lane Craig, also a renowned Bible scholar, says it was written by Matthew.

J B Phillips a renowned bible scholar says the Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew but was written by an unknown author and this unknown author copied much of his material from Mark.

Who wrote the Gospel attributed to Matthew? What can be known about the author? What evidence is their to support the idea that it was written by Jesus' disciple by that name?

[Goat]

William Lane Craig, also a renowned Bible scholar, says it was written by Matthew.

J B Phillips a renowned bible scholar says the Gospel of Matthew was not written by Matthew but was written by an unknown author and this unknown author copied much of his material from Mark.

Who wrote the Gospel attributed to Matthew? What can be known about the author? What evidence is their to support the idea that it was written by Jesus' disciple by that name?

There is no internal evidence that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew. It is a near universal opinion that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent
on the Gospel of Mark.. it takes Mark's errors when it comes to Jewish culture and tradition and corrects it. The fact that Matthew had to copy from someone who made so many errors about geography and Jewish traditions says that Matthew is yet another layer removed from any hypothetical events. The attribution of Matthew as author to the GOM comes from Eurisubs quoting Papias saying that the apostle Mathew wrote a gospel in the Hebrews own language. The GOM was written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to Goat in post #2]
So It was Church father Eusebius, quoting Bishop Papias, that attributed GoMat to Matthew.

I unnerstand.

By whom or what were the other three gospels attributed to their apostolic/peterfriendly/medical authorsHm

[TRANSPONDER]

That's useful information. Yes, the Vatican at the time of Constantine and with Eusebius getting his sticky fingers into everything, that reinvented Christianity almost as radically as Paul (I argue) reinvented Messianic Judeanism (the Nazorenes) into Gentile - friendly Christianity.

The only Biographical detail of Matthew is that he was a Capernaum tax - collector recruited by Jesus as a disciple. This always bothered me, not just because of this whole obsession of the Gospels with Tax - collectors and fallen women, but that Luke says it was Levi. I can do the excuses myself, but shouldn't the synoptics say the same thing?

And that's the point. Either the synoptics are derived from the Original (which is not gMark; and any Bible Sscholar who says it was is in my view not a scholar, Expert or Authority in this subject) or they are supposed to be independent eyewitness accounts. And Matthew is no Jew, and thus no eyewitness, even though Bible Authority Consensus argues he was. Sure, he was obsessed with the OT for prophecy and signals of Jesus being the new Moses, giving the New Law up on the Mountain, as distinct from how I think the Nazorenes saw Jesus - the new Joshua.

Because Matthew gets it all wrong. Of course they all do, because none of them relate a David and the Shewbread that makes any valid point let alone gives the teachers of the Law a fair shake, but none of the Synoptics seem to understand the point of 'Who is David's son?' They relate it but don't explain the point because they don't get what it is. Yes, none of the synoptic writers understand what they are writing, but Matthew goes further.

We know (and I don't need to apologise for 'We' as this one is the Iconic Atheist Apologetic) that Matthew misreads 'Virgin' in Isaiah, and it seems to be because he read it in the Greek translation. No Jew would have made that mistake. Also the 'two Donkeys' is equally Iconic. The synoptic original surely had the Donkey (and so does John, showing that was very much the original material) but it was the 'Matthew' writer, misreading Isaiah..or is it Zechariah? Damn' my memory... who misread the Jewish Idiom 'Upon a donkey, that is, a colt, the foal of a donkey'. The others don't overthink this, but just copy what is there; one donkey, and don't mess it up. But Matthew, obsessing about the passage, thinks it means two donkeys.
Not only was he no Jew, but could not have seen the event or he'd know, it was one donkey and not two (1). And my own project (and it is a pity I'm so idle) to compare Isaiah in the Septuagint with Isaiah in the Qumran scrolls and both with the Mazoretic version, because if the Dead Sea version supports the Septuagint rather than the OT, then Jesus quoting 'Babes and sucklings' could be correct. But if not, it is another mistake by 'Matthew' and Jesus could not have said it. In fact since it is only in Matthew, Matthew must have added it himself and Jesus can't have said it.

That's enough for me, even without Matthew's Greek Christian mindset in the nativity and in the Blasphemy charge. None of this would make sense to a Jew and it is all very plain to me that it was written by Greek Christians in the Original iteration, never mind Matthew's own personal and rather daft additions.

I must mention a rather interesting point that Matthew says it was a story put about by the Jews in his own day that the disciples 'Took the body'. I don't want to read too much into this. It strikes me as no more than a made up explanation for the Christian claim that Jesus rose - and for the empty tomb. Just as the story of Jesus hiding the sacred word in his thigh and being the son of a Centurion (Pantheus, wasn't it) in the Jerusalem Garrison are just smears rather than true facts about Jesus. But to me it suggests a quite late date of the Matthew version of the gospel and late enough (later than John) that any disciple of Jesus would be dead, and Jesus still hadn't returned.

(1) and Bible apologists would not need to make donkeys of themselves trying to explain how Jesus could perform the feat of riding on two animals (of different sizes too) at once.