Who was the author of Matthew?

[jd01]

Who was the author of Matthew? There is almost no information on him.

[Tcg]

Peace to you,

John self identifies himself in the Gospel.

They only Johns I can find in mentioned in gospel John are John the Baptist and John the father of Simon Peter. Where is the self-identification you are referring to?
Tcg

The author self-identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. There is a universal agreement in the Early Church that a certain John wrote the Gospel. Most later assumed it was John the Disciple but Papias is careful to identify John, the Elder and internal evidence suggests he was the author. I go over the details in my book.

A good argument has been made that the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus. Yes, the author identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. He does NOT self-identify as John. To claim to know what the Early Church universally agreed on is quite a stretch. It wouldn't be possible to even know everyone who was a part of the Early Church much less what they did or did not agree on.


Tcg

Yes, and (as my Lord showed me) Lazarus is indeed identified in that gospel as the one He loved. This makes the author of "John" an eyewitness, even if most won't accept that. Just not the eyewitness that has been traditionally taught.

Luke is not an eyewitness though (as has been said in this thread). Nor does he ever claim to be an eyewitness. He claims to have investigated and then written an orderly report from what others who were eyewitnesses had handed down to them.

If Mark is a companion (or son... 1Peter 5:13) of Peter, then Mark probably got most of his information from Peter; though if Mark is Peter's actual son, he may have witnessed a few things himself.

Matthew is the one I am not sure about. I have that one in a "probably Levi" category.



Peace again to you!

If Lazarus was the author of Gospel John, that doesn't mean that he was an eyewitness of all the events in the book. Beyond that, eyewitness testimony has been shown to be very unreliable. I remember a documentary where the theft of a purse was staged in front of a number of people. Afterwords, these witnesses were interviewed, and many got major details wrong some even identifying the thief as a man when it was in fact a woman. This occurred even though they were interviewed immediately after the event. Imagine the error that could creep in when the witness is given years and even decades after the events described.

Recent studies have detailed this unreliability related to legal procedings:

BRIA 13 3 c How Reliable Are Eyewitnesses?

Studies have shown that mistaken eyewitness testimony accounts for about half of all wrongful convictions. Researchers at Ohio State University examined hundreds of wrongful convictions and determined that roughly 52 percent of the errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes. Legal scholar Edwin Borchard studied 65 cases of "erroneous criminal convictions of innocent people." Mistaken eyewitness identification was responsible for approximately 45 percent of Borchard's case studies.

.
.

Eyewitness testimony is powerful because most people believe that the human mind is able to record and store every detail of the events we experience. They believe that these permanently recorded memories, thoughts, and impressions can be retrieved, even from realms of the forgotten and the subconscious. In fact, says psychologist Lofthus, "human memory is far from perfect or permanent and forgetfulness is a fact of life."

https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights- ... 20mistakes.

Clearly, eyewitness testimony is not a guarantee that what is reported is accurate.


Tcg

[TRANSPONDER]

Peace to you,

John self identifies himself in the Gospel.

They only Johns I can find in mentioned in gospel John are John the Baptist and John the father of Simon Peter. Where is the self-identification you are referring to?
Tcg

The author self-identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. There is a universal agreement in the Early Church that a certain John wrote the Gospel. Most later assumed it was John the Disciple but Papias is careful to identify John, the Elder and internal evidence suggests he was the author. I go over the details in my book.

A good argument has been made that the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus. Yes, the author identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. He does NOT self-identify as John. To claim to know what the Early Church universally agreed on is quite a stretch. It wouldn't be possible to even know everyone who was a part of the Early Church much less what they did or did not agree on.


Tcg

Yes, and (as my Lord showed me) Lazarus is indeed identified in that gospel as the one He loved. This makes the author of "John" an eyewitness, even if most won't accept that. Just not the eyewitness that has been traditionally taught.

Luke is not an eyewitness though (as has been said in this thread). Nor does he ever claim to be an eyewitness. He claims to have investigated and then written an orderly report from what others who were eyewitnesses had handed down to them.

If Mark is a companion (or son... 1Peter 5:13) of Peter, then Mark probably got most of his information from Peter; though if Mark is Peter's actual son, he may have witnessed a few things himself.

Matthew is the one I am not sure about. I have that one in a "probably Levi" category.



Peace again to you!

At one time I was half convinced that the writer of 'John' had an eyewitness account, even though the writer edited it heavily to add his own preaching and arguments put into Jesus' mouth. The sending of a message to Jesus in Peraea, Jesus waiting 2 days before setting out, the exchanges between Jesus and Lazarus' sisters all sounded rather detailed, though what it says is that the whole thing was a faked miracle to impress Jesus' followers. But the problem is that it's like Matthew Mark and Luke have never heard of it. I wondered whether they could have omitted it because it looks a fake, but that's not what they do , normally. So I'm leaning to the view that 'John' made the whole thing up.

But Matthew - at the risk of repeating myself, is demonstrably not a follower of Jesus or even a Jew. He shows with the Virgin misreading, the two Donkey mistake, the Babes and suckling misread and the misread of Rachel's children to get a prophecy on his invented nativity massacre out of it, that he had to read his OT material in Greek. Add to that the "Interpretation" of King of the Jews as prophesied messiah rather than pretender to the throne. Given that Herod sees the new born king as a political threat, his rushing to scripture and assurances that he only wishes to Worship the babe shows that in addition to being a Greek, he is also a Christian Greek, as that's how he interprets 'Messiah' (Christ). And he rather had it in for the Jews, too. I don't know who he was, but I reckon I know what he was.

[christian001]

The gospel of Matthew was attributed to Matthew by the early church fathers. https://www.explainchristianity.com/who ... -and-john/ Matthew probably wrote a Hebrew edition, followed by a Greek edition. https://www.explainchristianity.com/was ... -or-greek/

[Clownboat]

The gospel of Matthew was attributed to Matthew by the early church fathers.

Just like how early Mormons attributed that Joseph Smith found golden plates and magic glasses to write his Book of Mormon.
I'm not gullible enough to believe either claim without evidence considering the sources and their agendas to push a new religion. Why would we trust early church fathers and not early Mormon followers? Special pleading it would seem.

Matthew probably wrote a Hebrew edition, followed by a Greek edition.

Please show your work so we can all arrive at this conclusion. 'Probably' is not a great start though obviously.

[TRANSPONDER]

The gospel of Matthew was attributed to Matthew by the early church fathers. https://www.explainchristianity.com/who ... -and-john/ Matthew probably wrote a Hebrew edition, followed by a Greek edition. https://www.explainchristianity.com/was ... -or-greek/

I have already given reasons why Matthew (author of) could not have written a Hebrew edition; he could not read Hebrew, because if he could he would not have made the mistakes he made through working from the Greek septuagint.

What reasons are there for thinking there was a hebrew original (of Matthew's version)? Nothing I can see other than a circular argument - the Gospel account was written by followers of Jesus who were Jews, thus it is a reasonable supposition that they originally wrote in Hebrew, and it was translated into Greek.

Circular because the conclusion depends on a premise that depends on the conclusion being right. And The argument has legs because there is no call to disbelieve a book unless there is good reason.

I have already given good reason to suppose that Matthew was not written by a Jew, one of the 12, or an eyewitness, but by a Greek, a Pauline Christian and one who himself adapted and added to a Christian gospel already remote from any true things that Jesus did.

[Inquirer]

Who was the author of Matthew? There is almost no information on him.

Matthew may be the earliest of the three Gospels, there is an interesting book by the late Enoch Powell (a scholar in this area) that argues the case well.

But as to the question, here is the preface from that book, makes some good points:

To study documents with a view to discovering how they are related to one another and how their respective contents are to be accounted for is the business of literary and textual criticism rather than of history. But it would be absurd to pretend that the results have no implications for history. In themselves documents belong to history: they were produced at a particular time in a particular place by people who were not insulated from the society and the world around them. In that sense, the mutual relationship and the manner of origin of the gospels belong to history. But their content belongs to history in another sense too. To conclude, as this study does, that the contents, because they are part of a theological debate, are not reportage or narratives is not to conclude that they presuppose no historical events or persons. The Iliad is poetry and imaginative creation; but it would not have existed if there had not once been a great war and a long siege. The results of this study therefore raise historical issues, which ought not to be pretended away.

There was a moment when somebody first pointed to a piece of bread and said: ‘It is His body.’ That action implied on his part and on that of those to whom he spoke that they knew who was the ‘He’ implied in ‘His’. There was also a moment when that knowledge first came to be entertained – a moment before which no such notion existed. The crucial element turns out to be that ‘He was the son of God’, a statement so startling that it needed to form part of a narrative which explained it and would be capable of being transmitted in writing. The making of that statement and its committal, in whatever form, to writing were also events in history; and the examination of a document purporting to contain that narrative is a study of history, none the less so if the only reliable evidence for it is provided by the document itself. The attempt to account for the widespread acceptance and prevalence of the ritual meal through time and place belongs to disciplines other than history and criticism, and forms no part of this book. The document, along with others, constitutes, and from an early stage has always constituted, the accompaniment – as the chorus of a Greek tragedy accompanies and interprets the action upon the stage – of the liturgical worship of the Christian Church. That worship does not stand or fall by whatever may have been the textual history of the document, but derives its authority and its persuasiveness from the immemorial practice and the experience of the Church itself.

To ask questions which a document itself poses and to persevere in attempting to answer those questions as rationally as any others offered to human curiosity cannot infringe belief or worship. Indeed, for many of those who find themselves confronting perplexities in their study of the first gospel, it may be a relief to know that those perplexities are not private to themselves but exercised the minds of others from an early stage in the creation and transmission of the book. For me the most surprising experience has been to be led to perceive from how early a period in the evolution of the gospel the forms and ideas of worship were recognizably the same as they have continued down the ages.

The scholarship of centuries has been devoted to the document which forms the subject of this book. It was my method in studying it to clear the mind as far as possible of preconceptions or conclusions arrived at earlier by others; and I have deliberately therefore neither ascertained nor recorded previous agreement or disagreement with the results I propose.
The evolution which I am concerned to explore was complete before the divergences in manuscript transmission which apparatus critici record arose. I have used the British and Foreign Bible Society text and apparatus as published in 1958, but those who use a different edition will find no serious inconvenience.

[Tcg]

Matthew may be the earliest of the three Gospels

Three? Even in the cannon there are four. And there are many that are outside of the cannon. Of course, who cares about the number of tales about Jesus which exist? The amount is meaningless if one desires to understand reality. Oddly, that isn't the priority of some.


Tcg

[tam]

Peace to you,

Peace to you,

John self identifies himself in the Gospel.

They only Johns I can find in mentioned in gospel John are John the Baptist and John the father of Simon Peter. Where is the self-identification you are referring to?
Tcg

The author self-identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. There is a universal agreement in the Early Church that a certain John wrote the Gospel. Most later assumed it was John the Disciple but Papias is careful to identify John, the Elder and internal evidence suggests he was the author. I go over the details in my book.

A good argument has been made that the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus. Yes, the author identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. He does NOT self-identify as John. To claim to know what the Early Church universally agreed on is quite a stretch. It wouldn't be possible to even know everyone who was a part of the Early Church much less what they did or did not agree on.


Tcg

Yes, and (as my Lord showed me) Lazarus is indeed identified in that gospel as the one He loved. This makes the author of "John" an eyewitness, even if most won't accept that. Just not the eyewitness that has been traditionally taught.

Luke is not an eyewitness though (as has been said in this thread). Nor does he ever claim to be an eyewitness. He claims to have investigated and then written an orderly report from what others who were eyewitnesses had handed down to them.

If Mark is a companion (or son... 1Peter 5:13) of Peter, then Mark probably got most of his information from Peter; though if Mark is Peter's actual son, he may have witnessed a few things himself.

Matthew is the one I am not sure about. I have that one in a "probably Levi" category.



Peace again to you!

If Lazarus was the author of Gospel John, that doesn't mean that he was an eyewitness of all the events in the book. Beyond that, eyewitness testimony has been shown to be very unreliable. I remember a documentary where the theft of a purse was staged in front of a number of people. Afterwords, these witnesses were interviewed, and many got major details wrong some even identifying the thief as a man when it was in fact a woman. This occurred even though they were interviewed immediately after the event. Imagine the error that could creep in when the witness is given years and even decades after the events described.

The thing that pops out the most to me: even in your example, the actual event that people witnessed did happen. Even if some got the details wrong. That actually works against any argument that if details are wrong (or even conflicting), the event must not have happened. The example above shows the exact opposite, that it is normal for witnesses to get details wrong, even though the event everyone is reporting ACTUALLY happened.

(And keep in mind that the witnesses that got major details wrong, they were going about their own business, distracted with their own thing. They weren't paying singular attention to the theft. Their witness was just happenstance. But they still witnessed a theft.)

Recent studies have detailed this unreliability related to legal procedings:

BRIA 13 3 c How Reliable Are Eyewitnesses?

Studies have shown that mistaken eyewitness testimony accounts for about half of all wrongful convictions. Researchers at Ohio State University examined hundreds of wrongful convictions and determined that roughly 52 percent of the errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes. Legal scholar Edwin Borchard studied 65 cases of "erroneous criminal convictions of innocent people." Mistaken eyewitness identification was responsible for approximately 45 percent of Borchard's case studies.

I don't doubt that, because a witnesses to a crime might not get a good look at the person committing the crime (as in the example you gave above). I think I also read a study once that people may have trouble recognizing facial differences in people of another ethnicity. This leaves room for error in identifying the perpetrator of a crime.

Eyewitness testimony is powerful because most people believe that the human mind is able to record and store every detail of the events we experience. They believe that these permanently recorded memories, thoughts, and impressions can be retrieved, even from realms of the forgotten and the subconscious. In fact, says psychologist Lofthus, "human memory is far from perfect or permanent and forgetfulness is a fact of life."
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights- ... 20mistakes.

Clearly, eyewitness testimony is not a guarantee that what is reported is accurate.

That is true. But discrepancies in details does not mean that the actual event did not happen.



Peace again to you!

[Tcg]

Peace to you,

Peace to you,

John self identifies himself in the Gospel.

They only Johns I can find in mentioned in gospel John are John the Baptist and John the father of Simon Peter. Where is the self-identification you are referring to?
Tcg

The author self-identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. There is a universal agreement in the Early Church that a certain John wrote the Gospel. Most later assumed it was John the Disciple but Papias is careful to identify John, the Elder and internal evidence suggests he was the author. I go over the details in my book.

A good argument has been made that the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus. Yes, the author identifies himself as the Beloved Disciple. He does NOT self-identify as John. To claim to know what the Early Church universally agreed on is quite a stretch. It wouldn't be possible to even know everyone who was a part of the Early Church much less what they did or did not agree on.


Tcg

Yes, and (as my Lord showed me) Lazarus is indeed identified in that gospel as the one He loved. This makes the author of "John" an eyewitness, even if most won't accept that. Just not the eyewitness that has been traditionally taught.

Luke is not an eyewitness though (as has been said in this thread). Nor does he ever claim to be an eyewitness. He claims to have investigated and then written an orderly report from what others who were eyewitnesses had handed down to them.

If Mark is a companion (or son... 1Peter 5:13) of Peter, then Mark probably got most of his information from Peter; though if Mark is Peter's actual son, he may have witnessed a few things himself.

Matthew is the one I am not sure about. I have that one in a "probably Levi" category.



Peace again to you!

If Lazarus was the author of Gospel John, that doesn't mean that he was an eyewitness of all the events in the book. Beyond that, eyewitness testimony has been shown to be very unreliable. I remember a documentary where the theft of a purse was staged in front of a number of people. Afterwords, these witnesses were interviewed, and many got major details wrong some even identifying the thief as a man when it was in fact a woman. This occurred even though they were interviewed immediately after the event. Imagine the error that could creep in when the witness is given years and even decades after the events described.

The thing that pops out the most to me: even in your example, the actual event that people witnessed did happen. Even if some got the details wrong. That actually works against any argument that if details are wrong (or even conflicting), the event must not have happened. The example above shows the exact opposite, that it is normal for witnesses to get details wrong, even though the event everyone is reporting ACTUALLY happened.

(And keep in mind that the witnesses that got major details wrong, they were going about their own business, distracted with their own thing. They weren't paying singular attention to the theft. Their witness was just happenstance. But they still witnessed a theft.)

Recent studies have detailed this unreliability related to legal procedings:

BRIA 13 3 c How Reliable Are Eyewitnesses?

Studies have shown that mistaken eyewitness testimony accounts for about half of all wrongful convictions. Researchers at Ohio State University examined hundreds of wrongful convictions and determined that roughly 52 percent of the errors resulted from eyewitness mistakes. Legal scholar Edwin Borchard studied 65 cases of "erroneous criminal convictions of innocent people." Mistaken eyewitness identification was responsible for approximately 45 percent of Borchard's case studies.

I don't doubt that, because a witnesses to a crime might not get a good look at the person committing the crime (as in the example you gave above). I think I also read a study once that people may have trouble recognizing facial differences in people of another ethnicity. This leaves room for error in identifying the perpetrator of a crime.

Eyewitness testimony is powerful because most people believe that the human mind is able to record and store every detail of the events we experience. They believe that these permanently recorded memories, thoughts, and impressions can be retrieved, even from realms of the forgotten and the subconscious. In fact, says psychologist Lofthus, "human memory is far from perfect or permanent and forgetfulness is a fact of life."
https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights- ... 20mistakes.

Clearly, eyewitness testimony is not a guarantee that what is reported is accurate.

That is true. But discrepancies in details does not mean that the actual event did not happen.



Peace again to you!

No. It means that we have no idea of what actually happened.


Tcg

[Inquirer]

Matthew may be the earliest of the three Gospels

Three? Even in the cannon there are four. And there are many that are outside of the cannon. Of course, who cares about the number of tales about Jesus which exist? The amount is meaningless if one desires to understand reality. Oddly, that isn't the priority of some.
Tcg

Ha, the ease with which some say "understand reality" is breathtaking, if you really believe you understand reality then I won's spoil the fun for you.