Matthew the Apostle

• 1. Introduction

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  Matthew the Apostle is a man whose job title survives in the Gospels longer than almost anything else about him. He sat at what older translations call the receipt of custom in Capernaum, collecting taxes, when Jesus told him to follow. That is where the scriptural record places him. After that, the trail splits into tradition, argument and legend. He is counted among the twelve apostles. Many Christians also call him one of the four Evangelists, and his name sits on the first Gospel of the New Testament. Yet most modern scholars doubt he wrote it. A Roman Catholic feast, a tomb in southern Italy, a Muslim tradition and a Druze belief about prophets in groups of five all circle the same figure. So who was Matthew, where did he go, and why do so many faiths and artists claim a piece of him?

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• 2. The Tax Collector

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  In Matthew 9:9, a tax collector sitting at his booth in Capernaum is called to follow Jesus, and the passage names him Matthew. Matthew 10:3 repeats the occupation in its list of the Twelve. Elsewhere the label disappears. Mark 3:18, Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13 list him among the Twelve without saying what he did for a living. The parallel passages in Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 tell an almost identical story, but they call the tax collector Levi, the son of Alphaeus. They never connect that name to Matthew, though the three accounts are remarkably similar. Tradition has long treated Matthew and Levi as one man. A second Alphaeus appears in the lists of apostles, the father of James. From the shared name, the Eastern Orthodox Church holds that Matthew and James, son of Alphaeus, were brothers. Whether that is history or inference, it shows how much weight later believers placed on one repeated name.

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• 3. Journey to Ethiopia

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  After the ascension, the New Testament shows the disciples withdrawing to an upper room in Jerusalem, traditionally the Cenacle, as described in Acts 1:10-14. They stayed in and around the city, proclaiming that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Beyond that, the sources thin out. Church Fathers such as Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria say Matthew preached first to the Jewish community in Judea and then travelled to other countries. Ancient writers disagree about which ones, yet almost all of them mention Ethiopia. The source suggests this was more likely the region south of the Caspian Sea, in ancient Persia, than the modern African nation. Muslim commentary preserves a related memory. It names Matthew, called Matta, and Andrew, called Andirawas, as the two disciples sent to Ethiopia. A reference in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, mentions a disciple named Mattai among five followers of Jeshu, and it appears to report an execution.

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• 4. Death at the Altar

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  According to some traditions, Matthew converted Ephigenia, the virgin daughter of King Egippus of Ethiopia, and consecrated her to God. When Egippus died, King Hirtacus took the throne and asked the apostle to persuade her to marry him. Matthew invited the new king to liturgy the following Sunday. There he rebuked Hirtacus for lusting after a woman who, as a nun, was already the bride of Christ. The furious king ordered his bodyguard to kill Matthew as he stood at the altar. Both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church hold that Matthew died a martyr. A different story survives in carved stone. A capital in the Basilica of Annunciation in Nazareth shows Matthew with a king named Eglypus of Aethiopia and his sons, leading them away from a demon in the far corner. Its imagery treats the conversion as a prelude to the martyrdom that followed.

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• 5. Who Wrote the Gospel

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  Around the 2nd century, the bishop Papias of Hierapolis, who lived roughly from AD 60 to 163, gave the earliest surviving word on the question. The church historian Eusebius, who lived from AD 260 to 340, cites him: Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each person interpreted them as best he could. The scholar Origen, who lived from about 184 to about 253, also said the first Gospel came from Matthew. He said it was composed in Hebrew near Jerusalem for Hebrew Christians and then translated into Greek. A Hebrew original was said to be kept at the Library of Caesarea. Sometime in the late 4th or early 5th century, the Nazarene Community copied it for Jerome, who put it to use. Modern biblical scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman and James R. Edwards have challenged the idea that this text was the original of the Greek Matthew. Most scholars now hold that the Gospel was written anonymously and not by the apostle. They allow that it may contain a source he wrote, and they think the title "according to Matthew" was added in the 2nd century.

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• 6. Lost and Borrowed Gospels

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  In the 3rd century, Jewish-Christian groups such as the Nazarenes and the Ebionites used gospels attributed to Matthew. Only fragments remain, preserved in quotations by Jerome, Epiphanius and others. Most academic study follows the distinction set out in Schneemelcher's New Testament Apocrypha. It separates the Gospel of the Nazarenes, with 36 fragments, the Gospel of the Ebionites, with 7, and the Gospel of the Hebrews, with 7. Most critical commentators think these texts were composed in Greek and are related to the Greek Matthew. A minority see them as fragments of a lost Aramaic or Hebrew original. Jerome reports that the Nazarenes believed Matthew composed their Gospel of the Hebrews. Irenaeus and Epiphanius of Salamis treat it as a revised version of the canonical Gospel, and Epiphanius attributes the claim of Matthew's authorship to the Ebionites. A separate work, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, came much later. It is a 7th-century compilation of the Gospel of James, the Flight into Egypt and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

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• 7. Saint, Prophet, Painted Figure

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  Matthew is recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican churches. His tomb lies in the crypt of Salerno Cathedral in southern Italy. The Catholic, Anglican and two Lutheran bodies, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, all keep the 21st of September. The Eastern Orthodox Church marks the 16th of November, or the 29th by its other calendar, and joins him to the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles on the 30th of June, or the 13th of July. In Christian art he is usually shown with the winged man, one of the four living creatures of Revelation 4:7. The three paintings Caravaggio made of him in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, showing him called from the tax table, are landmarks of Western art. The Quran does not name Jesus's disciples, calling them helpers to the work of Allah, but Muslim commentary includes Matthew among them. Druze tradition honors him as a prophet, one of five first-century figures alongside Jesus, John the Baptist, Mark and Luke. The Druze believe great prophets arrive in groups of five, and the same logic names five in the age of the ancient Greeks, from Pythagoras to Empedocles. The source also lists Matthew's presence in fiction through The Master and Margarita, a thread it leaves undeveloped.

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