Figure

Matthew

Apostles

Matthew, also called Levi, was a tax collector, a despised publican sitting at his customs booth when Jesus said simply, Follow me, and he rose and left everything to follow. That a collaborator with Rome should be chosen among the Twelve became a sign of the reach of grace. Tradition names him the author of the first Gospel, written to show Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel, and his symbol is the winged man or angel, for that Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Christ. As archetype he is the creator and record-keeper, the transformed sinner who sets down the good news for all generations.

Facts

Attributions

Mythic Association

Identified in the Gospels as a tax collector, Levi, called by Jesus while sitting at his tax booth, an occupation that would have made him a social outcast among his fellow Jews under Roman rule. 1

Life

Office Held

Worked as a tax collector at Capernaum, in the service of Roman rule, before being called by Jesus, per Matthew 9:9. 3

Manner of Death

Martyred 1

Christian tradition holds he was martyred, though the surviving accounts disagree sharply on where and how: separate traditions place his death in Ethiopia, Persia, or elsewhere, with methods ranging from beheading to burning, so the fact of a martyr's death is attested while its specific circumstances are not.

Identity

Also Known As

Traditionally credited as the author of the first canonical Gospel, an attribution modern biblical scholarship treats as uncertain. 1

Symbol

His evangelist symbol is the winged man, drawn from the four living creatures of Ezekiel's vision, read as reflecting his Gospel's opening emphasis on Christ's human genealogy. 1

Gender

Male 1

Origins

Place of Origin

Capernaum, where the gospels place him at the tax booth 1

Position Profile

Key Text

The Gospel bearing his name traditionally stands first among the four canonical gospels, though most modern scholars regard Mark as written earlier and consider Matthew a later text drawing on Mark alongside other sources. 3

Attestation

Historicity

Historically attested 1

Veneration Today

Actively venerated in a living tradition 2

Traditions Revering This Figure

Christianity 2

Canonization

Pre-Congregation: venerated before any formal process existed 1Christianity

Veneration

Feast Day

His feast day is kept on September 21 in the Western church and on November 16 in the Eastern churches. 1

Patronage

Venerated as patron of tax collectors, bankers and accountants, drawing on his former profession before he was called. 1

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The Tax Collector Called from the Toll Booth

Matthew is listed among the twelve in all four Gospels. In the Gospel that bears his name he is called Matthew and identified as a tax collector, summoned from his toll booth with a single word and giving a feast at which Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, to the scandal of the pious. The Gospels of Mark and Luke tell the same call story but name the man Levi, and the church early identified the two as one person under two names.

The detail carries weight in its setting. A tax or toll collector in Roman Galilee was a Jew working the customs of a foreign power, handling Gentile coin, widely despised as both a collaborator and a cheat. That Jesus should call such a man, and that the movement should remember one of the twelve as having been one, is the kind of detail a tradition is unlikely to have invented and it fits the Gospels' insistence that the call went to the disreputable.

Beyond the call and the lists, the New Testament tells us nothing of what Matthew did or where he went. His later fame rests instead on a book, and on an ancient claim about who wrote it.

The Gospel Attributed to Him, and the Missions Assigned to Him

The First Gospel circulated anonymously and acquired the name of Matthew early. The oldest surviving statement, from Papias in the early second century, says that Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, and each interpreted them as he could, a sentence much argued over.

Modern scholarship generally doubts that the apostle wrote the Gospel as it stands. The canonical Matthew is in fluent Greek, not translated from Hebrew or Aramaic; it draws heavily on the Gospel of Mark, reproducing much of it almost word for word, which is a strange thing for an eyewitness apostle to do with a non-apostle's book; and its polished form points to a later author. What Papias described, perhaps a collection of sayings, may lie somewhere behind it, but the attribution is treated as traditional rather than established.

The traditions of his mission scatter widely: Ethiopia, Persia, or Parthia, with martyrdom in some accounts and a peaceful death in others. None is early or secure. His emblem among the four evangelists is the man or angel, because his Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Jesus, and he is invoked as patron of tax collectors, accountants and bankers, a wry legacy of the trade he was called to leave.

Matthew

1 entry

Originates In Language

Attributed To

Belongs To Tradition

Parent Scripture

Language

Gospel of Matthew

Matthew

Connections

Associated With

Christ's Presence, What Does It Mean to You? (jw.org)

This source names Matthew directly: "have understood this generation at Matthew 24:34, quoting the 1 November 1995 Watchtower's explanation that the term meant the contemporaneous generation of unbelievers who would see the sign of..."

Source Christ's Presence, What Does It Mean to You? (jw.org)

Does God Support Same-Sex Marriage? (INC Media)

This source names Matthew directly: "a woman, citing Genesis 1:27-28 and Matthew 19:4-6, and that same-sex sexual conduct, distinct from same-sex attraction itself, is treated as sin barring inheritance of the kingdom of God, citing 1..."

Source Does God Support Same-Sex Marriage? (INC Media)the holders' own account

How Do Jehovah's Witnesses View Divorce? (jw.org)

This source names Matthew directly: "for divorce is sexual immorality" (Matthew 19:5, 6, 9), and that "someone who chooses to divorce without Scriptural grounds is not Scripturally free to remarry" (1 Timothy 3:1, 5, 12)."

Source How Do Jehovah's Witnesses View Divorce? (jw.org)the holders' own account

Isaiah 7:14

This source names Matthew directly: "The Septuagint rendered almah by parthenos, virgin, and Matthew quotes the Greek."

Source The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901), verse-per-line textAmerican Revision Committee

Matthew the Apostle (Wikipedia)

This source names Matthew directly: "A Wikipedia article on Matthew the Apostle, recording that, like the other three evangelists, he is traditionally depicted in Christian art alongside one of the four living creatures of Revelation..."

Source Matthew the Apostle (Wikipedia)

Saint Matthew and the Angel, accession 12.14 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

This source names Matthew directly: "Art's own collection record for "Saint Matthew and the Angel," an oil on canvas by the Italian painter Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo (Brescia, 1480/85 to after 1548), painted between about 1508 and 1548."

Source Saint Matthew and the Angel, accession 12.14 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The Biblical Ideal of Marriage and Family (United Pentecostal Church International)

This source names Matthew directly: "one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-9; Ephesians 5:22-25, 28), married by law in accordance with all biblical injunctions," with the extended family comprised of relatives by blood and..."

Source The Biblical Ideal of Marriage and Family (United Pentecostal Church International)the holders' own account

The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke

This source names Matthew directly: "on the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, examining their composition, sources and theological purposes verse by verse."

Source The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and LukeRaymond E. Brown

The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic Problem

This source names Matthew directly: "the Farrer hypothesis, that Luke used Matthew directly, against the majority view that Matthew and Luke both drew on a lost sayings source called Q."

Source The Case Against Q: Studies in Marcan Priority and the Synoptic ProblemMark Goodacre

The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The End That Never Came? C.S. Lewis on the Bible's Most Embarrassing Verse

This source names Matthew directly: "Mark 13:30, the Gospel parallel to Matthew 24:34's "this generation will not pass away," as what Lewis himself called "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible," and for its account of Lewis's own..."

Source The End That Never Came? C.S. Lewis on the Bible's Most Embarrassing VerseJohn Nelson (C.S. Lewis Institute), discussing C.S. Lewis's essay "The World's Last Night"

The Garima Gospels

This source names Matthew directly: "among them four evangelist portraits (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and a portrait of Eusebius of Caesarea."

Source Wikipedia, "Garima Gospels"Wikipedia contributors

The Holy Innocents, 28 December

This source names Matthew directly: "the infants of Bethlehem the Gospel of Matthew describes Herod ordering killed to eliminate the infant Jesus as a rival."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The New Testament, Gospel of Matthew

This source names Matthew directly: "This entry cites the Gospel of Matthew directly as primary New Testament scripture, traditionally attributed to the apostle Matthew though the text itself does not name its author, which is why the..."

Source The New Testament, Gospel of MatthewAnonymous

The Watchtower Reinterprets This Generation

This source names Matthew directly: "had understood this generation at Matthew 24:34, the generation Jesus said would not pass away before all these things take place, to mean the specific generation of people alive in 1914, the year..."

Source Christ's Presence, What Does It Mean to You? (jw.org)

Attributed Works

Gospel of Matthew

Source Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia)

The Parable of the Sower

Source Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia)

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Depicted In

Saint Matthew and the Angel (Savoldo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12.14)

The painting's directly named subject per the museum's own title, shown with the angel his own Gospel-writing tradition assigns him, matching the corroborating Wikipedia record's account of that same attribute.

Source Saint Matthew and the Angel, accession 12.14 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Additional Source Matthew the Apostle (Wikipedia)

Revered In

Christianity

Studied

Jesus

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

Works Attributed

Gospel of Matthew

Why this is disputed. Tradition, reported by the second century bishop Papias, credits Matthew the tax collector and apostle with composing the Gospel, originally in Hebrew or Aramaic by that account. Critical scholarship generally regards the Gospel as an anonymous later composition, most likely by a Jewish Christian scribe writing in Greek who drew on Mark and a hypothetical sayings source, since the Gospel shows no sign of being an eyewitness account or a translation from a Semitic original, and Papias's testimony is usually read as describing a different, now lost work rather than the Gospel of Matthew itself.

Source The Catholic EncyclopediaCharles George Herbermann et al. (eds.)

Sources

1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Matthew, St; the authorship of the First GospelView the Source

2. Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source

3. The Holy Bible

Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27-32 (Levi); the lists of the twelveView the Source

The Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica)

Eusebius of Caesarea, 325Book III.39; Papias on Matthew compiling the sayings in Hebrew

Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia)

Attributed Works: Gospel of Matthew, Introduction
Attributed Works: The Parable of the Sower, Authorship section
it was attributed to Matthew very early and was highly popular in the early church

View the Source

Matthew the Apostle (Wikipedia)

WikipediaDepicted In: Saint Matthew and the Angel (Savoldo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12.14)

Quote, Depicted In: Saint Matthew and the Angel (Savoldo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12.14)

Matthew is often depicted in Christian art with one of the four living creatures of Revelation 4:7. The one that accompanies him is in the form of a winged man.

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Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

Associated With

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Belongs to Tradition

Depicted In

Revered In

Studied

Works Attributed