Who Wrote the Gospel of Matthew?

The Gospel of Matthew is an anonymous work, but ancient church tradition universally supports Matthean authorship of this Gospel. Papias (early second-century church leader from what is now Turkey, though he is dependent upon an earlier source), Pantaenus (d. c. AD 200, theologian who taught in Alexandria), Tertullian (c. AD 160–220, apologist from northeast Africa), Irenaeus (d. c. AD 202, church leader from Western Europe), Origen (c. AD 185–254, a scholar who died in Caesarea by the Sea), Eusebius (c. AD 263–339, a church leader and “father of church history” from Caesarea by the Sea), Jerome (c. AD 347–420, a priest and scholar from southeastern Europe), and Augustine (AD 354–430, a scholar from North Africa who also lived in Rome and Milan) say so. A major concern is the “Papias Fragment” in which he made the cryptic statement, “Matthew put together the oracles of the Lord in the Hebrew language.” (Similar statements are made by Pantaenus, Irenaeus, and Origen, but they may depend upon Papias’s comments).

No consensus exists regarding what this statement means, but Matthew gives little evidence of being translated from a Semitic language into Greek. It may mean that Matthew wrote sayings of Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic and later incorporated them into the Greek Gospel of Matthew (for the details on this view, cf. Daniel B. Wallace, “Matthew: Introduction, Argument, and Outline,” accessed September 8, 2009). It is also possible that Papias was wrong regarding an initial Semitic work by Matthew, and that Matthew wrote in Greek the gospel extant today. The key is to recognize that these ancient writers ascribe to Matthew some sort of work about Jesus’ life.