How authentic is Matthew's Gospel?

Answer 1

A:There are several dimensions to this question. First of all, the four New Testament gospels were all written anonymously and only attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear, later in the second century. Matthew's Gospel is not authentic in terms of authorship by the named apostle - but this also applies to the other gospels.

The Church Fathers in the second century noticed that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels. They believed that Matthew was the first gospel to be written, and that much of the material in Mark and Luke were copied from it. Modern biblical scholars agree that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels, but have demonstrated that Matthew and Luke were actually copied from Mark, often using the same words in the original Greek language. As the author of Matthew's Gospel knew nothing of the mission of Jesus other than what he obtained from Mark (and 'Q'), the Gospel can be no more authentic that Mark's and is potentially less so.

Scholars have long recognised that the two nativity stories in Matthew and Luke are irreconcilable, with each appearing to have been written independently of the other to prove the divine nature of Jesus' birth. Neither author knew what the other would write, so they simply produced two very different nativity stories, neither of which is believed likely to be historically true, by most biblical scholars. And Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) said of the discrepancies in the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, "Inspiration does not guarantee historicity or reconcilability; otherwise God should have inspired the two evangelists to give us the same record.

The author of Matthew's gospel wrote a resurrection account that is clearly different from the others. The discrepancies in all four resurrection accounts prompted Archbishop Peter Carnley to write:

"The presence of discrepancies might be a sign of historicity if we had four clearly independent but slightly different versions of the story, if only for the reason that four witnesses are better than one. But, of course, it is now impossible to argue that what we have in the four gospel accounts of the empty tomb are four contemporaneous but independent accounts of the one event. Modern redactional studies of the traditions account for the discrepancies as literary developments at the hand of later redactors of what was originally one report of the empty tomb...

There is no suggestion that the tomb was discovered by different witnesses on four different occasions, so it is in fact impossible to argue that the discrepancies were introduced by different witnesses of the one event; rather, they can be explained as four different redactions for apologetic and kerygmatic reasons of a single story originating from one source."

That one source is, of course, Mark's Gospel.

Answer 2

A:There are several dimensions to this question. First of all, the four New Testament gospels were all written anonymously and only attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear, later in the second century. In spite of its attribution, Luke's Gospel is not authentic in terms of authorship by the named apostle.

The Church Fathers in the second century noticed that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels. They believed that Matthew was the first gospel to be written, and that much of the material in Mark and Luke were copied from it. Modern biblical scholars agree that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels, but have demonstrated that Matthew and Luke were actually copied from Mark, often using the same words in the original Greek language. An important difference is that Luke's Gospel does not incorporate any material from Mark 6:47-8:27a, a total of 74.5 verses that were probably on exactly 13 pages of Greek text missing from the copy of Mark's Gospel relied on by the author of Luke. This 'Missing Block' results in the curious conjunction found in Luke 9:18 "And it came to pass as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them ..." These clauses are more meaningful when found in Mark at the start and end of the Missing Block.

It has long been known that the genealogies in Matthewand Luke are entirely different and incompatible. Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says of the genealogies, "Inspiration does not guarantee historicity or reconcilability; otherwise God should have inspired the two evangelists to give us the same record." Of Luke's description of the birth of Jesus as taking place during the reign of King Herod but also during the census under Quirinius, Brown says the best explanation is that, although Luke likes to set his Christian drama in the context of well-known events from antiquity, sometimes he does so inaccurately.

The stories of the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Jesus are also different and incompatible. This has prompted Archbishop Peter Carnley to write:

"The presence of discrepancies might be a sign of historicity if we had four clearly independent but slightly different versions of the story, if only for the reason that four witnesses are better than one. But, of course, it is now impossible to argue that what we have in the four gospel accounts of the empty tomb are four contemporaneous but independent accounts of the one event. Modern redactional studies of the traditions account for the discrepancies as literary developments at the hand of later redactors of what was originally one report of the empty tomb...

There is no suggestion that the tomb was discovered by different witnesses on four different occasions, so it is in fact impossible to argue that the discrepancies were introduced by different witnesses of the one event; rather, they can be explained as four different redactions for apologetic and kerygmatic reasons of a single story originating from one source."

That one source is, of course, Mark's Gospel.