What was Matthew's influence on writing the Bible?

Answer 1

A:Matthew, the disciple of Jesus, seems to have had no influence on writing the New Testament.

When the Church Fathers first saw that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels, they assumed that the gospel they would attribute to Matthew was the original and that Mark and Luke were copied from it. This would mean that Matthew's influence was very considerable, having not only written one gospel, but having two of the other gospels based on that original.

Modern scholars agree that there is a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels but have established that the gospel the Church Fathers attributed to Mark was really the original and that most of Mark was copied by the author of Matthew. Not only do they say that Matthew was not written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed, but that it was largely derived from Mark and another source, the hypothetical 'Q' document.