O'Donoghue MTh_Thesis-FinalCopy.pdf - South African Theological ...

to have used it as a source (France 1989:83). It is likely that both Ignatius and theDidache referred to Matthew’s Gospel, meaning this gospel could not have beenwritten after 100 A.D. (Senior 1997:81).Carter (2000:916) notes that Matthew referring to the destruction of the templeproves the book must be written after 70 A.D. as Matthew gives a theologicalinterpretation of why the events happened. The orientation of Matthew towards achurch community and the debate Matthew’s Gospel projects against the Pharisees,suggests that Matthew aims to define the church community as separate to aPharisaic tradition (Johnson 1999:191). The Pharisaic movement is thought tobecome dominant after the fall of the Temple in 70AD.However, the 80-90 A.D. dating view, while common, does not necessarily stand upto reason (DeSilva 2004:238). The reasons for this are as follows: Firstly, there weretensions between the Jewish community and the Christian Jewish community rightafter the time of Christ’s ascension. Thus it does not follow that it was written after70AD during the rise of the Pharisaic tradition. Secondly, Matthew’s reference to thedestruction of Jerusalem could well be attributed to prophecy (France 2009: 906).One could argue that the prophecies make a strong case for a dating before 70 A.D;as (if the prophecies were already fulfilled) one would think there would be somereferences to the fulfillment of these prophecies (France 1989:85). There are alsoreferences in Matthew’s Gospel that suggest that the temple was still in tact.Furthermore, while modern scholars generally accepted that Mark was writtenaround 65 A.D. this in fact may not be true (France 1989:82-83). The early church’sbelief that Matthew was written first would place the Gospel in the early 60’s.Irenaues dates the Gospel in the early 60’s, and there seems to be nothing availableto contradict his belief (France 1989:88).2.3 AuthorshipThe Early church believed that the Gospel was written by the apostle Matthew(France 1989:77). The Orthodox Protestant view holds the same (Lioy 2004:11-12).10