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

This view is largely rejected by modern scholars for two reasons. Firstly mostmodern scholars assume a dating too late to be written by Mathew (France1989:77). Secondly, it is assumed that the Gospel is something other than a followerof Christ from Galilee would have fashioned.Davies (1993:1) would fall into the camp of scholars who believe the apostleMatthew did not write the gospel in question. He believes that the Gospel wasattributed to Matthew as author only late in the second century and for the purposeof apostolic authority. He also says that there is no external evidence for believingMatthew wrote the Gospel that bears his name.However, as noted in section 2.1, such a late dating may not be the case. Further,the move to a late dating and thus a move away from Matthew as author is based onthe assumption that the book could not have been written by an eye witness of theevents (Derickson 2003:87). However, the early church Fathers all attributed thework to Matthew (p.97). These men were decent scholars who would have basedtheir belief on “widespread testimony and not isolated personal theories.”France (1989:79) believes that it is reasonable to accept Matthew as the author asthere are factors in the text that would reflect the work of the “tax-collector apostle.”While it cannot be proved, there is also no reason to believe that the early churchmerely guessed that Matthew was the author or that is was a pseudonym (p.78).Thus, it can be reasonably assumed that the apostle Matthew is the author of thegospel.Of interest to the main problem of this thesis is that “Matthew was a tax collector,who left everything in his life for Jesus (Green 2000:25).” The significance ofMatthew as a tax collector and the consequent standing in the Jewish community willbe in other areas of this thesis.2.4 Origin2.4.1 Matthew’s communityThe attempt to find out who the original readers of Matthew were, is difficult. There is11