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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

When Did They Start Calling Matthew "Matthew"?

The question was asked last night about when they began calling the Gospel of Matthew, "Matthew" since most scholars agree it was not written by the apostle by that name.

We spoke of the "Q" source, a collection of sayings of Jesus. Writing around 130 A.D., Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, tells us that the Apostle Matthew put together the discourses or 'sayings' of Jesus. This book was written in Aramaic, the common language spoken by first century Jews in Palestine, and by Jesus himself. Perhaps this was what modern scholars later called "Q". That is a guess, and it no longer exists by itself, as far as we know. St. Irenaeus (about 180 A.D.) reports the same tradition.

It is possible that this collection by an eyewitness, as well as the Gospel of Mark, were used to fashion both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. If that is so, then the tradition that one source was collected by Matthew could have been the origin of calling the Gospel by that name.

As I said, we don't have a copy of "Q". However, we didn't have copies of most of the Gnostic gospels either, until a cache of them was found in Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. (A discovery similar to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.) It could be that this Aramaic text is buried someplace dry just waiting for our discovery of it. But, that is nothing that should keep you up nights.

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