NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible CBSB_Digital Sampler | Page 29

Introduction to Matthew    | 1605
If Papias was wrong about some details, why should we trust him on others? This is a
legitimate concern. Nevertheless, some other factors may mitigate the concern. First,
some scholars believe that even if Papias does not properly describe our current Gospel of
Matthew, he preserves some genuine information; possibly Matthew wrote a collection of
Jesus’ sayings (fitting the meaning of Papias’s word here) in Hebrew or Aramaic, on which
oth ers (including Matthew’s later Gospel in Greek) drew. Second, people are usually more
apt to be correct about the simple fact of a document’s authorship than about the circum-
stances of its writing. So even if Papias was partly or largely wrong, if he knew anything
at all about these works written just a generation before him, he likely knew about their
authorship.
Another objection that some raise against the traditional belief that Matthew wrote this
Gospel is that Matthew, who was one of ­Jesus’ disciples (9:9; 10:3; Mk 3:18), would not need
to depend on Mark’s Gospel, since Matthew was an eyewitness of most of ­Jesus’ public
ministry. Ancient approaches to eyewitness sources differed somewhat from modern
approaches, however. Thus when the historian Xenophon writes an account of events in
which he participated, he nevertheless depends heavily on an earlier-published work by
another author, because the other work was already in wide circulation. By the same token,
Matthew could have been an eyewitness and nevertheless used Mark because its wide
circulation (or its association with Peter) made it a standard work. None of this proves that
Matthew wrote this Gospel. It does, however, call into question the conviction with which
some scholars dismiss that early tradition.
Provenance and Date
There is no consensus and no certain means of resolving Matthew’s precise setting or date.
Some general considerations may be relevant. Because Matthew, more than any other NT
document, addresses Jewish concepts closely paralleled in the emerging rabbinic move-
ment, the common scholarly view that he wrote from the Roman province of Syria (which
included Judea and Galilee) makes good sense. Some scholars also find similarities between
Matthew and other documents from early Syrian Christianity.
Because Matthew wrote in Greek, which dominated in Syria’s urban centers, rather than
Aramaic, which dominated in rural areas, Matthew’s core audience might have been located
in an urban setting. Many scholars thus suggest that Matthew writes especially for Antioch
in Syria. Antioch had a large Jewish community, one of the few Jewish communities not
devastated by the Judean war; it also was an early Christian center of mission to Gentiles
(Ac 11:20; 13:1 – 3; Gal 2:11 – 12).
Ultimately, what we can be sure of is that Matthew wrote especially to Jewish believers
in ­Jesus in the eastern Mediterranean world. Whatever specific “core” audience he may have
envisioned, as the author of a major literary work Matthew probably hoped that his Gospel
would circulate as widely as possible.
Matthew’s date is also a matter of much debate. If Matthew was the first Gospel writer,
he probably wrote before Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70. A larger number of scholars,
however, believe that Matthew made use of Mark’s Gospel, and many thus date Matthew
after 70. On this view, it is not surprising that Matthew must urge his Jewish Christian audi-
ence to bring the message of the kingdom to Gentiles — ​many Jewish followers of ­Jesus
at that time would have felt little love for the people who destroyed their holy city and
enslaved many of their people. Nevertheless, even before 70, tensions were building toward
that climax, so a similar background could be relevant on either dating.
A majority of scholars think that Matthew writes after 70 also because of allusions to the