Before he followed Jesus, Matthew was a tax collector — a telōnēs — working in Capernaum on behalf of Herod Antipas. Tax collectors we're hated by their fellow Jews: they we're collaborators with the occupying power, they enriched themselves by overcharging, and they we're classed in the rabbinic tradition alongside robbers.
In the Gospels
Jesus calls him with two words: "Follow me" (Matt. 9:9). Matthew gets up and leaves his tax booth — immediately, without negotiation. He then hosts a dinner for Jesus at his house, to which he invites "many tax collectors and sinners" (Matt. 9:10). This scene provokes the Pharisees' first recorded complaint about Jesus' table fellowship, and Jesus' response is one of the most quoted lines in the gospels: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick" (Matt. 9:12).
The Gospel of Mark and Luke call him "Levi" (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). The Gospel of Matthew calls him "Matthew." The identification of the two names is ancient and generally accepted, though some scholars have questioned it.
Author of the First Gospel?
Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century, wrote that "Matthew collected the oracles [logia] in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could" (quoted in Eusebius, EH 3.39.16). This is the earliest testimony about the authorship of Matthew.
Modern scholarship is divided. The Gospel as we have it is written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, and it draws extensively on the Gospel of Mark — which raises the question of how an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry would depend on a non-eyewitness (Mark, traditionally associated with Peter's preaching) for his narrative framework. Most critical scholars today hold that the Gospel was written by an anonymous Jewish-Christian author around AD 80–90, using Matthew the apostle's teaching traditions. Some conservative scholars continue to defend direct Matthean authorship.
Later Life and Death
Later traditions about Matthew are late and inconsistent. Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 200) says he preached to "Hebrews" for fifteen years after the resurrection. Eusebius records a tradition that he went to Ethiopia. Heracleon (a Gnostic writer) says he died a natural death; other sources say he was martyred by burning, stoning, or beheading. The details cannot be verified.
Sources
- Papias, quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.16.
- Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.16; 4.9.
- W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (T&T Clark, 1988), 7–58.
- Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 208–212.