tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post115905869437210498..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Would Matthew Not Have Used Mark if He Really Wrote Matthew?Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-1159064453655815782006-09-23T22:20:00.000-04:002006-09-23T22:20:00.000-04:00The objection from dependence on Mark is weak, esp...The objection from dependence on Mark is weak, especially given the fact that <I>use</I> of Mark wouldn't prove a <I>need</I> for getting information from Mark.<BR/><BR/>Matthew didn't have much prominence in the early church aside from the assignment of this gospel to him, so it doesn't seem that his name would have come to mind to such an extent that there would be a universal speculation that he wrote it. We know that the early Christians were willing to acknowledge and discuss doubts about authorship, as we see with Hebrews, 2 Peter, etc.<BR/><BR/>The internal evidence is consistent with Matthean authorship. The gospel is highly Jewish (a genealogy that only goes back to Abraham and a lot of mention of the fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures, for example), and there's a lot of use of monetary language. Matthew is described differently in this gospel than in the other two Synoptics (compare Matthew 9:9 with Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27; compare Matthew 10:3 to Mark 3:18 and Luke 6:15).<BR/><BR/>The date of the document is appropriate for Matthean authorship also. Even liberal scholars acknowledge that it's a first century document. It's probably pre-70. There isn't as much detail in Matthew 24 as a post-70 author seems likely to have included, nor does the author mention any fulfillment of the prophecy. The gospel's emphasis on the Sadducees makes more sense pre-70 as well. D.A. Carson notes that "Matthew records more warnings against the Sadducees than all other NT writers combined; and after A.D. 70 the Sadducees no longer existed as a center of authority" (The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Matthew, Chapters 1 Through 12 [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995], pp. 20-21). If the gospel is pre-70, as the evidence suggests, then it's well within the plausible lifetime of Matthew, and Matthew's disciples and those of the other apostles would have lived until much later than the document's date of composition. If it was attributed to Matthew from the start, then many people would have been alive who would have known better. And if somebody wants to argue that it was anonymous or attributed to somebody other than Matthew at first, then was attributed to Matthew after Matthew and the apostles' disciples (or just Matthew's disciples) were dead, then we'd have to assume that the document circulated anonymously or with another name for a few or several decades. Why doesn't any alternate attribution show up in the historical record, then? Matthean authorship is the best explanation of the evidence.Jason Engwerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17031011335190895123noreply@blogger.com