Mark 3:18). Because Levis occupation was one that earned distrust and contempt everywhere, the scribes of the Pharisees criticized Jesus on seeing him eat with tax collectors and sinners, whereupon Jesus answered, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:1517). 3.39.17). The meaning in Hebrew of the word day always means a 24 hour period of time. The debate over the authorship of Matthews Gospel usually focuses on the replacement of Levi, the son of Alphaeus, with Matthew (Matt 9:9; contra Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27) and the addition of the descriptor the toll collector after Matthews name (Matt 10:3; contra Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). As most of us know, the tax collector named Levi became Saint Matthew. Clement, str. The other Eleven were ordinary men. Following Jesus Meant Matthew Lost His Lucrative Tax Collector Career. - And it came to pass - seems the best reading - as he was sitting at meat in his house.This was the house of Matthew. Richard Bauckham makes it clear why these examples may be irrelevant to this case: "[I]f Matthew and Levi were the same person, we should be confronted with the virtually unparalleled phenomenon of a Palestinian Jew bearing two common Semitic personal names (Matthew: ninth most popular, 62 occurrences; Levi: seventeenth most popular, 25 occurrences). The thesis that the first canonical Gospel was published under the name of a pseudonym is defended by George D. Kilpatrick. Among these repetitions are: variations of Mattathias (five times), Jesus (twice), Joseph (three times), Simeon (Semein), Levi (twice), and Melchi (twice). Regardless of how this name change is explained, this toll collector may have been trained in accounting and documenting records and may have been functionally bilingual or trilingual in order to converse with travellers moving between the territories of Philip and Antipas. Perhaps they did so because Levis call narrative closely resembled the summons of the first four apostles to discipleship in Mark 1:1620 and Alpheus was already remembered as the father of one of the apostles in Mark 3:18. Of course, their hippy-dippy ways are . For an alternative approach, W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann speculate that an Aramaic source identified the toll collector as a Levite and that this was mistranslated as the personal name Levi in the Greek texts of Mark and Luke. "Meet Nathanael in the Bible, the 'True Israelite'." Learn Religions, Dec. 6, 2021, learnreligions.com/nathanael-the-true-israelite-701068. [42] Luomanen, Jewish-Christian Sects, 21, 123; Frey, Die Fragmente des Ebionerevangeliums in Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher bersetzung. [20] Matthew Black, The Use of Rhetorical Terminology in Papias on Matthew and Mark JSNT 37 (1989): 32; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 222. 13:3; Pol. 3.39.17. (vv. Christ redeemed the priesthood of Levi back unto himself and redeemed Matthew the . Brian McNeil (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 40; Jennifer Wright Knust, Early Christian Re-writing and the History of the Pericope Adulterae, JECS 14 (2006): 495n34; Norelli, Papia, 33132, 335; MacDonald, Two Shipwrecked Gospels, 14, 1922, 24653; Jrg Frey, Die Fragmente des Hebrerevangeliums, in Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher bersetzung. He it was who gave a feast, for attending which Jesus and the disciples were severely criticized by the Pharisees, k on the charge that it was unseemly for Him to eat with publicans and sinners. Jesus invited Matthew (Levi) to follow him (Lk 5:27-32). C hristmas Day may be Dec. 25, but it's not the end of Christmas story. Krzinger and Gundry insist that, Krzinger enlists Irenaeus in support of his reading of Papias, despite the fact that Irenaeus used the article when affirming that Matthew wrote to the Hebrews in their, Hence, Krzinger identifies the each one (. He offered something infinitely better. The answer is very simple. A minority view during the Patristic period was that Levi and Matthew were separate individuals. Teilband 1, ed. Soon, Jesus and His disciples are having dinner in . Matthew, or Levi, son of Alpheus, was one of the seven who received a call to follow Christ before the ordination of the Twelve. 3.1.1). Even so, most readers of the New Testament throughout history have taken the identification of Levi with Matthew for granted. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered them, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Luke 5:27-32. [2] For some examples, see Robert Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthews Gospel: With Special Reference to the Messianic Hope(Leiden: Brill, 1975), 183; David Hill, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 1; R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 6768; Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 14; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 113 (Dallas: Word, 1993), lxxvi; D. A. Carson, Matthew: Chapters 1 through 12 (EBC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 1819; Grant R. Osbourne, Matthew, ECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 34; B. Follow me, Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Jonah was in the belly of the whale 4 days. 11.1-3; Pelag. [19] Yet our access to Papias is mediated through Eusebius, so it is uncertain whether Eusebius interrupted an interconnected statement about both evangelists or juxtaposed two separate excerpts from Papias together. B. 3.24.6; Origen, in h.e. [44] As for Jerome, he boasted that he translated the Gospel according to the Hebrews (e.g., Vir. Jesus believed that he had the same right to reassign a person's nameand therefore a person's life calling and destiny" (Cunningham). The whole crowd came to him, and he taught them. Perhaps they did so because Levis call narrative closely resembled the summons of the first four apostles to discipleship in Mark 1:1620 and Alpheus was already remembered as the father of one of the apostles in Mark 3:18. This makes it doubtful that Matthew 9:9 was intended as either the evangelists self-reference or as a pseudonymous literary device supplementing the ascription of this Gospel to Matthew. ed. It was to that man, the most despised of the despicable, to whom Jesus said, "Follow Me!" Mark 10:35) and swapped Salome for her in another (Matt 27:56; cf. [23] They render the verb hermeneuein as meaning to mediate or to interpret rather than to translate.[24] Hence, Krzinger identifies the each one (hekastos) who interpreted according to their ability as the evangelists conveying oral Jesus traditions in a new literary medium;[25] Gundry takes the referent to be the expositors who expounded on Matthews text. [8] Alternatively, the textual variant that has James instead of Levi as the son of Alphaeus in Mark 2:14 in a handful of manuscripts was plausibly motivated by a desire for uniformity by having a single son of Alphaeus (cf. Jesus Christ and Saint Peter have entered the room, and Jesus is pointing at Matthew. [10] For the debate over whether Mark 2:14 and 3:18 refer to the same individual or to two different individuals named Alphaeus, see Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 87n.17. On the other hand, after scrutinizing the onomastic data compiled by Tal Ilan. T/F. [1] They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. though this example differs slightly from Matthew 9:9 inasmuch as the woman is left unnamed. 2. The Calling of Matthew is an episode in the life of Jesus which appears in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew 9:9-13, Mark 2:13-17 and Luke 5:27-28, and relates the initial encounter between Jesus and Matthew, the tax collector who . "Follow me," he said to him. After Jesus grants Peter the keys to the kingdom (see below), Jesus explains . Matthew was saying, Jesus IS the fulfillment of Old Testament predictions of our coming Messiah, Anontied One. He is called the Son of David nine times in the Gospel of Matthew. [18] B. C. Butler, The Originality of St Matthew: A Critique of the Two-Document Hypothesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 16566; Albright and Mann, Matthew, XXXVIXLVIII; Powers, Progressive Publication, 4749. [24] Krzinger, Papias, 1516; Gundry, Matthew, 619; idem, Pre-Papian Tradition, 6162, 67. Some scholars believe that the tax-collector simply had two names, one in Greek (Matthew) and the other in Hebrew (Levi). Calling of St. Matthew by Alexandre Bida, 1875. Epiphanius added to the confusion when he imagined that the Gospel that he managed to get a hold of, which skips over the virgin birth and commences at Jesuss baptism (Pan. 2:1-10; Acts 8:9-24). Perhaps most plain is the calling of the disciple Matthew, also known as Levi the tax collector. Q. Outside the New Testament, a statement of importance about him is the passage from the Apostolic Father Papias of Hierapolis preserved by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea: So then Matthew composed the Oracles in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he could. The Gospel According to Matthew was certainly written for a Jewish-Christian church in a strongly Jewish environment, but that this Matthew is definitely the Synoptic author is seriously doubted. 29-30) There are sayings (Matt 13:3643) and stories (e.g., Matt 12) in Matthews special material, too. The other Eleven were ordinary men. Mark 16:1),[11] though this example differs slightly from Matthew 9:9 inasmuch as the woman is left unnamed. [34] The double tradition is mostly comprised of sayings, but there are a couple of narratives (e.g., Matt 4:111/Luke 4:113; Matt 8:513/Luke 7:110). 3.39.16 with the Gospel according to the Hebrews in h.e. This is a quite different case from that of an individual having both a Semitic and a Greek or Latin name, as well as from that of an individual having a Semitic name and also a nickname or family name."[7]. Because Matthews original purpose was to prove to his Jewish brethren that Jesus is their Mashiach/Messiah, he included in his Gospel nine proof texts from the Old Testament which Jesus fulfilledMatthew 1:22,23; 2:15; 2:17,18; 2:23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 27:9,10. Jesus came to give us the same choice he gave . March 2020. The story of Matthew's calling shows us the amazing power of God's grace and how it transforms people and become extraordinary servants of our Creator. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Beroea to copy it. Jerome: De viris inlustribus (On Illustrious Men), chapter III. [41] Contra Edwards, Hebrew Gospel, 8 and Petri Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 12326. 1. T/F, 5. had his name changed from Levi to Matthew likely by Jesus Himself who changed Simons name to Peter.(Matt. [1] Regardless of how this name change is explained, this toll collector may have been trained in accounting and documenting records and may have been functionally bilingual or trilingual in order to converse with travellers moving between the territories of Philip and Antipas.