Red-Letter Day
Apostle & Evangelist
September 21
also known as Matthew, St. Matthew, Levi
Matthew, called Levi in Mark and Luke, was a Galilean tax collector summoned by Jesus from his customs booth and numbered among the Twelve Apostles. The universal early tradition, attested by Papias around 130 and by Irenaeus around 180, records that he composed a Gospel in Hebrew for Jewish believers before carrying the apostolic preaching to other peoples. The church remembers him on September 21 as the apostle who put the Lord's deeds and sayings into writing for the household of Israel and, through that writing, for the world.
Matthew was sitting at the tax booth when Jesus walked past. A tax collector in Capernaum did not work for his own people. He worked for the occupying power, taking a percentage off the top of what his neighbors carried in from the lake and the road, and he was hated for it. In the English Standard Version the call is told in a single sentence: "As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he rose and followed him."
That night Matthew threw a feast at his own house and filled it with the kind of people a respectable rabbi was not supposed to eat with, his fellow publicans and others the Pharisees called sinners, and Jesus sat down at the table with them. The Pharisees asked the disciples why their master would do such a thing, and Jesus answered that the whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. He had not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. Matthew, the man who had spent his working life writing down what other people owed, watched his own debt forgiven across that table.
He was numbered among the Twelve, and he walked with the Lord through the Galilean ministry, the journey to Jerusalem, the cross, and the empty tomb. After Pentecost the early church remembered him as the apostle to the Hebrews, the one who stayed longest with the synagogue communities of Judea and put the gospel into writing for them in their own tongue before the Twelve were scattered to other nations. Clement of Alexandria, writing around the year 200, preserved a small personal detail: that Matthew lived ascetically, on seeds and nuts and vegetables, in the manner of the prophets. When he finally left Judea, the tradition carried him east, variously to Ethiopia, to Persia, to Parthia, to Pontus, where he preached the kingdom and was at last killed for it, by sword or by spear, the medieval accounts disagree. What the whole church has held in common is the Gospel he left behind, and the witness that the converted tax collector, of all the Twelve, was the one entrusted to keep the Lord's accounts.
The historical record for Matthew the man is thin in the way the record for most of the Twelve is thin: a handful of New Testament notices, a small cluster of patristic statements about his Gospel, and a much larger body of later legend. The earliest external witness is Papias of Hierapolis, writing around the year 130, whose lost work Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord is preserved in fragments by Eusebius of Caesarea in Ecclesiastical History 3.39. The next is Irenaeus of Lyons, around 180, in Against Heresies 3.1.1. Both are quoted by Eusebius himself in EH 3.24 and 6.25, alongside Origen and others, and Eusebius is the single most important narrative source for the apostolic geography. Clement of Alexandria, around 200, preserves the only personal-character note (Stromateis 4). Beyond these the tradition becomes medieval: passion accounts, acta, breviary lections. The modern critical reader reads the patristic witnesses first and the medieval acta as the record of how later centuries received and elaborated the apostolic memory.
On the Gospel itself the early voice is unanimous. Papias, in McGiffert's translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, reports: "So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able." Irenaeus, in the Roberts and Donaldson rendering in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, places the composition geographically and chronologically: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church." Eusebius, again in McGiffert, gives the mission-and-writing as a single arc: "For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence." That Eusebian frame, written gospel as substitute for bodily apostolic presence, is the lens through which the patristic church understood all four evangelists, and it is why the church reads the Gospels at the Eucharist as the apostles' own continuing voice.
The church's reading holds the patristic witness as the witness. Matthew the apostle wrote his Gospel in Hebrew for Jewish believers, and the church received that Gospel as his and has read it as his through every century of its life; the Greek text that the manuscript tradition inherited carries the apostle's writing into the churches that did not have Hebrew. A critical hypothesis advanced since the late nineteenth century has proposed the opposite order, that the Greek Matthew drew on the Gospel of Mark and on a now-lost sayings source, and reads the patristic notices of a Hebrew original as testimony either to a separate Jewish-Christian gospel or to a now-lost Semitic stratum (the Papias names). The church's reading remains the church's; the critical reversal is a modern hypothesis, named for what it is.
September 21 has been Matthew's feast in the Western calendar since the early Middle Ages; the East keeps him on November 16. The liturgical color is red, the color the church wears for an apostle and martyr. Matthew is patron of tax collectors, accountants, bookkeepers, bankers, customs officers, and security guards, and of the cities of Salerno, where his relics rest, and Asti. Of the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4 he is the winged man, because his Gospel opens with the human genealogy of Christ; the pairing is fixed by Irenaeus in Against Heresies 3.11.8 and by Jerome in his prologue on Matthew, and from there it becomes the standard medieval tetramorph of the four evangelists, with Mark the lion, Luke the ox, and John the eagle. He is depicted as an evangelist with a book or codex, often with an angel at his shoulder dictating, and frequently with a money bag or set of scales recalling the call at the receipt of custom. His body was translated to the Cathedral of San Matteo in Salerno in 954 and rests there still; an arm relic is venerated at Notre-Dame in Paris.
Hymnody. William Walsham How's We give thee but thine own is widely sung on the feast in Anglican use, the hymn of the converted publican who has learned what stewardship means. The proper Vespers hymn in the Roman tradition is Mátthæe, sancte, bíne tu.
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The Gospel according to Matthew(Greek (universal early tradition: Hebrew or Aramaic original, now lost), first century; patristic tradition places composition before Matthew left Judea, c. 50-65)
Recommended: English Standard Version (Crossway)
The Gospel itself, the first book of the New Testament. Universal early tradition attributes it to the apostle Matthew, the converted tax collector; modern critical scholarship more often treats the canonical Greek text as composed by an anonymous Jewish-Christian writer working from Mark and a sayings source, with the apostle's name preserved as the witness behind the Matthean tradition. The church reads it as the apostolic witness it has always claimed to be.
Other translations: New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition
Public domain: King James Version (Wikisource), Bible Gateway (multiple translations)
Ecclesiastical History (with the Papias fragment on Matthew at 3.39 and the order of the Gospels at 3.24)(Greek, c. 324)
Recommended: Eusebius, The History of the Church, tr. G. A. Williamson, rev. Andrew Louth (Penguin Classics)
The single most important narrative source for early Christian memory of the apostles. Eusebius preserves the Papias fragment (c. 130, the oldest surviving statement on Matthew's Gospel), the Irenaeus and Origen testimonies, and his own framing of Matthew as the apostle who first preached to the Hebrews and then committed his Gospel to writing as he prepared to depart for other peoples. Read EH 3.24 and 3.39 first; book 5.10 on Pantaenus and the Hebrew Matthew in India is the load-bearing source for the early eastern tradition.
Other translations: Paul L. Maier, Eusebius: The Church History (Kregel, with commentary)
Public domain: CCEL: McGiffert translation (NPNF series 2, vol. 1), Papias fragment on Matthew (EH 3.39), Order of the Gospels (EH 3.24)
Against Heresies, Book 3 (on the fourfold Gospel and the four living creatures)(Greek (preserved primarily in Latin translation), c. 180)
Recommended: Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies, tr. Dominic J. Unger, ACW (Paulist / Newman, multivolume)
Earliest surviving witness that Matthew issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome (3.1.1). Book 3.11.8 is also where the four-evangelists-to-four-living-creatures pairing is fixed for the patristic and medieval church, with Matthew the winged man.
Public domain: CCEL: Roberts-Donaldson translation (ANF vol. 1), Book 3
Matthew for Everyone (2 volumes)(English, 2004)
The lay-accessible entry point. Wright walks the reader through Matthew chapter by chapter in short, prayable sections, in the voice of a believing scholar speaking to a thoughtful parishioner. Part 2 (chs 16-28) continues the same treatment through the Passion and resurrection (ASIN 0664227872). The book Commontide would put first in a reader's hand who wanted to read Matthew with company.
The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament)(English, 2007)
Recommended: R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT, Eerdmans 2007)
The watershed believing-academic commentary in English on the First Gospel. France writes as a scholar of the historical Jesus who takes the apostolic witness seriously, and the volume has become the field's default starting point for pastors and serious readers who want one substantial book on Matthew that respects both the Gospel's theological claim and its historical setting.
Further reading. Donald Hagner, Matthew (Word Biblical Commentary, 2 volumes, 1993-1995), is the deeper conservative believing commentary for those who want fuller exegetical apparatus past France's NICNT volume; widely used in evangelical seminaries; check WorldCat for library copies. For the wider scholarly conversation, Ulrich Luz's Matthew: A Commentary (Hermeneia, 3 volumes, Fortress 2001-2007) is the major critical commentary of the last generation, written from a confessional Reformed-Lutheran standpoint and unusually attentive to the Gospel's reception history through the medieval and Reformation periods; standard in graduate seminars. Dale C. Allison's Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present (Baker Academic, 2005) collects the leading American critical Matthew scholar's essays on structure, theology, and reception.
Online resources. The full Greek text of Matthew is available free at the SBL Greek New Testament and in parallel with English translations at Bible Gateway. Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, Irenaeus's Against Heresies, and Clement's Stromateis are all hosted in full English translation at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, with the Papias fragment on Matthew at EH 3.39 in the NPNF series.
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Matthew was named by twain names, that was Matthew and Levy. Matthew is expounded a hasty gift, or a giver of counsel, or it is said Matthew of magnus, and theos, that is God, as it were a great God. Or of manus, that is a hand, and theos, that is God, as it were the hand of God. He was a gift of hastiness by hasty conversion, a giver of counsel by wholesome predication, great to God by perfection of life, and the hand of God by writing of the gospel of God. Levy is interpreted assumyt, or applied, or put to, or set. He was assumpt and taken away from gathering of tolls, he was applied to the number of the apostles, he was put to the company of the evangelists, and set to the catalogue of martyrs.
Of S. Matthew.
Matthew the apostle, preaching in Ethiopia, in the city that is said Nadaber, found there two enchanters named Zaroes and Arphaxat, which enchanted the men by their are, so that whom that they would, should seem that your were prived of the health and office of their members. Which were so elevated in pride that they made them to be honoured as gods. Then Matthew the apostle entered into that city and was lodged with the eunuch of Candace, the queen, whom Philip baptized. Then he discovered the faits and deeds of the enchanters in this manner, that all that they did to men into hurt, that turned Matthew into health. Then this eunuch demanded of S. Matthew how he spake and understood so many tongues. And then Matthew told him how the Holy Ghost descended and had given to the apostles all science of tongues. That like as they had emprised by their pride to make the tower unto heaven which ceased by confusion of tongues that were changed, all in like wise the apostles made a tower of sciences of tongues, and nothing of stones but of virtues, by the which all that believe shall mount up into heaven.
Then came before them a man that said that the enchanters were come with two dragons, which cast fire and sulphur by their mouths and nostrils, and slew all the men. Then the apostle garnished him with the sign of the cross and went out surely to them, and anon as these dragons saw him, anon they came and slept at his feet. Then said Matthew to the enchanters: Where is your craft? Awake you them if you may; and if I would pray our Lord, that which you would have committed in me, I should soon execute on you. And when the people were assembled, he commanded the dragons that they should depart without hurting of any, and they went anon.
And the apostle there made a great sermon of the glory of paradise terrestrial, saying that it appeared above all the mountains and was nigh unto heaven, and that there were neither thorns ne rocks, and that the lilies and roses flourished always and waxed never old; but the people were there always young, and the sound of angels sounded there always, and the birds came anon as they were called. And said that out of this paradise was a man cast, but he was called to the paradise of heaven by the nativity of our Lord. And as he said these words to the people, anon a great noise arose, and a great weeping was made for the son of the king which was dead, and when these enchanters might not raise him, they made the king believe that he was ravished into the company of the gods, and that he should make to him a temple and an image. And then the foresaid eunuch, keeper of the queen Candace, made the enchanters to be kept, and sent for the apostle. And when the apostle was come he made his prayer and raised the king's son anon. And then the king, which was named Egippus, sent for all the men in his provinces saying to them: Come and see you God in the likeness of a man. And then the people came with crowns of gold and divers manner of sacrifices, and would have sacrificed to him, and then S. Matthew beheld them and said: What do you men? I am not God, but I am servant of our Lord. And by the commandment of him they made a great church of the gold and silver that they had brought, which in thirty days space was edified and achieved. In which church the apostle sat three and thirty years, and converted all Ethiopia to the faith of Christ. And then the king Egippus, with his wife and his daughter, and all the people, were baptized. And then the apostle hallowed to God Ephigenia the king's daughter, and made her mistress and governess of more than two hundred virgins.
And after this, Hirtacus succeeded to the king, and coveted the said virgin Ephigenia, and promised to the apostle half his realm if he would make her consent to be his wife; and the apostle said to him that after the custom of his predecessor he should come on the Sunday to the church, and Ephigenia being present with the other virgins, he should hear what he should say of the goodness of lawful marriage. And then he departed with great joy, and supposed that he would have stirred Ephigenia to his marriage. And when the virgins and all the people were assembled, he spake long of good and lawful matrimony, and was much allowed of the king, which supposed that he had said for to have joined the virgin to him for to consent the marriage. Then when silence was made, he made rehearsal of his sermon saying that marriage is good if it be truly held by good alliance. But you that be here, know you well that if any servant would take the wife of a king wedded he should not only run to the offence of the king, but above that he should deserve death, and not for to wed her, but for that he in so taking the spouse of his lord should corrupt the marriage joined. And you the king that knew that Ephigenia is made the spouse of the king perdurable, and is sacred with the holy veil, how may you take the wife of a more puissant king and couple her to you by marriage? And when the king heard this he began to enrage and departed all wood and frantic. And the apostle without dread confirmed all the others to patience. And Ephigenia, Iying tofore him for dread, he blessed, and all the other virgins also. And after the solemnities of the mass, the king sent a tormentor which slew Matthew with a sword behind him, which was standing by the altar holding up his hands into heaven, and so was consecrate a martyr. And then all the people would have gone into the palace for to have slain the king, and with great pain were they holden of the priests and deacons, and hallowed with great joy the martyrdom of the apostle. And the king then sent to Ephigenia matrons and enchantresses, but for all them, when he saw that he might not turn her courage ne draw her to him in no manner, he environed and beset the house of her with a right great fire, for to burn her and all the other virgins. And then the holy apostle appeared at the fire and put out the fire about the house, and it took the palace of the king, so that it burnt and consumed all that was therein, that none escaped save the king and his son only. And the son was ravished of the devil and began to cry and confess his father's sins, and went to the sepulchre of the apostle. And the father was made a foul mesel, and when he saw that he might not be cured, he slew himself with his own hand with a sword. And the people then established for to be king, the brother of Ephigenia whom the apostle had baptized, and reigned seventy years, and established his son for to be king after him, and increased much the honour of christian men, and replenished all Ethiopia with noble churches of our Lord. And then Zaroes and Arphaxat fled into Persia from the day that the apostle raised the son of the king, but S. Simon and S. Jude vanquished them there. And know you that four things be principally considered in the blessed S. Matthew. The first is the hastiness of obedience, for as soon as our Lord called him, he left all and doubted nothing of the Lord, and left the reckonings of his receipts imperfect, and joined him perfectly to our Lord Jesu Christ. And for this hasty obedience some took occasion of error in themselves, like as S. Jerome records in the original upon the foresaid place, saying in that place: Porphyry and Julian Augustus reproves in the same place the folly of the story Iying, saying that as the story says, like as they followed suddenly the Saviour, that they would as hastily follow another man that had called them. For there were showed so many virtues and so many tokens tofore, that the apostles of our Lord believed verily without doubt. And certainly this replenisher of the privy majesty shone in his blessed face at the first to them that saw him, and he might by that sight and will draw them to him. If such virtue, as men say, is in a precious stone which is named magnet, which draws to him festues and straws, how much more the creator of all things may draw to him whom he will. This said Jerome. The second is his largess or his liberality. For anon he made to him a great feast in his house, the which was not great by apparel of meats, but it was much great only by reason of great desire, for he received with right great will and right great desire. And also it was great by reason of service, for this feast was demonstrance of great mystery, which mystery the gloss expounds upon S. Luke saying: He that receives our Lord Jesu Christ in his house was fed withinforth plenteously of greater things than the other, that is to wit of delectations, of good manners, and of good delights. And after he was great by reason of his enseignments, for he showed great teachings and doctrines. And this was of great mercy by desire, and not by sacrifice, as he said: Misericordiam volo et non sacrificium, etcetera. And also they that be whole need no leech, and so it was great, for there was Jesu Christ and his disciples. The third is humility which appeared to him in two things, first he showed him a publican. The other evangelists, as says the gloss, because of shame, and for the honour of the evangelist, they set not their common name, but as it is written: The just is first accuser of himself. And Matthew named himself publican, first because that he showed that none converted ought not mistrust of health, like as he was made of a publican, an apostle and evangelist. Secondly, because he was patient in his injuries. For when the pharisees murmured that Jesu Christ was descended to a man, sinner, Matthew might have answered: You be more wicked and more sinful that ween you be just and refuse the leech, for I may no more be said sinner that am gone to the leech of health and hide not my sin ne wound. The fourth is the great solemnity of him in the church of his gospels. His gospels be offer and more used in the church than the other evangelists, like as the psalms of David and the epistles of Paul be rehearsed before other scriptures, which be more offer recited in the church. And this is the reason that James witnesses that there be three manner of sins, that is to wit: the sin of pride, of lechery, and of avarice. In the sin of pride sinned Saul, for Saul by the sin of pride persecuted the church over proudly. David sinned in the sin of lechery, for he made adultery, and for the adultery he slew Uriah, his true knight. And Matthew sinned in the sin of avarice, for for covetousness he meddled him of villainous gain. For he was in a port of the sea where he received the toll and custom of ships and merchandise. And howbeit that they were sinners, yet always our Lord took their penance in gree and was pleased therewith, so that he pardoned them not only their sins, but multiplied in them his gifts of grace. For him that was a right cruel persecutor, he made a right true preacher, and him that had been adulterer and homicide, he made a prophet, and him that coveted so villainous gain, he made apostle and evangelist. And therefore these foresaid three be oft recited that no man that would be converted should have despair of pardon when such that were in so great sin, he beholds to have been in so great grace. And it is to be considered that, after S. Ambrose, some things ought to be noted in the conversion of S. Matthew, that is to wit somewhat of the party of the leech, and some of the party of the sick to be healed. In the leech were three things, that is to wit, wisdom by which he knew the root of the malady, and the bounty by which he ministered the medicine, and the power by which he healed him so soon. Of these three says S. Ambrose in the person of the said Matthew: This master may take away the sorrow from my heart, and the dread of the soul which knows the things hid and privy. And this is as touching to the first. And as to the second: I have found a leech that dwells in heaven and sheds in earth his medicine. And as to the third he said: He may well heal my wounds that knows not his own. In this blessed sick man that was healed, that is to say S. Matthew, three things be to be considered, after S. Ambrose. He took away first his malady, he was always agreeable to his leech, and he was always clean and whole after he had received his health. Then he said: Matthew, follow now your leech merrily and gladly, and he joying said: Now I am no publican, ne am not Levi, I have put away Levi sith I have received Christ and follow him, and this is to the first. And as to the second, I hate my lineage and flee my life and follow only the Lord. And as to the third he said: Who shall depart me from the charity of our Lord God which is in me? Tribulation or anguish or hunger? As who says: Nothing. And the manner of healing, as Ambrose says, was treble. First, Jesu Christ bound him with bonds; secondly, he impressed in him charity; and thirdly, he cleansed him from all rottenness. And Ambrose says in the person of Matthew: I am bounden with the nails of faith, and good life of charity. Secondly, I shall keep your commandment as imprinted in me by charity. And as to the third: Good Lord, come soon and open my wounds lest any noieful humour corrupt ne rot the hid passions, and wash them that be foul and cleanse them. His gospel that he had written with his own hand, was found with the bones of S. Barnabas, the which gospel Barnabas bare with him, and laid them upon them that were sick, and anon they were healed by the merits of the martyr, and were founden in the year of our Lord five hundred.
Eusebius preserves one further notice that has shaped the eastern tradition. In EH 5.10 he reports that the second-century Alexandrian teacher Pantaenus traveled as far as India and found there Christians already in possession of Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew letters, said to have been left with them by the apostle Bartholomew. The historical detail behind the story is debated, but its early date makes it a load-bearing witness to the conviction that Matthew's Gospel was carried east as well as west almost from the beginning. The geography of Matthew's own later mission, by contrast, is preserved only in much later sources: Ethiopia, Persia, Parthia, and Pontus all appear in medieval accounts, and the manner of his death, by sword or by spear, varies with the source. The church holds him as a martyr; the specific scene cannot be pinned to the apostolic generation with the evidence we have.
Lord Jesus, you called Matthew from collecting taxes to become your apostle and evangelist: Grant us the grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, that we may follow you as he did and proclaim to the world around us the good news of your salvation; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
British (Received Pronunciation): Capernaum /kəˈpɜːrneɪəm/; Parthia /ˈpɑːrθiə/; Stromateis /ˌstrɒməˈteɪɪs/
Proverbs 3:1–12Psalm 119:33–402 Timothy 3:1–17Matthew 9:9–13