Like the other of the Canonical Gospels, the authorship of Matthew is unknown. The earliest known reference for the tradition of an author, Matthew, comes from Papias of Hierapolis, 120-140 CE. Quickly, the "Matthew" mentioned by Hierapolis is associated with "Matthew the tax collector".
From literary and linguistic analysis, scholars today point to three different levels of writing in the text. The first is a second-person retelling of a witness's story (likely written well before the temple's destruction), the second level adds to that the Johannine theology, and the third edit levels it into the clear, accessible text it is today.http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Aut ... ent#cite_note-who-8 |