MATTHEW, SAINT, an apostle and evangelist, was a publican or tax-gatherer at the sea of Galitee. It is assumed by divines generally that lie is the same person that Mark and Luke refer to under the name of " Levi;" but several weighty names are against this view, as, for example, Origen, Grotius, Michaelis, and Ewald. After the ascension of Christ, Matthew is found itt Jerusalem; he then disappears from Scripture. Nothing whatever Is known of his career.—Mattliew's gospel is believed to be the first in point of time. Irenteus places its composition in the year 61 ; some of the later fathers, as early as 41 A.D. The obvious design of the work is to prove the 3-lessialiship of Jesus; hence the frequency of the expression used in regard to the acts of the Saviur, " that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet." 3Iuch controversy has been carried on regardine. the language in which St. Matthew wrote his gospel. The opinion of the ancient ghurch o.enerally (founded on a passage in Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in the 2d c.) was that Siatthew wrote it in Hebrew, or rather m that mixture of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac spoken in Palestine in Christ's time, and known as Aramaic. Erasmus doubted this, and held that Matthew only wrote the one we now possess. His view was supported by Calvin Beza, and otheis of the reformers; and
more recently, in some form or other, by the great majority of scholars, both orthodox and heterodox. Still more recently the opinion of Bengel, that Matthew wrote first a Hebrew gospel and then transla1ed it into Greek, has been advocated by several able writers. The passage in Papias is by no means clear, and some of the greatest gram marians and biblicists, such as Lach.mann, Ewald, Meyer, Reu.ss, and Credner, under stand it to mean that Matthew only drew up a series of notices of Christ's life and sermons, which were afterwards arranged in some sort of order by another writer. Even yet, however, the order is but dimly perceptible, and little or no attention is paid to. chronological sequence. On this view the present gospel is Matthew's in substance only, and not in form. The style is comparatively tame, and even the conception of Christ, which is predominant, is earthly rather than divine. Hence the fathers called it the Somatic, or "bodily" gospel, as distinguished from the more spiritual gospels of Luke and John.