Gospel of Matthew

[javid]

Hi.

***1. Saint Matthew wrote his Gospel in Aramic

Eusebius, Church History, 3.24.6;.

Barton, John and Muddiman, John (eds.), The Oxford Bible Commentary, (Oxford, 2007, 1st ed.), p.886 and Achtemeier, Paul J. (ed.), Harpercollins Bible Dictionary, (Harper San Francisco, 1996, 2nd ed.), p.653.

***2.Gospel of Matthew, that already exists, written Greek, because:

It’s oldest texts, written in Greek.

Question:

Is Gospel of Matthew, that already exists, can be what Saint Matthew wrote?

 

[DavidFilmer]

Question:

Is Gospel of Matthew, that already exists, can be what Saint Matthew wrote?

We don’t have a single word of the original Gospel of Matthew (or ANY other New Testament test).
We have SPECULATION that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Aramaic. We have no flippin idea of what language Matthew (or ANY other Gospel text was written in).

There is no such thing on planet earth in modern times as any tiny fragment of any ancient text that is actually considered to be ORIGINAL (ie, written by the hand of the author, and I would even go so far as to claim no such text exists that was exactly written by the hand of the author’s follower, or his follower).

The Church has only ever declared that the Biblical texts, in their original form, are infallible (meaning divinely inspired). The Church has never declared that any particular derivative work or translation (including the “official” text of the Latin Vulgate) is divinely inspired. Since there is no such thing as an original text of the New Testament (no such text has survived), the Church cannot say, with absolute theological certainty, that any particular text teaches any definitive truth.

Which is probably the very reason why the Church has always been reluctant to officially interpret any part of the New Testament. Different Catholic theologians interpret Church interpretations by different standards, but few respected theologians recognize that the Church has officially interpreted more than a dozen or so sentences of the New Testament.

It really does not matter what language the New Testament was originally written in. We have NONE of that in ANY language.

 

[javid]

Thanks.

By a Historic view, How can we trust a book, we ever don’t know it’s origial language? This is the Question: Is it translated from some language? Who translated it? Can we be sure that he didn’t add or eliminate some words? Why we must be sure it exists as author wrote?

Well, we ever don’t know the Original Language and we are not sure that they wrote in Greek at first. O.K. Who translated it to Greek? Did the tranlating done truly?

 

[DavidFilmer]

By a Historic view, How can we trust a book, we ever don’t know it’s origial language?

Only the original language of the Gospel of Matthew is in question. We are pretty sure the rest of the New Testament was originally written in Greek.

Can we be sure that he didn’t add or eliminate some words? Why we must be sure it exists as author wrote?

THAT is really the interesting question.

Historically, that has been a VERY difficult question to answer. Scholarly p residence has generally been given to older texts, because those are closer (historically) to the original texts (NONE of which survive).

There is a modern science known as “textual criticism.” In English, the name of this science is misleading, because the English word “criticism” has a negative connotation. But this is a modern and advanced field of linguistic research that has no implied bias.

Textual criticism would hardly be possible without the power of modern computer and database technology. Modern textual scientists have access to every ancient Scriptural manuscript, as well as every non-Scriptural contemporary text. These tools allow modern linguists to positively conclude that the guy who wrote the Epistle to the Romans was absolutely NOT the same guy who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians (though both are normally attributed to St. Paul). Even in English, the writing style is starkly different. In Greek, it is completely incompatible. To a modern textual critic, the authorship cannot possibly be the same.

Textual critics look at sentence structure (including the average length of a sentence), word usage and frequency (as compared to both other contemporary authors as well as the author in question), allegorical references, and many other standards to come up with a more reliable version of the “original” text.

Ironically enough, “modern Catholic translations” are more textually accurate than older translations. And these translations will become better (not worse) over the next decades.

Well, we ever don’t know the Original Language and we are not sure that they wrote in Greek at first. O.K. Who translated it to Greek? Did the tranlating done truly?

 

[javid]

Textual criticism would hardly be possible without the power of modern computer and database technology. Modern textual scientists have access to every ancient Scriptural manuscript, as well as every non-Scriptural contemporary text. These tools allow modern linguists to positively conclude that the guy who wrote the Epistle to the Romans was absolutely NOT the same guy who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians (though both are normally attributed to St. Paul). Even in English, the writing style is starkly different. In Greek, it is completely incompatible. To a modern textual critic, the authorship cannot possibly be the same.

So we can’t trust them historically! We just accept them by faith, not?

Historically, We must ask if one wrote by St.Paul, so who wrote the other?

And about Gospel of Matthew, we have same problem, We don’t know how we recieved it! So we just can accept it by faith.

Is this true?

 

[dronald]

So we can’t trust them historically! We just accept them by faith, not?

Historically, We must ask if one wrote by St.Paul, so who wrote the other?

And about Gospel of Matthew, we have same problem, We don’t know how we recieved it! So we just can accept it by faith.

Is this true?

Actually we can. As David explained extremely well, we have the science to prove that the words in the Bible are true to what was written by the original authors. Textual criticism has proved that 98% of what is written in our modern Bible’s are true to the text. There are some minor variants but not enough to change its meaning. Two of the most contested passages in the Bible are the woman caught in adultery and the long ending of Mark. There is early evidence that it should be in the Bible but some scholars disagree.

As for Paul’s letters there is a way that a computer can compare the style in which the letters were written to see if the author was the same. Hebrews has basically been rejected unanimously as Pauline while some letters have been contested.

Check out www.danielbwallace.com

 

[yankee15]

So we can’t trust them historically! We just accept them by faith, not?

Historically, We must ask if one wrote by St.Paul, so who wrote the other?

And about Gospel of Matthew, we have same problem, We don’t know how we recieved it! So we just can accept it by faith.

Is this true?

You are not considering just how serious the authors were about their writings. Remember, copies were made by dictation, and the originals were most likely, kept guarded by the author himself. Moreover, copies destined for other communities, were not taken lightly, and were entrusted to competent scribes and messengers. Were scribal mistakes made? Sure. Were heretical versions distributed? Sure. But you must realize that they were quickly identified and removed from circulation. If you would like to read more on this subject, I recommend Hurtado’s “Earliest Christian Artifacts” and Gamble’s “Books and Readers in the Early Church”.

 

[javid]

Actually we can. As David explained extremely well, we have the science to prove that the words in the Bible are true to what was written by the original authors. Textual criticism has proved that 98% of what is written in our modern Bible’s are true to the text. There are some minor variants but not enough to change its meaning. Two of the most contested passages in the Bible are the woman caught in adultery and the long ending of Mark. There is early evidence that it should be in the Bible but some scholars disagree.

As for Paul’s letters there is a way that a computer can compare the style in which the letters were written to see if the author was the same. Hebrews has basically been rejected unanimously as Pauline while some letters have been contested.

Check out www.danielbwallace.com

You are not considering just how serious the authors were about their writings. Remember, copies were made by dictation, and the originals were most likely, kept guarded by the author himself. Moreover, copies destined for other communities, were not taken lightly, and were entrusted to competent scribes and messengers. Were scribal mistakes made? Sure. Were heretical versions distributed? Sure. But you must realize that they were quickly identified and removed from circulation. If you would like to read more on this subject, I recommend Hurtado’s “Earliest Christian Artifacts” and Gamble’s “Books and Readers in the Early Church”.

But Critics claim that copies have many problems. On the other hand my question is not about copies, it was about the Unknown person who translated Gospel of Matthew! we ever don’t know who he is!

And I didn’t see any evidence for these:

We have the science to prove that the words in the Bible are true to what was written by the original authors. Textual criticism has proved that 98% of what is written in our modern Bible’s are true to the text.

Remember, copies were made by dictation, and the originals were most likely, kept guarded by the author himself.

Thanks

 

[DavidFilmer]

So we can’t trust them historically! We just accept them by faith, not?

Not.

Historically, We must ask if one wrote by St.Paul, so who wrote the other?

We have no flippin’ idea. And we do not need to know who wrote them. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Who was Mark? Nobody knows.

Who wrote the Gospel of Luke? Who was Luke? Nobody knows.

Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew? If you want to SERIOUSLY claim that Matthew was written by the same Apostle named Matthew, then PLEASE open your own thread to be pummeled by theologians and historians who are pretty much in unanimous agreement that these “Matthews” were not the same person.

If you want to claim that the Apostle John was the primary author of the Gospel of John, then you are welcome in my box. But if you claim that this person was the same as the person normally called St. John the Divine (the author of Revelation) then (Edited).

If you claim that the person who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews was the same person who wrote the Epistle to the Romans (both of which are often attributed to St. Paul), then (Edited).

 

[meteoric]

But the question of the content of the scriptures is a legitimate question, and there is an element of faith involved. But I think less than is implied.

We know that the “writings of the apostles” was spread throughout the Christian world in the first few hundred years after Jesus’ ascension. We know that there were other books, but that they were known to “wrong” and not “as been taught.” Eusebius mentions them. The books accepted as scripture were known and quoted in the writings of other early Christian authors.

They weren’t idiots. They recognized books like the Gospel of Thomas as not being old enough to be related to the apostles. In a world where there was much commerce and communication, a fairly common language, and where most people couldn’t read so had to memorize the “sayings of the apostles”, a mistranslation would have trouble taking hold across all of Christendom.

Now, if you want to go with a conspiracy to change the writings, you have to take the previous two paragraphs into your explanation. If someone were to purposefully try to pass something off as the Gospel attributed to Matthew that was radically different, how would such a thing actually gain acceptance in a physically spread out community of believers who never-the-less kept in contact with each other? To believe that that, you would need to believe that the three synoptic Gospels were all fake, and would have to have been created very early in the life of the Church. But we know from textual analysis that the three were written in different locations for different target audiences, with different emphasis on aspects of Jesus, so your conspiracy would need to explain how that came about too.

But if you aren’t arguing conspiracy, but simple copy or translation errors, well, here we are less concrete grounds, and yes, faith does play a part here, too. As Catholics the Bible is the book of the church; we are not the church of the Bible. The Bible is part, but not the whole of the Deposit of Faith handed down from the Apostles.

And finally, yes, there have been conspiracies to change the meaning of the Scriptures. After the rise of Christianity, Jewish copies of the Old Testament were changed to de-emphasize those things that the Christians thought were important. The one that I remember is the phrase from Isaiah, that says in the copies of the Scriptures after Christ “A young maiden will have a son”, yet the pre-Christian copies state “A virgin will have a son”.

So, perhaps God provided that we would find the Dead Sea Scrolls and other pre-Christian copies of Scripture to preserve His true word.

Tom A.

 

[ezeekl]

Thanks.

By a Historic view, How can we trust a book, we ever don’t know it’s origial language? This is the Question: Is it translated from some language? Who translated it? Can we be sure that he didn’t add or eliminate some words? Why we must be sure it exists as author wrote?

Well, we ever don’t know the Original Language and we are not sure that they wrote in Greek at first. O.K. Who translated it to Greek? Did the tranlating done truly?

By the same token, how can we assume that Matthew [or any other book of scripture] is inspired by God? Is there some “inspired Table of Contents” floating around somewhere?
And since we don’t know the answers to these questions then we have to ask the question, where does that leave sola scriptura?

 

[javid]

Not.

We have no flippin’ idea. And we do not need to know who wrote them. Who wrote the Gospel of Mark? Who was Mark? Nobody knows.

Who wrote the Gospel of Luke? Who was Luke? Nobody knows.

Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew? If you want to SERIOUSLY claim that Matthew was written by the same Apostle named Matthew, then PLEASE open your own thread to be pummeled by theologians and historians who are pretty much in unanimous agreement that these “Matthews” were not the same person.

If you want to claim that the Apostle John was the primary author of the Gospel of John, then you are welcome in my box. But if you claim that this person was the same as the person normally called St. John the Divine (the author of Revelation) (Edited).

If you claim that the person who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews was the same person who wrote the Epistle to the Romans (both of which are often attributed to St. Paul), then (Edited)

So, I am true. We just trust them by faith. Historic view, can’t trust them.

 

[ezeekl]

So, I am true. We just trust them by faith. Historic view, can’t trust them.

Not necessarily. There is the testimony of the early church writers which, although not inspired, gives us a window into their times. They tell us what the early church believed and tell us of the battles between the early church and the early heretics. Catholics, as well as Orthodox, place a historical value on these writers as witnesses of the faith in their times. Non Catholic denominations seem to ignore them as a whole. The reason being that the faith to which these early church witnesses testify to is decidedly Catholic. I am sure that if there was a second or third century sola scripturist the protestants would be quoting him profusely. However, there is none so those who like to go around giving their own testimony do not want to hear the testimony of the early church because that testimony is decidedly Catholic, not protestant…

 

[Abu]

“Edith Myers in her What Does the Church Really Say about the Bible, which first appeared in serial articles in The Wanderer, has performed a gigantic task.
She has given us not her personal speculations or opinions, but the authentic teachings of the Church’s Magisterium over the past century.”
Msgr. John E. Steinmueller
(Consultor of the First Pontifical Biblical Commission)
Bay Hills, Huntington, New York (1979)

The reality:
“…the Pontifical Biblical Commission was formally established by Pope Leo XIII in 1902, and in 1907, in Praestantia Sacrae Scripturae, Pope Pius X declared its decisions to be binding.

*What Does The Church Really Say About The Bible?
8) On the Author, Date of Composition, and Historical Truth of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1911. *
“Matthew, the Commission said, is in truth the author of the Gospel published under his name. The Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem. We cannot accept the idea that the book was merely a collection of sayings compiled by an anonymous author. While the book was first written in Hebrew, the Greek is regarded as canonical, and is to be regarded as historically true, including the infancy narratives, and passages relating to the primacy of Peter (Mt: 16:17-19) and to the Apostles’ profession of faith in the divinity of Christ (Mt: 14:33)." [My emphases].
pamphlets.org.au/australia/acts1718a.html

 

[steve_b]

Hi.

1. Saint Matthew wrote his Gospel in Aramic*

Eusebius, Church History, 3.24.6;.

Barton, John and Muddiman, John (eds.), The Oxford Bible Commentary, (Oxford, 2007, 1st ed.), p.886 and Achtemeier, Paul J. (ed.), Harpercollins Bible Dictionary, (Harper San Francisco, 1996, 2nd ed.), p.653.

***2.Gospel of Matthew, that already exists, written Greek, because:

It’s oldest texts, written in Greek.

Question:

Is Gospel of Matthew, that already exists, can be what Saint Matthew wrote?

Actually before Eusebius, Irenaeus in ~180 a.d. wrote

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Against Heresies 3:1:1) Bk 3 Chapter 1 vs 1

 

[cornbread_r2]

…]

If you want to claim that the Apostle John was the primary author of the Gospel of John, then you are welcome in my box. But if you claim that this person was the same as the person normally called St. John the Divine (the author of Revelation) (Edited).

…]

Why do you think the Gospel of John is likely to have been primarily written by the Apostle John (if that’s what you’re implying)?

 

[Holly3278]

We do not have the original manuscripts of the New Testament or of the Old Testament but we do know with very good certainty what was in them. Saint Jerome translated the Scriptures into Latin. He was born in 331 and died in 420. He is a doctor of the Church. He may very well have had access to the original manuscripts. Here is more information about Saint Jerome.

catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=10

Also, here is more information about why we can trust the translations of the Bible and the Bible that we have today.

bible.org/article/we-can-trust-bible

bible.org/seriespage/iii-how-we-got-bible

Basically the scholars have compared various manuscripts and we know with very good certainty what was in the original Bible. It is also true that the early Church Fathers often quoted the Bible and their quotes line up very well with our modern translations. There are various ways of textual analysis and hermeneutics by which we can know with very good certainty that our modern Bible is the same as the original or at least it is so accurate to what the original said that we can be 100% certain that there is no doctrinal error in them.

 

[Abu]

“…the Pontifical Biblical Commission was formally established by Pope Leo XIII in 1902, and in 1907, in Praestantia Sacrae Scripturae, Pope Pius X declared its decisions to be binding.

**“What Does The Church Really Say About The Bible?
4) On the Author and the Historical Truth of the Fourth Gospel, 1907. **
There is sufficient evidence that John the Apostle wrote the Fourth Gospel, the Commission stated, to uphold this opinion against adverse critics. We may not say that the discourses of Our Lord that are reported therein are not really the words of Jesus but theological compositions of the authors."

"DEI VERBUM, THE DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION OF VATICAN IIThe Church has always and everywhere maintained, and continues to maintain, the apostolic origin of the four Gospels. The apostles preached, as Christ had charged them to do, and then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they and others of the apostolic age handed on to us in writing the same message they had preached, the foundation of our Faith: the fourfold Gospel, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
pamphlets.org.au/australia/acts1718a.html