Gospel of St. Matthew

[exoflare]

I read this on another message board:

No angel ever dictated anything in Abrahamic tradition. Mohammed or the Muslim authors of Islam heard the Christian tradition that an angel dictated the gospel to Matthew as he wrote it (which is purely tradition) and they riffed from that…

The only thing I’m wondering is, is there really a legend of any sort that an angel dictated the Gospel to Matthew as he wrote it? I don’t think that kind of story would make sense anyway since he was supposed to have been guided by the Holy Spirit. What do you think?

 

[But_for_Grace]

Hi Exo

I have never heard that one. I would also be intrested in finding this out as well.

 

[Liberian]

exoflare:

I read this on another message board:

No angel ever dictated anything in Abrahamic tradition. Mohammed or the Muslim authors of Islam heard the Christian tradition that an angel dictated the gospel to Matthew as he wrote it (which is purely tradition) and they riffed from that…

The only thing I’m wondering is, is there really a legend of any sort that an angel dictated the Gospel to Matthew as he wrote it? I don’t think that kind of story would make sense anyway since he was supposed to have been guided by the Holy Spirit. What do you think?

Exoflare,

Personally I would doubt it.

It reminds me of an encounter I had with a spiritist on a Greyhound bus thirty years ago. He was trying to convince me that the Book of Revelation had been written by “automatic writing,” a process by which the author balances the pen on the tip of his finger and a spirit controls the motion of the pen to make it write. I asked him if he had ever actually read the Book of Revelation; he admitted that he hadn’t. “If you do,” I replied, “you will realize that the process of automatic writing is far too mundane and ordinary to have produced something as wild as the Book of Revelation.”

• Liberian

 

[Verbum]

Hi Exo–,

Apparently it was a common belief in the Middle Ages that an angel dictated Matthew’s gospel. Thre are works of art that reflect that belief.

See here.

Verbum

 

[Della]

I wonder how such an idea got started–that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel by inspiration of an angel. It seems rather unnecessary to me considering he was educated enough to be a tax collector and he was there for most of the major events in the ministry of Christ and could very easily have gotten the childhood stories from Mary and possibly St. James the Lesser.

Odd that anyone would think that Matthew would need an angel to refresh his memory or dictate anything to him. Maybe it’s because Matthew wrote about Joseph receiving reassurance and guidance from an angel in his dreams?

If Muslims believe this legend, I can see how people would equate Mohammed receiving the Qu’ran from an angel with this story about St. Matthew. Seems logical.