I don’t like to name names but at least one of my teachers is a very well renowned biblical scholar. I have never heard that the gospel of Matthew was originally written in aramaic.
We, of course do not have the original Gospel of Matthew but we do have an early bishop of the Church in Caesarea named Eusebius who wrote an early work entitled
Church History in about 312 AD. In chapter 14 verse 6 He makes this statement:
“6. 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.”
See
ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.viii.xxiv.html
The footnotes go on to state the following:
“That Matthew wrote a gospel in Hebrew, although denied by many, is at present the prevailing opinion among scholars, and may be accepted as a fact both on account of its intrinsic probability and of the testimony of the Fathers, which begins with the statement of Papias, quoted by Eusebius in chap. 39, below, is confirmed by Irenæus (III. 1. 1, quoted below, V. 8, §2),—whether independently of Papias or not, we cannot say,—by Pantænus (but see below, Bk. V. chap. 10), by Origen (see below, VI. 25), by Jerome (de vir. ill. 3),—who says that a copy of it still existed in the library at Cæsarea,—and by Epiphanius (Hær. XXIX. 9). The question as to the relation of this Hebrew original to our present Greek Matthew is much more difficult. That our Greek Matthew is a mere translation of the original Hebrew was once a prevailing theory, but is now completely abandoned. That Matthew himself wrote both is a common conservative position, but is denied by most critical scholars, many of whom deny him the composition even of the Hebrew original. Upon the theory that the original Hebrew Matthew was identical with the “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” see chap. 27, note 8. Upon the synoptic problem, see above, II. 15, note 4; and see the works mentioned there for a discussion of this original Matthew, and in addition the recent works by Gla, Original-Sprache des Matt. Evang., 1887, and Resch, Agrapha, Leipzig, 1889.
The very natural reason which Eusebius gives for the composition of Matthew’s Gospel—viz. that, when on the point of going to other nations, he committed it to writing, and thus compensated them for the loss of his presence—occurs in none of the earlier reports of the composition of the Gospel which we now possess. It was probably a fact which he took from common tradition, as he remarks in the previous sentence that tradition says “they undertook it from necessity.” and thus
153compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence.”
I find it very interesting that as late as 400 AD Jerome says the original Hebrew manuscript was still in existence at Caesarea.
