Matthew the Apostle

Matthew the Apostle, also known in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as Levi the son of Alphaeus, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament presents him as a telones, a tax collector or publican, stationed at Capernaum in Galilee during the early first century, when that region formed part of the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas under Roman imperial oversight. Tax collectors were widely resented among Jews of the period because they gathered revenue on behalf of a foreign power and were commonly suspected of extortion. According to the Synoptic accounts, Jesus saw Matthew at his customs post, summoned him to follow, and Matthew rose and followed. Shortly afterward Matthew gave a banquet in his house at which Jesus dined with other tax collectors and persons regarded as sinners, an action that drew protest from Pharisees and scribes. The Gospel that bears Matthew’s name lists him among the Twelve as Matthew the tax collector, thereby preserving the memory of his former occupation.

Beyond these Gospel notices and his inclusion among the apostles present in Jerusalem after the Ascension, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, virtually nothing about Matthew’s later life can be established from contemporary historical sources. Christian tradition from the second century onward credited him with composing a Gospel, originally in Hebrew or Aramaic, for a community of Jewish Christians. Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the early second century and cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, stated that Matthew compiled the sayings of the Lord in the Hebrew language and that each interpreted them as he was able. Irenaeus of Lyons and other patristic authors repeated similar claims. Modern biblical scholarship, however, generally regards the canonical Greek Gospel of Matthew as an anonymous work of the later first century, composed in a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian milieu, and treats the traditional ascription to the apostle as a later ecclesiastical attribution rather than a historically demonstrable fact. The relationship, if any, between a possible Hebrew collection associated with Matthew and the canonical Gospel remains a matter of scholarly discussion.

Accounts of Matthew’s missionary journeys and death are late, mutually inconsistent, and historically unverifiable. Clement of Alexandria reports that the second-century teacher Heracleon held that Matthew died a natural death rather than by martyrdom. Other traditions, circulating in various forms from late antiquity through the medieval Golden Legend, place his preaching in Ethiopia, in the regions south of the Caspian Sea, in Persia, or in Syria, and describe him as a martyr slain by the sword, by fire, or by other means. Eastern Christian sources have sometimes associated him with Hierapolis. None of these narratives can be corroborated by first-century evidence. From the eleventh century the cathedral of Salerno in southern Italy has claimed to possess his relics, said to have been translated there in 1080; the church is dedicated to him and remains a principal site of his cult in the Latin West.

In Christian art and liturgy Matthew is customarily represented by a winged man or angel, corresponding to one of the four living creatures of the visions of Ezekiel and of the Book of Revelation, a symbol linked to the Gospel’s opening genealogy and its emphasis on the humanity of Christ. His principal feast is observed on 21 September in the Roman Catholic Church and in many Anglican and Lutheran calendars, and on 16 November in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Because of his former profession he has long been invoked as patron of accountants, tax collectors, bankers, bookkeepers, customs officers, and others engaged in financial or fiscal work, as well as of the city of Salerno. He is venerated as a saint across the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and many Protestant traditions, ranking among the apostolic figures whose cult predates the later formal processes of canonization.