It’s more challenging to figure of the date of Matthew’s Gospel than either Mark or Luke, but we’re finally within striking distance of doing so.
In previous posts, we’ve seen that Matthew was written after Mark, which means after about A.D. 55.
We’ve also seen that it was written before A.D. 70.
That gives us a range of about 15 years, but can we narrow it down further?
Let’s look at the evidence . . .
Matthew and Luke
We have a good date for the Gospel of Luke, which was written around A.D. 59, so if we can establish Matthew’s relationship to Luke, we could get a more precise date for his Gospel.
We thus need to consider some theories about how the two Gospels are related:
- Matthew and Luke were written independently of each other
- Luke used Matthew in composing his Gospel, so Matthew came first
- Matthew used Luke, so Luke came first
The Independence Hypothesis
This is the most common view among scholars today. According to it, Matthew and Luke wrote their Gospels independently, seemingly without displaying any knowledge of each other’s work.
According to this hypothesis, both used Mark’s Gospel, but there also are over two hundred verses that they also share in common, and if they were truly independent of each other, they needed to get this material from some common source.
Scholars have given this source the name “Q,” from the German word Quelle, which just means “source.”
For this view to work, Matthew and Luke would have had to be written at about the same time.
Otherwise, whichever was written first would have had enough time to spread in the Christian community for the other to have read it, and we would expect to see it reflected in some way in the other Gospel.
I estimate that would have taken no more than five years, so let’s assume that if this view is true then Matthew would have been written within about five years of Luke.
That would put it between roughly A.D. 55 and 65.
This is consistent with our previous finding that it was likely written between 55 and 70, but is there a way we can test this hypothesis?
Testing the Independence Hypothesis
For the Independence Hypothesis to work, the hypothetical Q source needs to have existed.
The two strongest arguments for the existence of Q are the fact that Matthew and Luke diverge significantly at the beginnings and the ends of their Gospels. That is, Matthew and Luke read very differently in their accounts of Jesus’ birth and childhood (the “Infancy Narratives”) and in their accounts of his resurrection (the “Resurrection Narratives”).
To put the matter concisely: If one knew of the other’s Gospel, why are their Infancy and Resurrection Narratives so different?
I’ve looked at this matter before, and I’ve concluded that there actually are good reasons both for why their Infancy Narratives read differently and why their Resurrection Narratives read differently.
I thus don’t think the key arguments for Q are persuasive. In addition, there are significant arguments against Q:
- Q is an entirely hypothetical source. We don’t have independent evidence for its existence, and thus we should only propose it if we have other, solid grounds for thinking neither Matthew nor Luke knew the other.
- Q is billed by the scholars who advocate it as a “sayings source” that preserves the sayings of Jesus, but this does not reflect the facts (see also here).
- If Q were a distinct source from Mark, we wouldn’t expect to see Matthew and Luke blending the two, and blending them in the same way, but we do. These places are known as “Mark-Q overlap” passages.
- If Matthew and Luke used Mark independently of each other, we would expect to see them making minor modifications in the way Mark phrases things, but we wouldn’t expect to see them modifying Mark in exactly the same way. Yet we do. There are numerous instances where Matthew and Luke phrase things in a way that differs from Mark. These are known as the “minor agreements” against Mark.
The problems with the Q Hypothesis are more fully explored by the British scholar Mark Goodacre and his colleagues in the books Questioning Q and The Case Against Q.
If Luke Used Matthew
The idea that Luke used Matthew’s Gospel when writing his own is known as the Farrer Hypothesis.
It assumes that both Matthew and Luke used Mark’s Gospel, but it does away with the need for Q because Luke simply took the two-hundred-plus verses that he shares with Matthew directly from the latter’s Gospel.
This does away with the problems of Q’s hypothetical nature, its role as a “sayings source,” the Mark-Q overlaps, and the “minor agreements.”
Presently, the most forceful exponent of the Farrer Hypothesis is Marc Goodacre, who explores it (among other places) in his book The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze.
Based on the dates we have proposed, the Farrer Hypothesis would place the composition of Matthew’s Gospel in a very small window: between the composition of Mark, around A.D. 55, and Luke, in A.D. 59.
On this view, we could place Matthew confidently around A.D. 57.
But there’s another possibility we need to consider . . .
If Matthew Used Luke
The idea that Matthew used Luke’s Gospel when writing his own is known as the Wilke Hypothesis.
It also does away with the problems associated with the Q Hypothesis.
The Wilke Hypothesis has, rather inexplicably, been long neglected by scholars, but is presently receiving some much needed attention, and several books have appeared on the subject, such as Robert MacEwen’s overview Matthean Posteriority. Alan Garrow also has a helpful series of videos on the subject.
Based on the dates we have proposed, the Wilke Hypothesis would place the composition of Matthew’s Gospel in the A.D. 60s, between the publication of Luke in 59 and the destruction of the temple in 70.
So we need to ask a question . . .
Which Came First?
The issue of whether Matthew or Luke was written first—like the Synoptic Problem in general—can get very technical, very quickly, and we don’t have space to descend into the details here.
I will therefore look only at a few top level considerations.
The best argument for the idea that Matthew wrote first appears to be the argument from “editorial fatigue.” This is the idea that, in copying Matthew, Luke introduced certain changes but then unconsciously began to slip back into Matthew’s way of describing things, thus showing that Matthew was his source.
Goodacre explores this idea here.
I have evaluated the argument here, and ultimately I do not find it convincing.
By contrast, the basic argument I would make for the idea that Luke wrote first is that Matthew simply appears to be a more developed literary work.
This occurs on multiple levels, from the organization of Jesus’s sayings into Matthew’s five great discourses, to tiny tweaks, such as when Luke’s unqualified “Blessed are you poor” (Luke 6:20) becomes Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3) to bring out the significance of spiritual rather than merely material poverty.
Particularly striking is the fact that sayings of Jesus that are scattered all over the place in Luke are organized into obvious, topical blocks in Matthew.
This is easy to explain if Matthew wrote later: He was simply an organizer, and so he organized the sayings he found in Luke.
However, the reverse is harder to explain: If Luke used Matthew then he would have had to smash Matthew’s beautifully organized blocks and scatter the material around in a far less obviously organized way.
Defenders of the Farrer Hypothesis argue that Luke had reasons for doing this, but, if so, they are not obvious, whereas Matthew’s organizational scheme is clear.
At least on the level of appearances, it is hard to avoid Reginald Fuller’s rather brusque assessment that, if the Farrer Hypothesis were true, Luke would present us with “a case of unscrambling the egg with a vengeance!” (The New Testament in Current Study, 1963).
B. H. Streeter put the matter even more brusquely when he argued that the way Luke would have to treat the material he drew from Matthew, in comparison with what he drew from Mark, by saying that “a theory which would make an author capable of such a proceeding would only be tenable if, on other grounds, we had reason to believe he was a crank” (The Four Gospels, 183).
Streeter is too harsh, but given the problems with the Q Hypothesis and the fact that it’s easier to explain Matthew’s use of Luke rather than the reverse, I come to the tentative conclusion that Luke wrote before Matthew.
This would put the writing of Matthew in the decade between the publication of Luke and the destruction of the temple, say around A.D. 65.
External Evidence?
It’s always good to support deductions from evidence internal to the Gospels with evidence external to them, and it happens that in this case there is a piece of confirmatory, external evidence. Writing around 189, St. Irenaeus of Lyons states:
Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations 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 (Against Heresies 3:1).
Note that Irenaeus states Matthew wrote his Gospel “while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome.” That would place its composition between Paul’s arrival in Rome, which I have dated to A.D. 58, and their martyrdoms, which occurred in the mid 60s (likely 65 or 66 in the case of Peter and 67 in the case of Paul).
Irenaeus thus confirms the general date I have proposed for Matthew.
However, we must not place too much weight on this fact, for Irenaeus appears to imply that Mark was written after Peter and Paul’s deaths, and thus after Matthew, which would not be correct. Also, he states that Matthew wrote among the Hebrews “in their own dialect” (Greek, tê idia dialektô), which could merely mean that he wrote in a Jewish style—which would be true—but which more naturally would mean that he wrote in the Aramaic language, which appears not to have been the case.
Despite these difficulties, it is possible that Irenaeus, writing about 125 years later, preserves an authentic memory of when Matthew’s Gospel was written.
Conclusion
Regardless of what one thinks of Irenaeus, we have the following approximate dates for the Synoptic Gospels:
- Mark: around 55
- Luke: around 59
- Matthew: around 65
But what about John? That’s what we’ll turn to next.
