why did jesus change levi to matthew

[10] Even so, most readers of the New Testament throughout history have taken the identification of Levi with Matthew for granted. Wright --University of Arizona, Center for Judaic Studies The Testimonium Flavianum Question (My Two Cents), The Bible is Accurate Manuscript Evidence, Sayings From the Bible in the 21st Century, Colors & Dyes For Clothing in Ancient Rome, Thanksgiving: First Foods, First Friends1620, Ancient Ossuaries Uncover Biblical Truths. [17] Additionally, specialists on the Synoptic Problem generally hold that Matthews Gospel reproduced over 90 percent of Marks content, improved Marks grammar and style, and edited out Marks transliterated Aramaic terms. 16:18) Mark and Luke were probably stunned by Jesus' inclusion of a hated tax collector in His Twelve. Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. As a result, those who reject the academic consensus on Markan priority are often the most open to Papiass claim. Matthew's Gospel was written in approximately A.D.___, before the destruction of Jerusalem. He may call peop Levi asked Jesus to come to dinner at his home. Mark 16:1),[11] though this example differs slightly from Matthew 9:9 inasmuch as the woman is left unnamed. "John, James, Andrew and Peter were the disciples closest to Jesus," Traylor says. Dr. Beth Harris: In the Contarelli Chapel. 3.2) that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was associated with Matthew. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?, On hearing this, Jesus said to them, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. [30] For instance, see France, Evangelist and Teacher, 6466; Morris, Matthew, 14; Carson, Matthew, 13 Osborne, Matthew, 34; Brown and Roberts, Matthew, 16. [31] Warren Carter, Matthew: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 17. Because Levi's occupation was one that earned distrust and contempt everywhere, the scribes of the Pharisees criticized Jesus on seeing him eat with tax collectors and sinners, whereupon Jesus answered, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:15-17). According to Matthew 9:9 and Mark 2:14, Matthew was sitting by the customs house in Capernaum (near modern Almagor, Israel, on the Sea of Galilee) when Jesus called him into his company. 1.7; Irenaeus, haer. [43] Further, the Gospel according to the Ebionites features a pun that only works in Greek (cf. He was included as one of the Evangelists according to the Christian tradition. The fact of one man having two names is of frequent occurrence among the Jews. The final option is that a non-extant Jewish Gospel stands behind Papiass reference to Matthews oracles or, at least, the New Testament Gospel that bears the name Matthew was mixed up with a Jewish Gospel circulating in Papiass milieu. Follow me, Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. The important take-away from this detour through the Patristic testimonies was that the oldest tradition was that the evangelist Matthew published a text in Aramaic and left it to more qualified translators to translate it into the form that we have today as the Greek. [47] Whatever the case, Jerome slowly distanced himself from his earlier confident declarations that the Nazarenes had the original Matthean Gospel in their possession (cf. Teilband 1, ed. Hence, Mark listened to Peters chreiai or anecdotes about the Lords sayings and deeds (cf. There were, however, at the time of Christ and the Apostles two languages spoken by JewsAramaic and Greek. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. 7.2627; 14.5960). Of course, their hippy-dippy ways are . But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus answered them, It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Luke 5:27-32. It is beyond the scope of this paper to determine why Matthew was substituted for Levi. [45] Luomanen, Jewish-Christian Sects, 100101; Kok, Gospel according to the Hebrews, 41; Gregory, Gospel according to the Hebrews, 47, 47n.28. Phil. Likewise, Jerome prematurely announced that he had finished his translations of the Old and New Testaments when he just started the task (Vir. At worst, they were charlatans, sycophants, and brutes (cf. Levi's work was to take the money. [7] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. [30] Warren Carter underscores how Papiass erroneous supposition served to underline the antiquity of this gospel and link it to the apostles.[31], Another option is that Papias was referring to a lost source. The fishermen who followed Jesus, and some became His Apostles, had to pay taxes on fishing licenses and perhaps on their daily catch. The meaning in Hebrew of the word day always means a 24 hour period of time. Unlike the modern deductions about Matthews level of literacy, Papias did not presuppose Matthews facility in Greek. Matthew was an accurate counter. 2) Jesus explains his action in having a meal with tax collectors and sin-ners by saying "Go and learn what it means 'I desire mercy and not sacri-fice'" (Matt 9,13; Hos 6,6). Baum, Ein aramischer Urmatthus, 26364. Vielhauer and Strecker, Jewish Christian Gospels, 15465; Klijn. The text of Matthew in its final form, on the other hand, may be a better point of contrast for Marks narrative, and Q would not have an advantage over it if Q originated in Greek as well. As Brent Cunningham expressed it the changing of the names represented Jesus' ownership of them. He was honored that His Lord considered him such a gift, But as Levi he had immediately joined his life to Jesus and His Mission. After Jesus grants Peter the keys to the kingdom (see below), Jesus explains . Because of that, Levi later threw a party at his house and invited his sinner friends to meet Jesus. [41] Contra Edwards, Hebrew Gospel, 8 and Petri Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 12326. Neither Matthew 9:9 nor 10:3 advances an explicit authorial claim. 1. [24] Krzinger, Papias, 1516; Gundry, Matthew, 619; idem, Pre-Papian Tradition, 6162, 67. [16] At first sight, this description seems like a poor match for the extant text entitled the Gospel according to Matthew, for it does not look like a translation of an Aramaic precursor. Perhaps most plain is the calling of the disciple Matthew, also known as Levi the tax collector. [17] W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. See W. F. Albright and C. S. Mann, Matthew, AB (Doubleday: New York, 1971), CLXXVIII. We soon discover the difference between the man and the rock. The Ipuwer PapyrusWere The 10 Biblical Plagues Real? Luke 6:12-26. See Barnabas Lindars, Matthew, Levi, Lebbaeus and the Value of the Western Text, https://brentnongbri.com/2018/05/21/matthew-and-levi-and-james/, Lindars, Western Text,222; cf. At the same time, opposition against Jesus was growing stronger, especially from the religious . A beam of light illuminates the faces of the men at the table who are looking at Jesus Christ. It is the contracted name of Mattathias. Matthew's shocked facial expression shows that he understands this societal dynamic well, but his look and gesture may indicate even more than that. ill. 3). In Mark 2:14, Jesus calls Levi, a tax collector and son of Alphaeus, to follow him, much as Jesus calls other disciples, and at first Levi does follow Jesus. I. Many commentators compare Matthews two names with other first-century Jews who had a Greek or Latin cognomen. However, none of the ancient Christian literati surmised that the Apostle was fluent in Greek, for they handed down the tradition that Matthew composed his Gospel in Aramaic before it was translated into Greek. Acts 1:19; 2:6, 8; 21:40; 22:2; 26:14);[22] Krzinger enlists Irenaeus in support of his reading of Papias, despite the fact that Irenaeus used the article when affirming that Matthew wrote to the Hebrews in their dialektos (cf. Matthew's " original name, Levi, suggests that he was a man of the priestly tribe." Levi means " adhesion ." But Matthew was re-Christened " gift " or "given," a profound switch for a tax. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Matthew 9:9-13, Matthew is the ONLY one of the Gospel writers who uses his changed name from Levi to Matthew. (Matt. though this example differs slightly from Matthew 9:9 inasmuch as the woman is left unnamed. Jesus invited Matthew (Levi) to follow him (Lk 5:27-32). ill. 3; Tract. T/F. These Jewish tax collectors were disdained by the Jews. This writer will explore what the ancient writers who were closer in time to Matthew had to say about the language in which Matthew was originally written: Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:1 c.175-185 A.D. The first (Gospel) is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an emissary of Yeshua the Messiah, who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew. Origen circa 210 CE, quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. This is not a solitary occurrence within Matthews Gospel: the evangelist inserted the mother of the sons of Zebedee into one pericope (Matt 20:20; cf. [39] Edwards (Hebrew Gospel, 210) identifies Matthews oracles in h.e. A minority view during the Patristic period was that Levi and Matthew were separate individuals. ill. 3) and, after comparing it to the textual fragments that he received from Jewish Christ-followers living in Beroea known as the Nazarenes, would translate the entire work. This is a quite different case from that of an individual having both a Semitic and a Greek or Latin name, as well as from that of an individual having a Semitic name and also a nickname or family name."[7]. Other scholars suspect that the Nazarenes only supplied Jerome with their own translations and commentary on Matthews Gospel. [34] Friedrich Schleiermacher, ber die Zeugnisse des Papias von unsern beiden ersten Evangelien, TSK 5 (1832): 73568; Manson, Gospels and Epistles, 7787; Hill, Matthew, 2427; Davies and Allison, Matthew IIV, 1.17; Black, Rhetorical Terminology, 3235; Hagner, Matthew 113; xlvxlvi; Nolland, Matthew, 3; Carter, Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist, 1617; Sim, R. Because Matthews original purpose was to prove to his Jewish brethren that Jesus is their Mashiach/Messiah, he included in his Gospel nine proof texts from the Old Testament which Jesus fulfilledMatthew 1:22,23; 2:15; 2:17,18; 2:23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 27:9,10. 6.14.2; Epiphanius, Pan. When Jesus called Levi, Jesus never told him, "Repent, and follow Me." Jesus only said, "Follow Me." Jesus sought out someone like Levi, who was in need of God's mercy and helped him to make a decision to follow Jesus; that is to turn to God.

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