Matshock wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 13:51:
Matthew was a direct witness to the life of Jesus BTW.
Blind faith makes all dreams possible.
... by the end of the 2nd century the tradition of Matthew the tax-collector had become widely accepted, and the line "The Gospel According to Matthew" began to be added to manuscripts. For many reasons most scholars today doubt this—for example, the gospel is based on Mark, and "it seems unlikely that an eyewitness of Jesus's ministry, such as Matthew, would need to rely on others for information about it" — and believe instead that it was written between about 80–90 AD by a highly educated Israelite, intimately familiar with the technical aspects of Jewish law, standing on the boundary between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values.
Most textual scholars consider that the author drew on three distinct sources, each representing a distinct community: material shared with Luke (called "Q", a hypothetical collection, or several collections, of sayings); the Gospel of Mark; and material unique to Matthew (called "M"). He wrote for a Jewish audience: like "Q" and "M", he stresses the continuing relevance of the Jewish law; unlike Mark he never bothers to explain Jewish customs; and unlike Luke, who traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, father of the human race, he traces it only to Abraham, father of the Jews. The content of "M" suggests that this community was stricter than the others in its attitude to keeping the Jewish law, holding that they must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees in "righteousness" (adherence to Jewish law); and of the three only "M" refers to a "church" (ecclesia), an organised group with rules for keeping order.
(60) The disciples saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb on his way to Judea. Jesus said to his disciples, "That man is round about the lamb."
They said to him, "So that he may kill it and eat it."
Jesus said to them, "While it is alive, he will not eat it, but only when he has killed it and it has become a corpse."
They said to him, "He cannot do so otherwise."
Jesus said to them, "You too, look for a place for yourself within repose, lest you become a corpse and be eaten."
- gospel of thomas