Matthew the Tax Collector: Was He Levi, and Did He Write the Gospel?

Cold open

Rome, the year 1600. In a side chapel of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi hangs a brand-new picture by a painter called Caravaggio. A dim room. A table of men counting money. A shaft of light slicing in from the right. And from the same side, a hand, reaching out, pointing.

It's called The Calling of Saint Matthew. And here's the funny thing. Four hundred years later, art historians still argue about which of those men at the table actually is Matthew.

Which is fitting. Because with Matthew, everything comes with a question mark. Was he the same man as "Levi"? What exactly was a tax collector in Galilee? And did he really write the Gospel that carries his name... a book which, if you read it carefully, never actually says who wrote it?

As always: when it's the Bible, I'll tell you. When it's early tradition, I'll tell you that. And when it's legend... you'll know.

Let's begin.

One man, two names?

Scripture

Three Gospels tell the same little story. Jesus is passing by (in Mark, he has been in Capernaum and gone out beside the sea). He sees a man sitting at the tax booth. He says two words: "Follow me." And the man gets up and follows him.

Simple. Except... the name.

Matthew's Gospel says the man was "called Matthew." But Mark calls him "Levi the son of Alphaeus." And Luke calls him "a tax collector named Levi," and adds that, "leaving everything," he followed.

Then, in Matthew's list of the twelve apostles, we get "Matthew the tax collector." Mark, Luke and Acts list a Matthew among the Twelve too, but they never call him a tax collector. And in our standard Bibles, none of the four lists has a Levi.

Scholarship

So the usual solution is: Levi and Matthew are one man, with two names. And that's perfectly reasonable. Double names turn up all over the New Testament. Simon was also Cephas. Saul was also Paul. One candidate in Acts manages three: "Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus." Matthew itself is a Hebrew name, probably a short form of Mattithiah, meaning something like "gift of the Lord."

But notice: no Gospel ever says "Levi, also called Matthew." It's a harmonisation. A very sensible one... but an inference.

Speculation

If they were one man, did Jesus give him the new name, the way he gave Simon the name Peter? People have suggested it. The text never says so.

Tradition

Not every early writer treats them as one man. In the second century, a teacher called Heracleon, quoted by Clement of Alexandria, writes: "not all the saved made the confession by the voice and departed; of whom are Matthew, Philip, Thomas, Levi, and many others." Matthew and Levi, named separately, in the same breath.

Around the year 248, the great scholar Origen allows that Levi, a follower of Jesus, may have been a tax collector, but says he was "not of the number of the apostles," and then adds, "except according to a statement in one of the copies of Mark's Gospel." So even Origen's copies of Mark didn't agree! Yet in his commentary on Romans (which survives only in a later Latin translation) Origen treats Matthew and Levi as the same man. Origen's own writings point both ways.

Scholarship

There's even a handful of manuscripts of Mark (the oldest is the famous Codex Bezae, from around the year 400) where the man at the tax booth is called "James the son of Alphaeus." Most textual critics see that as a later scribal change. But it shows the puzzle is very old.

Tradition

In the 390s, Jerome writes it flatly: "Matthew, also called Levi."

So: one man with two names? Probably, most would say. Proven? No.

At the tax booth

So what was Matthew's job? Our Bibles say "tax collector." The old King James says "publican."

Scholarship

A publicanus belonged to the great Roman tax companies, which bid for the right to collect a province's taxes. But Galilee wasn't run directly by Rome. It was ruled by Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, who governed as a client ruler with Rome's blessing from 4 BC until AD 39.

The Greek word in the Gospels is telōnēs, and the booth is a telōnion. Many scholars, John Donahue in a well-known 1971 study for one, think "toll collector" is closer to the mark. Capernaum sat on the lakeshore, just a few miles from the River Jordan, the border with the territory of Antipas's brother Philip. Goods crossing that border could be charged duties. So the most likely picture is a local Jewish man, working in Antipas's system, collecting tolls and customs. Not a Roman official.

But honestly? The Gospels never describe his duties. That picture is reconstructed from what we know of the region.

Scripture

What the Gospels do show is how tax collectors were seen. They're grouped with "sinners." With prostitutes. Jesus says, "Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." When tax collectors came to John the Baptist, he told them: "Collect no more than you are authorized to do."

Scholarship

And later Jewish law is blunter still. The Mishnah, written down around AD 200, lumps tax collectors in with murderers and robbers, and says that if tax collectors enter a house... the house is ritually unclean. Ouch.

Now, some recent scholars argue the "total outcast" image has been overdone. And the Mishnah was written down more than a century and a half after Jesus. Fair points. But a tax collector was not, let's say, everybody's favourite dinner guest.

Scripture

Here's a curious detail. Where Luke has Jesus say "even sinners love those who love them," Matthew's version asks, "Do not even the tax collectors do the same?"

Speculation

Rather cheeky, in a book that tradition says a tax collector wrote! Some see an ex-tax collector being honest about his old trade. Others see a sign the author wasn't one. The text doesn't tell us.

Dinner with the wrong crowd

Scripture

Straight after the call, there's a meal. Mark says Jesus was at table "in his house," with many tax collectors and sinners. Whose house? Mark doesn't make it clear. Matthew just says "the house." It's Luke who says Levi "made him a great feast in his house."

And the scribes of the Pharisees asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Jesus answers: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Matthew's version adds a line from the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice."

Elsewhere, Jesus says people called him "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!" Not, you'll notice, a compliment.

And Matthew himself? He never speaks a single line, in any Gospel. Not one. His last appearance in the whole New Testament is a name in a list, in the upper room, in Acts chapter one. And then... silence.

The book with no name

So, the big question. Did this man write the Gospel of Matthew?

Scripture

The Gospel itself never names its author. And when the tax collector appears in chapter nine, the book talks about him in the third person: "he saw a man called Matthew."

Scholarship

And the heading "According to Matthew"? Scholars agree it isn't part of the original text. Exactly when it was first attached is debated.

So the name comes from tradition. Let's look at it.

Tradition

The earliest surviving witness is Papias, a bishop in what's now Turkey, writing probably in the early 100s. His books are lost. We only have quotations, and this one is preserved by the historian Eusebius, about two centuries later. Papias says:

"So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able."

The Greek word behind "oracles" is logia.

Around the year 180, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, says Matthew "issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect," while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome. Origen, too, says Matthew wrote first, in Hebrew.

So the tradition is early and consistent: Matthew wrote, and he wrote in Hebrew. Hold on to that word, Hebrew. Because that's where things get tricky.

What the scholars say

Scholarship

The Gospel we actually have is written in Greek. And most scholars think it doesn't read like a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic.

Second: most scholars think Matthew's author used Mark's Gospel as a source, along with other material. The great bulk of Mark turns up in Matthew, often word for word, in the same order.

Now look at the call scene. Mark: "he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he rose and followed him." Matthew: "he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he rose and followed him."

Almost identical, except the name. So many scholars ask: why would an eyewitness copy someone else's account of his own calling? For them, that weighs against the apostle writing the Greek Gospel, and most critical scholars date it to around AD 80 to 90.

But other scholars defend the traditional view. Early tradition says Mark wrote down Peter's preaching. So, they argue, why wouldn't an apostle use Peter's account? And a minority argue that Matthew came first and Mark used him, which would change the picture entirely.

Then there's Papias. What did he mean by logia? The word can mean "sayings," or "oracles." Was he describing our Gospel? A collection of Jesus's sayings? Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah? Some scholars even argue that "in the Hebrew language" really means "in a Hebrew style," though most aren't convinced.

And critics add one more point: the later writers may all be echoing Papias. Consistent, yes. But possibly one voice, repeated. Defenders reply that Irenaeus and others had sources of their own. Round and round it goes.

So where does that leave us? Honestly: the Gospel is anonymous. The tradition naming Matthew is early and consistent. Whether that tradition is right, and what Papias was really describing, is still genuinely debated. Anyone who tells you it's settled, either way, isn't giving you the whole picture.

Ethiopia, Parthia... or neither?

So what happened to Matthew afterwards? The Bible is silent. And the traditions... don't agree.

Tradition

Let's start with a lovely oddity. Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria says that "the apostle Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh." Matthew the vegetarian. Clement doesn't say where he heard it.

Then, around the year 400, Rufinus says that when the apostles were allotted their regions of the world, Matthew received Ethiopia. Socrates repeats it a generation later.

And remember Heracleon? Clement calls him the most distinguished of the school of Valentinus, whom the wider church considered unorthodox. His point was about confessing Christ aloud before the authorities, and then "departing," which is usually taken to mean dying. And Matthew is on his list of the saved who did not. So one of our oldest sources seems to say Matthew was not martyred at all.

Legend

Later writings don't settle it either. A short list of the apostles, wrongly credited to Hippolytus and of uncertain date, says Matthew "fell asleep" (that is, died) at a town in Parthia. No martyrdom mentioned.

But legend loves a martyr. A Latin Passion of Matthew, found in manuscripts from the 700s onwards, tells a dramatic story. Matthew in Ethiopia. Defeating two magicians. Consecrating the king's daughter, Iphigenia, to God. And the new king, Hyrtacus, who wants Iphigenia for himself and, furious, sends a guard to kill Matthew with a sword. In the thirteenth century, the Golden Legend retold it, and has him struck down at the altar.

So: Ethiopia or Parthia? Martyred, or died peacefully? The honest answer is that we don't know.

Scholarship

What we can say is where his relics are claimed to be. Medieval records say they were brought to Salerno, in southern Italy, in the year 954, and they're venerated in the crypt of Salerno Cathedral today.

Back to the painting

Scholarship

So let's go back to Caravaggio. The chapel's decoration was set out in the will of a French cardinal, Matthieu Cointrel. And Caravaggio painted three scenes of Matthew there: his calling, his inspiration as he writes the Gospel, and his martyrdom, drawn from that legend.

Now look again at the calling. Christ points. A bearded man at the table points too. Most art historians say he's pointing at himself: "Who, me?" That's Matthew. Supporters point out that a similar bearded figure plays Matthew in the other two paintings.

But a minority reads it differently. The bearded man is pointing past himself, at the young man at the end of the table, head down, still counting coins. "Him?" On that reading, Matthew hasn't looked up yet.

Which is it? Caravaggio didn't say. And you know what? That might be the most honest portrait of Matthew ever painted.

Close

So, what do we really know?

A man sat at a tax booth. In Mark's telling, Jesus had gone out beside the sea, after a stay in Capernaum. Jesus said "Follow me." He got up and followed. Mark and Luke call him Levi; Matthew's Gospel calls him Matthew; and most readers, for most of history, have taken them to be the same man.

There was a meal, with many tax collectors and sinners. There's his name in every list of the Twelve. And after that... silence.

The book that bears his name may be his. The earliest tradition says so. Many modern scholars doubt it. Nobody can prove it either way.

But here's what nobody disputes. The Gospel that carries his name has stood first in the New Testament for most of Christian history.

Not bad... for a tax collector.

Next time: the apostle whose name became a byword for betrayal. Judas Iscariot. And a puzzle the New Testament hands us directly: two accounts of his death.