The most common way to doubt the orthodox authorship claims of the New Testament has been to claim that the apostles could not have written their books of the New Testament because they could not write books at all. The argument goes that because the apostles were poorer peasants they would not be able to afford education to learn how to read and write (Antiquity had no public schooling system so the only way to learn how to read and write would be to hire an expensive tutor), therefore it’s unlikely that the apostles were able to write long theological treatises and gospels in Greek.
One apostle has a unique position in this discussion. That is the apostle Matthew. Some argue that because Matthew was a tax collector, he must have been able to write, as he would have to write tax receipts and work with Roman officials. Erik Manning for isjesusalive.com makes this argument:
“Publicans worked in cooperation with their Roman superiors. They were in close contact with them. They would have had to provide documentation of their collections and speak with them, so Matthew likely had to be bilingual” 1
Does this argument hold up? Was Matthew able to write a gospel? Or is he another illiterate peasant? This article will try to answer that question. We can’t analyze the literacy of Matthew himself as there are no external sources about this topic. The best that can be done is to reconstruct the education of someone like Matthew would have. Based on the Gospels we know he was a tax collector in a town called Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. So first we will analyze the literacy of the average person from the Sea of Galilee. Then we will analyze the tax system to see if it would require writing. Finally, we will look at any evidence related to tax collectors in particular to see what that evidence can say on the question of who wrote Matthew. But first, we need to establish some context on ancient literacy as a whole.
The most important study of literacy in the ancient world came from the historian William Harris in his book Ancient Literacy. Harriss analyzes the evidence to conclude that at no point in the ancient world was there any mass literacy. The closest thing to mass literacy was some craftsmen’s literacy. There were some theories that in advanced places like Athens commerce required literacy, but Harris concludes that it’s more likely that Athens mostly used oral commerce. In the end, Haris concludes that it’s very improbable that any ancient societies had literacy rates above %10 with most of the literacy being among skilled workers like craftsmen, not unskilled workers or women2.
This gives a picture of literacy in the broader ancient world. But we must remember, that Matthew didn’t just live in the broader ancient world. He lived in a specific town. As per the Gospels, the apostle Matthew lived in a village called Capernaum:
“he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim” (Matt. 4:13)
Here we learn it’s on the Sea Of Galilee. On the map above one can see that it’s near other towns associated with the story of Jesus such as Nazareth, Magdala, and Bethsadia. Archeologists have excavated this site thoroughly. The most interesting feature of this town is a synagogue. The New Testament does mention a synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus teaches in John 6. That being said this almost certainly isn’t the synagogue in the New Testament. According to the review article “Notes on Recent Excavations at Capernaum” written by G. Forester in 1971 for the Israel Explanation Journal the style of the synagogue matches late second or third-century patterns3. S. Loffreda in “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum.” for the same journal opts for a date from the late fourth century through the middle fifth century 4. Sharon Lea Mattilla uses ceramic data to establish a late fifth to early sixth-century date5. Based on these archeologists the synagogue could have been built anywhere from the late second century to the early sixth century. Note that any of these dates place the synagogue too late to be the synagogue in the New Testament. That doesn’t mean Capernaum had no synagogue during the time of Matthew, it just means we have no way to know. To summarize, Capernaum was a small village of mostly houses and maybe a synagogue
Now that we have a picture of what Matthew’s hometown looked like we can begin to unpack whether or not the typical Capernaumite6 man could read and write. To understand literacy throughout Judea in Matthew’s time it’s impossible not to turn to Cathrine Hezser’s definitive book, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. Hezser explains that literacy was predominantly an urban phenomenon that was held by the elites and sub-elites7. Therefore, Capernaum, being a non-elite, non-urban village, likely would not have high literacy rates. It’s pretty clear then, that the average Capernaumite would not be literate. But Matthew wasn’t the average Capernaumite. As a tax collector, one might think he’d need to read and write.
To evaluate this idea we must understand what being a Judean tax collector entailed. To understand that we must understand what the Roman tax system in Judea was like. We should note that it was incredibly complex. Roman rulers didn’t just use one tax system, rather, they used many. On top of the Roman tax, a tax collector was also collecting religious taxes such as the temple tax.8 On top of that was the Fiscus Iudaicis, an additional tax used to punish rebellions in Judea that was used to build Pagan temples.9 Some estimates of the amount of types of taxes that Romans had cross 100 different types of taxes10. It’s clear why some would assume that tax collectors would need to write to keep track of all this.
The historical record does reflect the idea that writing was involved in tax collection. William Harris mentions that Valentinian I tried to improve local records for tax purposes11. We also have word of tax collectors themselves writing. The grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus writes in his De Verborum Significatione that a tax collector finishes his account when he writes12. This is evidence that tax collectors, like potentially Matthew, would have to write on the job. This extended to Judea. Catherine Hezser mentions a tax receipt for a tax on a lease that was recovered.
However, that doesn’t show that Matthew was able to write Matthew. Matthew was written in Greek. Therefore the author would need to be able to write in Greek. The issue is it’s improbable he would have that ability. The tax receipt mentioned was written in Aramaic13. The argument for tax collectors' ability to speak Greek, as presented by Manning above, comes from the idea that tax collectors worked with Roman officials. This seems unlikely. Julius Caeser put the act of taxation on local authorities14. As David Downs explains, it was local entities like cities that would levy most taxes15. Therefore it’s unlikely Matthew would work with Roman authorities. Rather he’d be working with closer Judean authorities. As Hezser explains, as confirmed by documentation, these Judean authorities spoke Aramaic.
If someone tells you Matthew couldn’t write at all, they are wrong. If someone tells you Matthew could write complex Greek, they are also wrong. In actuality, the answer lies somewhere in between. The apostle Matthew would have some level of Aramaic literacy but almost certainly wouldn’t be able to write in Greek to make his Gospel.
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Manning, Erik. “Did Matthew Really Write the Gospel Attributed to Him?” Is Jesus Alive?, 25 Mar. 2019, isjesusalive.com/did-matthew-write-the-gospel-of-matthew/.
FOERSTER, G. “Notes on Recent Excavations at Capernaum (Review Article).” Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 21, no. 4, 1971, pp. 207–11. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27925290. Accessed 20 July 2024.
LOFFREDA, S. “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum.” Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 1973, pp. 37–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27925374. Accessed 20 July 2024.
Mattila, Sharon Lea. "Capernaum, Village of Nah| um, from Hellenistic to Byzantine Times." Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Volume 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages 2 (2015): 217.
There’s no standard way to refer to someone from Capernaum that I could find. Since Capernaum comes from Hebrew and other members of a Hebrew group get the suffix -ite in English (Consider the Moabites, Amalekites, and Israelites) I have called those who are from Capernaum, Capernaumites.
King, Darwin, et al. “The Comprehensive Taxation System Existing during the Roman Empire.” Journal of Business and Accounting, vol. 12, no. 1, 2019, pp. 64–78, asbbs.org/files/2019/JBA_Vol12.1_Fall_2019.pdf#page=64. Accessed 5 July 2024.
Berthelot, Katell. "The Paradoxical Similarities between the Jews and the Roman Other." Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (2017): 95-109.
Udoh, Fabian. "Taxation and other sources of government income in the Galilee of Herod and Antipas." Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods 1 (2014): 366-87.
