The Foreseen

Matthew, the Old Usurer Who Left Everything

nby Alessandro Zangrando

ìThe wind blows where it pleases,î said Jesus during His conversation with the eminent Pharisee Nicodemus. (Jn 3:8) Just as does the breath of the Holy Spirit, which upsets all the plans and expectations of men. And the wind blew also on Matthew. He was a publican; that is, a businessman who was given a contract by the Roman procurator for the collection of tariffs, the portorium, a form of customs duty and toll that wayfarers had to pay as they crossed the boundaries between the tetrarchies ruled by Herod Antipas and Philip. Matthew, in short, was a tax collector by profession, a figure that then, as now, was not greatly liked among the inhabitants of Galilee. As tax collector, he had the right to go through peopleís pockets and baggage. At his desk, piled with papers and documents, he did accounts, counted coins.

And Jesusí gaze fell right on him. It was in Capernaum. The Messiah had just healed the paralytic, then ìwhen He went out after this, He noticed a tax collector, Levi by name, sitting at the tax office, and said to him, ëfollow me.í And leaving everything, Levi got up and followed Him.î (Lk 5:27-28) So for Matthew too, life changed in an instant. After meeting Jesus, he left his business immediately and prepared a great banquet at his house. ìWith them at table was a large gathering of tax collectors and others. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to His disciples and said, ëWhy do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?í Jesus said to them in reply, ëIt is not those that are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have come to call not the upright but sinners to repentance.íî (Lk 5:29-32)

Little more is known about Matthew. His name derives from the Greek ìMathaios,î a translation of the Hebrew ìMattaiî which means ìgift of the Lord.î In the other synoptic Gospels, the evangelist is cited as ìLevi the son of Alphaeusî in Mark (Mk 2:14) and in Luke as ìa tax collector, Levi by name.î (Lk 5:27) This is explained by the Jewish custom of coupling with the Semitic name another Greek or Latin name. Matthew is also recorded in Acts (1:14), when Luke lists the apostles who gathered together after the Ascension.

Uncertain information

According to some traditions, in his work of evangelization he reached Ethiopia, Persia, Syria, Macedonia, and even Ireland. There is no certainty even about his death; some say he died of old age and others say he was martyred, run through by a sword while celebrating Mass. Still others assert that Matthew had converted Iphigenia, daughter of King Hegesippus of Ethiopia, after bringing her back to life. She then refused to marry King Hiarticus, and Matthew defended her virtue, a gesture he paid for with his life.

At the end of the 4th century, sailors coming from Ethiopia brought his body to Velia. Subsequently the inhabitants, threatened by invasion by the Visigoths, transferred his remains to Lucania. In 954, finally the evangelistís body reached Salerno at the behest of the Longobard King Gisulph I, who hid them in the cathedral. The bones were found in 1080, and since that date rest in the crypt.

Is Matthew the apostle the same person who wrote the first Gospel? Historians divide on the issue. Some attribute the Gospel to another Matthew, because there is a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem (verse 22:7, ìthe kingÖ burned their townî), which suggests it was written after 70 A.D. Other exegetes, including the authoritative Oscar Cullmann, think that the Gospel is based on an Aramaic source compiled by the apostle (a collection of the sayings of Jesus, the so-called ìlogiaî). According to Apollonius, an Asian bishop cited by Eusebius, the Gospel was compiled around 42 A.D., before the apostle left Palestine to preach in other countries. For St. Ireneus of Lyon, the book was published ìwhile Peter and Paul were evangelizing and founding the Church of Rome,î thus the date would slide to the year 60.

Signs of his profession

In all probability, the Gospel of Matthew was compiled initially in Aramaic, and subsequently in Greek. The tax collector was used to writing ìbecause without writing things down daily, he would not have been able in the past to keep the lists of payments in order on his counter,î as Abbot Giuseppe Ricciotti explains in his Life of Jesus Christ. And signs of his profession appear in the narration; in his Gospel, money is described in detail, every coin is cited with its proper name and value. He reveals his precision, too, concerning the tax laws. ìAmong the synoptic Gospels,î the abbot goes on, ìMatthew is the one who gives the most space to the words of Jesus, which take up about three-fifths of the entire text.î The narrative is structured around five great speeches: the Sermon on the Mount, the Mission of the Twelve, the parables, the discussions of the Church, and the coming end. Matthew was speaking to a well-defined public. These were Christians whose origins were Jewish. His Gospel contains numerous lexical and stylistic elements of Semitic origin, transmitted from the original text to the Greek version. The best known is the expression ìKingdom of Heaven,î which we find only here, a formula which arose as a result of the rabbinic concern not to utter the name of God. Matthewís aim is to report an event that had meaning for readers whose faith was that of Moses, as Ricciotti explains: in his Gospel, more than in any other, Jesus appears as the Messiah promised by the Old Testament, who fulfills all prophecies in His person. As Oscar Cullmann noted, Matthew insists particularly on showing the correspondences between the Old Testament prophecies and the figure of Jesus. ìPerhaps among all the documents written earlier, he already uses a sort of anthology of Old Testament texts applied to Christ,î wrote Cullmann.

James the Lesser,

nby PAOLA RONCONI

The words ìbrothers and sistersî in the Gospels, used in connection with Jesus, leave readers a bit perplexed. ìJesus had, besides a mother and a father, also other relatives, just as his mother had a sister (Jn 19:25), so he had ëbrothersí and ësisters,í mentioned several times by the evangelists. We are told the names of four of these brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Judah (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3); his sistersí names are not given,î wrote Ricciotti in his Vita di Ges˜ Cristo.

Even if the debate on the precise meaning of the Hebrew word íah (brother) is still open, the prevailing interpretation is ìcousins,î or, more generically, ìclose relatives.î

The Gospel of John (7:5) tells us that during his public activity ìnot even his brothers had faith in him,î at least for the most part. A reason might be sought in the fact that Jesus, with the Twelve, spent a large part of His public life in Capernaum, which was given preference over His native Nazareth, and there He performed most of the extraordinary facts for which He became famous.

According to a tradition, one of these ìbrothersî could be James, the son of Alphaeus (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 6:15) and of Mary the wife of Clopas, ìhis motherís sister,î who stood near the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25). (ìClopasî and ìAlphaeusî could derive from two different Greek transcriptions of the same Aramaic word hilpay or halfay, or this person, his father, could have had two names, like Paul-Saul, which was very common at the time).

When the apostles are listed in the Gospels and the Acts (Mt 10:2-4; Mk 3:16-19; Lk 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), divided into three groups of four, James is always the first of the third group, as though there were a hierarchy among the twelve. A certain special consideration for James, given his kinship with the Master, would not be surprising.

Besides his patronymic (ìof Alphaeusî), James is indicated as the ìLesser,î to distinguish him from James the son of Zebedee, the ìGreater.î

The Gospels tell us nothing about what James was like; his name does not appear in the narrative of any particular episode during Jesusí life, nor is James mentioned during the dramatic moments of His Passion and Death, when we know, instead, that His mother accompanied Him along the way to Calvary and stood at the foot of the cross.

An important name

James is named, however, at a later point, in the early Church in Jerusalem, after the Resurrection.

Searching among St. Paulís writings, we find that Jesus, after His resurrection, ìappeared to Cephas [Peter] and later to the Twelve; and next He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothersÖ then He appeared to Jamesî (1Cor 15:5-7), but this is all Paul tells us. Out of so many people (five hundred brothers), the only names Paul cites are those of Peter and James, as though to say, ìHe appeared to just these two important personages!î And it seems not to matter exactly when and where these things happened. Again, toward 37-38 A.D., three years after his conversion, Paul went to Jerusalem to ìmeet Cephas,î designated by Jesus Himself as the authority over the Christian community then taking shape. ìI stayed fifteen days with him but did not set eyes on any of the rest of the apostles, only James, the Lordís brother.î Thus James already held a high position with the group of apostles, so that Paul could not spend time in Jerusalem without meeting him.

But letís continue our research. In 44, Herod Agrippa, ìto please the Jewsî (Acts 12:1-4) began his persecutions of Christians (already a few years earlier the Hellenists in the Christian community had been expelled from Jerusalem, and Stephen stoned). He ordered James, the son of Zebedee, to be beheaded, and had Peter arrested. An angel miraculously freed Peter, and when he joined his brothers who had gathered to pray together, he told them what had happened. Then he said to them, ìTell James and the brothers.î (Acts 12:17) Acts goes on to say ìThen he left and went elsewhere.î Many scholars interpret this passage as the moment when Peter named James to be his successor; from that moment James would have taken over from Peter the direction of the Church in Jerusalem and the entire Christian community. Some critics, predominantly Protestant, consider James to be the first pope, thus diminishing the primacy of Peter (handed down for 2,000 years now by the Bishop of Rome) and thus of Rome itself.

The Council of 51 A.D.

Jamesí dominant position was not fully manifested until the Council of Jerusalem (51 A.D.), called to settle a question between Paul and the Jewish-Christians in Antioch: Is it right that pagans converted to Christianity not be subjected to the law of Moses and thus to circumcision? According to Paul, ìsomeone is reckoned upright not by practicing the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ.î (Gal 2:16) His position could not avoid causing a scandal among the Pharisees. Paul arrived in Jerusalem with his companions Barnabas and Titus. They immediately met James, Cephas, and Johnñthe ìpillars,î as he calls themñwho extended a gesture of friendship when they ìoffered their right hands to Barnabas and to me as a sign of partnership; we were to go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.î (Gal 2:9-10)

At the Council, James spoke after Peter: ìMy verdict is, then, that instead of making things more difficult for Gentiles who turn to God, we should send them a letter telling them merely to abstain from anything polluted by idols, from illicit marriages, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.î (Acts 15:19-20) This was the core of his speech. He had been brought up like most Jewish families; that is, to observe the Law of Moses strictly, and to speak both Greek and Aramaic. (James was called ìthe Justî by Hegesippus and was cited in the History of the Church by Eusebius of Caesarea for his chaste, upright habits and his assiduous attendance at the temple.) Over the years, James won the respect of the strictly observant Jewish-Christians.

In this regard, critics have often underlined the anti-Pauline aspect both of Jamesís words to the Council and of a letter (the first of the Catholic Letters of the New Testament). Faith is not enough, works too are necessary (in the letter he exhorts the faithful to patience, humility, attention to the poor, prayer, and the conversion of sinners). The dating of the letter varies: either around 47, before the Council of Jerusalem, or just before his death in 62. The text seems in some passages to contrast with the Pauline idea of faith that brings salvation. Leaving aside any debate about exegesis, we should keep in mind that James was addressing ìthe Twelve Tribes [the Jewish-Christian communities] of the Dispersion.î Thus a distinction between faith in Jesus and Judaism would have doubtless been incomprehensible to the author of the letter as well as to those to whom he was writing. Paul, instead, was dealing with pagans.

Good government

James was one noted for political astuteness, possessing a strategy for surviving the persecutions (at times provoked by the laxity of certain Jewish-Christians with regard to the law of Moses), as well as for his desire to search for some way, albeit difficult, to reconcile Christianity, paganism, and Judaism.

It is a given fact that Jamesí ìgood governmentî brought about a truce in the persecution against the Christians on the part of the Roman power between the years 43 and 62 (the year of his death).

The best witness to Jamesís death available to us is a passage from the Antiquities of the Jews by the historian Flavius Josephus (facts later confirmed by Hegesippus, in the History of the Church by Eusebius of Caesarea). In 62, taking advantage of a vacancy in the Roman power between the death of the procurator Festus and the arrival of his successor Albinus, the high priest Annas, after calling together the Sanhedrin, had James and the others stoned for transgressions against the law.

With the death of James, the Christian community lost a head whose authority was, if not unanimously, at least largely respected.