Discussing the traditional attribution of authorship of the tax collector Levi/Matthew to the Gospel of Matthew, D.A. Carson et al. offered, among other points, the following about the traditional authorship:
3. The assumption that Matthew was a tax collector (essentially a minor customs official collecting tariff on goods in transit) and was the author of the gospel makes sense of a number of details. Not all the evidence cited is equally convincing. A number of peculiarly Matthean pericopes do depict financial transactions (17:24-27; 18:23-35; 20:1-16; 26:15; 27:3-10; 28:11-15), but none of them betrays an insider’s knowledge of the customs system. Certainly a customs official in Matthew’s position would have had to be fluent in both Aramaic and Greek, and such fluency must have been important when the gospel was first crossing racial barriers: indeed, it squares with the notion of a gospel written in Greek that nevertheless could draw on Semitic sources. C.F.D. Moule suggests that 13:52 is a subtle self-reference by the author: the “scribe” (γραμματευς [grammateus], NIV “teacher of the law”) who becomes a disciple should not be understood as a reference to a rabbinic scribe but to a “scribe in the secular sense,” that is, a well-educated writer. Goodspeed goes further yet: after compiling impressive evidence that shorthand was widely practiced in the Roman world, he suggests that Matthew’s training and occupation would have equipped him to be a kind of notetaker or secretary for the group of disciples, even during Jesus’ ministry. The theory is plausible enough, but completely without hard evidence.
4. On the assumption of Markan priority, some think it is unlikely that an apostle would so freely use the work of a secondary witness such as Mark and believe that this tells against any theory of apostolic authorship. But plagiarism in the modern sense, and the shame associated with it, developed in the wake of the printing press and the financial gain that could be associated with the mass production of some writing. The wholesale takeover, without acknowledgment, of someone else’s literary work, without or without changes, was a common practice in the ancient world, and no opprobrium was connected with it. In that case it is hard to think of a reason why an apostle might not also find the practice congenial, the more so if he knew that behind Mark’s gospel was the witness of Peter. (D.A.Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992], 72-73)
