Who was Matthew the tax collector?

The call at the tax office

As Jesus passed by from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, “Follow me.” He got up and followed him.

Capernaum, Jesus’s base on the north shore of the lake, stood near the edge of Galilee, the land Herod Antipas ruled for Rome. Antipas taxed boats, catches and roads, and the booth by the road collected his tolls, not Rome’s directly. Luke adds that the man “left everything” and gave a great feast in his house, crowded with tax collectors (Luke 5:28–29).

Levi or Matthew?

Mark tells the same scene with another name, “Levi the son of Alphaeus” (Mark 2:14), and Luke also says Levi. Only the Gospel of Matthew calls the man Matthew, and only its list of the twelve calls him “Matthew the tax collector” (Matthew 10:3). Most readers take them as one man with two names, like Simon who was also Cephas. Matthew, Mattityahu in Hebrew, means gift of Yahweh. Some scholars suspect instead that the Gospel took Mark’s story and gave it the name of an apostle. Either way, Levi appears in no list of the twelve, and Matthew appears in all four.

Why tax collectors were hated

The Gospels pair tax collectors with sinners, prostitutes and Gentiles (Matthew 18:17; 21:31), and the reasons were practical. The right to collect was leased out, and the collector lived on whatever he took above what he owed. When tax collectors came to John the Baptist asking what to do, his answer says it all.

He said to them, “Collect no more than that which is appointed to you.”

They worked for a foreign power or its client king, handled everyone’s money and sat where no trader could avoid them. The Mishnah even lets a man make a false vow to murderers, robbers and tax collectors to save his goods (Nedarim 3:4). Zacchaeus of Jericho, “a chief tax collector, and he was rich” (Luke 19:2), shows how well the trade could pay.

A dinner that caused a scandal

So when Jesus sat down at Levi’s table with “many tax collectors and sinners,” some scribes and Pharisees asked his disciples why. His answer: “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick” (Mark 2:17). Matthew’s Gospel alone adds a line from the prophet Hosea: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). The charge stuck. His critics called Jesus “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).

The Gospel and the legends

Early in the second century Papias of Hierapolis wrote that Matthew had compiled the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew language, as Eusebius quotes him (Church History 3.39.16), and the church soon credited Matthew with the first Gospel. The book never names its author, is written in fluent Greek and, most scholars think, uses Mark as a source, so many doubt that the apostle wrote it as it stands; how the Gospels came to be is told in Which Gospel was written first? Readers have long noticed its eye for money: only Matthew has the coin in the fish’s mouth for the Temple tax (Matthew 17:24–27).

Later traditions send Matthew to preach in Ethiopia or Persia. Western churches keep his feast on September 21, the Orthodox on November 16, and he is the patron of bankers and accountants. In Rome, in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, Caravaggio painted The Calling of Saint Matthew around 1600: a shaft of light, a table of men counting coins, and Jesus pointing.