Church.

In the first place, let us consider the Gospel of St. Matthew. The
majority of people accept this as having been written by St. Matthew,
with his own hand, during his ministry; and that the Gospel, word for
word, is the work of this great apostle. This idea, however, is not
held for a moment by the educated clergy, as may be seen by a
reference to any prominent theological work of late years, or even in
the pages of a good encyclopedia. The investigators have made diligent
researches concerning the probable authorship of the New Testament
books and their reports would surprise many faithful church-goers who
are not acquainted with the facts of the case. There is no warrant,
outside of tradition and custom, for the belief that Matthew wrote the
Gospel accredited to him, at least in its present shape. Without going
deeply into the argument of the investigators (which may be found in
any recent work on the History of the Gospels) we would say that the
generally accepted conclusion now held by the authorities is that the
Gospel commonly accredited to St. Matthew is the work of some unknown
hand or hands, which was produced during the latter part of the first
century A.D., written in Greek, and most likely an enlargement or
elaboration of certain Aramaic writings entitled, "Sayings of Jesus,"
which are thought to have been written by Matthew himself. In other
words, even the most conservative of the critics do not claim that the
Gospel of St. Matthew is anything more than an enlargement,
elaboration or development of Matthew's earlier writings, written many
years before the elaboration of the present "Gospel." The more radical
critics take an even less respectful view. This being the fact, it may
be readily seen how easy it would have been for the latter-day
"elaborator" to introduce the then current legend of the Virgin Birth,
borrowed from pagan sources.

As a further internal evidence of such interpolation of outside
matter, the critics point to the fact that while the Gospel of Matthew
is made to claim that Joseph was merely the _reputed father_ of the
child of Mary, the same Gospel, in its very first chapter (_Matt. 1_)
_gives the genealogy of Jesus from David to Joseph_ the husband of
Mary, _in order to prove that Jesus came from the "House of David_,"
in accordance with the Messianic tradition. The chapter begins with
the words, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of
David, the son of A