THE CHURCH’S USE OF MATTHEW’S CROSS-REFERENCES
A somewhat related analysis is that of the early Church’s use of the Bible. Matthew is not just the Gospel to the Jews; it was also the Gospel of the early Church. The Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary on Matthew (p. 34) says that “the early church cherished Matthew and quoted it more frequently than any other Gospel.” This is so true that Matthew “has often been described as a kind of Christian Pentateuch.”[1] In the first few centuries, the Fathers cited the Gospels as follows:[2]
| Matthew | 48,647 |
| Mark | 5,165 |
| Luke | 21,713 |
| John | 30,160 |
| All Gospels | 105,685 |
Matthew was cited more than nine times as often as Mark, even though half of Matthew parallels/copies Mark. Matthew was cited almost as much as all the other Gospels combined. And Matthew, of course, is also the Gospel that referenced Apocrypha more than all the other Gospels combined.
In fact, the early Fathers were even more inclined to cite those verses in Matthew that the KJV identified as referencing Apocrypha. They cited them almost twice as often as the average verse in Matthew:
| Chapter | Verse | Cites | |
| Matthew | 4 | 4 | 56 |
| Matthew | 5 | 7 | 66 |
| Matthew | 5 | 11 | 80 |
| Matthew | 5 | 25 | 39 |
| Matthew | 5 | 33 | 47 |
| Matthew | 5 | 42 | 41 |
| Matthew | 6 | 1 | 49 |
| Matthew | 6 | 5 | 42 |
| Matthew | 6 | 7 | 29 |
| Matthew | 6 | 20 | 138 |
| Matthew | 6 | 33 | 88 |
| Matthew | 7 | 12 | 53 |
| Matthew | 7 | 17 | 45 |
| Matthew | 7 | 19 | 14 |
| Matthew | 9 | 22 | 72 |
| Matthew | 11 | 29 | 327 |
| Matthew | 13 | 43 | 93 |
| Matthew | 19 | 28 | 127 |
| Matthew | 22 | 23 | 40 |
| Matthew | 25 | 35 | 139 |
| Matthew | 25 | 41 | 253 |
| Matthew | 27 | 43 | 36 |
| Total | 1874 | ||
| Cites/Verse | 85 | ||
| Average | 48,647/1071 | = | 45 |
| Apocrypha/Average | 189% |
The 22 verses that (per the KJV) cross-reference Apocrypha were cited by the Fathers 1,874 times; the 678 verses of Mark were cited 5,165 times. The 22 cross-references to Apocrypha were cited 36% as often as the entire 678 verses of the Gospel of Mark combined, and the rates were 85 citations per verse to eight, more than 10 to one. It would appear that a key “improvement” Matthew made to the Gospel of Mark, in the eyes of the early Church Fathers, consisted of making what the KJV saw as possible references to Apocrypha.
[1] The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon, John Barton, p. 25.
[2] All data is from Biblia Patristica, www.biblindex.org. Biblia Patristica is a multi-generational global work in progress that is the best source we have for collecting and indexing every single reference from the Fathers. It is the source all the scholars seem to use, without exception. But I am neither a gentleman nor a scholar, and alas, I was never able to get the updated search form (www.biblindex.org/en/quotations/search) to work correctly for me. So, all my searches were made using their old form (www.biblindex.org/citation_biblique/search), which does not result in the most up-to-date results (the database available to me has less-than-complete coverage starting in the fourth century). Accordingly, I may have missed later citations that would have been found using the new search form, or the eventual final database. However, that could only increase the amount of “citations” to the Apocrypha (compared to what I show herein), with the impact on ratios unknowable. Very notably, Augustine is not available in the database for me to search, so no Biblindex search results herein ever include him. I was able to search many of his works myself (relying of course on the footnotes the translators provide), so he does still show up in my own data, but those results are incomplete.
In addition, my review of documents found some citations (mentioned in the translations, but not indexed in Biblindex) that do not show up in my searches of their database. I believe they are all valid citations, nevertheless, just not noted and indexed correctly, etc. Such is life when you are dealing with indexes, particularly those with 300,000+ entries assembled over decades.
