Matthew

Matthew, also called Levi, was sitting at his tax collector's booth in Capernaum when Jesus passed and said simply, "Follow me." He rose and followed immediately — leaving behind a lucrative but socially despised profession. Tax collectors in Roman Judea were Jewish men who worked for the occupying power, often enriching themselves by charging above what Rome required. Their neighbors considered them traitors and sinners. Matthew's response to the call is one of the starkest in the Gospels: no dialogue, no delay.

He then hosted a large banquet at his house with many tax collectors and sinners reclining at table with Jesus. When the Pharisees challenged this, Jesus replied, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." The Gospel of Matthew, attributed to him by the early church, is the most thoroughly Jewish of the four Gospels — organized around five teaching blocks that echo the five books of Moses, saturated with fulfilled-prophecy citations, and concerned throughout with the continuity between Israel's scriptures and Jesus' ministry. It became the most frequently quoted Gospel in early Christian writings.