to maintain that a work commencing with a detailed history of the birth and infancy of Jesus, his genealogy, and the preaching of John the Baptist, and concluding with an equally minute history of his betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, and which relates all the miracles, and has for its evident aim throughout the demonstration that Messianic prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus, could be entitled [Greek:  ta logia] the oracles or discourses of the Lord.  For these and other reasons ... the majority of critics deny that the work described by Papias can be the same as the Gospel in our Canon bearing the name of Matthew” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i., pp. 471, 472).  But the fact which puts the difference between the present “Matthew” and that spoken of by Papias beyond dispute is that Matthew, according to Papias, “wrote in the Hebrew dialect,” i.e., the Syro-Chaldaic, or Aramaean, while the canonical Matthew is written in Greek.  “There is no point, however, on which the testimony of the Fathers is more invariable and complete than that the work of Matthew was written in Hebrew or Aramaic” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i., p. 475).  This industrious author quotes Papias, Irenaeus, Pantaenus in Eusebius, Eusebius, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Jerome, in support of his assertion, and remarks that “the same tradition is repeated by Chrysostom, Augustine and others” (Ibid, pp. 475-477).  “We believe that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, meaning by that term the common language of the Jews of his time, because such is the uniform statement of all ancient writers who advert to the subject.  To pass over others whose authority is of less weight, he is affirmed to have written in Hebrew by Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome.  Nor does any ancient author advance a contrary opinion” ("Genuineness of the Gospels,” Norton, vol. i., pp. 196, 197).  “Ancient historical testimony is unanimous in declaring that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, i.e., in the Aramaean or Syro-Chaldaic language, at that time the vernacular tongue of the Jews in Palestine” (Davidson’s “Introduction to the New Testament,” p. 3).  After a most elaborate presentation of the evidences, the learned doctor says:  “Let us now pause to consider this account of the original Gospel of Matthew.  It runs through all antiquity.  None doubted of its truth, as far as we can judge from their writings.  There is not the least trace of an opposite tradition” (Ibid, p. 37).  The difficulty of Christian apologists is, then, to prove that the Gospel written by Matthew in Hebrew is the same as the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek, and sore have been the shifts to which they have been driven in the effort.  Dean Alford, unable to deny that all the testimony which could be relied upon to prove that Matthew wrote at all, also proved that he wrote in Hebrew, and aware that an unauthorised translation, which could not be identified with the original, could never claim canonicity, fell back on the remarkable notion that he himself translated his Hebrew Gospel into Greek; in the edition of his Greek Testament published in 1859, however, he gives up this notion in favour of the idea that the original Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek.