According to an early Christian writer who lived during the second century a. d., "Matthew . . . wrote the Logia in the Hebrew dialect"—that is, in Aramaic—"but each one interpreted (or 'translated') them as he was able" (cf. Eusebius: "Ecclesiastical History" III, 39). Now the word "Logia" means literally "oracles" or "sayings," but is constantly employed in a more restricted sense with special reference to the sayings of Christ Jesus. It was long supposed that Matthew's "Logia" was simply another name for the canonical gospel which bears his name, and which, on this hypothesis, was first written in Aramaic and afterwards rendered into Greek. More recent researches, however, have led a majority of scholars to the conclusion that Matthew's Gospel was not translated from an Aramaic original, but was "quite clearly a Greek composition," as Dr. McNeile expresses it; and the consensus of opinion now is that "The Logia," mentioned in Eusebius' volume, was a document dealing briefly with the Master's activities and discourses, and prepared by Matthew in the colloquial Aramaic ordinarily used by Jesus and his disciples, and that after a time it appeared in various Greek versions or translations, as Eusebius suggests.
It is considered one of the chief sources which were employed by Matthew himself, and also by Luke, when they composed their Gospels; indeed, the collection is often briefly designated as "Q" (the initial letter of the German word "Quelle" or "Source"), thus suggesting its basic importance.
That it antedated all four of our canonical Gospels is now generally conceded, but in fixing the actual time of its composition there is less unanimity of opinion. In any case, it seems to have been contemporary with the earlier epistles of Paul.
