The Gospel of Matthew, although the first book in the New Testament canon, was not considered the first gospel genre to be written. The Gospel of Matthew recounts the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. In this essay, I intend to examine how the exegesis and interpretation of this gospel can be affected by our understanding of authorship, the intended readership, and where and when it was written. While all of these categories are important in their own right, I will focus more on the intended audience and readership of this gospel. Authorship Mitch and Sri suggest that early biblical history includes everyone from Irenaeus in the second century to Origen and Tertullian in the third century. , until Augustine in the 5th century declared that the apostle Matthew was the author. However, in the 19th century this theory was less supported. The theory behind this change was that the author of Matthew made extensive use of material from the earlier gospel of Mark and if the author of Matthew had been an apostle and an eyewitness to the work of Jesus, why did he he leaned on Marc's material. Bockmuehl also joined the debate. on the question of whether the apostle Matthew wrote the gospel bearing his name. Schnackenburg, on the other hand, suggested that evidence based on Papia's writings in 130 AD indicates that the author of Matthew's gospel was "Levi the publican". Bock supports this theory by saying that "The association of this gospel with the apostle Matthew dates back to a remark of Papias, according to which Matthew had collected the words of Jesus in Hebrew or Aramaic and then translated them into Greek." Although this quotation has been disputed, the superscripts which accompany the manuscripts of this gospel down to middle of paper......, like the dates of many other books of the Old and New Testaments, remain obscure. It could be argued that Matthew is written specifically to the Jews in order to explain and defend the deity of Christ. Matthew contains many fulfillments of Old Testament prophecies that the author intentionally emphasizes to his Jewish audience in order to argue that Jesus is truly the Messiah. By examining how the original material was used differently by the Gospel authors, it highlights the need to The reader should inquire about the original source of the material, how it was altered, and why the The author has modified the details and composition of the original material. Bornkamm warns: “We must be careful not to read out of the text or into the text more than is justified. » Which could lead to misunderstanding of the information?