The Bible and earlier Christians

[Jenny A]

My contention is that Matthew lied and hoped nobody would notice.

He lies almost compulsively through his Gospel tale, alleging "prophecies" that were supposedly "fulfilled" but when you read the OT to cross-check his assertions, they turn out to be bogus. At other times he misquotes the OT, alleging that it says things it doesn't say. He also spins tall tales that historians can't verify, from the massacre of the infants around Jerusalem under Herod the Great to the "Attack of the Zombie Saints" when Jesus dies on the cross.

I sympathize somewhat. Matthew had the unenviable task of trying to evangelize to the Jews and convince them that this hippy flower-child was really the long awaited Messiah. Part of the sale of this bill of goods needed to include the "promised kingdom" being in the sky, not on earth as expected. <snip>
A hard sell, indeed. No wonder he lied his ass off.

He did have an uphill road didn't he? But I'm not entirely sure he was lying about the OT as much as you suggest. I think he may have been working from memory and memory of a Greek translation of the OT at that. There are scholars who put the canonization of the Hebrew OT as late as the 2nd Century CE. In any case, he was wrong.

No doubt that someone made up Herod's baby slaughter and the visit of the Magi. Whether Mathew cribbed it or made it up out of whole cloth it's an invention.