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>But given that Q appears to have been a predominate source since it was used for two different gospels, the identification would provide an excellent explanation for how the Gospel of Matthew got its name: it was inherited from its source, which had originally been named after the disciple of Yeshu
>Regardless of which sayings source if any the “Sayings of Matthew” refer to, the name of the lost text establishes that the earliest known disciple of Jesus referenced outside the gospels was Matthew, the only name among the Twelve that also appears as one of the original five disciples of Yeshu. Thus, one of the earliest written documents to quote Jesus may have originally been ascribed to one of his first century BCE disciples. All of the Biblical epistles fail to identify James, Cephas or John as disciples of a historical Jesus, with the exception of 2 Peter, which is generally accepted to be a forgery. None of the epistles except 2 Peter identifies Jesus as an itnerant preacher. The Epistle to the Hebrews says Jesus was executed outside the city gate but 1 Thessalonians says he was killed by Jews, not Romans. Only 1 Timothy, dated to the late second century, and the apocryphal epistles of Ignatius say that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate. According to the Epistle to the Galatians, James is a “pillar” and Cephas is an “apostle”. Given that each of the four gospels give different names for the Twelve, it is not far from reasonable to assume that the “disciples” were the names of important first- or second-century CE teachers as symbolic disciples in an allegorical conceit of fiction. For example, James would have represented the Ebionites who still followed the laws of Moses. Thomas would have represented the Gnostics who wrote gospels based on the twin brother of Jesus, Judas Thomas, a character split from Judas Iscariot to differentiate the Thomas Gnostics from Zealots who followed Judas the Galilean
