This particular admonition is found only in Matthew which scholars believe was written exclusively for Jewish audiences. A number of other sayings mostly unique to Matthew talk of spreading the Gospels only to Jews and reveal an anti-Gentile (pagan) bias:

"Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night." - John 19:38-39a

Jewish authorities countered accounts of Jesus' resurrection by saying that it was all a hoax:

"A godless and lawless heresy had sprung up from one Jesus a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified; but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceive men by asserting that he has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven." - A circular letter issued by the Sanhedrin (mentioned by Justin Martyr (2nd C) and Eusebius)

"The lexical evidence is conclusive: not 'resurrection' but 'resuscitation' is the only meaning possible for both these Aramaic words, one of which Jesus used. I am referring to the synonymous words achajuta [rise] and techijuta [come to life]. Both nouns are derived from the verb chaja, 'life', and consequently mean - I repeat - resuscitation and nothing else." - Father Günther Schwartz, "Tod, Auferstehung, Gericht und ewiges Leben nach den ersten drei Evangelien"Via Mundi, 55 (1988)

"But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep." - 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

"It has often been said that Paul believed the end of the world was at hand. It is more accurate to say that he believed it had already begun, for that is his logic in the preceding passage. As a Pharisee he believed in the general resurrection at the end of time. But Jesus, he claims, has already risen as the start of the general resurrection. Notice his metaphor. Jesus is the 'first fruits' - that is to say, the beginning of the harvest, the start of the general resurrection. That is why he can argue in either direction: no Jesus resurrection, no general resurrection; or, no general resurrection, no Jesus resurrection. They stand or fall together, and Paul presumes that only the mercy of God delays the final consummation, the ending of what has already started." - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

"And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name..." - Philippians 2:8-9

"In this passage Paul moved from death to exaltation into heaven. There was no Pauline mention of a resurrection back to this earth." - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 304

"The appearance of the risen Christ to Paul, mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, was not narrated anywhere in his apostles by Paul himself. Paul talked of his conversion, but he never mentioned the road to Damascus, the bright light, or the heavenly voice. Those details were supplied to us by Luke some thirty years after Paul's death, giving Paul no opportunity to comment on their accuracy. When one reads this account in the Book of Acts (9:1 ff), it is fair to say that, at least in the mind of Luke, the appearance to Paul was a vision from heaven and not a physical objective happening. Even those who were traveling with Paul did not see what Paul saw." - John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 281

"...For Paul, resurrection meant not the resuscitation of a corpse involving the removal of a stone and the emptying of a tomb, but a transformation from a dead physical body to a living spiritual one:" - Randall Helms, Gospel Fictions

"Flesh and blood can never possess the kingdom of God." - 1 Corinthians 15:50.

"Now what happens as an oral tradition arises about an historical event or an historical person is that, strangely enough, the first oral tradition is not an attempt to remember exactly what happened, but is rather a return into the symbols of the tradition that could explain an event. Therefore, one has to imagine that legend and myth and hymn and prayer are the vehicles in which oral traditions develop. The move into a formulated tradition that looks as if it was a description of the actual historical events is actually the end result of such a development. Only the later writer would bring a report about Jesus' suffering that has the semblance of the report of the actual events, one after another, that happened. One could, for example, imagine that the oldest way in which the early Christians told about Jesus' suffering and death was the hymn that Paul quotes in Philippians 2, about the one who was in the form of God who humiliated himself and was obedient even to death on the cross, and was therefore raised high up by God. This was a very old hymn. Paul quotes this hymn when he writes Philippians, that is, in the early 50s of the first century. He quotes this as a hymn that probably was sung in the Christian communities, ten or twenty years earlier. That is the way in which you first tell the story. And that you tell the story in the form of a hymn also shows that the telling of the story is anchored in the worship life of the community. So here is really the beginning of the oral tradition. And it becomes story as it is retold, resung.... It could be resung as a hymn, but retold as a narrative, again in the worship setting of the community." - Helmut Koester: "From Jesus to Christ", PBS Frontline On-line

Listing of links to the Christian Apochryphal Gospels: