The Authorship of the Gospels

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The way history works, at least to my understanding, is historical records are treated as evidence. That’s kind of what history is, someone writing down things that sometimes happened in their lifetime, but quite often they wrote after the fact.

Now if you’re saying that the recorded history of the handful of church fathers is not evidence, then it seems to me you’d have to explain to the historian how to go about doing history since that’s all they have to rely on.

So going by what I believe is the norm in the discipline of history, there is only positive evidence for the authorship of the gospels and no negative evidence. If you want to dispute historical records as evidence then you’ll have to make that case rather than just assume that it’s true.

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It doesn’t.

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OK, then. Could you provide these historical records of these people who actually saw John, Matthew, Luke and John physically writing the Gospels? TIA.

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What I’ve claimed from the start is that there is actual historical evidence, i.e. recorded history, for the authorship of the gospels, and no actual historical evidence to the contrary. If that’s correct, based on how history is done, to claim that the authorship isn’t who they are attributed to is to go against all the actual historical evidence.

Whether or not the evidence is weighty enough to make a judgment is another question which could be discussed. But based on the fact that it’s the only evidence makes a pretty good case for arguing the affirmative, and a pretty good case against arguing the negative.

But as far as what is counted as evidence, to my knowledge the church fathers testimony would be counted as evidence based on historical methodology. If you want to debate whether or not the historical method is reliable, you’ll have to make your case for it. But I would imagine you’d have some pretty hefty explaining to do to all of academia devoted to studying it.

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But there isn’t. so you’re wrong.

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Sort of. Written records can provide solid support, questionable support, or virtually no support for a historical question. It is the job of experts in the field to weigh the evidence and judge what kind of support in provides. That’s the part you reject.

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So you say. But you’re no historian. So how do you justify your claim? As I understand it, according to historians it is evidence. So based on that there is justification for what I’m saying.

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It’s not my claim. It’s the claim of historians.

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The claim I’m concerned with is that in spite of only positive evidence the gospels weren’t written by who they are attributed to. That’s the issue I’m raising.

As far as I know, there aren’t any historians who claim that recorded history is not evidence, or that there is no positive evidence for gospel authorship? If there are, please provide the evidence.

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Your claim is incorrect. Take the historical record for the authorship of Matthew. The traditional ascription to the disciple is probably based ultimately on a single source, Papias, who said (in the most straightforward translation) that the disciple wrote down the sayings of the Lord in Hebrew or Aramaic. There is no reason to believe that Papias was in fact referring to the Gospel of Matthew in this passage; he could be talking about other written material that perhaps went into the gospel at some point, or even to the hypothesized Q source of the sayings of Jesus. If Papias was referring to the gospel, he was pretty clear mistaken, since the Gospel of Matthew is dependent on the Greek of the Gospel of Mark, and thus is not a translation of an independent gospel. (It’s also unlikely that an eyewitness would base much of his account on someone else’s written version.)

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Have you listened to Tim McGrew’s lecture? There are more sources before 200 AD then Papias.

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No – I’m not interested in lectures on the subject by non-experts. I am aware of other early sources, in particular Irenaeus (and I see Origen is one too). As I understand it, the problem is that there is no reason to think these are independent witnesses to the original events, rather than multiple witnesses to the same tradition. And they all require that Matthew be a translation into Greek, which does not fit the literary evidence.

In any case, I’m not really interested in adjudicating the question of who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. What I wanted to do was point out that the consensus scholarly judgment on the subject is based on evidence.

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Thanks for engaging with the evidence. I’ll deal with your arguments below, but I just want to reiterate that my claim isn’t that skeptics don’t have their own explanations of the evidence. Simply that there is only actual evidence in favor of the attributed gospel authorship. This itself adds weight to the argument in favor.

And I do want to apologize to @Rumraket for mistakenly accusing him of committing an ad hominem. I had a few things going on at the time and didn’t carefully read his comment. I will say, however, that his comment didn’t possess much substance. But nonetheless it was not, as I first hastily suspected, an ad hominem.

It’s a little vague what you meant by Papias is probably unltimately the single source, but I think you meant that he is the first in line as far as closeness to the source. But I don’t think it hinges only on him. But we can discuss that later. But here is what Papias wrote about gospel authorship.

Papias of Hierapolis (ca. 125 AD, Recorded in Eusebius 3.39)

“So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.”

“Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.”

So for Matthew, it does seem like he is talking about Matthew’s gospel since the next paragraph is about Mark’s gospel. Also it’s plausible that Matthew did write his gospel first in Hebrew, and then later a Greek version with new additional material. And just because Matthew may have used portions of Mark’s gospel doesn’t preclude him from writing from his own experiences as well. He was an eye witness after all. There’s sufficiently enough in Matthew that obviously didn’t come from Mark to make this plausible as well.

And I believe arguments may have been made that it may have actually been the other way around, that Mark used portions of Matthew. And what I included about what Papias said about Mark’s gospel as well, also needs to be dealt with.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Is Tim McGrew an Expert on the Gospels?

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Right. That’s the claim that’s wrong. Matthew’s evident use of Mark is actual evidence against the attributed gospel authorship.

I find that explanation simply unbelievable. That Matthew would write his own gospel in one language, and then write a gospel in Greek that is based on wholesale adoption of somebody else’s gospel – even though Matthew found it necessary to improve both the Greek and the theology of the original.

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http://paulbarnett.info/2013/01/epiphany-five-reflections-from-a-life-time/

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Even conversations like this were anticipated long ago.
“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom:preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” - 2 Timothy 4:1-5 NASB

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Hi @Jim,

In response to your arguments regarding the authorship of Matthew’s Gospel, I suggest you have a look at these articles by Matthew Ferguson:

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels

Matthew the τελώνης (“Toll Collector”) and the Authorship of the First Gospel

…In fact, Matthew is merely a toll booth collector, sort of like those we hand change to when we drive through toll booths today on the freeway.

Now what, if anything, about this job role suggests that Matthew could author a complex Greek gospel, complete with intricate allusions to the Old Testament, along with the incorporation of previous literary materials, such as the Gospel of Mark and Q ? Very little. In fact, it is not clear that Matthew would have even needed to know how to write in Greek…

Since tax collectors and toll collectors in Judea were jobs performed by Jews collecting either for the Jewish authorities or Jewish contractors, we have every reason to expect that the language of the tax bureaucracy was Hebrew or Aramaic…

Now, all of this is important because we can compare this kind of occupational background to the internal evidence within the Gospel of Matthew…

This background suggests that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was probably a wealthy Diasporic Jew, who was educated outside of Palestine. This portrait aligns perfectly with the fact that most scholars place the composition of Matthew in Antioch c. 80-100 CE [2]. Furthermore, there are internal reasons within the Gospel of Matthew to doubt that the author was a native Hebrew or Aramaic speaker. These reasons include the fact that the author was dependent on Greek translations of the Old Testament scriptures, as well as sources already received in Greek, such as the Gospel of Mark and possibly Q . In fact, the author of Matthew appears to even be dependent on Greek translations for his exegesis of OT verses…

… [T]he church fathers have many problems in their description of the Gospel of Matthew when attributing it to this figure [the apostle Matthew - VJT]. Papias ( Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.39.15-16), the earliest witness, claims that Matthew authored the gospel in the Εβραιδι διαλεκτω (“Hebrew dialect”). However, as scholar Raymond Brown ( An Introduction to the New Testament , pg. 210) explains:

“The vast majority of scholars … contend that the Gospel we know as Matt was composed originally in Greek and is not a translation of a Semitic original … Thus either Papias was wrong/confused in attributing a gospel (sayings) in Hebrew/Aramaic to Matthew, or he was right but the Hebrew/Aramaic composition he described was not the work we know in Greek as canonical.”

Confusion with another, otherwise unknown, Hebrew/Aramaic work could explain how the church fathers later spuriously attributed the Gospel of Matthew to the disciple Matthew when misinterpreting Papias’ statement [4]. Likewise, the church fathers also agreed upon Matthean priority, believing the Gospel of Matthew to have been authored before Mark , which is why Matthew is placed first in the New Testament. However, the vast majority of scholars today agree upon Markan priority, and that the Gospel of Matthew was written later than and used Mark . If the church fathers could be mistaken about something so central to the Gospel of Matthew as the fact that it was written before Mark and used Mark , they could easily be just as mistaken about the author of the text, which would be no greater an error.

Finally:

…[I]f the Gospel of Matthew was really authored by someone who was familiar with tax practices in Judea, as the disciple Matthew would have been, he missed his one opportunity to make a redaction that would fit this description! Matthew could have corrected Mk. 12:13-17 to reflect actual tax practices in Judea during the time of Jesus. Nevertheless, Mt. 22:15-22 repeats the same mistake and has inaccurate tax practices described in Judea during the time of Jesus. This makes little sense if the Gospel of Matthew was actually authored by a tax collector, who would have known better.

For those readers who don’t know who Matthew Ferguson is, here’s what he says about himself:

I am a Classics Ph.D. student at UC Irvine whose research focuses on the history, literature, and languages of the Roman Empire during the 1st-2nd centuries CE. In particular, I study the intersection of Judaic, Greek, and Roman culture during this period, and ancient literature that was written in Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, and Latin…

… I started Κέλσος as a resource to fact-check and evaluate the claims made by many religious apologists…

I should also note that this blog is not anti-Christian, or any other religion, per se, but is specifically designed to counter arguments that target non-believers. There are also many Christians who do not engage in such aggressive apologetics, such as NT scholars James McGrath and Michael Kok, whose views I also share and discuss on this blog.

Cheers.

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I read a few of your citations. What Tim McGrew did is look for people prior to the year 200 that attest to the original authors.

What the counter arguments from the “experts” amount to are Bart Ehrman type speculation about how things were back then and what we see as historic claims don’t fit the narrative despite the documented evidence.

I suggest you listen to McGrew’s arguments and make a case against the merits of his argument if you want to seriously engage here. Bart Ehrman spent 2 hours arguing with Tim and Tim held his own. He may be new at this but is an important voice to listen to.

I don’t know who wrote the Gospels at this point but McGrew makes an interesting case.

I don’t care what the experts opinion is at this point I care what they can establish through clear argument. So far they don’t have a compelling case that counters McGrew’s. This is why the skeptics need to argue from authority.

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When you look at some textural criticism of Mathew this hypothesis is plausible but needs work. An example is the wording he used to describe Jesus claim that some of the disciples will see him in his glory prior their death. This claim proceeds the transfiguration. While this account based on wording is the same in Luke and Mark it is slightly different in Mathew.

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