The Authorship of the Gospels

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The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time, by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure–Jesus Christ–to confirm the faith of their communities.

Comparing the writings of Paul against the Gospels do you see where Ferguson in embellishing here?

This guy is a secular humanist. While we need to listen to the arguments of both sides this piece is heavy in opinion and light in facts.

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If you do assume naturalism, you have another problem, which is that the accounts of the “Olivet discourse” bear a lot of resemblance to the equivalent prophecies in Daniel, and not so much to the actual military seige of 69-70. It’s as if the writer was applying OT prophecy in advance to a foreseen general situation, rather than reading back actual events into a fake retrospective prophecy via OT texts.

The closest thing to an exception is Luke, whose account se4ems more detailed, and who may have had access to accounts of the Roman action - or may, writing at a time when the rebellion was brewing in the 60s, have interpreted Jesus’s words more in line with what seemed imminently likely.

But as N T Wright points out, the difference is rather crucial: Jesus uses the future destruction of the temple and city as the vindication of his entire ministry. Either there was no church before 70AD, and somehow people later believed Jesus had predicted the events even though nobody could remember that he had - or the church in Jerusalem, which according to the records was quite large by this time, knew his final prophecy and saw the unfolding events as the vindication he claimed.

Certainly, they are known to have fled to Pella as a result of prophetic warning of disaster, and seem to have been up and running pretty quickly in Jerusalem once it was over.

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(Copied from other thread.) I see various arguments, but no actual evidence (historical texts) that would be on the negative side of the issue. Did I miss something? And by the way, I looked up one of his references:

As textual criticism expert Bart Ehrman ( Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium , pp. 249-250) points out:

but either I’m looking in the wrong place, or he’s made a mistake in his reference.

Edit: I just missed it. Sorry!

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Maybe I need to clarify what I mean by “actual evidence.” What I’m saying is that, as far as I know, there is only positive testimony for attributed authorship, and no testimony to the contrary. Does that help to get us on the same page?

OK. But I don’t think your opinion would qualify as a defeater for what I proposed as plausible. Do you have any compelling evidence from that time period that would show that it would be implausible?

OK. I see how that could be an apparent problem with the text. But how is that related to the issue of authorship?

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I am supporting Tim’s slide that said that Mathew could have been originally written in Hebrew and then translated to the Greek.

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There is no positive testimony. You seem not to understand what this would be. An example would be if we had a letter that said something like “Just had a lovely visit with Matthew. He’s working on a book about the time he spent following Jesus of Nazareth. It has some interesting details about the time that Jesus came back to life, which he still insists really happened. He plans to call it ‘The Gospel of Matthew.’”

There is nothing of this sort, correct?

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On what basis do you understand what “positive testimony is”. Someone in the past claiming authorship is attributed to Mathew is positive testimony.

Tim has supported that claim over 3 different testimonies over 50 years starting from the year 200.

Your effort to define “positive testimony” such that it only fits your own narrative is duly noted. The evidence against the authenticity of the authors comes over 1000 years past the event.

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Not so, unless you think that people who today believe Bigfoot exists, even though they have never seen any evidence of his existence, is “testimony” to the existence of Bigfoot.

It isn’t.

From the year 200. Right.

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You have not looked at the evidence. It starts in 200 AD and ends a 125 AD. Presented by Tim and debated by Bart Ehrman with no substantive rebuttal. I suggest you look at the first 30 minutes of Tims lecture.

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I don’t think this argument holds water as there is no equivalence.

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Time does not go in that direction.

“Testimony” 125 or 200 years after the fact is not testimony.

Please justify that assertion.

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Oh. Where exactly is that particular slide. I know I’ve heard him talk briefly about it. Just not sure where?

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Most English lexicons disagree with you. The Cambridge Dictionary (the first one I happened to check) defines testimony as “a spoken or written statement that something is true.” Yes, statements from “125 or 200 years after the fact” can indeed be testimony.

Of course, if historians depended solely on contemporaneous records, we would know very little about much of ancient history and some of the most famous people of those centuries.

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200 - 125 != 50.

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Hi @colewd,

I’m afraid that’s too late, for reasons explained by Bart Ehrman in a 2016 online debate with Mike Licona on the historical reliability of the Gospels (see here for the opening page):

Since the 1920s cultural anthropologists have studied oral cultures extensively, in a wide range of contexts (from Yugoslavia to Ghana to Rwanda to … many other places). What this scholarship has consistently shown is that our unreflective assumptions about oral cultures are simply not right. When people pass along traditions in such cultures, they think the stories are supposed to change , depending on the context, the audience, the point that the story-teller wants to make, and so on. In those cultures, there is no sense at all that stories should be repeated the same , verbatim. They change all the time, each and every time, always in little ways and quite often in massive ways.

Even if we go back to 130 A.D. (Papias), that’s still a century after the Crucifixion. A century is a long time for information to be transmitted faithfully.

And how reliable is Papias anyway? In Ferguson’s words:

Incidentally, Eusebius ( Historia Ecclesiastica 3.39.13) elsewhere describes Papias as a man who “seems to have been of very small intelligence, to judge from his writings.” Likewise, another fragment of Papias tells a story about how Judas, after betraying Jesus, became wider than a chariot and so fat that he exploded…

He concludes:

Thus, we have a fairly clear trail for how all of the Gospels’ authors were probably derived from spurious 2nd century guesses: Matthew and Mark were based on an oral tradition reported by Papias that originated from an unknown John the Presbyter. Luke was speculated to be an author based on little more than vague narrative constructions using the first person plural in the text of Acts , and John was based on speculation over an unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.” Thus, not only is the external evidence weak, but all of it can be completely explained as later, spurious misattributions.[26]

@Jim wrote:

Maybe I need to clarify what I mean by “actual evidence.” What I’m saying is that, as far as I know, there is only positive testimony for attributed authorship, and no testimony to the contrary. Does that help to get us on the same page?

Testimony which is given several decades after an alleged event, and which cannot be traced back to an original eyewitness, doesn’t count as reliable 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.

I’ve listened to them, and I’ve also listened to Tim McGrew debating Bart Ehrman. Tim McGrew is an intelligent and well-read man, but in my judgement, he lost when he was up against a pro.

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In the first 30 minutes one of the slides claims Mathew was written in Hebrew.

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These are fair points but not contradictory information. So far all we have is written accounts that the authors are who they are. They may not be who they say but that is speculation.

Erhman’s claim of unreliability is speculation because we don’t know what written information these guys may have had.

Tim named four sources Papias may not have been the original or only source.

This is typical of what Bart does he takes speculation and creates a narrative. This type of argument is ok for someone trying to spin the public.

Ehrman is a fine scholar. If you want to hear his debating skill listen to his debates against mysticists.

I agree with you at this point especially if the public is the audience. For listeners that are familiar with the subjects Tim has more evidence behind his claims. This is not just about Tim’s skill it is just the nature of the arguments. Again, when Bart has a subject that is strongly supported by the evidence he is terrific.

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I believe that’s true to an extent. I think there are other considerations as well. But although disputed, I believe it can be argued from evidence that Papias had contact with eyewitnesses. And Irenaeus is know to have grown up listening to John’s disciple Polycarp.

There’s also the fact that church tradition was involved, which, regardless of speculating about how reliable it may have been, the consistency of the testimony from 125-200 AD speaks in it’s favor.

And the timeline of testimony can be linked from one generation to the next. And the fact that they are all consistent despite being geographical located throughout all corners of the Roman Empire also speaks in their favor. I would say that’s a pretty decent case for considering them reliable.

I also understand that in history in general this would normally be more than sufficient warrant for trusting the accounts. But because of the nature of the supernatural claims at stake, so it seems, the bar is raised, as far as I can tell, without any warrant.

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If that is the definition of “reliable evidence”, are historians wrong to consider Euclid (1) a real historical person, and (2) the author of the multi-volume Elements? Was the writing of that great mathematical tome by an ancient scholar a fictional event? Would you say that it was a collaborative effort by many mathematicians which simply got attributed to a fictional person?

Much of what we know about the ancient world comes from the testimony of writers centuries later—sometimes even many centuries later. We have no contemporaneous eyewitnesses testifying of Euclid’s expertise as a mathematician. If there is no “reliable evidence” for Euclid, would you say that the attribution of the Elements to Euclid is dubious, just as many claim that Homer was not a real historical person who wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad?

I’m not trying to frame a debate. I just want to understand accurately your position.

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I’m not an historian. But it is my impression that Euclid’s elements is generally taken to result from a collaboration.

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