Correct, if by collaboration you mean that Euclid is generally assumed to have drawn on the mathematical writings which had preceded him. In that regard, Euclid may well have been much like a modern-day writer of a mathematics textbook—where none of the mathematical principles therein may be original to the author but nevertheless compiled into a new copyrighted work.
However, that doesn’t impact my question:
Of course, if you consider “editor” a better description for Euclid than “author”, I’m fine with that. Even so, that wouldn’t substantively change my question about the definition of “reliable evidence.”
I think you question is comparing apples and oranges.
Questions about the authorship of the Gospels are raised because of concernse about the truth of what they say. But for Euclid’s elements, we validate the content with mathematical proofs rather than with testimony.
Of course we do. But that doesn’t change the fact that historians consider the testimony from centuries later as valid evidence for the existence of a real historical person, a mathematician by the name of Euclid.
Nobody disputes that mathematical concepts verified by proofs are of a different nature than other types of claims.
Re Euclid’s existence as an historical person, see this article and see also here. Re the Elements, see this article and see also here. My own view is that Euclid’s historical existence is probable but far from certain, and that Euclid may well have arranged the theorems in the Elements, but he did not discover them. Cheers.
The majority of experts believe Euclid was the single and actual author of the the volumes, though as @vjtorley mentions, there is some disagreement.
Very few experts believe the Gospels were actually authored by the people whose names they bear.
These are the conclusions drawn from the preponderance of the evidence.
Your point is irrelevant. It is like saying because most people experts believe grizzly bears exist, they should also believe Sasquatches exist. If the evidence for both claims differ, then one can arrive at different conclusions for each.
Absolutely false. I can name dozens of colleagues who have published their reasons for favoring the traditional author-attributions, though most emphasize that one can’t be totally sure. (And I’ve sat through more than a few papers related to this topic over the decades.) Yes, it is certainly true that I’ve been retired for some twenty years now and no longer keep current on the latest scholarship—but I would be very surprised to learn that significant numbers of New Testament scholars I counted among my friends have radically changed their position on this topic during that time.
As for me, I’m not particularly adamant on the authorship issue. After all, it is a matter of tradition and not what any Biblical text actually states about its author. (And even those who continually focus on the inerrancy of the scriptures readily admit that those authorship traditions have no bearing on their inerrancy positions.) In the case of the Gospel of Matthew, I don’t find the Matthean authorship tradition as compelling as some do. I consider the arguments for Luke and John authorship to be relatively stronger. Even so, I don’t lose much sleep on this topic.
Pardon me for lacking the memory skills to name extemporaneously hundreds of such scholars. Nevertheless, I can personally assure you that they exist.
I know such scholars exist because I got to know them over the course of my career and I read their books and peer-reviewed papers. I’m curious as to how you happen to know that they don’t exist.
Is it? How many NT scholars are there in the world? I mean, for my own field of atomic physics, our nation-wide conference only has 1000 people, and I estimate that at most only 20%-30% are professors whose opinion has weight in the profession. So worldwide I estimate there to be no more than 500 atomic physicists active in research. I would be surprised if NT-related fields had much more than this.
I checked the membership list for the Studi Novi Testamentum Societas (MEMBERSHIP LIST, 2018 | New Testament Studies | Cambridge Core), the premier society for professional NT scholars. It lists about 950 names. So if what @AllenWitmerMiller says is true, having hundreds of people agree on some issue is quite significant in the field.
Then why does he not answer my question re: how many scholars in the field reject the stated authorship of the Gospels?
Is this diagram from Wikipedia not accurate in its depictions of the main hypotheses re: the authorship of the Gospels?
It seems pretty exhaustive, but I don’t see a single one in which there are just three boxes labelled “Mark”, “Luke” and “Matthew” sitting there by themselves, with no arrows connecting them to each other nor to any other possible sources. Why would they omit a theory that is, supposedly, endorsed by “hundreds” of scholars in the field?
As far as I know, the question of who authored the gospels is fairly separate from the question of their interdependence on each other. Right, @AllenWitmerMiller?
So are there scholars who believe the Gospel of Matthew was actually written by the Matthew who was a disciple of Jesus, but he copied much of his writings from the author of Mark, even though these described events to which Matthew was supposedly a direct witness?