Who REALLY Wrote the Gospels?

the gospels comprising the first four books of the Christian New Testament serve as the primary source of information about the life of Jesus their reliability is often attributed to the assumption that they were written by eyewitnesses but who actually wrote the gospels how do we know let's find out [Music] [Applause] together this might seem a strange question when the table of contents of your Bible clearly labels these books Matthew a disciple of Jesus Jesus Mark said to be an assistant to the disciple Peter Luke said to be the traveling companion of Paul a later convert and John also a disciple of Jesus but how do we know that these are the names of the actual authors or can we know that unfortunately none of the authors explicitly identify themselves within the text these are Anonymous books entirely without attribution now in the first century it was not unusual for an author's name to be omitted the Republic parallel lives true histories and on abstinence from animal food were all Anonymous works in the same sense from the same era however based on external evidence these are widely accepted as having been written by Plato plutar Lucen of samas and porry respectively of course despite speculation other Anonymous works from the time remained unattributed like Hebrews the Didi or The Shepherd of Hermos but some precedence for anonymous writings doesn't remove the mystery indeed it merely sets the stage before delving into the reasons behind attributing these Anonymous writings to Matthew Mark Luke and John let's first examine when these attributions began to emerge the earliest surviving document that mentions the names of Matthew Mark Luke and John was written around 185 ad irus of Rome known for his extensive work against the heresies addressed various groups and belief beliefs he considered to be deviating from Orthodox Christianity during this time numerous gospels were in circulation and used by different churches irus declared that only four of these are authoritative those he names Matthew Mark Luke and John all the later Traditions about gospel authorship Trace back to this Proclamation but what about the 100 or so years between the writing of the gospels and irus is it possible the names were commonly known that whole time it is true that no manuscripts from this Anonymous era contain the names of the authors for example manuscript P1 is the earliest extent page one of the Gospel now known as Matthew we know we have the top of the page because we see the character Alpha indicating the page number but there is no title Gospel according to Matthew like there is in later editions our earliest page one was distributed anonymously no title that said if there were debates about the authorship of the New Testament book of Hebrews among Church fathers around the same time wouldn't we have records of similar debates concerning the gospels if they were similarly Anonymous and considering the geographical spread of Christianity and uniform authorship traditions in all regions isn't that a demonstration that the names would have been attached to the gospels early on well these are arguments from Silence attempting to draw conclusions based on the absence of evidence rather than the presence of evidence the earliest manuscript discovered outside the region of Egypt dates only to the 4th Century 200 years after the irus Declaration therefore we simply do not know when the written gospels began to accompany oral preaching similarly the existence or absence of authorship disputes before irus cannot be known if these traditional author defenses are argument from Silence isn't calling this an anonymous era also an argument from Silence actually not at all during the period of lost manuscripts we come across numerous influential Church fathers who quote from the gospels but do not attribute these quotations to any specific authors like Matthew Mark Luke or John in works such as the Didi first Clement the Epistle of Barnabas Ignatius of antioch's letters to the Ephesians smans magnesian and polycarp polycarp's letter to the Philippians as well as in Justin murder's writings direct quotations from one or more of the four canonical gospels are found all of these texts date to at least 120 ad however none of these Church fathers attribute their quotes to Matthew Mark Luke or John for instance Justin Martyr who provides the most quotations attributes them all to the Memoirs of the Apostles without specific names attached the didiy refers to teachings from Matthew as from the gospel of the Lord this is not an argument from Silence but rather a positive affirmation of anonymity if the traditional names were already attached to the gospels before 120 ad why would these Church fathers refrain from using them to site their quotations and even go so far as to use alternate names especially when they do explicitly credit other authors by name within the same documents considering that martyr in particular was contending with heretical challenges it would have been advantageous for him to utilize the names if the tradition already existed during this time the most obvious conclusion is that the names didn't exist yet now if the traditional authorship gained acceptance between 120 and 180 ad why did Matthew Mark Luke and John specifically emerges the attributed names instead of others to avoid confusion for the remainder of this video Let's refer to the gospels as first 2 third and fourth gospels based on their order in traditional printings it is widely believed that the second gospel was written before the first gospel so it's a bit of a Star Wars episode number situation history can be confusing sometimes while eraas is writing in 185 D provides the earliest known connection between the name Matthew and the book we recognize as the First Gospel there is an earlier reference from a man named papius who wrote approximately 50 to 60 years earlier papius authored a five volume work called expositions of the sayings of the Lord although no copies of this work have survived however there are quotations from this work that have been preserved in particular uus of cesaria writing in or around 300 ad reported that papius wrote and so Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew tongue and each one interpreted them to the best of his ability it is upon this sentence that the entire tradition of Matthew's authorship rests unfortunately uus does not provide further context making it difficult to determine the specific composition papius was referring to however there are clues that indicate it cannot be our first gospel firstly papius described a collection of sayings akin to a quotation book while our first gospel is predominantly a narrative this genre mismatch is significant similar to mistaking a map for a diary or a recipe book for a novel secondly papia stated that Matthew's work was written in Hebrew but our first gospel is an original highlevel Greek composition not a translation linguists overwhelmingly agree on this point but for those unfamiliar with ancient Greek it becomes apparent when comparing lengthy passages where our first gospel matches word for word with our second and third Gospels it would be highly improbable for an English translation of a Spanish language news story to match word for word with the native English report of the same event or in this case two different English language reports simultaneously thirdly papius also described the death of Judas in an elaborate exaggerated and fanciful manner that does not align with the straightforward account in our first gospel if papius indeed had access to our first gospel he did not consider it authoritative whatever collection of Hebrew sayings papius attributed to Matthew it certainly does not correspond to the work we now recognize as our first gospel the Matthew known to papius has been lost to the passage of time it is curious that some Modern Scholars would place trust in papius considering that those who quote him did not in the same passage where uus records papius Claim about Matthew he also warns that papius work includes strange Parables of the Savior and statements of a rather mythical character according to uus papius appears to have been of very limited understanding although some assert that papius had Apostolic connections he himself described his link to Jesus as being at best fifth hand akin to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend even the very Source we have for papius his account did not consider him reliable yet it is upon his secondhand and contradictory statement that the tradition of Matthew's authorship is constructed unfortunately questionable papius is also the source for attributing the writing of a gospel to mark when Mark was The Interpreter of Peter he wrote down accurately everything he recalled of the Lord's words and deeds Mark did nothing wrong by writing some of the matters as he remembered them for he was intent on just one purpose to leave out nothing that he heard or to include any falsehood among them however if Mark's writing had a singular purpose of being comprehensive as described by papius then our second gospel does not appear to be a strong candidate for Mark's composition it is significantly shorter and more concise than the other gospels without any specific quotations provided by papius to establish a connection there is no solid evidence linking the document he described to our second gospel the author of The Gospel of Luke is the only gospel writer who uses firstperson language stating I too decided to write and handed down to us however the author never explicitly identifies himself by name but instead employs pronouns in the author's second volume known as The Acts of the Apostles there are four instances where the author switches from using they to we suggesting personal involvement in some of the Apostle Paul's Journeys however the author still does not provide his name it was observed that in Acts Paul is depicted as bringing the gospel to the Gentiles and in the letter to the Colossians three Gentiles Deus AAS and Luke The Physician are listed as companions of Paul since the narratives concerning Deus and apaas place them elsewhere but little is known about Luke's history the Assumption was made that Luke The Physician could be the author it is important to note that there is no compelling reason for the author of the third gospel would necessarily be limited to the few individuals named in Paul's letters the majority of early Christians remain unnamed so the identification of Luke as the author is a relatively arbitrary guess based on a limited number of options the traditional attribution of authorship to John for the fourth gospel is based on two passages where the author briefly departs from Pure third person narrative the first passage occurs in chapter 19 during the description of Jesus's crucifixion the author mentions the presence of three Marys anded unspecified disciple Jesus loved near The Cross the author States the man who saw it has given testimony and his testimony is true he knows that he tells the truth and he testifies so that you also May believe from this we can deduce that the disciple who witnessed the event gave some form of testimony at some point however it is uncertain whether this book itself is the specific testimony referred to Additionally the author does not claimed to be this disciple The Narrative remains in the third person stating he testified not I Testify the second passage is found in chapter 21 again referring to the unspecified disciple whom Jesus loved this is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down we know that his testimony is true it is possible to interpret writing these things down as referring to the author of the fourth gospel itself if not for the subsequent sentence the author explicitly distinguishes between himself and the mentioned disciple we the author and the readers know that his the disciples testimony is true the identity of the Beloved disciple is never disclosed in the text leading Scholars to propose various candidates including John the son of Zebedee Lazarus Mary Magdalene James or even an individual not mentioned in the New Testament regardless of who it may have been the text makes it clear that the Beloved disciple is distinct from the author of the fourth gospel these are the primary reasons cited in support of the traditional authorship but they are not particularly compelling furthermore there are additional reasons to cast doubt on this attribution in the ninth chapter of the First Gospel there is an account of Jesus meeting Matthew who is traditionally considered the author of the book however instead of using his own words to describe this significant event in his life Matthew simply copies The Narrative nearly word for word from the author of the second gospel who certainly was not present furthermore Matthew does not Place himself in the story he uses phrases like Jesus saw a man named Matthew Jesus told him and Matthew got up rather than Jesus saw me Jesus told me or I got up in fact none of the gospels are written in first or second person perspective to indicate personal participation in the events the authors do not claim to be eyewitnesses nor provide literary H suggesting that we should consider them as such despite the obvious ER of legitimacy that this would lend their words to be fair writing in the third person perspective did occur in the first century as seen in examples like Julius Caesar and tacitus however this was not a prevailing practice and was used for brief stylistic emphasis rather than as an extended narrative convention the 12 disciples including Matthew would have spoken primarily Aramaic and most like fell in the 97% of first century Jewish Palestine who lacked the ability to write in any language let alone compose literary works in the educated Greek found in the First Gospel in fact around 155 ad the Church Father Justin Martyr wrote for from Jerusalem there went out into the world men 12 in number and these illiterate of no ability in speaking argue that any of them later acquired education would contradict the church tradition still upheld in the 2 Century while Matthew was known as a tax collector we should not think of him as a modern-day educated accountant in Palestine the position was simple and crude collection and enforcement without significant paperwork or need of literacy there are no known first century Palestinian residents who were born and raised in that region who wrote books in Greek it is unlikely that Matthew will would have been the first to do so apart from the well-known controversy surrounding the likely added later ending of the second gospel the beginning of the document is equally contentious among textual critics many Bible translations and commentators suggest that the grammatically disconnected first sentence the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was originally the author's title rather than the first sentence of the work confusion likely arose due to to later scribes formatting choices if this interpretation is correct it implies that the second gospel was not initially circulating with the title The Gospel According to Mark in its earliest years as traditionalists often claim in fact the phrasing according to Matthew according to Mark according to Luke appears to be a later addition to differentiate the narratives when they began to be collected together it would be unnatural to write the Gospel According to me some argue that Mark was an obscure figure in the early church and therefore his name would not have been chosen later to lend authority to the gospel however due to limited documentation we have no concrete information regarding who was well known and who was not it is worth noting that John Mark is mentioned at least nine times in the New Testament which is more frequent than the mentions of the disciple Matthew who is often considered more famous the author of the third gospel known for having Advanced Greek writing skills and helenistic cultural references is commonly assumed to be a gentile while an individual named Luke is mentioned three times in the New Testament it is only in a passage from Colossians that he's described as a gentile however it should be noted that the authorship of Colossians itself is a subject of dispute among Scholars the single connecting description of Luke as a gentile becomes subject to doubt and with it the assumptions about his authorship the same problematic passage in Colossians is our only source indicating that Luke was a physician however in the first century medical practitioners often required their knowledge through apprenticeships oral traditions and practical experience rather than formal education learning Greek composition which took years to master was not typically associated with medical training during that time time given the limited lifespan and the demands of acquiring expertise in multiple disperate Specialties the pairing of Greek writing skills and medical training becomes less plausible moreover the portrayal of Paul in the book of Acts which is written by the same author as the third gospel frequently diverges from Paul's self-portrayal in his genuine letters for example in Acts Paul is depicted as immediately going to Jerusalem to meet with the disciples shortly after his vision of Jesus however in Galatians Paul explicitly states that he did not consult with the disciples after his conversion these discrepancies which will be explored in more detail in a future video cast doubt on the idea that acts and by extension the third gospel was written by a companion of Paul just as it is historically implausible for tax collector Matthew to write a book in Greek it is is even less likely for John a fisherman From Galilee to accomplish such a feat the book of Acts affirms that John was an unschooled ordinary man according to church Traditions individuals such as papius and polycarp were Companions of John the son of zebede however when examining polycarp's writings it is notable that he quotes from the first second and third gospels but never mentions the one later attributed to his supposed Mentor John similarly uus quotes papius on the authorship of the first and second gospels but remains silent about the one later ascribed to John who was purportedly His companion while silence cannot be considered as definitive evidence it does raise curiosity in questions while the idea of illiterate individuals using secretaries to write their gospels is not implausible a systematic IC study on the usage of secretaries in Antiquity found no evidence of secretaries taking dictation in one language and translating it into another or being given instructions for a lengthy narrative and then composing it themselves there are no analogous instances supporting such a scenario it would be a unique and unlikely occurrence considering the available evidence the most reasonable conclusion is that after nearly A Century of anonymous circulation and nameless quotation when competing apocryphal gospels with authoritative sounding names like Gospel of Thomas and gospel of Peter began to emerge in the 2 Century the early church felt compelled to attach names to the existing gospels this was done to differentiate them from the newly emerging texts and to counter heresies by attaching authority to their favorite texts with names already associated with other gospels The Logical Choice was to attribute the four canonical gospels to two Disciples of Jesus and the traveling Companions of the influential figures Peter and Paul while we may never definitively know the true authors it is highly unlikely that Matthew Mark Luke or John wrote the gospels attributed to them [Music]

Channel: Paulogia

Views: 110,729

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Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023