Loading...Here is the second of my “Anniversary Posts” given in celebration of the fourteenth year of the blog. Unlike the snarky first in the series, this one is meant to be strictly informative, on an issue that I regularly get asked about by people who come to realize that the Gospels were not originally circulated in the names we now know them by. But they weren’t called something else. They were anonymous. But why? Here was my answer from April 2013, and it’s pretty much what I think now in April 2026!
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It is always interesting to ask why an author chose to remain anonymous, never more so than with the Gospels of the New Testament. In some instances an ancient author did not need to name himself because his readers knew perfectly well who he was and did not need to be told. That is almost certainly the case with the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John. These are private letters sent from someone who calls himself “the elder” to a church in another location. It is safe to assume that the recipients of the letters knew who he was.
Some people have thought that the Gospels were like that: books written by leading persons in particular congregations who did not need to identify themselves because everyone knew who they were. But then as the books were copied and circulated, names were still not attached to them. As a result the identities of the authors were soon lost. Then later readers, rightly or wrongly, associated the books with two of the disciples (Matthew and John) and with two companions of the apostles (Mark the companion of Peter and Luke the companion of Paul).
Another option is that
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This may be a simple question, but I have often wondered why Paul’s letters came to be held in such high authority in early Christianity.
When I read them, I sometimes get the impression that Paul himself was not always a universally respected figure. In 1 Corinthians he defends his right to financial support and refers to Peter and the other apostles who travel with believing wives. His letters to the Galatians and Corinthians also show communities that were struggling and often resisting his authority. In 2 Corinthians, his sarcastic remarks about the so-called “super-apostles” can also sound defensive or dismissive.
For that reason, I sometimes wonder why Paul’s writings eventually came to be treated almost on the same level as Scripture. In the Gospels themselves Paul does not appear at all, and in some respects his theological perspective seems quite different from the narrative world of Jesus. Moreover, unlike many early Christian writings that circulated anonymously, Paul repeatedly emphasizes his own name and authority in his letters.
Given all this, why did Paul’s letters in particular gain such prominence in the formation of the New Testament canon?
Yes, it’s an intriguing question, especially since in his letters Paul himself seems to indicate that he has more enemies than friends among the Christian teachers in his churches…. For a variety of reasons, though, possibly because his emphasis that gentiles could be right with God withot becomeing Jews, he baecame increasingly popular among Christian (gentile) converts. I’ll be looking more deeply into all this for/in my book on the canon.
In a previous answer you graciously provided to me, you said ‘gentiles’ in NT context does not mean only ‘non-Jewish people’. This correctly takes into account the semantic evolution of the words ‘gentile’ and ‘ethnos’ which evolved over many centuries in tandem with the changing ‘market’ for the Christian evangelical mission.
I find it confusing when careful scholars like you use sloppy words like Gentile, with its current meaning being quite different from what Paul would have meant when he wrote it. People tend to interpret according to what it means now.
Paul makes much more sense to me when I assume there were non-zealous Jews bristling at Torah requirements – and those non-zealous Jews were the focus of Paul’s mission. One of the ways Diasporan Jewish families, who lived in other nations for centuries, did not observe Torah was inevitably by intermarrying with people of other ethnic groups. This practice was, of course, objectionable to Jewish zealots – but not all Jews were zealous for Torah. Paul certainly was not. Timothy’s parents were not.
Non-Somali people in my city do not become interested in local Somali issues without having some attachment to Somalis, or to immigrants in general.
Sorry — I don’t think I know what you’re referring to. Where did I say that the term “gentile” means something other than “non-Jewish person” in the NT? It CAN also mean “nation” — but the only time it would signify anything other than “non-Jew” would be when it is used in the plural to refer to “all the ETHNOI” (as in Matthew 25 [sheep and the goats] and 28:19-20 [great commission]), in which presumably Judea would be included. But when it’s talking about people, it simply means “non-Jew.” So when you say I’m being sloppy, I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
It is necessary to understand what words mean and that the meaning can (and in this case did) evolve over time.
When Jerome translated the Vulgate, ‘Gentiles’ were not Christians. It meant heathen then. In the Age of Discovery, Christians European explorers were not ‘Gentiles’, the people they encountered in the New World were Gentiles. It meant heathen then.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/gentile (scroll down for ‘ethnic’)
The new LSV translation does not use the word ‘gentile’ even once because its meaning changed over time, making it an anachronistic word choice. https://www.lsvbible.com/
“The English word gentile derives from the Latin word gentilis, meaning “of or belonging to the same people or nation” (from Latin gēns ‘clan, tribe, people, family’). Archaic and specialist uses of the word gentile in English (particularly in linguistics) still carry this meaning of “relating to a people or nation.” The development of the word to principally mean “non-Jew” in English is entwined with the history of Bible translations from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and English.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentile
A Jewish perspective:
https://momentmag.com/jewish-word-gentile/?srsltid=AfmBOorjrEPM-9Z8DKqcO0fqWyZ9QwbTOzpByP3k_6vv-mUmy8GmB440
Linguistics, in which I trained, verifies the contemporary meaning of words when studying historical texts. All fields need to do that – or unwittingly make anachronistic claims.
In my opinion, the Apostle Paul did not write 2nd Corinthians, 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, Titus, 1st Thessalonians, 2nd Thessalonians, 50% of 1st Corinthians and Ephesians 5:22-24. The Council of Nicea added a verse or two to Romans. 1st Corinthians was written after the Jewish War in 70 CE. Paul was collecting money for a war relief. Ephesians and Colossians were dictated to a court stenographer who wrote Shorthand while Paul was in Ceasarea awaiting the appeal to Ceasar in Rome, Italy in the last chapters of Acts. Of course, Paul was not the author of Hebrews, either. The Pauline literature is mostly pseudepigraphal forgeries by two different groups.
I’d say it’s hard to show Paul didn’t write 2 Corinthians or 1 Thessalonians or most of 1 Corinthians. If you do think so, it woudld required the same kind of sustaines argument you cna make for, say, 1 Timothy.
Dr. Ehrman, thank you for responding. The Corinthians letters, 1st Timothy, and Titus were written by the same group. The Thessalonian letter and 2nd Timothy were written by another group. The Corinthian group was misogynists (and narcissists) and gave Paul a bad reputation. The “Q” Community who wrote the Gospel of Matthew and were interviewed by Luke wrote both Thessalonians letters, 2nd Timothy (2 Peter, Jude, and the addendum of 1st Peter). The “Q” Community invented the narrative of the Return of Jesus. In the 2nd chapter of ACTS, Peter said the prophecy of Joel was fulfilled and the LAST DAYS had arrived. The “Q” Community is responsible for the Satan and demons content, too. “John of Patmos” was a member of the “Q” Community. 2nd Corinthians 2:11 mentioned “Satan”. Clue #1. 2nd Corinthians 12:2 mentioned the “third heaven”. Clue #2. That might be from Enoch. Ephesians 5:22-24 is a spurious insertion (of the Corinthian Group). The “Q” Community was the (former) Essenes and the (former) Therapeutae. Josephus is the most reliable historical source for the Essenes. He wrote that they were a secret society and had “prophets”: not predictors of future events but interpreters of past events.
Thanks.
Is it possible an author chose anonymity for protection from some type of persecution by the authorities?
some people have suggested that for REvelation, but even there I don’t think there’s any evidence or real reason to think so. Most authorities had no knowledge of/concern about Christians for centuries, and we don’t have any record of early Christian authors getting in trouble for anything they wrote (or non-Christians even reading them!)
When I read Luke 23:43, it seems that Jesus tells the man on the cross that he will be with him in paradise “today,” which suggests that Jesus himself would go to paradise immediately after his death. However, when I read this together with John 20:17, where the risen Jesus says he has not yet ascended to the Father, I feel there may be a tension between the two passages.
So I sometimes wonder which explanation historians might consider more plausible:
1. Paradise and heaven are basically the same place, but perhaps God simply was not there at the moment—so Jesus technically had not yet “ascended” (though three days are a rather long absence!).
2. In John’s theological framework, Jesus did not go to heaven during the three days after death, but to some intermediate place (perhaps something like paradise, or what later texts such as 1 Peter 3:19 might suggest) or just stayed in the tomb.
3. Or, more simply, the authors were not trying to harmonize such chronological details at all, and readers like me may be worrying about a problem the authors themselves never intended to solve.
Which of these possibilities do historians generally find most plausible?
I’d say probably both #2 and #3, wiht a proviso. It’s not that the authors weren’t trying to harmonize their differences. They had different sources of information and views and didn’t know there *were* differences. Each was just giving his own account, unaware of the other.
Dr. Ehrman,
Questions: I was just doing a comparison between Mark and Matthew regarding what I consider perhaps the most interesting Jesus quote: Mark 8:27 “Who do men/people say that I am?” – I just compared it to the edit in Matthew 16:13 and noticed it replaces the word “I” with “the Son of Man”. Woah, that’s interesting!
So…. if the original quote means he just means “I” : himself, a small-town, reluctant messiah, prophetic heir to John the Baptizer, etc. but still, human, humble, authentic in only a way Mark can deliver…then is this change because by the time Matthew is writing (or has more access to recent sources than Mark did) Christians had widely started identifying him as the “Son of Man” (cosmic being) he spoke of( thanks to Paul maybe) thinking they were one and the same?
Where does the idea of “Son of Man” as cosmic enter the picture, when in Daniel it’s identified as the Righteous of Israel?
Could Jesus have understood it to mean the latter (as well/instead?)
Why couldn’t the former manifest as the latter? His followers came to think the Son of Man was corporeal after all.
Yup, it’s a key passage for realizing that early Christians identified Jesus himself as the Son of Man even though he himself talked about himself and the son of man as different figures. The “Son of Man” is identified as a messianic figure/judge from heaven in other texts as well, most famously 1 Enoch. That shows us that we can’t evaluate what the “son of man” must mean to later Jewish authors/speakers (author of Enoch; Jesus) based on what it actually meant to the author of Daniel. These later Jews were *using* Daniel for their own views, not doing a modern exegesis of Daniel.
Not to mention that if they people knew it was “Zorba the Greek” they would have gotten nowhere!
Most scholars agree that “Mark” was written first and that “Matthew” and “Luke” relied heavily on “Mark”. According to the theory of anonymity, obviously neither the author of Matthew or Luke knew who wrote the document they so heavily relied upon. According to this theory, it “just was”. The obvious question is, how did an anonymous document achieve, within twenty to thirty years of its composition, such prestige? Indeed, how did any of the gospels achieve the status they possess today if originally circulated anonymously? Let us examine more closely what the theory of anonymity implies: it implies that each other wrote his gospel secretly, burning the midnight oil, concealing his project from family and friends. Then, upon completion of the project, the author sneaks out under the cover of darkness and sends forth his gospel (in a bottle on the ocean? laying it down before a known house church?) and retreats back to his house. Somehow and FOR SOME REASON, this anonymous book is deemed by its first readers worthy of preservation and dissemination.
Does the theory of Anonymity really have explanatory power?
I’m not sure that Mark had “prestige.” It was a story of Jesus that two later authors found useful. I would say, though, that plenty of anonymous books from antiquity had very significant standing in one community or another. As you know, the historical books of the Hebrew Bible are anonymous; so is the NT book of Hebrews, the Didache, the letter of Barnabas, and so on.
I don’t think anyone argues that the Gospels were written by sneaky authors keeping their identity secret. Saying they were “anonymous” does not mean that the original readers didn’t know who wrote them. It means the authors did not attach their names to them, and that once they were copied and distributed outside their original communities, no one knew who the author was or much cared. They were accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus and so were precious becuase of their contents, not because one person or another wrote them. That’s crystal clear from the historical record; they are quoted as authoritative for 90 years before anyone on record put a name on them.
I’ll refer you to L. Michael White’s “Scripting Jesus” which I have found to be a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the Gospels, their context and meaningful differences…with all respect to Bart – I think no single scholar can specialize in every topic or write exactly what people may want/need.
White’s main theme, which seems accurate, is that the gospel writers were writing for local communities who both knew the authors and who understood the emphasis of each community. These communities were probably separated by enough distance they didn’t share documents. Very much a self-reinforcing local system (Parochial?). The gospels were read aloud to those communities, who knew the stories being told. This very much makes considering:
Few people could read and fewer could both read and write.
The OT books were similarly written to communities who understood their religious and mythic cultures.
Marcionites, Ebionites, Gnostic, etc. communities wrote self-reinforcing documents to local communities; some of these communities grew, yes.
These authors and local communities never intended their documents to be part of a NT bible but, as Bart has stated, wrote as though their stories were a continuation of Hebrew/Israelite stories.
Hope this helps.
Yes, White and I agree on nearly all of this. (Are there parts that you see us disagreeing on here?)
Yes, White and I agree on nearly all of this. (Are there parts that you see us disagreeing on here?)
The gospel genre is hero story. The one problem the hero arrives to resolve is stated at the start – Herod Antipas illegally wed Herodias. After the hero does his thing, this single issue is resolved in favor of the illegally wed royal couple. This new atonement path (not dependent on Torah compliance unlike the previous one) allowed Drusilla to wed Felix even more illegally than her aunt’s marriage, and without censure from those pesky Torah zealous Jews.
According to my literary criticism training, I must assume a hero story was produced by the beneficiary of the hero’s action unless there is valid reason to think otherwise. People have no motivation to make up fictional stories in which their opponents prevail.
Women have an unusual amount of agency in the gospels. Paul had women co-workers who preceded him in ministry. You refer to hypothetical gospel authors with a male pronoun. My reading points to specific women having the motivation to produce the gospels. Do you think women could have created the synoptic gospels and stayed anonymous because women couldn’t attach their names to publications? And even if they could, attaching their names would have unnecessarily betrayed it as being propaganda.
Growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness religion, I thought I knew the Bible very well (I left in 2001 when I was 44) but after reading your books and watching your videos with Megan, I can see that I only knew how to find scriptures. Thank you for everything. I now consider myself to be a Christian atheist.
Bart,
Reading this post just gave me a new (to me) thought. Who’s the real genius, Jesus or the gospel writers? If a significant portion of the gospels are not even historical and even the parts that are historical are probably not Jesus’ identical words, it seems to me that we should be in awe of the gospel writers as much or more as we are of Jesus. Your thoughts?
I think that the Jesus who changed history was the “remembered Jesus” not the “historical Jesus” per se.
That makes sense. So, back to my original question. Would a person be out of line who claimed that the real genius was in the gospel writers’ accounts rather than the historical Jesus? Therefore, the gospel writers should get more credit! Maybe instead of “Christianity,” it should be “MatthewMarkLukeJohnianity?” And then there’s Paul…
As a conservative Christian, I viewed the NT as more of a “recording” of the life and teachings of Jesus. The writers were secondary. But now I see the writers playing an enormous role in what Christianity is. All this mostly thanks to you, Bart! 🙂
I wish we knew how much genius was in Jesus! Unfortunately, since he’s only mediated through the Gospels, and since these were based on oral traditions in circulation for decades, it is very hard to know! But even some of the sayings/parables we are pretty sure go back to him are stunning.
I’ve never understood why the author of Matthew would copy Mark almost verbatim if the author was actually a disciple and could give an eyewitness account
I’ve also found it strange that the authors of Mark and John (if they were actually disciples) waited so long to write their accounts particularly if they were in danger and some of their brethren had already been martyred.
I meant to say “I’ve also found it strange that the authors of Matthew and John…”