Porphyry, in post 76 you said:
“As to Augustine’s more particular observation that we know the authenticity of a work because the author himself published it widely in his own life, that point is sound in itself, yet applied to the NT, it is question-begging. We have no record of the NT books during the lives of the purported authors–nor does Augustine even claim to provide any such evidence. We have no external attestation of the books of the NT until–at the earliest–decades after they are purported to have been written. And we have no clear attestation of their authorship until later still. So we cannot say, for example, this book was widely known as the Gospel of Mark during Mark’s own life, when he and his intimates were alive to contest the attribution. Again, the argument is unsound, more rhetoric than logic.”
Is it reasonable to say, as many modern scholars do, that the four gospels gained circulation anonymously, since no explicit authorship claims were made in the texts themselves, and only later were called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I find this scenario difficult to swallow in two aspects: 1) it’s hard to believe these texts were embraced and then spread as anonymous documents, and 2) when they were later named, there was no known contention about it.
Stephen, in post 77 you said:
“Well I’m responding to your position which privileges the perspective of certain ancient writers simply because they are closer in time to the date of original compositions.”
Okay, so you don’t want to privilege them. But does that mean they don’t get a voice at all?
“The truth is, we have no idea of the provenance of the gospels. We are able to discern clues from the text.”
How is that different from being skeptical about the authorship of every book in the public library until someone had discerned enough clues from the text to figure out who the author was?
I only think it’s preposterous to ignore them.
First, in that case your position has shifted. The first time you labeled a position as “preposterous” you said:
It is preposterous to think that modern scholars are better able to determine the authorship of NT books than ancient scholars.
Second, no one is ignoring the fathers. At no point in this conversation have I refused to discuss the fathers.
Is it reasonable to say, as many modern scholars do, that the four gospels gained circulation anonymously, since no explicit authorship claims were made in the texts themselves, and only later were called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I find this scenario difficult to swallow in two aspects: 1) it’s hard to believe these texts were embraced and then spread as anonymous documents, and 2) when they were later named, there was no known contention about it.
I don’t actually know what happened but I don’t think that is implausible. I think a necessary starting point is realizing just how little we have by way of records of what was going on in Christianity during its first century or so.
We need to look at other known cases of fraud or misattribution. Looking at known cases can tell us what sorts of things actually happen, and thus can tell us what the possibilities are.
If you go through old works, of the antique and medieval period, there are lots of misattributed works. If someone has a copy of a work he finds valuable and important, it is natural to try to identify the author.
The person who tries to identify the author may not do a very thorough job. He might very plausibly make mistakes and assumptions, he may have little to no real evidence that could really identify the author and so resort to connecting dots that just don’t connect. He might let his imagination get the better of him and come up with some very fanciful theory of authorship.
Once he is convinced, and sticks the name of an author on the manuscript, suddenly his identification gets a certain authority, simply because now it is part of the document. If you find something written in a book there is a tendency to accept that the person who put it there did so for a reason and knew what he was writing. You can see this tendency today all over the place on the internet, people see things written on the internet and, presuming it is a good story (and especially if it somehow reinforces or bolsters beliefs we already hold) many never think to question it. At the same time, all the psychological factors that drove him to jump to conclusions in naming the author may also cause other people to be too quick to accept his attribution.
Of course, once that attribution becomes commonly accepted, then someone coming one or two centuries later will have difficulty untangling the story and discovering it was a misattribution.
So again, you have to start with looking at how misinformation arises and spreads in the first place, then see whether those established and attested human behaviors could have applied to something like the attribution of some of the books of the NT.
If we are sitting here describing those behaviors objectively, you might say, “they couldn’t all be so dumb; they couldn’t all be so gullible”. But that is why we need to ground ourselves in attested human behavior: that tells us what is actually realistic, in a way that sticking to our idealized projection of how we imagine we would act can never do. We all think we are more rational and objective than we really are. That idealized view of ourselves doesn’t reflect humanity. Even today (where information is readily available and we have the benefit of some pretty advanced science to explain the world) ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
On that note, it’s also important to remember that there wasn’t actually unanimity on the authorship and authenticity of all 27 books of the NT. We do have a record of there being dispute. There were disputes about authorship among the orthodox, some of which were never resolved. And of course, if we include the non-orthodox Christians (to say nothing of non-Christians opponents) there was no consensus.
Okay, so you don’t want to privilege them. But does that mean they don’t get a voice at all?
Is this how you imagine it works? Either we accept ancient testimony unequivocally or reject it unequivocally? Each voice must be considered on its own merits. And we must accept that there will be blank spaces on our maps. At the very least what we can glean from someone like Eusebius are the views of a literate believer in his own day. But the concept of the disinterested objective historian barely exists in our own day. It didn’t exist at all in the ancient world.
How is that different from being skeptical about the authorship of every book in the public library until someone had discerned enough clues from the text to figure out who the author was?
Because the closer we get to the modern day the more corroborating information we have from other sources. Prof Ehrman has books available but he also does videos and has a website. We have letters by Paul, forgeries by others who valued his authority enough to steal it, and references to him in other texts. The Greek playwright Aeschylus is reported to have written 90 plays of which six(!) survive. Sophocles wrote 120 plays of which seven(!) survive. The great lyricist Sapho’s work exists only in fragments. We have no single complete copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. My point? When all we have is the text then we are forced to rely on the text.
Even today (where information is readily available and we have the benefit of some pretty advanced science to explain the world) a lot of people believe a lot of crazy stuff.
Like my Uncle Edward, an electronics engineer by profession, who got bored one day and rewired his house, no fool, but who was absolutely convinced that Space Shuttle launches adversely affected the weather. In most things a clear headed person but on that subject completely bonkers.
Porphyry, in post 76 you gave your reaction to Contra Faustum 33:6. I have a number of questions to ask you about what you wrote but I will hold off asking them for now in the interest of seeking some agreement on the status of this thread. (I’ll explain what I mean by this in a post I’ll make a little later this afternoon which will be called an “interim status update.”) That said, I will ask you just one question about CF 33:6 at this time: Would you agree that Augustine’s focus in this passage is authorship and not canonicity?
Porphyry, this is the Jerome quote you brought us in post 36:
“Here is Jerome: the epistle which is entitled “To the Hebrews” is accepted as the apostle Paul’s not only by the churches of the east but by all church writers in the Greek language of earlier times [which, by the way, is not accurate, see Origen], although many judge it to be by Barnabas or by Clement. It is of no great moment who the author is, since it is the work of a churchman and receives recognition day by day in the public reading of the churches.”
1) Please let me know from where you pulled this quote as I have not been able to find it. I don’t question its authenticity – I just want to read it in its original context. (I think it works fine out of context, but I just want to familiarize myself with the document as it may offer me help in other areas of my interest.)
2) In the meantime, recall that in post 49 you said this about the quote: “I offered the quotation–on your demand–precisely to show that the eventual agreement on canonicity was reached only by bracketing the contentious issue of authorship.” If authorship was bracketed and orthodoxy was considered a replacement factor for it, why weren’t other orthodox church writings – such as by Clement, etc. – put forward for inclusion in the canon? Whether they were or they weren’t, what then would be the defense for any exclusion of them?
Porphyry, in post 83 you wrote:
“‘I only think it’s preposterous to ignore them.’ First, in that case your position has shifted. The first time you labeled a position as “preposterous” you said: ‘It is preposterous to think that modern scholars are better able to determine the authorship of NT books than ancient scholars.’”
Fair point. Before concluding my participation in this thread I will address this discrepancy.
“Second, no one is ignoring the fathers. At no point in this conversation have I refused to discuss the fathers.”
I wasn’t speaking of present company as I know none of you or your writings except what you’ve written in this forum.
INTERIM STATUS UPDATE
I would like to now take stock of where we are, in order to make any continuation of the dialogue more productive than it otherwise might be. I’ll start with a reminder of the question that began the thread:
Who Is Better Qualified to Determine Authorship of the NT Texts – Modern Scholars or Ancient Ones?
Next, I’d like to identify the lines of argument presented in this thread. I solicit your help in this process. I welcome the addition of lines of argument I am missing and also in the wording of each line of argument. Inclusion in this list is not a statement on the quality of the argument. In other words, I’m not trying to make a statement about which line of argument is more persuasive than another. That will come, if at all, farther down the road. At this interim point, I just want to solidify our gains. I assure you that it is a gain to me to understand all your lines of argument – and that gain is independent of whether or not I am ultimately persuaded by any of them.
I repeat my need for your help getting better wording on the lines of argument favoring modern scholars. My attributions are not complete or concise; I just wanted to give you something to work with. You can, of course, add lines of argument as well, but I was hope that all the arguments you’ve made to me fall into one of those three categories. My hope is that we can consolidate our gains in understanding each other through this process. McKinsey consultants are taught to try to make such lists MECE (i.e. the items on the list are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.) (No, I never worked for McKinsey, so all I’m doing is admiring and imitating MECE, not claiming any special expertise with it.)
LINES OF ARGUMENT FAVORING MODERN SCHOLARS:
1. Modern scholars have a much better track record of identifying and rooting out forgeries than ancient scholars. (Porphyry and Robert)
2. Modern scholars have more knowledge about the first century than people in the second century would or could have. (Stephen in post 13)
3. Modern scholars are not as encumbered by the religious perspectives that impaired many ancient judgments (??)
LINES OF ARGUMENT FAVORING ANCIENT SCHOLARS:
1. History generally gives precedence to sources closest in time and place to the subject being studied.
2. Ancient scholars had access to testimony and evidence lost to modernity.
3. Ancient scholars had greater knowledge of ancient language and culture than modern scholars have.
Porphyry,
Something has occurred to me. If you and I can’t agree that Eusebius in EH 3.25, Athanasius in his Festal Letter 39, and Augustine in Contra Faustum 33.6 were talking about authorship, then it’s really a waste of time for you and I to discuss any other aspect of the question that launched this thread. For if those three men in those three texts were not taking a position on authorship (because, per you, it had been bracketed for the sake of achieving a canon), then I don’t see a way to distinguish between the ancient view of authorship and the modern one. Both would be in agreement, at least in principle, that authorship of the 27 NT texts was not a settled issue. Without the ability to distinguish the two views, the question that launched the thread makes no sense.
If you and I can’t agree that Eusebius in EH 3.25, Athanasius in his Festal Letter 39, and Augustine in Contra Faustum 33.6 were talking about authorship, then it’s really a waste of time for you and I to discuss any other aspect of the question that launched this thread.
But that’s not what I’ve said.
I certainly never said that Augustine in CF 33.6 isn’t discussing authorship, I only said that his arguments concerning authorship are bad arguments.
I don’t recall making any comment about whether Eusebius discussed authorship.
As to Athanasius’s Festal Letter, I said it was remarkable for being an explicit discussion of canonicity and said relatively little about authorship. This was in post 51, in case anyone would like to review.
I do want to correct something else I said recently (post 75). I had conflated in my memory two different exchanges: post 19, where I had offered a quotation from Eusebius’s EC III.25, was not part of the exchange where you challenged me to “demonstrate it”. I did offer the quotation, and we did return to discuss it later, so I think the substance of comment 75 stands.
Robert, regarding post 92, would you please define what you mean by assumption in the context of this thread. For example, if a writer implies something do you “assume” what he means? For another example, is any inference an assumption…or do only certain kinds of inferences qualify as assumptions? More broadly, do you think a good writer shouldn’t expect his readers to assume anything? Do you think all writers are explicit about every point they want readers to take away? Do you never make any assumptions about your readers when you write? Please spare no words in your answers to these questions as I am struggling mightily to figure out the way you use this term.
Robert,
You’re being willfully unreasonable and denying the obvious. If anyone in the time of Eusebius could have gone to Thessalonica and gotten the church leaders to deny that they had ever claimed 1 and 2 Thessalonians as authentic, Eusebius and his book would have been discredited throughout the Roman Empire. Even if nowhere else (though that is unlikely), Eusebius’s book itself was a report of Thessalonica vouching for the two epistles – likewise Ephesus for their letter, Colossae for theirs, and so on. Such is the argument Eusebius follows throughout the book – apostolic succession churches were the places to check for the claims made about authorship of NT texts. Thus it is entirely reasonable to say that it is a fact to say, as I did, that “the most ancient churches, including those of Thessalonica, are on record as having claimed both letters were from Paul.”
Augustine is explicitly discussing authorship.
Eusebius is discussing canonicity. He certainly thinks most of the books of the NT were by their traditional authors. Nevertheless his understanding of canonicity is complicated (why does he place the Apocalypse both among the accepted and the rejected writings, but not among the disputed writings?) and it is not clear to me that authorship is the decisive question (consider his comments on the 2nd and 3rd epistles of John).
If one wants to understand Eusebius’s thinking on canonicity and authorship, one ought to attend carefully to EH VII, 25, where he seems to adopt the position of the Letter of Dionysius: the Apocalypse is not by the Evangelist, but by a John the Elder, who was authoritative and inspired.
As to Athanasius, I think I already outlined my view in brief.
Robert, You’re being willfully unreasonable and denying the obvious.
Whoa now. You may want to slow your roll.
If anyone in the time of Eusebius could have gone to Thessalonica and gotten the church leaders to deny that they had ever claimed 1 and 2 Thessalonians as authentic, Eusebius and his book would have been discredited throughout the Roman Empire.
That is far weaker than what you claimed. You claimed that the Thessalonian church made a claim and that we have that claim on record. Now you are arguing, at best, from their silence. Not actively disavowing a letter is not the same as giving an unqualified testimony of its authenticity. Even if the church of Thessoloinica was actively using second Thessalonians as Scripture, that doesn’t necessarily mean they thought they were in a position to authenticate its authorship historically.
it is entirely reasonable to say that it is a fact to say, as I did, that “the most ancient churches, including those of Thessalonica, are on record as having claimed both letters were from Paul.”
No, to say they are on record making that claim would require actually producing a record of them claiming the authenticity of the specific letters. You don’t have that.
but before we get too far into the weeds, let me back up for some context: When I first challenged you to produce the passage where they were on record, I was pretty confident you couldn’t. But I was also open to the possibility you knew something I didn’t. In that case, I was interested to see who specifically made the claim in their name, and in what context that claim was made. After all, there are any number of plausible reasons they could have vouched for a forgery: they themselves might have been deceived by a forgery (someone “discovered” a letter in their archives), or maybe they themselves had some vested interest in the authenticity of the letter (maybe it advanced a position they were interested in, and they conveniently had a letter of Paul making the very point they needed to make; maybe having another letter from Paul bolstered their status among the churches) I mean, plenty of later churches, whether in good or bad faith, authenticated dubious tombs of apostles or relics from early Christianity.
It is all sort of moot since we don’t actually have a record of them, specifically, claiming the letter. I’m simply saying, even if you could find a place that the Thessalonian church claimed the letter, it wouldn’t necessarily settle the issue.
Even if you had a letter on “The First Church of Thessalonica” letterhead stationary, dated and notarized, attesting to the authenticity of 1 and 2 Thessalonians as products of Paul, it wouldn’t be as strong a witness to the matter at hand as what Eusebius has given us in his “Ecclesiastical History.” His concern is to cover the time from Jesus and the apostles to his own. Of specific concern to him is the history of the apostolic succession churches (apostolic sees) because they are the ones who can speak most definitely about the letters originally addressed to them – from the beginning and through every generation since then. Thus when Eusebius identifies all 27 NT texts in 3.25, and specifically states that “Paul’s epistles” are among “the recognized books,” he is giving the strongest possible attestation because he’s not just speaking for himself – he’s speaking for the whole of Christendom, which includes the apostolic churches like Thessalonica. He does not need to write the literal words “Thessalonica,” “Ephesus,” “Colossae” and so on because everyone knew to whom the letters of Paul were addressed.
Although Athanasius and Augustine would later speak of all 27 texts without differentiation, Eusebius distinguished between those accepted without dispute (20 books) and those accepted with dispute (7 books). The reason there could be 20 without dispute is that churches founded by the apostles had continued, generation after generation, to use those texts in liturgical settings.
There are common threads that run through Eusebius’s “EH,” Athanasius’s “Festal Letter 39,” and Augustine’s “Contra Faustum.” One of them is that the apostolic texts were “handed down” from generation to generation. How could they be handed down unless at the beginning they had been “handed over” by their respective authors? We do not have the means to verify this chain of custody, but we don’t need to verify it. We just need to know whether we can take the word of men like Eusebius, Athanasius, Augustine, and the churches for whom they spoke. Did all those churches have a motive to lie about the provenance of those books? Not that I can think of, and, even if they did, how would they ever get everyone to agree about what the lie would be? There was no central controlling authority in those times.
Another common thread that runs through Eusebius’s “EH,” Athanasius’s “Festal Letter 39,” and Augustine’s “Contra Faustum” is that all the authors of the 27 texts are known – no anonymous text was mentioned. In fact, that’s the only data that any ancient ever added to an apostolic text: the name of the person who handed it over in the beginning. Thus the titles of the books bore the names of their authors in every case (Luke-Acts was a two-volume work and therefore did not need the author’s name repeated in the second volume). That’s why Bart could subtitle “Forged” with the phrase “Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.” Bart knew we “thought they were” because we thought they were who the ancient church said they were.
What this all means in the context of this thread is that while ancient scholars were just as capable as modern scholars, if not more so, to analyze the vocabulary and syntax of a writing for what it might reveal about the author, those ancient scholars also had another way – a surer way – of determining authorship that modern scholars could not duplicate if they wanted to: a handing down a text from one generation to the next just like a family heirloom. (That the autographs were replaced by copies and that copies were replaced copies is an incidental, immaterial, and mundane aspect of the process.)
The 4th century – that is, the century of Eusebius, Athanasius, and Augustine – was definitive. It marked the transition from a focus on authorship to a focus on canonicity. That the Romans wanted a Church of England, as it were, demanded a biblical canon. But without 300 years of focus on authorship, a canon could never have been achieved the way it was – which was without a vote, without an ecumenical council and without a transcript of the process. Once canonicity was achieved, authorship was subordinated in importance and the subject has suffered ever since. But all we have to do to regain historical assurance of authorship is return to the historical record.
When I came to this site I expected to run into people who thought the ancients (1st century through 4th) were wrong about NT authorship. I never expected to find out that there’d be people here who thought the ancients never made up their minds about it. But if they hadn’t, there would have been no consensus from which a canon could be formed. The essence of what made the church catholic and orthodox back then was their common dedication to all the apostolic texts that could be found. Authorship, therefore, was, by definition, critical to that dedication.
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