JAS said
A lack of reasonable alternatives or serious arguments against?
A reasonable alternative is that the names of the gospels were passed around as they were being copied.
Can I make a copy of your gospel of Matthew and your gospel of Mark. Not, can I make a copy of your longer anonymous gospel and also your shorter anonymous gospel who’s material is contained almost in whole by your longer anonymous gospel, the provenance of which neither of us know.
brenmcg said
JAS said
A lack of reasonable alternatives or serious arguments against?
A reasonable alternative is that the names of the gospels were passed around as they were being copied.
Can I make a copy of your gospel of Matthew and your gospel of Mark. Not, can I make a copy of your longer anonymous gospel and also your shorter anonymous gospel who’s material is contained almost in whole by your longer anonymous gospel, the provenance of which neither of us know.
I don’t see that as an alternative at all, at least not for assigning different names. I presume that they carry the names that were traditionally associated with them, and that the association was probably because they were each circulated within a given area with a given history of association. Are you suggesting something substantially different?
Robert said
No, I refererred to master copies (plural) being used by scribes making further copies. I nowhere referred to a single master copy.
Right, so all the many master copies that scribes had, throughout the whole empire, all attributed the same name to each gospel?
The question is why are there no dissenting voices? Why didn’t different regions of the empire come up with their own traditions for who wrote the first or second or third or fourth gospel. Why didn’t the Romans believe Mark wrote the first, the Ephesians believe John wrote it, the Antiochians believe Matthew, the Alexandrians believe Andrew wrote it. Why does everyone agree on all four gospel names? There’s no pope in Rome deciding for everyone.
Bovon: “Why anyone would happen upon the name Luke remains a riddle. Perhaps a student of Paul’s was desired fro this work. …” An even bigger mystery is why everyone would accept that name. You haven’t offered an explanation for this.
Why is it such a mystery for you? Is it because you assume that these attributions were made very, very early when there would have been people around who could confirm or contest such attributions? The opinions expressed by Papias are the earliest we have and they do not seem to correspond well with the actual texts we have. Yet Papias’ opinion was accepted by later writers. The earliest attribution we have for Luke and John is so much later, is it really that surprising that nobody was around to confirm or contest these attributions?
How could be a riddle that someone picked Luke as the author but not a mystery why everyone else accepted it?
The mystery is not that no-one could confirm or contest this, the mystery is everyone accepted the same tradition. Why not multiple traditions? For any of the gospels?
It is a typical apologetic trope to exaggerate the historical problem and then claim that the only possible solution to such a great problem must be that all of the gospels must have been correctly attributed to their actual authors from the very beginning. I don’t think this is any great problem to be solved, thus I have merely described what we know of the history of this process from our extant sources. At various points attributions were made for the various gospels and these attributions became ingrained in the manuscript tradition over time.
It’s possible they were mis-attributed. What’s not possible is for the gospels to spread widely throughout the empire and only then for the traditional names to have been made up and accepted by all christians. The names were propagated with the text.
JAS said
I don’t see that as an alternative at all, at least not for assigning different names. I presume that they carry the names that were traditionally associated with them, and that the association was probably because they were each circulated within a given area with a given history of association. Are you suggesting something substantially different?
The question is when were the traditional names associated with them? Before they spread or only after? If after why didn’t many variant traditions develop in different regions of the empire?
I suspect that the names were always associated with them. Whether they actually had that written as a title at first, is hard to say. It may be that it was only necessary to write the names once they were being shared. Before that, there would be no matter of confusion. But such assumptions can only be more speculation.
Robert, perhaps I am missing the sense of the argument. Are you positing that there were simply four accounts and later someone said, well we have these four accounts, let’s call this one The Gospel according to Matthew, and this one the Gospel according to Luke . . . . etc? Without calling back to any prior tradition?
JAS said
I suspect that the names were always associated with them. Whether they actually had that written as a title at first, is hard to say. It may be that it was only necessary to write the names once they were being shared. Before that, there would be no matter of confusion. But such assumptions can only be more speculation.
Ok then we’re in agreement.
Robert said
brenmcg said
Right, so all the many master copies that scribes had, throughout the whole empire, all attributed the same name to each gospel?
No, where do you get these crazy ideas?
I asked you to explain how the names got attached to the gospels with no dissenting voices – part of your explanation was that scribes took the name from their own master copy. This only works as an explanation to the original question if the same name is on each master copy.
If the question is why did everyone accept “Luke” you can’t appeal to many master copies with differing names as your solution.
Again, why do you assume there must be dissenting voices? Why do you assume that different regions of the empire must come up with their own traditions for who wrote each gospel? If no one knew who wrote each of the gospels, why assume they must all have created differing opinions and traditions. Rather, it looks like whoever came up with these attributions, they eventually became accepted by everyone because no one really knew who wrote each of these gospels.
I’m asking why were there no dissenting voices? That needs to be explained. Did no one care for a few generations who wrote the gospels then just heard someone say “Luke” and said ok lets go with that? The entire empire just agreed to it? Four times?
The only riddle is why he specifically picked Luke, and Bovon provides the solution to his riddle. The riddle is not why others did not pick different authors. Have you ever read Bovon’s commentary? I know I have recommended it to you along with several other top-tier critical commentaries.
He does not provide the solution. He proposes a solution. But that’s not even the question. The questions is why would everyone else accept it?
If no one was in a position to confirm or contest the attributions, why would they create contrary traditions?
Because they are all supposedly free to make up whatever author they find most appealing.
Four angels came down from heaven and gave the gospels – they weren’t written by men!
Why did everyone agree on the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?
You’re still assuming the authors’ names were propagated with the texts from the very beginning or at least from a very early time, but I’ve tried to show you that this is not a valid assumption. If so, why do we not have any attribution for the gospels for Luke and John until the end of the second century.
There’s no direct attribution to any of gospels until the end of the second century. But the idea that that was the names were actually associated with the gospels is ridiculous.
The probable explanation is the claiming to quote from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John is, for a couple of generations, claiming to quote from fallible men.
First, christians would quote from “the Lord”, then the memoirs of the apostles (as group inspired by god), and only later did quoting from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John become associated with quoting “gospel truth”.
Robert said
. . . No reason to assume that there should have been multiple conflicting attributions developed as independent traditions unless these traditional attributions were early and accurate.
I was following you right up to this point. If the traditional attributions were early and accurate (or at least soundly established), why would that increase the possibility of multiple conflicting attributions? That seems to me exactly opposite of what would be the reasonable assumption. There would be no opportunity for conflicting attributions once one was already accepted. As for the rest, while there are interesting questions, there is obviously the admission of great gaps in our certainty, allowing many plausible ideas to be offered and survive. One does not need to assume that Matthew actually wrote the gospel that carries his name to allow the possibility that what was written had some basis in a tradition that led back to him. And, as with the apparently added ending for Mark, the presence of a tradition does not preclude some alteration in the process of transmission, and even intentional intermingling as each area became aware of other traditions and attempted to have a more “accurate” account.
Robert said
brenmcg said
Right, so all the many master copies that scribes had, throughout the whole empire, all attributed the same name to each gospel?
No, where do you get these crazy ideas?
If the question is why did everyone accept “Luke” you can’t appeal to many master copies with differing names as your solution.
I didn’t. I merely do not make the same unwarranted assumptions as you.
You’re denying both that the master copies all had the same name and also that the master copies had differing names?
Which one is supposed to be part of your explanation? Did these master copies have the same name or differing names?
No, it does not. I asked why you assume there must have been dissenting opinions and you have ignored this question.
Because towards the end of the second century there are over 100,000 christians in the empire. If the names of the gospels haven’t been decided upon by then its a safe assumption that there were differing opinions.
He does not provide the solution. He proposes a solution. But that’s not even the question. The questions is why would everyone else accept it?
I never said everyone accepted Luz’ explanation. If you have a better explanation, let’s hear it, hopefully without unwarranted assumptions.
Not why do people accept his “explanation”. Why did christians accept the name someone just made up as the supposed author.
And they were also free to accept whatever information they were provided by others, including important authors who were widely considered authoritative (eg, Papias, Irenaeus). But again, if no one was in a position to confirm or contest these attributions, as certainly seems to be the case, why would they create contrary traditions? Just saying they could have done so does not explain why you assume they would have done so.
Yes they were free to both accept and not accept it. Why did everyone accept? Were there not differing opinions on other matters in christianity? Was everything Papias said greeted with universal acceptance?
Why were contrary traditions not created prior to hearing the opinions of Papias and others? Is there just a vacuum of tradition waiting to be filled for generations?
The probable explanation is the claiming to quote from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John is, for a couple of generations, claiming to quote from fallible men.
Again, what are you trying to say here or how it supposedly interacts with anything I have said.
First, christians would quote from “the Lord”, then the memoirs of the apostles (as group inspired by god), and only later did quoting from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John become associated with quoting “gospel truth”.
Again, is there some relevance of this statement to the discussion??
Responses to your question “why do we not have any attribution for the gospels for Luke and John until the end of the second century.” There are quotes from their gospels mid second century but no-one writes “as John says …” til the end of the century.
Why is this if the names were known you ask. Because it takes time for the words “according to John …” or “according to Luke …” to take on an air of authority.
While I am aware that the earliest manuscripts we have for the gospels seem not to carry an attribution, I am not aware of any evidence of a controversy in establishing names. In the absence of such evidence, a completely plausible assumption is that there was no controversy because the attributions were already known in some way, presumably by tradition. (I am already aware of the fact that internal evidence strongly suggests that they were written down too late to have had the direct involvement of the authors whose names are assigned, but that is a different matter, even if somewhat related.) That does not necessarily mean that the attributions are purely correct, nor purely wrong. Is there historical evidence of such a controversy?
richard carrier wrote :
We don’t know why any Gospels received any names. Much less particular ones. But the legends around them are inconsistent legends not connected to any specific texts (or even our texts, e.g. Papias knows a “Matthew” Gospel written in Hebrew, which cannot be our Gospel, which was copied from Mark’s Greek and uses Greek scriptures as a base text and thus can’t ever have had a Hebrew origin) and some details evolved later rather than at assigning of the name and so can’t help us in explaining the assignment.
The most we can guess is that it appears names were chosen from the letters of Paul (Trobisch proposes a logic of it in his book on the first edition of the NT) when they were assembled together as a four-Gospel canon to combat Marcion’s.
There actually were Gospels assigned to purported eyewitnesses (e.g. the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas). They just weren’t chosen for thiscanon. The first canon doesn’t survive, and it included only one Gospel, a different version of Luke-Acts. Which purports not to be written by a witness but by some later historian (possibly then named by Marcion; or indeed possibly not, and it only later assumed he was using the same Gospel), and hence could not be assigned to a witness, and any name would have suited, particularly one you could claim associated with Paul; the legend that Luke was a doctor comes from someone picking the most educated companion Paul ever mentions and perhaps assuming they would be a likely skilled writer, but Luke is only in Colossians identified as a physician, and as that letter is a forgery, that that Luke was a doctor is a fiction, so we know their authorship of Luke-Acts is a fiction as well.
Meanwhile, the other Gospels were also circulating unnamed and none identified themselves as written by a witness nor were written as such. Those legends were invented later owing to convenience and confusion. But when names were assigned, authenticity would be undermined by associating them “suddenly” with witnesses, as surely such would have been mentioned and known before then, and surely the texts themselves would say this, not just the titles (whereas Luke and John both explicitly say they were not written by witnesses, so none could be assigned to those texts). That is why the authenticity of the Gospels in the current canon required picking obscure names and inventing legends about them.
The only exception is Matthew, a name legend then spun referred to a witness. But we know that’s false, as Matthew is a rewrite of Mark and thus cannot be a personal memoir (and again, it does not say it is one, either, yet would be expected to). Possibly it was picked because a Mark and a Matthew are mentioned by Papias as authors of Gospels, yet neither of which we can confirm are our Gospels of those names. That may simply have inspired someone to so-name two Gospels and thus attach them to the legends spun by Papias.
In any event, none of the Gospels say they were or were previously known to be written by witnesses, so witnesses could not have been assigned to them credibly (and the one attempt to do so, Matthew, is demonstrably not a credible assignment). And two could never have been so assigned (Luke and John) as they both explicitly say they were not themselves the witnesses (John mentions a lost written text from a purported witness as a source, but IMO, that was originally meant to be Lazarus, a fictional character, and thus likely a fictional source; see ** you do not have permission to see this link **, index, “Lazarus”).
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