achase79 said
I don’t think that all of the evidence that the gospels were originally anonymous is all negative or an argument from silence. One significant issue is that the titles don’t make sense as original authorial subscriptions. “According to” only makes sense as in a collection of Gospels; otherwise you’d just call it “the Gospel” (e.g. Acts isn’t titled “Acts according to Luke”). This suggests that the titles were added after they were collected into a book and published together (which doesn’t make the titles wrong, but does make them secondary).

In addition, the titles aren’t uniform. If the title was part of the original work, wouldn’t they be preserved verbatim. For example the early manuscripts of Luke attest the following ** you do not have permission to see this link **: kata loukan, to kata loukan euaggelion, euangellion kata loukan. Which is the “original” title? Or is the variation because there was originally no subscription attached and the titles were added later?

Further, we know that some early Christians misattributed gospels to disciples who didn’t write them. For example. Papias, our first witness to the gospel titles (he only references Mark and Matthew), refers to an Matthew as an Aramaic gospel. Clearly this isn’t the gospel that we currently have. And we have fistfulls of early Christian pseudepigrapha, including gospels, almost all attributed to disciples, so we know that some early Christians were willing to falsely attribute works to the disciples.

Finally, in John in particular, there seems to be authorial intention to keep the author of the gospel hidden. Why would the author spend all his time hiding his identity behind the supposed “beloved disciple” and then title his gospel with his real name?

These three pieces of evidence (the unsuitability of ‘kata‘ for an original title, the variability of gospel titles, Johanine authorial intent to hide the author’s identity, and the tendency in early Christian literature for [incorrect] authorial attribution) are not arguments from silence. They’re negative arguments only insofar as they provide evidence against the hypothesis that the gospels were originally orthonymous. They’re data points that require explanation, and the model of anonymous gospels seems to me to fit the data better (not perfectly) than the model of orthonomous gospels. If the gospels were anonymous, what would we expect to see: variability in the naming scheme, variability in attribution (e.g. Matthew as the author of 2 distinct gospels), and perhaps titles added in a format consistent with later editors/compilers. What would we expect to see if the gospels were originally orthonymous? Consistent titles, written in a format consistent with individual compositions, with tradition consistently attributing the same gospels to the same people.

Of course, just because the Gospels were originally anonymous doesn’t mean that they were wrongly named. The argument that the gospels were specifically misattributed is longer and involves the low levels of even Aramaic literacy in Palestine, the significant evidence that the authors of the Gospels were fluent in Greek, the synoptic problem, the rhetorical strategies of the authors of the Gospels, and in some cases the lack of familiarity with first century Palestine.

Fantastic post!

I’ve elected to use the correct technical terms for authorship here. From my reading of your initial post, you are using “anonymous” in a way that it isn’t used in scholarship, and the distinctions here are extremely important. What follows is a series of technical arguments, not a layman’s argument. But here’s my claim in layman’s terms: it is improbable that the gospels were authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. I think this claim is strongest for Matthew and John, and weakest for Luke.

First, a note about document titles in the ancient world. The normal way of attributing a book to an author in the ancient world would be to put their name in the genitive case followed by the title of the work (cf. e.g. the works of Josephus, Tacitus, Livy). The gospels, in contrast, use the more generic “κατα” (‘according to,’ perhaps ‘handed down from.’) This is not the standard way of attributing authorship in the ancient world [1]. In addition, they are written entirely in the 3rd person (except in the non-narrative prologue and the end of John, and the ‘we passages’ in Acts), which also seems to distance the purported authors from the events themselves.

Now, can I prove that no tradition from the apostle Matthew or John is present in the gospels attributed to them, or that no Petrine or Pauline tradition exists within Mark or Luke? No. But because of the literary relationships between the Gospels, I can examine Mark, special M and special L material, and finally John, and show that they contain significant aspects that are distant from the milieu that Jesus lived in.

But first, I want to point out some basic facts about the gospels and first century Palestine and address the a priori likelihood that they were written or composed by the disciples of Jesus. I’ll then look at the length of the period in which the gospels were cited without attribution, and examine the timing and strength of the patristic witness to gospel authorship. I’ll discuss the relative incidence of apostolic pseudepigrapha in the first two centuries before evaluating some recent positive claims for eyewitness testimony in the gospels (I address the two a priori arguments out of order to make better sense of the material topically).

Greek Literacy in Palestine in General and the Apostles Specifically

Our best estimates of the overall literacy rate in Palestine are about 3% [2]. The rate was almost certainly much less in rural Galilee. The number of people who could compose a complex literary work such as a gospel (even one as “simple” as Mark) must have been diminishingly low. In fact, I know of only two other Palestinian Jews in the first century who were able to accomplish such a feat: Flavius Josephus and Justus of Tiberius, both in the upper echelon of society. We know very little about the work of Justus of Tiberius (it hasn’t survived), and Josephus admits that he composed Jewish War in Aramaic (BJ 1.1.3) and required royal assistants to for help composing narratives in Greek (CA 1.50) [3].

Peter and John are both identified in the gospels as fishermen by trade. Although I have significant hesitation about the historical value of Acts, in Acts Peter and John are described as illiterate laymen (ἀγράμματοί … καὶ ἰδιῶται). Matthew (=Levi?) is identified as a standard toll collector (τελώνης in contrast to Zaccheus, a ‘chief toll collector,’ a ἀρχιτελώνης). Although Matthew might have had some rudimentary accounting and writing skills, these would have been in Aramaic since toll collectors were Jewish contractors under the control of Herod Antipas. [4]

I think that the above provides reasonable evidence that Matthew, Peter and John did not possess sufficient functional literacy to compose the gospels associated with them. Is it possible, instead, that they dictated to others? I think not. Matthew, Mark and John all use significant classical literary structures and techniques (chiasmus, antithesis, etc.) which were usually the result of years of schooling, something Peter John and Matthew would have lacked [5]. Scribes in the ancient world took dictation; we have no examples of these scribes composing a narrative with complex structural elements all on their own [6]. If Matthew, Peter and John were illiterate and at best second-language Greek speakers it doesn’t make sense that they would dictate very functional Greek with complex Greek literary structures.

Problems with Apostolic Authorship of the Gospels

It makes no sense at all for Matthew to have been dictated by an eyewitness. The verbal coincidences between Matthew and Mark are significant enough that the only explanation seems to have been someone directly copying Mark. Why would an eyewitness do this? Wouldn’t they have their own story to tell? Matthew is more like a revision and conflation of Mark (and Q), not direct eyewitness testimony. In addition, Matthew seems dependent on the Septuagint, which seems unlikely if he were a Palestinian Jew [7]. Furthermore, some special M material is historically quite problematic (e.g. the birth narratives, the prominent role of the Pharisees, the resurrection of the saints, the guard at the tomb) again reducing the likelihood that Matthew was an eyewitness.

Mark seems unlikely to be John Mark (traditionally a Jew from Jerusalem, cf. Acts 12:12). Matthew alters Mark in numerous places, correcting Mark’s misstatements of Jewish practice (cf. Mk 5:22, 6:17, 7:3-4, 10:11-12, 10:19, 14:12, 14:13, 15:34. 15:42, 15:46).  Mark seems to have some difficulty with Palestinian geography (Mk 5:1, 7:31, 11:1), and uses the Septuagint instead of the targums or Hebrew bible. I think this makes it improbable that John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark based on the teaching of Peter.

Turning to Luke, it is worth noting that “Special L” material has a number of clear historical problems which makes me think that it does not trace back to eyewitness accounts. For example, the birth narrative of Luke contains elements which are entirely historically implausible [8]. Similarly, in Luke 3, the narrator has a Palestinian Jew quoting the Septuagint in the synagogue rather than the targums or Hebrew bible [9]. Because we have relatively little information about Luke, though, I hesitate to draw a strong conclusion.

John has long been recognized as a composite work [10]. If the apostle John wrote John, which John did he write? Did it include the prologue and chapter 21? If he wrote the final version, why did he base it on an earlier text? If all of the gospels are written by apostles, why does John’s gospel differ so extraordinarily from the synoptics? As I’ve noted elsewhere, John contains some fairly implausible narratives, like a narrative of the Palestinian Jews Jesus and Nicodemus having a misunderstanding based around a Greek pun [11]. John is dependent on the Septuagint, again likely indicating a non-Palestinian context (cf. e.g. John 1:23; similarly John 19:37 is dependent on Theodotion) [12]. Finally, I think that given John 11:5,36 Lazarus has at least as good a claim on the identity of the Beloved Disciple as John the son of Zebedee, again reducing the likelihood that the gospel was written by John.

There are some additional negative arguments which strike me as convincing, but feel free to dismiss them if you wish: If John was the son of Zebedee, why does his gospel never mention his brother James, who plays a larger role in the synoptics? But more importantly, John omits the Transfiguration, a focal revelatory moment at which John the son of Zebedee was present according to the synoptics. If the apostle John saw Jesus transfigured, why would he leave it out of his gospel?

The Problems with Papias’ Testimony

So, if the gospels weren’t written by/dictated by/significantly influenced by eyewitnesses, how did they get the names they currently have? Perhaps the first question is when they got their names.

The first plausible instances when the gospels are named occur near the turn of the third century in the writings of Irenaeus and the Mutorian Cannon, along with titles on gospel manuscripts [13]. Although Papias documents gospels by Matthew and Mark, there are good reasons to believe that either Papias is mistaken or that he is referring to different gospels than the ones we currently have. Regarding Matthew: Papias describes it as a collection of sayings (τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο); the gospel of Matthew we currently have is a narrative. Papias believes that Matthew is written in Aramaic or possibly Hebrew (Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ), but our gospel of Matthew was composed in Greek and in fact is a derivative from the Greek Mark. Raymond Brown concludes:

“either Papias was wrong/confused in attributing a gospel (sayings) in Hebrew/Aramaic to Matthew or he was right but the Hebrew/Aramaic composition he described was not the work we know in Greek as canonical” [14].

You have argued that the collection of sayings (τὰ λόγια) has something to do with Q, but Q is a clearly a Greek document (cf. the extensive literal verbal parallels between Matthew and Luke), not a Hebrew or Aramaic one, so this can’t be the explanation.

Similarly, Papias seems to be describing a gospel of Mark that does not mesh with what we currently possess. Papias notes twice that the gospel of Mark he knew was not in order (οὐ μέντοι τάξει … οὐχ ὥσπερ σύνταξιν τῶν κυριακῶν ποιούμενος λογίων). Papias describes Mark writing down the teachings of Peter as he would teach according to the situation (ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας), not omitting or falsifying anything. This doesn’t describe Mark. Mark is a single formed narrative of Jesus’ life and death, with consistent themes and an overarching literary structure. This description of the composition of Mark wouldn’t make sense of a number of Markan structures, e.g. the Marcan sandwich.

Insofar as Papias contrasts the orderliness of Matthew with the disorder of Mark (Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν … τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο vs. Μάρκος … οὐ μέντοι τάξει), we can see that he could not have been referring to the Mark we know (call it ‘received Mark’ to differentiate it from the Mark that Papias may be referring to). If received Mark is “not ordered” then received Matthew is not ordered. Out of the 72 pericopes in Mark listed in Funk’s New Gospel Parallels, Matthew changes the order of Mark in only 9 of them. Only ones that impact the chronological ordering are the block from Mark 4:35-5:43 (Matthew pushes these forward but keeps them in order) and the formation and sending of the 12 (Matthew pushes this forward as well) [15]. It thus seems very likely that Papias was wrong or he was referring to a different Mark.

Now, there’s good reason to be skeptical of Papias anyway. Eusebius refers to him as “a man of exceedingly small intelligence” (HE 3.39.13). Papias also has implausible alternate versions of the end of Judas:

“swollen in the flesh that he could not pass where a wagon could easily pass. Having been crushed by a wagon, his entrails poured out”

and

“Judas walked about as an example of godlessness in this world, having been bloated so much in the flesh that he could not go through where a chariot goes easily, indeed not even his swollen head by itself. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so puffed up that he could not see the light, and his own eyes could not be seen, not even by a physician with optics, such depth had they from the outer apparent surface. And his genitalia appeared more disgusting and greater than all formlessness, and he bore through them from his whole body flowing pus and worms, and to his shame these things alone were forced [out]. And after many tortures and torments, they say, when he had come to his end in his own place, from the place became deserted and uninhabited until now from the stench, but not even to this day can anyone go by that place unless they pinch their nostrils with their hands, so great did the outflow from his body spread out upon the earth” [16].

I think the most likely explanation is that Papias was overly credulous. But this is probably good for your position because if Papias is right in his descriptions of Matthew and Mark it would be almost certain that our received Matthew and Mark are not authored by the apostles because Papias seems to be referring to different gospels titled ‘according to Matthew’ and ‘according to Mark’ which predate the versions we currently possess!

The Period of Anonymity

So, to get back to the question, what was the length of the period of anonymity of the gospels? Well, the gospels are quoted throughout the late first and early second century without attribution, from 1 Timothy 5:18 through 1 Clement (13:2, 15:2, 34:8, 36:5), the Didache (1:5, 8:2), Ignatius (Eph. 14:2, Smyr. 6:1, Poly. 2:2), Polycarp (Philippians 2:3, 7:2, 12:3) and Justin Martyr (Dial. 106.4, Dial. 103.8, I Apol. 61.4). Marcion used something like received Luke to write his Gospel, but Marcion’s gospel had no title. The Didache specifically quotes Matthew not as the gospel according to Matthew but as “[the Lord’s] gospel.” Justin refers generically to the memoirs of the Apostles. These examples could be multiplied. You claim that early Christians knew who wrote the gospels even if the titles weren’t original. Why is it that no early Christian before Irenaeus referred to the gospels by their current names?

So it seems to be the case that the Gospels didn’t have names associated with them until sometime in the second century, probably late in the second century. You’ve argued that the pseudepigraphical Christian texts we have are all late texts. But given that the gospels seem to have had titles attached in the second century, let’s see what the breakdown of orthonymous vs. pseudepigraphical Christian texts is in the first two centuries.

The Incidence of Apostolic Pseudepigrapha in the First Two Christian Centuries

Let’s look at the books claimed to be written by the Apostles. In Lost Christianities, Dr. Ehrman lists 5-6 pseudepigraphal gospels as belonging to the second century: The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Thomas, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of James, and possibly the Secret Gospel of Mark. Schneemelcher adds the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Judas, the Infancy Gospel of James, and the Gospel of Matthias. In addition, we have pseudepigraphical Acts from the second century (John, Paul, Peter, the Kerygma Petri) as well as pseudepigraphal epistles from or predating the second century (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 & 2 Peter, Jude, James, 3 Corinthians, Laodiceans, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, The Preaching of Peter, The Epistula Apostolorum, possibly the Letter of Peter to Phillip). We also have pseudepigraphical apocalypses from the second century (Apocalypse of Peter, the Secret book of John, Apocraphon of James, probably the Second Apocalypse of James) [17]. The presence of pseudepigrapha under the names of the apostles in the second century is well documented [18].

Now there is also orthonymous apostolic Christian literature from the first two centuries. They consist of the seven undisputed letters of Paul. So if we do the math, of 45 documents attributed to the apostles in the first two centuries, 7 are orthonymous – about 15%. Since the gospels are attributed to the apostles, with their titles attached in the second century (early or late), the prior probability of any one of them being orthonymous is approximately 15%. Therefore the prior probability of the canonical apostolic gospels being of them being orthonymous is about 2%. If you take that probability and multiply it by the formerly discussed prior probabilities related to Palestinian Jewish illiteracy, the likelihood of apostolic authorship of the gospels becomes diminishingly small.

Positive Arguments for Significant Eyewitness Involvement in the Composition of the Gospels

Now low prior probabilities can certainly be overcome by good evidence. Probably the best recent attempt to argue for eyewitness testimony at the base of the gospels is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Bauckham believes that the testimony of Mark goes back to Peter and John goes back to a different eyewitness named John; he doesn’t think that Matthew is written by an apostle. Now, I think some of his arguments are grasping at straws (cf. his arguments regarding inclusio, John as a high priest, anonymous characters for their own safety) [18]. But some of his arguments deserve consideration.

In particular, Bauckham’s use of onomastics is a useful and concrete way of determining whether the gospels reflect the environment of Palestine or the diaspora. Bauckham pulls from Tan Ilan’s Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity to show that the relative proportion of names in the gospels is well proportioned to other literary and epigraphic evidence from 330 BCE to 200 CE in Palestine. However, as he admits, the incidence of Greek male names in the gospel is almost 80% higher than the background incidence in Palestine in other literary and epigraphic sources. To me this seems to better fit with a diaspora setting. He admits that we don’t have comparative data for diaspora; he quotes Egyptian data to suggest that naming would be different, but I’m Egyptian data is not likely to be representative of all diaspora.

Martin Hengel has made a different kind of argument for the earliness of the gospel titles, somewhat along the lines that you have. He argues that as soon as churches had multiple gospels, they would need ways to differentiate them. In addition, he argues that if the gospels were originally anonymous, we wouldn’t see the unanimity in naming that we currently do. Further he thinks that Mark and Luke are unlikely names to be retroactively attributed to gospel authors. However he does not think that the apostles Matthew and John wrote the gospels attributed to them [20].

I agree that it seems that there would be a need to differentiate different gospels as soon as there was more than one of them. And yet, in the writings of the church before Irenaeus the gospels are quoted but not named, and thus not differentiated. Why would they need to differentiate gospels in their libraries but never bother to differentiate them in writing? We also have gospels from the early church which are (as far as we know – yes this is an argument from silence) unnamed (Q, the Egerton Gospel, Marcion’s gospel) or named not for a person but referred to simply by the name of the group that used it (the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of the Hebrews). It seems likely that these gospels were also unnamed. (Another possibility is that they weren’t unnamed, but the early church fathers call them by other names because their names conflicted with the canonical gospels. But in any case the early church heresiologists treat them as unnamed.) Maybe churches didn’t tend to collect gospels until some later point when someone published a collection, or maybe the differentiated them in some other way. But it’s easier to say “I think they would have differentiated them by name” than to point to evidence that they actually differentiated them by name.

I’m also not sure that he’s right about the unity of the naming tradition. As I pointed out above, the variation in manuscript titles to me looks more like a post-hoc phenomena. Furthermore, as I noted above, Papias may provide evidence for different gospels called ‘Matthew’ and ‘Mark.’ Secret Mark may also provide evidence of divergent naming in the early gospel tradition. But we have very little data for divergence here, mostly because there’s almost no data suggesting that names were attached to the gospels at all!

Further, I don’t think that we have the information to determine whether Mark and Luke would be likely or unlikely names. They do occur in other books that eventually became canonical. I do think that it’s possible that there was someone else named Mark, and that later tradition associated him with Peter (and perhaps the same with Luke). But for the reasons I stated above, I think it’s unlikely that these gospels were written by companions of the Apostles.

Finally, let me add that Mark has some Aramaic phrases (5:41, 7:34, 14:36, 15:34); Matthew adds a couple of words (5:22, ?6:24). John has more familiarity with Judean geography than Mark (cf. e.g. Bethany beyond the Jordan). For these reasons, I don’t think that their traditions are entirely detached from Palestine. But given the other difficulties I’ve expressed above, I think it’s unlikely that they primarily consist of eyewitness testimony.

How might the canonical titles have been added?

To me it seems most likely that the canonical titles were put on when the Gospels were published as a collection, and those attributions became universally accepted. These attributions may have been based on some tradition, but as we have seen with Papias, some early Christians were overly credulous. That both Paul’s letters and the Gospels were published relatively early as collections has recently been ably argued by David Trobisch among others [21]. One significant supporting argument here is that the order of the Gospels (as well as Paul’s letters) are usually invariant in the manuscript tradition, which would not be expected if the gospels were independently published. I’ve also argued above that the “κατα” titles make sense in the context of a collection, not individual works. Some have suggested that Marcion’s canon was the impetus for putting together and publishing such a collection, which would put the gospel titles in the second half of the second century [22].

I’m sure you can come up with responses to some of these points (and there’s much more detail I could add), but for me the overall picture seems pretty consistent with the gospels not being eyewitness testimony and inconsistent with the gospels being of apostolic origin.

References

[1] ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[2] Herzer, C. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. Coronet Books: 2001. Cf. also Harris, W. Ancient Literacy. Harvard University Press: 1991. Cf. the lower estimate (1.5% literacy rate) of  M. Bar-Ilan, “Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries C.E.”, S. Fishbane, S. Schoenfeld and A. Goldschlaeger (eds.), Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society. Ktav: 1992, pp. 46-61.

[3] Cf. Thackery, Josephus: The Man and the Historian. KTAV: 1967.

[4] Ferguson, “The Literacy and Education of Galilean τελῶναι: Could a Toll Collector Author the Gospel of Matthew.” ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[5] Rhoads, D. Mark as Story. Fortress: 2012.

[6] Ehrman, B. Forgery and Counterforgery: The use of literary deceit in early Christianity. Oxford: 2013. Cf. Chapter 8.

[7] Menken, M. Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament text of the evangelist. Peeters: 2004.

[8] ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[9] ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[10] Martyn, L. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. 3^rd Ed. Westminster John Knox: 2003. Cf. also Brown, R. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. Paulist Press: 1978.

[11] ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[12] Schuchard, B. Scripture within Scripture: The interrationship of form and function in the explicit Old Testament citations of the Gospel of John. Scholars Press: 1992; Law, T. When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the making of the Christian bible. Oxford: 2013.

[13] ** you do not have permission to see this link **

[14] Brown, R. Introduction to the New Testament. Yale University Press: 1997, p. 210.

[15] Funk, R. New Gospel Parallels. Polebridge Press: 1990.

[16] Preserved in the works of Apollinarius of Laodicea. For the text, cf. Jackson, F. & Lake, K. The Beginnings of Christianity: Part I, Acts of the apostles. McMillan: 1933.

[17] Ehrman, B. Lost Christianities: The battles for the scripture and faiths we never knew. Oxford: 2003, pp. xi-xv. Ehrman’s list isn’t exhaustive, so I’ve supplemented with Schneemelcher, W. New Testament Apocrypha. Trans. R. McL. Wilson. Westminster John Knox: 1990.

[18] The best resource for this is Dr. Ehrman’s Forgery and Counter-Forgery: The use of literary deceit in early Christianity. Oxford: 2013.

[19] Cf. for example, Catchpole, D. “On Proving Too Much: Critical Hesitations about Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6(2), pp. 169-181.

[20] Hengel, M. Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ. SCM Press: 2000.

[21] Trobisch, D. The First Edition of the New Testament. Oxford: 2011.

[22] BeDuhn, J. The First New Testament: Marcion’s scriptural canon. Polebridge Press: 2013.