Archase79: You disparage the testimony of Papias, but this IS a debate over it.

There isn’t much debate about it in the scholarly literature. Practically the only people who grant Papias credence are evangelical scholars. But regardless of whether there’s debate, I’ve presented evidence. I don’t think you’ve addressed my numerous strong arguments that Papias was 1) overly credulous and 2) that he must be referring to gospels other than canonical Matthew and Mark. It’s not legitimate to just say “there’s debate” and ignore my evidence. Address my arguments! If there’s debate, read the debate and present me with the arguments you find compelling!

If you read any other ancient author who said that someones head swole up so big that it couldn’t fit between a space between which two wagons could pass you’d disparage their testimony too!

We didn’t discuss Justin Martyr.

If you think Justin Martyr’s references to the gospels are a strong piece of evidence for your position, please make this argument. 

We can at least agree on Irenaeus as the first clear testimony to traditional authorship of the four gospels.

Yes.

There is no early testimony, clear or otherwise, to your position on gospel authorship. No Apostolic Father writing “I wish we knew who wrote what people are starting to call Mark’s Gospel”, or “Luke didn’t write that Gospel. It was…”  If there were any such testimony, you would cite it.

I think you’re wrong here (as I will show below), but first I want to point out that I’m not basing my position on early testimony. Because there is no reliable early testimony, neither of us are basing our arguments on it. Likewise, you couldn’t base any argument against the apostolic authorship of the Gospels of Thomas or Peter on early testimony – this is little or none!

I’m basing my argument on the facts that (1) we agree that the gospels were originally anonymous and (2) there is no good evidence of an authorial tradition associated with the gospels until the turn of the third century and (3) there’s significant internal evidence that the gospels weren’t authored by eyewitnesses (which I’ve discussed above) and (4) Christian pseudonymity flourished around the second century. In addition, there is indirect evidence that the canonical gospels did not have their names attached to them during the second century (Marcion, Clement of Alexandria, Papias, etc.)

Now, let me present what I feel are “unclear” early testimony regarding naming disputes in the gospels.

In addition to the debate about whether John was by John the son of Zebedee or “John the Elder” noted by Eusebius (and possibly Papias), Epiphanius notes that some thought that the Gospel of John was written by Cerinthus (along with the Apocalypse) [Panarion 3.4].

But since they do not accept the books in which St. John actually proclaimed his Gospel, it must be plain to everyone that they and their kind are the ones of whom St. John said in his General Epistles, “It is the last hour and ye have heard that Antichrist cometh; even now, lo, there are many Antichrists.” For they offer excuses [for their behavior]. Knowing, as they do, that St. John was an apostle and the Lord’s beloved, that the Lord rightly revealed the mysteries to him, and that he leaned upon his breast, they are ashamed to contradict him and try to object to these mysteries for a different reason. For they say that they are not John’s composition but Cerinthus’, and have no right to a place in the church.

Furthermore, Tertullian notes that Marcion, who included a version of Luke in his canon, did not have a name attached to it (Adversus Marcionem 4.2):

Marcion, on the other hand, attaches to his gospel no author’s name

In addition, the Gospel of Peter shows that if Mark is believed to be recording the teaching of Peter then there were two different gospels attributed to the Petrine tradition. Furthermore, as I’ve argued above (and I haven’t seen you address my arguments here), Papias seems to be referring to (1) a Matthew that is not canonical Matthew and (2) a Mark that is not canonical Mark, thus attesting either Papias’ ignorance or the existence of different gospels names Matthew and Mark in the second century.

I’m not sure how strong these are as evidence, but I think they carry some weight, especially in the gaping void that is the orthodox gospel authorial tradition.

About the credibility of Papias, we must agree to disagree. Concerning your other criticisms about him, I don’t agree or disagree;  I need to learn more first.

Do you have any reason to believe that Papias is credible? I’ve cited a significant amount of evidence suggesting that he isn’t. If you wanted to convince me, you could offer some positive evidence that he is credible (but as I’ve argued before the credibility of Papias would be a problem for you given that he ascribes noncanonical gospels to Matthew and Mark).

Regarding Irenaeus, I don’t know if he first assigned the titles of the gospels. It’s possible, but we simply don’t have the historical data. My guess is that whoever first assigned them used a combination of oral tradition and best inferences from the gospels themselves (but I think that they were wrongly ascribed, due to the internal evidence I’ve quoted above). I think it’s unlikely that they were intentionally malingering, although due to the theological/canonical debates going on at the time it is certainly possible.

You haven’t responded to my question about who first stated that the four gospels were not by MMLJ. If you don’t know, it is OK to say so. It is worth finding out who first said it.

I don’t know the answer to your question (we simply lack the documentation of who was *first* at anything), but our earliest surviving source that suggests that the canonical gospels should not be attributed to their canonical authors is, I think, Papias. I’ve laid out my reasons for why I think this is the case above. If you want a more explicit claim, I would consider Marcion or the Alogi (also cited above) as plausible first documented incidents of questioning the traditional authorial claims of the gospels.

To me, the nature of the evidence precludes absolute proof of either.

While I technically agree with you here because of the nature of historical argument, I think that we can calculate reasonable ranges of probabilities about past historical events, and I think that the likelihood of the traditional authorship of the gospels is diminishingly small.

As I see it, you hold my second century evidence and arguments to a hypercritical standard of proof, not even a legal one: ‘Guilty unless proven innocent; false unless proven true.’ And the nature of the evidence isn’t good enough for that certainty. You rely on second century lack of authorship citation in the early Fathers to be proof of your position. I will use a truism: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I believe you aren’t applying your high demand for proof to your own argument here.

I didn’t see any second century argumentation from you. Cyprian is a third century father. You don’t make any arguments (besides an argument from silence) for Papias being credible, and you haven’t addressed my argument that even if Papias is credible, it supports the pseudonymity of the gospels. If you have second century evidence for the traditional authorship of the gospels (besides Irenaeus, which we agree on), please tell me what it is.

Just to clarify, I don’t think that the absence of explicit citations of the gospels in the second century up until Irenaeus proves that the gospels are pseudonymous. But it is a piece of data I need to fit into two competing models (orthonymous vs. pseudonymous gospels.) And it fits better into the second model, and poorly into the first model. I don’t know exactly how much weight to assign it, but I think that it has some weight, especially given the explicit citations of Paul and the OT in the same literature. My overall conclusions are based on much more evidence than simply the lack of (expected) explicit citations in the second century though.

I don’t think I’m using a high demand for proof (except that when you claim something I want to see proof of it, not just the claim.) But given the second century church’s tendency to mis-attribute writings to the apostles (discussed above), I can’t just take their word that the gospels were written by their traditional authors. And I think that the internal evidence for a non-eyewitness origin of the gospels is compelling (also discussed above).

So what’s the piece of data you think fits most poorly into the pseudononymous model? (Here’s my opinion: I think it’s probably the relatively uniform naming tradition of the gospels in the late second/third century. Feel free to list any others.)

Which piece of data do I think fits most poorly into the orthonymous model? (I would list more than one, but to be fair I’ll just choose one): The incredible proliferation of pseudononymous works in the first four Christian centuries and the overwhelming credulity of the early Christians in accepting them.

The early Apostolic Fathers were alive when the gospels were written (Ignatius of Antioch, Papias, Clement of Rome, maybe Polycarp). (Ignatius was martyred in about 110-120 CE. If he was about 70 years old (a guess), he would have been born about 40-50 CE.) We don’t know when these AF became Christians; I am guessing young adult to middle aged, because it would take time for them to become leaders of their communities. So, decades of them learning from other Christians, meeting Christians from other communities, traveling to them, letter-writing, likely all in the last quarter of the first century. At the same time that the three later gospels were being written. And when a gospel was written, presumably the community it was written in knew who wrote it. And when it was copied to be shared with other communities, how many links in the chain of transmission before Ignatius or Papias got a copy? One? Two? Zero? (ie sent direct from the source community to Antioch where Ignatius was or would be?). These people knew each other, and traveled, as they did in Paul’s time. Papias clearly was inquisitive, questioning Christian travellers he met (unless that testimony of his is to be doubted as well). There was not enough time or space for knowledge of authorship to be lost. The only way that would work would be if the gospel authors chose to be unknown (‘hey – a stranger gave me this today’), and all the communities were completely incurious, yet trusting. And that makes no sense to me either.

Let me say that I think your model here makes sense on its face. At one point in my life I believed that model. But this kind of model fits very poorly with the proliferation of pseduepigraphical Christian literature in the first and second century. Bart Ehrman notes that “arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature is the degree to which it was forged.” [1] Consider for example Eusebius’ discussion of Serapion’s acceptance of the Gospel of Peter (H.E. 4.12.2). Serapion accepted the gospel because it was written by Peter, and only later rejected it, not because of it’s questionable authorship but instead because of it’s heretical teachings. Literary pseudepigrapha was widespread in first century Judaism (cf. 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, etc.). Literary pseudepigrapha was widespread in first and second century Christianity (as argued above). 

I think one model that makes reasonable sense of this phenomena is that early doctrinal and power disputes within the church led to the use of weaponized forgery and counterforgery. In the context of a diverse early church (we have good evidence of this) spread out over large distances without good methods of documentary verification pseudepigraphy could thrive. The forgers knew what they were doing; the deceived were indeed deceived (but sometimes perhaps with some wishful thinking on their part.) Pseudepigrapha flourished in first century Judaism with a similar social environment but a different set of theological arguments. For a more complete argument, cf. Dr. Ehrmans’ book, Forgery and Counterforgery.

Something that does make sense to me would be a simplification of known authorship. What seems to be the complex story behind Matthew and John would be forgotten and simplified over time, to ‘just John’ and ‘just Matthew’.

Another option which would be consistent with the internal evidence against eyewitness testimony would be that there was some oral tradition about four men named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, who were later mis-identified as apostles or companions of the apostles. They were all fairly common names, so the gospels would be homonymous, not orthonymous or pseudonymous. I’m not sure it’s the most probable explanation, but it doesn’t strike me as entirely implausible.

[1] Ehrman, B. Forgery and Counterforgery: The use of literary deceit in early Christian polemics. Chapter 1.

The only way to evaluate historical information is to check them against known information and to check them for potential sources of bias. As I have shown above, Papias fails on the following pieces of information

1. Judas’ head swole up so that it wouldn’t fit through the space where a wagon could fit (and much more graphic detail about his demise). Note that “they say” only refers to the details about his eyes and the stench, not to whether his head swole so much it wouldn’t fit through where a wagon would pass.

2. Those resurrected by Jesus lived into the reign of Hadrian

3. Jesus taught an odd apocryphal teaching out of 1 Enoch/2 Esdras

4. Matthew composed his gospel “in the Hebrew language”

5. Mark composed his gospel from the oral teaching of Peter and “not in order.”

6. He seems to have accepted the pericopae adulterae

Given how little we have preserved from Papias, this is a lot wrong or implausible. I don’t care about his character. I care about whether he tends to get things right or wrong. I don’t even care whether he was martyred (so was Joseph Smith) – although in Papias’ case, I’m not aware of any written tradition that he was even martyred!

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I’m not claiming that this forum post is scholarship. You asked me what positive evidence we might have that the gospels were originally anonymous, and I provided it to you, and you agreed with me. You then asked for the positive evidence that the gospels were pseudononymous. I provided that to you as well, citing major scholarly works and interacting with the primary sources.

You claim that writing might be common enough to not disqualify the canonical authors. I’ve cited the well-accepted works of Harris, Bar-Ilan and Heszer who suggest that the literacy rate in first century Palestine was ~3%, likely lower in rural areas like Galilee [1]. You’ve mentioned only Millard, who admits in his own book that “there was not a high rate of literacy” in first century Palestine [2]. I’ve noted that we lack any literary Greek works from first century Palestine, excepting Josephus who spoke Greek badly and had assistants helping him with his Greek. If the gospels are first century Palestinian writings they are sui generis in respect to language and composition. Furthermore, I noted that one of our earliest Christian sources on Peter and John explicitly describes them as illiterate.

I’ve noted the numerous internal problems with eyewitness testimony in the gospels, which you haven’t addressed at all.

I’ve pointed out how Papias serves as a witness against you position due to his being dead wrong about Matthew and Mark. You’ve suggested that the reference to Matthew in the Hebrew dialect is somehow a reference to Q. Q is a Greek document, and does not seem to be a translation from Aramaic [3]. You haven’t addressed the fact that Papias’ description of Mark as “out of order” and based on the preaching of Peter both seem inconsistent with the gospel of Mark we currently possess.

I’ve noted the proliferation of pseudepigrapha in both first century Judaism and first and second century Christianity. You seem to be arguing that most/all of this pseudepigraph is second century, while the canonical texts are from the first century. First, I’m not sure that we are so sure of our dates for anything in this time period that we can cleanly differentiate first from second century Christian writings. But even if you’re right, we still have a significant number of pseudepigraphal texts from the first century – they’re included in the New Testament. Dr. Ehrman has done a nice review of these books, but Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude are all probably pseudepigraphical and from the first century. In addition, the gospels of Thomas and Peter may very well be first century documents, and for many of the other noncanonical gospels we simply lack good data to know whether they were written in the second or first century. Moreover, we know that many early Christians accepted these writings as apostolic.

You rightly note that we don’t have early evidence of critics questioning the canonical authorial traditions, but I don’t assign much weight to this because we have few surviving records of the critics and the ones we have seem to be low information critics anyway, taking much of what Christians say at face value.

I’ve noted the long interval before the explicit citation of the gospels, a period of anonymity stretching about 100 years. As far as I can tell, we’re in agreement on that. You think that maybe the use of nonexplicit citation is stylistic. I asked for evidence for this and you quoted Cyprian, and I showed that Cyprian often did use explicit citations of the gospels and that the apostolic fathers never used explicit citations of the gospels. I showed that Clement of Alexandria used explicit citations not only of the canonical gospels, but of extracanonical ones. I also showed that throughout the apostolic fathers Paul and the Hebrew Scriptures were explicitly cited. You have provided no explanation for this.

So as far as I can tell, my argument stands firm. It is unlikely that the gospels were authored by eyewitnesses or even Palestinian Jews. Most likely they were written in the diaspora, and titles assigned during a period of doctrinal struggle.

[1] There are many more sources I could cite here as evidence of a low baseline literacy rate in Jesus’ time (e.g. Botha & Rhoades, Orality and Literacy in Early Christianity; Keith, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee; Horsley & Draper, Whoever Hears You Hears Me: Prophets, Performance and Tradition in Q; Eve, Behind the Gospels: Understanding the Oral Tradition to name but a few). The idea that illiteracy was common in first century Palestine is the standard scholarly view. It seems to me that the ongoing arguments in this field have to do with the definition of literacy and the extent of semi-literacy or functional literacy (cf. e.g. Johnson & Parker, Ancient Literacies). What is absolutely clear is that individuals who could compose a Greek literary composition would be exceedingly rare, and even more exceedingly rare in rural areas.

[2] Millard, A. Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus, p. 185. He thinks that although literacy was not high that access to people who could write might be higher (this involved things like having a scribe write a contract). In my mind, this does not relate to the ability of peasant Galileans to compose a Greek literary composition. There are a number of problems with Millard’s book, including his over-reliance on late rabbinic sources, which I would be happy to discuss in detail.

[3] Cf. e.g. Robinson, Kloppenborg & Hoffman. The Sayings Gospel Q in Greek and English, p. 28.

gmatthews: I’m not a student of Dr. Ehrman (except insofar as I’ve read quite a bit of his work). A long time ago, I wanted to be an apologist; I thought getting degrees in Classical Languages and Religion would help. I ultimately ended up liking the Classical Languages piece more than Religion. But I’ve spent the last two decades of my life reading and thinking about early Christianity, first from the perspective of an apologist and later from the historical-critical perspective. I’ve found that being able to read Greek and Latin (and Hebrew) well opened a lot of doors for me in the technical literature.

Papias’ use of ‘in the Hebrew/Aramaic language’ (Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ) is certainly puzzling. Although some try to translate it “the Hebrew style,” I find this translation unconvincing (see the same construction in Acts 21:40, 22:2, 26:14; use of διάλεκτος in Acts 1:19; 2:6 in such a way as to clearly refer to language). There are interesting questions about the relative semantic overlap of διαλέκτος and γλῶσσα, and whether Ἑβραΐδι means “in Hebrew” or “in Aramaic.” My best guess, however, is that Papias was simply credulous and repeating rumors or inferring from the Semitic influences in Matthew that it was originally written in Hebrew.

The first direct reference to a document called “the Gospel of the Nazarenes” is in the 9th century [1]. However, patristic evidence points to a gospel known to be used by the Nazarenes, among others. We have no text, only opaque citations, some of the best of which are probably from Jerome: “the Gospel which the Nazarenes and the Ebionites use, which we have recently translated from Hebrew to Greek, and which most people call the authentic [Gospel] of Matthew” (Commentary on Matthew 12:13). Furthermore, Jerome says it “is written in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue but in Hebrew characters … which is also called ‘The Gospel of the Apostles’ or, as many think ‘the Gospel of Matthew.'” (Contra Pelaganios, 3.2). Epiphanius claims “[The Nazarenes] have the entire Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew. It is carefully preserved by them in Hebrew letters.” (Panarion 29.9.4)

Eusebius quotes Hegesippus as referring to a Gospel of the Hebrews written in Syraic (HE 22.7). There are several places in the patristic literature which refer to “the Jewish gospel,” “The Gospel of the Hebrews” and “The Gospel of the Ebionites” which may or may not be the same thing as the Gospel of the Nazarenes. Eusebius relates that Papias says that the Gospel of the Hebrews contained the story of the woman caught in adultery (HE 3.39.17). J.K. Eliot argues that some of the references to the Gospel of the Hebrews cannot refer to the Gospel of the Nazarenes, as the quotations of the Gospel of the Hebrews from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, an Didymus the Blind do not seem to be related to Matthew and seem likely to have been originally written in Greek [3]. More likely “the Gospel according to the Hebrews” is a broader designation used by the proto-orthodox for all gospels used by early Jewish Christians.

Could Papias have been referring to the Gospel of the Nazarenes, then? We don’t have evidence of the existence of the Gospel of the Hebrews, much less the Nazarenes until well after Papias (180 CE by Hegesippus), but the absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence. Likely there was indeed a gospel in Hebrew at the time of Papias, if only because the first Christians were Jewish. But if there was, Papias was wrong to attribute that gospel to Matthew.

Our patristic sources show that there was a literary relationship between the Gospel of the Nazarenes and the Gospel of Matthew [3]. However, Matthew’s dependence on Mark, the Septuagint and Q [4] all speak to a Greek composition by an educated diaspora Christian. They are also inconsistent with dependence/translation from a Hebrew or Aramaic original. Perhaps the Gospel of the Nazarenes was a later translation of the Gospel of Matthew into Aramaic, Hebrew or Syraic. But what we know of the Gospel of the Nazarenes is inconsistent with the claim that the Apostle Matthew wrote it.

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[1] Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From The End of the New Testament Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century. Brill: 1988, p. 86.

[2] Eliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 4.

[3] Eliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 4, 10-14. It is also notable that some patristic commentators refer to it as ‘the Hebrew Gospel according to Matthew,’ and a number of New Testament cursive manuscripts (e.g. 1424) contain marginalia comparing the Gospel of the Hebrews/Nazarenes to Matthew.

[4] Q shows direct verbal parallels between Matthew and Luke. Given the Q hypothesis, then, Q must have been written in Greek in the form that Matthew and Luke both used it. Other studies (quoted in my post above) note that Q does not seem to be “translation Greek,” suggesting that Q was originally composed in Greek. For Matthew’s dependence on the Septuagint, cf. Menken, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist. Peeters: 2004

From MarkJoniken

Early anti-Christian writers such as Celsus seem to have accepted traditional authorship of the gospels. At least, we have no evidence that they attacked or questioned it. If we did, you would cite it.

As it happens, there is an instance I overlooked earlier. In Contra Celsum II.27, Origen notes:

After this, [Celsus] says that some believers, as though from a drinking bout, go so far as to oppose themselves and alter the original gospel text three or four or several times, and they change its character to enable them to deny difficulties in the face of criticism.

Origen’s Greek here seems to suggest that Celsus thought that there was one original gospel (ek tes protes graphes to euaggelion) which was subsequently changed multiple times. It is unclear if this “three or four or several” (trixhi kai tetraxhi kai pollaxhi) is a reference to our canonical gospels or to other apocryphal gospels, or just a general reference to Christians altering the text. If he is referring to the canonical gospels and if Celsus is correct, it seems likely that the gospels are pseudononymous. At the very least this is an example of an early pagan opponent of Christianity arguing that early Christians altered their texts.