We are told again and again that there was no dispute about who the authour was of a book from earlier on.
so no dispute means that the authorial attribution must be true for the book?
Quoting Kamil Gregror
“For context, it became apparent by the time of Origen that Hebrews wasn’t written by Paul because of differences in style. Two other proposed authors are named by Origen – Luke and Clement of Rome.
However, a vast majority of ancient works with a false authorial claim only ever have one false authorial claim made in antiquity. Hebrews (and John) is an exception not a rule. Pick a random ancient work with a false authorial claim and track its attribution in antiquity. I’ll bet a large amount of money you’ll ever find it (falsely) attributed to only one author.
This means it’s not true that if the gospels were falsely attributed, we would expect to see them attributed to many different people. If they were false attributed, only one false attribution ever being made is entirely consistent with what we know from other ancient examples.”
That is a really interesting observation.
I don’t know if it is accurate, but it is consonant with what I know (not exhaustive) about misattributed works in the medieval period.
I wonder whether the dynamic isn’t that, when a work is wrongly attributed, it is often a work of a minor of unknown figure being attributed to a major figure. Once it is attributed to the major figure, it takes off and gains popularity–under that misattribution. And that misattribution then drowns out or even “corrects” any memory of the accurate attribution.
I suspect something similar plays out today with misattributed quotations: You have a quotation, either from a minor figure or an anonymous source; then someone attributes it to someone famous; then (in part because of its association with a famous figure) it takes off and that quotation, with its misattribution, becomes widely known, and anyone who still attributes it to its actual source will himself get corrected.
Even if I’m right that that is (in part) what drives the spread of misattribution today, I’m not sure it would shed all that much light on what was going on with the gospels though: they did spread and become widely known before we have evidence of their attribution to the evangelists being widely accepted. Maybe there is more going on.
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