In my previous posts I have tried to establish that the four Gospels circulated anonymously for decades after they were written. To some modern readers that seems surprising. Why wouldn’t the authors name themselves? Surely they named themselves. Didn’t’ they?
The clear answer is, no, they did not. But why?
There have been a number of theories put forth over the years. Possibly the most popular one (at least it’s the one I’ve heard most often) is that the Gospel writers thought that what was most important was the message they wanted to convey about the life, teachings, deeds, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The authors did not want their own persons to “get in the way” of the message, and so they wrote their Gospels anonymously.
In rough outline I suppose that might be true, but I would refine the idea a bit myself – as I will in a moment. Before doing so, I should respond to an objection to this view. Most of the *other* books of the New Testament identify their authors (Paul, Peter, James, Jude, etc.). And most of the *later* Gospels have names attached to them (The Gospel of Peter; the Gospel of Thomas; the Gospel of Philip; the Gospel of Nicodemus; etc.). Those authors were not afraid of having their person get in the way of the message. So why were the Gospel writers?
Several points need to be made on this score:
- The writings of the New Testament that in which the authors *do* identify themselves are genres in which this is typically done – letters (e.g., of Paul, of Peter) and apocalypses (John). I will be arguing below that the Gospel writers saw themselves as writing in a genre that did not require a self-identification of an author.
- Then why did *later* writers of later Gospels identify their authors (falsely, as it turns out)? The answer is fairly clear and straightforward. Later Gospel writers were very intent indeed on showing that *their* message, as opposed to the message of other Gospels, was the right, true, and apostolic message to be believed as authoritative. To provide an authoritative account for their own book, in light of the fact that there were other books with other messages floating around, the later authors produced forgeries, *claiming* to be an apostle (Peter, James, Thomas, Philip, etc.) when in fact they were not. That wasn’t a problem with the earlier Gospels. When Mark wrote his Gospel, he felt no need to establish that *his* book, as opposed to others, was apostolic. There *were* no others. So too Matthew and Luke: they were continuing a Gospel tradition, started with Mark, that was widely seen in their circles as authoritative, and so did not need to authorize their message by pretending to be an apostle when they were not. In John’s case the text *is* authorized: the author claims to be basing his account on the traditions passed on by “the disciple Jesus loved.” The author’s own identity doesn’t matter – only that of his source does.
- I should stress that many of the New Testament writings outside the Gospels that do name the author do so pseudonymously – that is, these are forged writings, authors claiming to be a famous (apostolic) person when in fact they were not. This is true of six of Paul’s letters – 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus – both of the letters that go under Peter’s name, James, and Jude.
- Four other books, along with the Gospels, are anonymous: Hebrews (later church fathers said it was written by Paul; but the author does not claim so); 1, 2, 3 John (anonymous, but later attributed to John the Son of Zebedee).
So, now I’m back to the question, why would the Gospel writers not identify themselves? Again, I think the popular answer is in essence right: they saw no need to do so. Their point had to do with the message they wanted to deliver, not with their own identity as authorities who could deliver it. There was no need to establish their authority. The authority lay in what Jesus said and did. It was only later when Christians had lots of Gospel accounts before them, with varieties of perspectives represented, that it was important to stress that this, that, or the other Gospel was the one that got it RIGHT. And to do that, readers, editors, and scribes assigned names to earlier Gospels to show that the person delivering the teaching knew what he was talking about. And later Gospel writers made these claims for themselves, maintaining that they were relatives of Jesus (his brother James or his brother Thomas) or disciples (Peter, Philip, and so on).
But I think there may be one other thing going on with the NT Gospels that led their authors to write their accounts anonymously. I’ve never seen this suggested in the scholarly literature before, which either means I came up with it myself (in which case, caveat lector!) or I haven’t read enough scholarly literature. It is this. I think when Mark was writing his Gospel, he was imagining that he was continuing the story that he inherited from the Hebrew Bible. As you know, the final prophet of the Hebrew Bible, Malachi, ends by promising that Elijah would be coming before the “day of the Lord.” And how does Mark begin? By describing the coming of John the Baptist in the guise of Elijah. Mark is a continuation of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible.
But as you probably know, the Hebrew Bible – in the sequence of books given in the original Hebrew — does not end with Malachi, the final prophet, the way the English Old Testament does. It ends with 2 Chronicles, a narrative book that describes, at the very end, the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and then the promise to rebuild the city by the Persian king Cyrus. There has been sin, and destruction, and the promise of restoration – told in a historical narrative. And Mark picks up the story at that point, with the coming then of the Savior, Jesus.
The historical books of the Hebrew Bible (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles) are anonymous. They are telling the history of the people of God, not based on the authority of the author but as a holy narrative of how God worked among his people. The names of the authors are unimportant and irrelevant in this kind of sacred history. Mark continues the sacred history, and like his predecessors, tells his story anonymously. Matthew and Luke and even John do it in their own ways, and also, as a result, tell their sacred history in the person of Jesus anonymously. I don’t think it’s surprising at all that they did not reveal their names.
A simplistic question: I recently read that the Gospels should be read in a Jewish context; not in a Hellenistic context.
Your essay above recalled that thought to my mind.
If my question above makes any sense, do you have any thoughts on that notion?
Scholars today do not neatly differentiate between “Jewish” and “Hellenistic” since most Jews in the Roman world were Hellenized. So it’s probably a false either/or. Make sense?
Yes…thank you.
Sorry .. always running behind … your comment has added to my delighted confusion. Hellenized in which aspects? Could you elucidate?
It was kind of like today. You wouldn’t talk about Jews and Americans, as if they were two distinct categories. In antiquity you wouldn’t talk about Jews and the Hellenized. Most Jews were Hellenized.
I’m behind the years of this topic but I understand these were are anonymous sources. Is there old gospel manuscripts (that anyone can see for themselves? ) that show these Gospels didn’t have names attached to them at first or how do Historians know that? Thank you.
The Gospel manuscripts we have are from hundreds of years after the Gospels were first put in circulation, and these much older copies do have names on them. But the names are given as “According to Matthew.” No one, of course, would provide a title for his book as “According to me.” Whoever put that title on is telling you whose account this was understood to have been. And the main reason for doing *that* is to differentiate between *various* accounts that were in anonynmous circulation.
I’m Sorry if you’ve already covered my question, but if we don’t have the originals of the Gospels, how do we know they were anonymous? Is it the writing in the 3rd Person? Thank You Sir.
Yes, they are all in the third person, and the authors never give us their names. The titles name four individuals, but these titles were not on the original writings; they were added by later copyists.
Aesop is believed have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Aesop’s fables were originally passed orally and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop’s death. Aesop’s fables as we know them today are surely not 100% copies of Aesop’s words. Human error, creativity and cultural influences changed the stories over centuries. At the same time, nobody could accurately say that Aesop’s fables were originally anonymous and later attributed falsely to Aesop.
And yet that is the assertion that Mr. Ehrman and others make about the Gospels. What proof is there that the original writings didn’t reflect oral histories associated with one person? An unequivocal belief in anonynous Gospels seems as blind to the facts and bible history as those Christians who argue for an innerant Bible. A belief in anonymous Gospels also presupposes that no apostle of Christ made any effort or failed to ensure their oral sayings were eventually put into writing–albeit belatedly when it was clear the Second Coming wasn’t imminent. Such a failure also makes no sense for a true believer, regardless of the truth of what they believe.
The Gospels as oral histories were probably passed on exactly like the fictional Aesop’s fables, albeit over a much shorter time frame when many of the original witnesses of Christ were still alive. The Gospels reflect the gist of what these followers of Jesus were communicating, either orally or in writing. Such Gospels would naturally have inconsistencies and different points of view. These very personal histories might even disagree on how to interpret what Jesus said (as did Paul and Peter on how to deal with Gentiles). They might draw on each other at times to fill in the gaps, recognizing that others had already told the story better (like politicians with kindred philosophies who steal lines and ideas from each other).
But the first time they were written down, each of these oral histories of the life and sayings of Jesus would not be “anonymous.” Rather, these first attempts to write down a Gospel would be closely associated with one person and one point of view on the life and sayings of Jesus. And if the first person who wrote them down was not necessarily the one who inspired the Gospel, it would entirely appropriate to write the Gospel as “according to” someone.
Mr. Ehrman what is wrong with that vision?
I have a very full discussion of the issue in my book Jesus Before the Gospels. Have you read it yet? I think it would be right up your alley. There is massive proof that stories regularly change (and were *meant* to change, int he ancient world) when told by word of mouth.
Incidentally, why do you think that the fables we call Aesop’s were actually originally composed by Aesop?
What about the possibility that they were writing for individual communities with specific needs and situations, communities made up of folks who were already familiar with the writers, who had no idea that their work would ever reach an audience beyond the specific community?
Yes, I think that’s probably true.
Yes, Stephen, I agree. I always imagined that the original writers actually read their gospels to Christian gatherings (most people could not read). If the author was reading to his community his own work, there was no need to say “who wrote it”.
I think it’s probably not true. One would not undertake such a serious literary effort, especially one with an evangelistic emphasis, simply for a single local community. Paul’s letters had already been widely circulated. I’m sure the gospel authors expected the same. The only reason to cite authorship would be to imply authenticity. Since these were neither biographies nor histories, but ancient bios narratives, authenticity wasn’t the point. They were stories told to show what kind of person the author believed the protagonist to be. Readers neither required nor expected them to be necessarily true. The authors likely had no particular credentials other than the ability to write well-crafted narratives in Koine Greek. Each knew the wide range of things people were saying about Jesus, and tried to address all of them. No matter what you believed or heard about Jesus, you’d find something in the gospels to identify with. You’d find explanations for why no one had actually met him, or why no one had even heard of the miracles or the ideas during his lifetime. Mostly you’d find explanations for why the person who became the universal sacrifice could be a good person, yet be executed by Rome. He was accused of being a Zealot, found innocent, but executed anyway to prevent riots.
I wish Dr. Ehrman had commented on your comment.
Specifically I would like to know if Dr. Ehrman believes that the gospels were written by early Christians attempting to give an accurate historical account of the life of Jesus based on the oral Christian traditions available to them— or—were the authors simply professional writers who had heard the stories of one particular Jewish messiah pretender and decided to write a supernatural-laden historical fiction about him for the sole purpose of earning a living?
Sorry, I must have missed the question. You give an either-or, but I don’t think the either or the or is right! These were authors trying to proclaim the “good news” (hence the name “Gospel”) by telling stories they had heard about Jesus. They did not have our view of “accurate” history; but on the other hand they were not professional writers either.
Is there any speculation about why the Gospels were given *those* particular four names?
Ah, that’s what this thread is all about — and where it’s heading!
Hello Bart, iam a big fan of your books and debates.
one thing i don’t get. i don’t get why the gospels writers must have gotten the information about Jesus through an oral tradition for decades and that the words most have been changed for a big part.
take the gospel of Marc for example, it could have been written at a time that people who knew Jesus where still alive.
it seems to me very possible that the writer could have heard a disciple preach or met met with on more people who knew Jesus personally.
Isn’t it very possible that the writer of Marc could have known people who knew Jesus and that he got information from first hand?
Please tell me your views on this, iam puzzling with this question.
It’s a great question. And I’ve devoted an entire book to trying to answer it! Hope you can read it: Jesus Before the Gospels.
1) Why do you think there are so few gospels circulating in the 1st century? Is it because Christianity hasn’t yet spread widely around the Empire, especially among the literary elite?
2) What might have been the process by which the 4 gospels were circulated in their communities? Someone wrote a gospel. Did he then pass a copy to the elders of the local church to be read out loud in public? When a gospel was read out, would the audience have inquired about identity of the author? Conservative Christians say it would have been the common practice for the community to inquire and know about the author before accepting the text is authoritative.
1. We don’t know how many Gospels *were* in circulation. Luke says there were “many” (see Luke 1:1-4). We don’t know what he meant by that.
2. Yes, I think that the authors probably were known within their own (small? large?) communities.
Hmmm. I’d always assumed that the Gospel authors stayed anonymous because of fear of persecution. I know that persecution is often overhyped, but it seems like the Nero persecutions were a recent and vivid memory in the late first century.
We don’t have any record of anyone being persecuted for writing a Christian book. The authorities almost certainly would not have cared. (Nero had the Christians executed for setting fire to Rome) (they probably didn’t do it, but that was the charge brought against them)
DR. Ehrman, as you know I have published a book “The Way God Told It” it has my name on the front cover, but I was hesitant to put it there: because I felt that the writer wasn’t me. Yes, my body sat for months in front of the computer typing, but what I was typing was far beyond my actual knowledge of God or the scriptures. There is a saying in my native Italian language when one cheats at the school exams that says “NON E’ FARINA DEL SUO SACCO” in other words “it hasn’t come from him.” I know that because, the next day in re-reading my writing I was amazed of what I had written. Yes Believe it or not, God is alive and well and He still uses man for the advancement of humanity.
Hello, Dr. Ehrman!
Reading your posts regarding John brought me to this understanding:
Among the followers of John, the son of Zebedee, there must have been some literate persons who wrote down some of what John had to say about Jesus. Many other earwitnesses remembered what they heard from John as well.
The anonymous author of (Gospel According to) John wrote the book based upon these written and orally transmitted information. Since we don’t have the original we can’t tell whether this book was originally written or altered later to accommodate the theological view such as the deity of Jesus.
By George, I think you’ve got it! Your interpretation makes a lot of sense. I will have to go back and read 2 Chronicles.
Remarkable insight Dr. Erhman (humbly stated for who am I too assess?? BUT) and really quite thrilling … and as a normal person plausible .. if the authors viewed themselves as narrators and what they wrote continuations of a view from even more ancient scribes if not prophets, this would make very good sense indeed! Were then the Gospels a narrative as to how Jesus (as God??) worked among His people? How can your insight be academically substantiated?
Yes, I think that’s what the narratives are meant to do. And there is no way to “prove” the theory in any scientific sense; one simply has to see if it best accounts for the known facts.
Interesting. Thanks
I have never thought of this possibility. It is as good an explanation as any. I guess we will never know. So when the author first wrote the “Gospel of Mark”, did he send a manuscript? Or did he read it to his church? Or did he speak it, largely from memory? I always assumed that he read it to the congregation since most could not read and also because duplicating a manuscript was hard work. If the author read it to his congregation, then the listeners would know who wrote it. The author had no need to write his name on the document that he kept for himself. When would the document begin to be copied and circulated? Would they have waited until the author died and the manuscript was found among his possessions?
Great questions. Maybe I’ll devote a post to them! (Short answer: Mark, whoever he was, wrote the book; it was read to the congregation — or to a small group within it; someone copied it; someone copied the copy; someone took a copy to another city where the author wasn’t known; someone copied it there; a copy was taken to another city, then another, then another. The author’s name was lost early on in the process)
Doc Ehrman
in antiquity were their BIOGRAPHIES about famous authors? i mean, did people examine the lives of authors in terms of characteristics?
memory?
“this author had an excellent memory and he did not indulge in telling lies” ?
Yes, “bioi” were a common form of writing — thus Suetonius, Plutarch, etc.
This is related to what I’ve been looking for; a mention of who wrote Mark. I listen to a pastor weekly who routinely talks of Mark, Luke and John as if they were real authors, and might say “when Luke write this etc. etc.”
So I was just wondering what we know about who wrote Mark? Or Luke? Now, this pastor has a Ph.d and is a widely trusted evangelical educator, but whenever I hear him talk of these names as actual authors, like Max Lucado or CS Lewis, I cringe just a little bit. I feel like I’m not getting the whole story.
I’m afraid we really don’t know. They were both educated Greek-speaking Christians, living decades after Jesus, somewhere outside of Palestine. Apart from that, it’s a lot of guesswork.
Even non-Fundamentalists use ‘Mark’ as a shortcut for ‘the author of the gospel traditionally called Mark’.
If the authors did put their names to the gospels (eg. “The Gospel According to Bob”) how likely is it they would still have made it into the new testament?
Great question! I suppose we have no way of knowing.
When the gospels were circulated between different Christian communities in the 1st century, is it likely that information about authorship was passed on orally, alongside the written text?
Probably within their own communities, I should think.
Perhaps each was a team, committee, or community effort? In true bios narrative practice, each author told stories about the kind of person they believed the protagonist to be. Decades after the crucifixion, in the Greek world far from Galilee, no one had any way of knowing what actually happened during the lifetime of Jesus. They could choose only from among the huge field of orally passed stories and their own creativity. Based on linguistic analysis by Bivin and Blizzard, I think the authors may have harvested typical rabbinic dialogs of the era, to show what kinds of things a backwoods Jewish sage might have said. The synoptics had to include explanations for why the ideas of Christianity were unknown during the lifetime of Jesus. They reserved their strongest efforts to explaining why a good, innocent man would be executed by Rome. Finish off with some subtle jabs at the Jews for deicide (not a formal accusation until Melito of Sardis). PS: Thanks Dr. Ehrman for that info in After the New Testament. Each gospel was a serious writing effort. Translations of the Hebrew sayings may have been a hasty effort. The overall writing was not careless or hasty. The ideas of Christianity were already being challenged. The authors were strongly motivated to tell the best story as an evangelistic and apologetic tool. To me, it’s easy to see why they might not want to attach a single specific name to it. The motivation was to compete for mindshare for their religion. I commend them for leaving them anonymous rather than making them pseudonymous. I also commend their honesty for never claiming eyewitness testimony. I have no reason for holding them to modern standards for a historian or biographer, over those of the ancient bios genre.
What do you think about the hypothesis that the gospels were written originally as weekly readings, to be read alongside the Torah readings that were part of Jewish practice?
The more I think about it, the more this seems more than plausible, though I’m only an interested layman and I could easily be missing something. You’ve got a community of Christians, they’re mostly illiterate, and because they’re also observant Jews, the leaders of the gatherings are still reading from the Torah every week with the intention of keeping their scriptures fresh in everyone’s memory. Of course, the worship would also include people speaking to the gathering about Jesus, but as new converts joined and as existing Christians got forgetful about this or that incident, the same basic information about Jesus’s life would be brought up over and over. It seems just about inevitable that the desire would crop up sooner or later, in some community somewhere, to create a similar series of readings about Jesus and his life and teachings, to be read alongside the Torah readings and show how Jesus’s life continued and fulfilled them.
Because each reading would be coming around again each year, there would be repeated opportunities for the leaders of the community to make revisions — making embellishments, emphasizing a point that didn’t seem made strongly enough the first time, adding details that would relate the story to the Torah reading for that day or a recent day, and so on. Significant new material might even be added — for example, the “Little Apocalypse” reading could have been written and inserted into the gospel of Mark in response to the seizure of the Temple, even though the rest of the readings may have been in use for many years. If the readings were coming around repeated in the cycle, there would be regular opportunities for revisions; if most people in the gathering were illiterate, it would take a while before people knew the readings well enough to regard them as a fixed, traditional form.
It also seems just about inevitable that, once such a set of readings was created, that they would be copied and passed around to other communities, who might want to tweak them for their own purposes. If the community’s beliefs and purposes were different enough, the community’s leaders might undertake a significant revision of the readings (thus creating Matthew and Luke).
I haven’t seen this idea put forward very often, but it seems to me an entirely plausible explanation for the origins of the gospels, and to account for some of their features. But it seems that most often I see the gospels characterized as works that were written like books, committed to paper all at one time and then circulated in that matter, rather than as serials, a new installment given every week and the cycle starting over again each year, each go-round giving another opportunity for revision.
Do you have any thoughts about this take on the gospels?
It’s an interesting theory, but I’m afraid I’ve never found it convincing, simply because the evidence for it seems so thin. And because I don’t think the Gospels, with the possible exception of Matthew, were written by Jews who had been active in their synagogues. (Mark and Luke certainly not)
An additional thought on this…would the original authors have considered their versions as divinely inspired and hence the “author” in some sense was God? If you felt this to be the case attaching your name to the book would be at the least presumptious or at worst blasphemous. This would also explain the anonymous nature of the first gospel accounts, and then the named later gospels as per your observation.
However, you likely have answered this somewhere, when did the Christian community start to attribute inerrancy to the bible? The epistle writers had modest, problem solving goals with their literary efforts – I doubt they thought they’d be preserved for all time as scripture. The gospel writers were either thinking themselves as God’s pen, or were individuals striving, as humans, to write down as best they could their understanding of God’s work on earth. Is inerrancy and the divine origin of the bible something relatively recent, like papal infallibility?
My sense is that the authors simply thought they were writing the accounts of what God had done, not that they were writing what God directed them to write. The idea of “inerrancy” is a modern one.
I agree, and I think most Christian scholars agree too. Do you subscribe to the idea that inerrancy began with B.B. Warfield and the Princeton theologians? The whole verbal plenary idea… because it seems even newer than that… having read Warfield’s view of Darwinism… I can’t see modern fundamentalists swallowing that idea without burping up charges of “denying the word of God.” I’m not sure it can be identified exactly (maybe it can?)… but what’s your sense on when modern “bible worship” began?
No, it is usually thought that Warfield was developing a view that was already floating around. The idea of inerrancy is usually traced to the Niagara Conferences at the end of the 19th century.
That makes sense. Did it spring out of Darbyism/Dispensationalis? Or just out of that general time? I’m just wondering if there’s a specific point it’s generally seen as “beginning” (or if it is more organic in that general period).
That’s a good question. I don’t know how much the Niagara conferences were connected (completely? not at all?) to Dispensational thought.
It makes sense that a biographer or historian might not see the need to identify himself as the author. It makes no sense that one of Jesus’ disciples, commissioned by him to serve as a witness for him, would pass up the opportunity to identify himself as an eyewitness of his Lord as he tells the story. That would be like denying Jesus as Peter did! More evidence in my mind that the gospels could not have been written by any apostles, or even an associate of an apostle who would have been sure to identify such a reliable source.
I’ve been reading Adella Collin’s commentary on Mark (It’s HUGE, 800 pages) and she goes through some argumentation about why Mark probably meant to be writing in the style of the Hebrew Bible, as you argued above. She doesn’t, however, phrase it exactly like you just did, or portray Mark as seeing himself “continuing” the Hebrew Bible.
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
Matthew and Luke I could see as writing, like Mark, to continue to the story of the Hebrew Chronicles. But don’t they also seem to be writing to counter, rather than continue, the story of Mark? After all if they thought Mark’s version got everything right then they would not have tried to improve on it. Forgive the laymen’s question 😛
-Sean
I think that given Luke 1:1-4, at the very least Matthew and Luke found Mark to be inadequate (though not necessarily wrong).
Getting it right wasn’t the objective. It was covering the ideas and providing the explanations. Why were the ideas of Christianity unknown during his lifetime? The disciples were dense. They were told not to tell. Jesus used parables, not for the usual purpose of explanation, but to hide meaning from the general audiences. It was hidden from them. It was not revealed until after the resurrection.
Was Jesus a Zealot? If you thought so, you could find enough to identify with. If you didn’t think so, you could see why other people might have thought so. You could also see it as a convenient false accusation to make to Rome about him.
Hi Bart. I was wondering what you thought about Origen’s quotation of Celsus regarding gospel authorship. In “Against Celsus” Origen writes,
“The disciples of Jesus, having no undoubted fact on which to rely, devised the fiction that he foreknew everything before it happened… The disciples of Jesus wrote such accounts regarding him, by way of extenuating the charges that told against him.” (2:13)
Do you think that Celsus is referring to the Apostles here or anonymous Christians? Or do you think that Origen could be misrepresenting what Celsus said?
He’s referring to disciples,and is claiming that they made up the idea that Jesus foretold his death. (He had no way of knowing the Gospels were written by other people)
Hi Bart, you wrote about the gospels,
“There was no need to establish their authority. The authority lay in what Jesus said and did.”
My question is how would the church receiving this gospel know that Jesus said and did these things? For example, if the church in Corinth received the Gospel of Matthew from Antioch with no name and no idea who wrote it, wouldn’t that make the church in Corinth suspicious?
I would consider myself an agnostic now, but when I was a Christian I accepted Hebrews as inspired by God even though I thought it was ananymous. I guess I thought it was in the New Testament and it wouldn’t be there if God didn’t want it there. I see now that this is a bit naive. Do you think the early Christians were naive in accepting the authority of gospels that were anonymous? I’m just curious as to why they would have accepted it if they didn’t know if the apostles or Jesus would have approved of it.
Modern critical scholars would be suspicious, but my sense is that most ancient Christians were no more suspicious, and could not be expected to be, than most modern Christians. Somebody told them that this is how it was and they believed them!
I think authority and authenticity wasn’t something people expected of a bios narrative. They were stories told to show what kind of person the author thought their protagonist to be. There was no need for the stories to be true. We do the same when we tell stories to make a point. Also, they were immersed in mythical literature about the Greek gods. They fervently believed that the gods required sacrifices. But I don’t think they considered all the stories told about the gods to be fact.
Thanks for a detailed explanation from an expert point of view – it helps to counter some of the points made from well-meaning but poorly informed opinions like physicist Dr. Aron Wall, who admittedly is not an expert in ancient languages and makes most of the general assumptions of fundamentalist believers-http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/the-gospels-arent-anonymous/
Wow! So happy to be part of this Blog. I am a Christian who wholeheartedly believes that reading “The Books of Bart” should be obligatory for all Christians! Ehrman’s work actually builds the case for the thoughtful Christian. Sorry to learn that Bart lost his faith not from the pursuit of a historical Jesus but from his worries over the question of how a loving God could permit such suffering in the world.
I am intrigued that this blog does not address the points made in Brant Pitre’s
“The Case for Jesus” which utterly skewers the idea of anonymous Gospels. I thank Mr. Ehrman for his great contributions to the studies of the Gospel but urge him to consider and respond to Mr. Pitre’s points which I’m happy to make here if he wants me to. In particular the idea that the Gospels were anonymous at first, spread for decades anonymously and then magically all got attributed to the same name all around the world without a single example of a Gospel by another name. Pure silliness and of course it’s totally accepted by most (non-Christian) academics. Here’s a short video by Pitre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ1osU9nkJ4
Yes, maybe I should. I have to admit, I find returning to the issue tiring…. But I do talk about it in some of my books (Jesus Interrupted, etc.)
Dr. Ehrman of course I have read your book Jesus Interrupted but that was published in 2010 while Dr. Pitre’s was published in 2016 and seeks to directly refute your work. Is there somewhere I can learn about how you respond to Dr. Pitre’s Points? In particular regarding the anonymity of the Gospels? I simply don’t understand how Gospels could circulate anonymously for decades and then all be magically attributed to the same author. 4 times and all around the world. What are the odds of that happening?
No, I”ve never given a direct response — just glanced at the book whnen it came out and didn’t think there was much to it. I suppose maybe I should, but the problems always seem so obvious to me …
What are the odds that the first five books of the Old Testament would all be assigned to Moses after circulating anonymously for decades? (centuries?). By the way, the Gospels ARE anonymous. Surely Pitre doesn’t argue the authors name themselves does he? (Calling a book “According to Mark” is not an authorial claim by the person writing the book!) (I can’t remember his exact argument, mainly I suppose because it didn’t make much of an impression!) (But yes, maybe I should take a look and respond….)
Is there some specific reason that in NT the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are in the order they are?
Is it that order just because they have to be in some order, or do they have other reasons?
Before I thought it would be matter of the writing order, but later I learnt that Mark was written first, so it wouldn’t make sense.
Thank you
It’s not clear, actaully. Different theories are possible. Matthew was thought to be first written, and John last: so is it chronological? (Mark was thought sometimes to be an abbreviated Matthew, so it would make sense for it to come next). Or the most popular ones to begin and end the sequence? Or the two actual disciples of Jesus to begin and end? Not all manuscripts, though, have the same sequence: another one is Matthew, John, Luke, Mark.
Hi Prof. Ehrman,
Irenaueus have quoted Polycarp as saying “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia…those who were conversant with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan…Then, again, the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1; 2.22.5; 3.3.4
How relevant is this information❓
Other scholars also says that we can see that the writer of John mentioned himself as an eyewitness (John 19:35) and refers to his presence as the “disciple whom Jesus loved”. The name of John does not appear in that gospel account even though the synoptic gospels depicts John as one of the three closest to Jesus. If John were the author, this notable absence would be understandable.
It is completely relevant for knowing what Christian tradition was saying a hundred years after the Gospel was written. Is it probative for knowing who the author was? Irenaeus said all sorts of things (as did so many of his contemporaries) that are now known not to be factually accurate, even in major ways (e.g., his description of Gnostics — his entire enterprise!). Think about how probative an oral tradition today would be for an event that happened in the 1920s. Or furhter: just turn on two different news channels today: you’ll find completely contradictory accounts about what happened *yesterday* (not from a hundred years ago). You have to evaluate each report and determine how reliable it is, and on what grounds.
Awesome.
Thanks Dr. Ehrman.
Dear Bart,
you claim: “That wasn’t a problem with the earlier Gospels. When Mark wrote his Gospel, he felt no need to establish that *his* book, as opposed to others, was apostolic. There *were* no others”. What about Luke’s claim that there were many other reports about Jesus’ sayings and deeds. If that’s correct, isn’t that contrary to your claim that “there *were*no others” – when Mark wrote his gospels?
Hope you can clarify this for me. Thanks!
Kind regards,
Marko
Luke certainly knew of other Gospels; I doubt if he knew when they were written and whether any of them were written before Mark. (The fact that Luke knew of others doesn’t mean Mark did). Am I answering your question?
Yes! Thank you! The fascinating thing is that you always have time to comment. I hope that one day I’ll have such quality control of my own time and schedule!
If you know of anyone who could loan me a few of their spare hours a day, let me know.
Do you know of any greek (or hebrew) writings outside of the New Testament that were written anonymously?
We don’t have any Hebrew writings from the time of the Old Testament and it was not a widely used language in the time of the New Testament. There are *lots* of Greek writings that are anonymous, including a number of Christian writings from after the NT period — including, most obvioulsy, a bunch of Gospels, Acts, and so on.
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
is it possible to conclude the Gnostic writers and other “heretical” writings (Gospel of Ebionites, Gospel of Nazarenes/Hebrews, etc) didn’t believe that Mark wrote Mark (and Matthew wrote Matthew, etc) because they had their own gospels? Thus, these groups obvious rejected the apostolic/”authentic” authorship of the Gospels we know today?
Thank you for your time!
– Rob
The problem is that we don’t know if they had ever heard of Mark’s Gospel, let alone read it.