Board index ‹ Bible

[Can't Tell You]

How to you deal with the fact that the gospels and many of the letters from Paul were written by unknown authors and over a generation after Jesus's death? To me the biggest crack in the armor Is that I just cAn't trust that the "word" of god Is legit.

[jimwalton]

It has been well established by scholarship, both Christian and secular, that Paul most certainly (far beyond a reasonable doubt) wrote Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Evidence is strong that he wrote Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians, though some debate this. What is most debated is 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus. That's nowhere near a legitimate crack in the armor.

I have been studying the authorship of the gospels deeply for about a year now (I'm actually thinking of writing a book. Well, I've started to write, having done the research. I've looked at the ancient documents, the ancient attributions, quotes from the gospels in ancient works, the manuscripts, fragments, and uncials themselves.)

All the gospels are anonymous. It was the nature of the genre, just like modern novels. Authors don't put their own names in novels, whether historical or fictional. I'll have to be brief about the gospels here. There's too much information for this format.

MATTHEW. There is no ancient copy without his name on it. The early church fathers were unanimous in attributing it to Matthew. There has been no debate over authorship until modern times. There are a few arguments against his authorship (It doesn't sound like an eyewitness; an eyewitness would not have to access information from another source). Those pale in contrast to the arguments in Matthew's favor:

- The author seems to have been a highly educated Jew.
- The author was familiar with technical aspects of the Jewish law.
- The author was a conservative-minded Jew.
- The gospel uses material that details Messianic titles (such as “The Prophet,” and “the Righteous One”) that were already archaic in the time of Jesus. This would give credence to an early writing date by a close follower.
- The interest of the Gospel in the Law, in ecclesiastical matters, in oral interpretation of law and custom, would come most readily from a man trained in the legal disciplines, or from one who had been in constant touch with men so trained. Matthew the Jew, who was also a tax collector, fits that profile.
- The preservation of sayings of Jesus about the Law, and about some of its interpreters and interpretations, would be precisely the kind of interest we might expect from someone who was probably a Levite.
- The gospel’s parables reflect interest in the spiritual history of Israel as God’s chosen people.
- Mark is not necessarily a source. Recent scholarship has called into question both the traditional view that Matthew got his material from Mark, and even got it from Q. Some scholars now are positing that Matthew was written before Mark. Though Matthew is often accused of stealing much of his content from Mark, the contrast between Matthew and Mark is characteristic of their stories from start to finish.

The archaic expressions, interest in ecclesiastical matters, carefully recorded statements of Jesus about the Law, a conservative type of eschatology, together with an already dying method of commentary, all serve to convince us that we are dealing with an author very similar to what we would expect Matthew to be like. There is no evidence from the first century that it was ever doubted that Matthew was the writer of Matthew, and we have little reason to doubt it either.

MARK. Again, the early church fathers were unanimous in attributing the writing of it to Mark. There is substantial evidence that Mark could have been the author.

- The early church fathers unanimously recognized Mark as the author.
- It doesn’t make sense that anyone would have pasted the name of Mark on a gospel if he were not the author. What makes more sense is that they would have attributed it to Peter or James if they were trying to ascribe credibility to the work. There is no reason anyone would have attached Mark’s name to the book unless he had actually written it.
- The use of Aramaic words and phrases in the book are evidence that the author lived in Jerusalem.
- The use of biblical quotations and allusions to prophecy imply that the author was Jewish.
- The gospel has similarities to items and emphases that also occur in Paul’s writings, attesting that the author was possibly well acquainted with the apostle Paul.
- The quality of the Greek in the book is only average, consistent with what can be expected from Palestinian Jews of the era.
- The Gentile orientation of the gospel could be evidence that it was written by someone familiar with the Gentile world. (Peter is believed to have been in Rome from AD 55-60 [an argument by W.T. Manson], and that Mark was there with him.) The gospel has Latin words transliterated into Greek (Mk. 15.39), and Jewish customs are explained as if a Gentile audience may be unfamiliar with them (Mk. 7.3-5)

There is substantial evidence that Mark could have been the author.

LUKE.

- The uniform testimony of the early church is that Luke was the author.
- There are numerous technical medical terms in the gospel, consistent with Dr. Luke (Col. 4.14) as the author.
- The Greek in Luke has a high quality consistent with a Gentile author.
- His knowledge of Palestinian geography and customs betrays that he is not a Palestinian.
- He claims not to have been an eyewitness, but to have gotten his information from others, which is consistent with Luke.
- The author was well educated.
- The author was acquainted with both Old Testament literary traditions and Hellenistic literary techniques.
- The title “According to Luke” is on the oldest extant manuscripts.

There is little evidence offered from scholarship that Luke was not the author.

JOHN. I have six listed reasons that John was not the author, and 15 that substantiate that he was. (I'm not sure you want me to list them all, or this post is going to be ridiculously long, though I can do that if you wish.)

The upshot is that the evidence is quite strong that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors of the 4 gospels, and that they were written within about 30-40 years of the life of Jesus (which, to us, compares back to 1975 or 1985. Do you think we could write a reasonable biography of Ronald Reagan as President, or of the Watergate break-in of the 1970s?). Some would put the writing of Mark in the late 50s (which has historical evidence to support it), and Luke and Matthew in the early 60s, and possibly John by the late 60s. (While most scholarship puts John later than that, it is aggressively debated.)

I don't want to go on and on. (Well, I do! but I won't...) There are a bunch of vocal minimalists out there, but they don't have the weight of evidence in their camp. I have made lists of the extant manuscript evidence for the gospels, and the quotes from early sources. It's pretty impressive (Those can be in subsequent posts, as you wish), but far from conclusive. What we have to do is infer to the most logical conclusion, which is, evidentially speaking, the traditional viewpoint. No crack in the armor here.

[Can't Tell You]

So my argument to this would be as follows:

1. They don't present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings.
2. the Gospels are not historical works (even if they contain some historical kernels).
3. They are all anonymous.
4. Even the Gospels’ titles do not even explicitly claim authors, but only "according to".
5. The Greek in the gospel of John is too erudite for a Galilean workman who spoke Aramaic.
6. The Gospel of Matthew has very few eye-witness evidences.
7. Mark's use of the Septuagint makes one believe he was a Gentile living in the Jewish Diaspora, not a Jewish native of Palestine.
8. Luke doesn't mention Mark as one of his sources, despite that he knew Mark personally, and borrowed as much as 65% of the verses in Mark.
9. All of the Gospels’ authors were probably derived from spurious 2nd century guesses: Matthew and Mark were based on Irenaeus misinterpreting passages in Papias that probably referred to other literary works, Luke was speculated to be an author based on little more than vague narrative constructions using the first person plural in the text of Acts, and John was based on speculation over an unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved.”

I have read plenty of apologetic books when still a christian but the scholarship always seamed lacking to me when looking into their claims and sources. Using the bible to verify the bible leaves me very unsatisfied.

I like your analogy of us writing a biography of something from the 50s & 60s. But to keep it in context, we have video, papers, books and other accounts of what happened in that time. Even going to school we had text books that we learned from. The writers of the gospels had nothing but oral stories and second hand reports, or they copied from the same source material making small changes to support their view points. So it would be a far less reliable accounting of the truth than we could make today of an event 40-70 years ago.

[jimwalton]

Wow, that was a long article, but I read it. Yeah, I've read the stuff before. It proves that point that in academia there is no lack of disagreements about sources and reliability, and of differences of opinion. It's based on nuances and interpretations, suppositions and speculations. I obviously disagree, and you obviously don't. That's how people make decisions and arrive at conclusions by which we govern our lives.

As far as oral tradition, though, you speak as a person of written tradition without realizing what the other world was like. We have some quotes from Socrates that show a completely different perspective:

"Words put in writing are incapable of being clear, and are only useful to remind someone of what they have heard."

"Written words cannot be defended by argument and cannot teach truth effectively."

"If an author thinks that what he has written has certainty and clarity, it is to his disgrace."

"Written words do not provide opportunity for questioning and teaching."

"Written words are of little value unless an author is able to back them up by explanation."

In our culture we have a writing bias, just as Socrates obviously had an oral one. But we are remiss to think that in an oral tradition, where people are used to transmitting information orally and remembering it accurately, their conveyance of information was substandard, questionable, and unreliable. Rabbinic confidence in memorization was so high that some rabbis even banned the writing of oral traditions (Babylonian Talmud, Temurah 14b).

[Can't Tell You]

> "Written words do not provide opportunity for questioning and teaching." "Written words are of little value unless an author is able to back them up by explanation."

These are interesting points, and I think that part of the problem with the bible in its current form is that it is written words and that it cannot be changed. With the oral tradition that preceded the writing down of the stories, people could debate and adjust the flow of the story and the content in it to make it fit a point.

Part of the arguing and discussion around the oral tradition would effect both the parties involved. The originator would refine his argument and the next time he told the story it would be slightly different and the listener would take what he heard and mix in the relevant parts to his own understanding. Thus, each telling and argument changing the story just a bit, so when it dose get written down 40-70 years later there has been a lot of debate and who knows how simple the story started out as.

[jimwalton]

You're right that oral tradition had a certain ebb and flow. It's the same when we converse with each other. Suppose I was in a slight car accident. When I come home and tell the story, I may vary it slightly from one person to another, but they're all "true" and they're all "what happened". The different versions are just that: different versions, but we don't have a problem here of lying or of contradictions. I may emphasize different points or even change words, but we all know how this works, and we accept it.

It's no different in common communication. I'll say to my wife, "Hey, I'm heading down to Lowe's to pick up a package of screws." Let's say she happens to be on the phone and is asked about it, so she tells her friends, "Yeah, he said he's going to the store to buy some hardware." Well, that's not what I said, but it is what I said.

The stories we have in the Bible are exactly like this. They are carried on in an oral culture with certain variations, but that's not a problem. They are true, and what happened. They quote what was said, but not necessarily what was "said". But they're accurate, and authoritative accounts of historical events.

The first century was a rhetorical oral culture in transition to a written culture, just as we are in a written culture transitioning to an electronic one: some in each. The culture was no longer a primarily oral culture, yet it was not a fully literate culture either. It was largely, or perhaps radically, oral. The spoken word was the most highly regarded. "Memory skills were well developed, but tended to be thematic rather than verbatim. Poetry and story were used to conserve tradition rather than create it." The particular form or oral tradition active in Palestine at the time was "informal controlled oral tradition." Usually informal settings rather than formal educational classrooms; the teller had some flexibility in the telling, but only in certain areas. Through time, both in the telling and in the refining via eye-witnesses, these stories achieved a certain form, and eventually they were written down. It's possibly why the gospels have so much in common: the stories had reached a set form of telling, but there was still some flexibility in it. An example is in the book of Acts, which I think was written by Luke, but others disagree. Regardless, three times in the book is the story of Paul's conversion. All three are different. Now either the author was an idiot, or we are learning something about oral culture here.

It's no different for the stories of the OT. We don't when they were written, because papyrus doesn't last that long.

> people could debate and adjust the flow of the story and the content in it to make it fit a point.

You're right about this. The Gospels clearly show it, since they were each written to make a different point. But that doesn't mean they are telling untruths. One goes to Lowe's, and one to a hardware store. No matter. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, and the gospels are in Greek, so we have very few of his actual words, but that doesn't mean we don't what he said. In informal controlled oral tradition, there were certain pieces of the story you didn't mess with (change), and others had flex to them. But we're still getting what he said and what happened.

> I think that part of the problem with the bible in its current form is that it is written words and that it can not be changed.

That sounds like a change of position. Previously you said that oral tradition "would be a far less reliable accounting of the truth than we could make today of an event 40-70 years ago." And now you're saying that "part of the problem with the bible in its current form is that it is written words and that it can not be changed." So is the strength in orality or in the writing? I think they each have their merits, and what we have in our Gospels is a carefully preserved authoritative rendition of what Jesus said and did, flexibility accounted for. The tradents of the story of Jesus made sure they were passing on the truth (Lk. 1.1-4; Jn. 21.24; 1 Jn. 1.1-3), even if you disagree who the writer was.

The variations of the Gospel writers indicate the independence of the reports, without any trace of collusion or conspiracy. The differences have been marked from the earliest times; early Christian writers such as Tatian and Irenaeus discussed them. Efforts to meld them together was resisted, because it was felt that would present a false picture of Jesus. Ironies believed that the difference were to be welcomed as aspects of revelation, and his point was approved by the Christian community. The four Gospels give us four pictures, as if you asked DaVinci, Renoir, Picasso, and Jackson Pollack to give us renderings of Jesus. It's not a problem, but actually a strength.