4 New Testament Authorship

We previously examined the textual evidence, genre, and dating. Our next consideration has to do with the authors of these different writings. Who wrote the various New Testament writings? Are they people we would want to be writing these works? Were they related or connected to the events? Were they people in a good position to know the truth (or falsity) of what was being reported? As with the last chapter, we will examine the reliability question from a zoomed-out perspective. Authorship alone will not give us all the details, but we will have a better view of the city.

Since there is often debate surrounding the authorship of these twenty-seven writings, this chapter will be able to only briefly introduce some issues related to authorship. One way I will be doing this is by limiting the discussion to the writings of Paul and the Gospels. We will begin by looking at Paul’s writings and see that several of Paul’s writings are considered to have been undisputedly written by Paul, even by skeptics. We will then move to the Gospels and consider whether they were anonymous, as some contend, or whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the original names for these Gospels.

PAUL’S LETTERS

It is an incredible fact that within the New Testament we have the writings of someone who persecuted the church. His name is Paul, and he aggressively and violently persecuted early Christians. He was present at and approved of Stephen’s martyrdom, as reported in Acts 8:1. He was sent to Damascus to continue his persecution of believers there, according to Acts 9:1-2. Paul also provides us with his own firsthand statements of how he personally persecuted believers in several of his letters (1 Cor 15:9; Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6; 1 Tim 1:13-14).

However, after having an experience of the risen Jesus, he had a rather dramatic conversion and began preaching the gospel message he once tried to destroy (Acts 9:3-31; Phil 3:3-7; 1 Tim 1:12-16). He met with many who personally walked, talked, and lived with Jesus (see esp. Gal 1:18; Acts 15:1-35.) and was a participant in many events of the early church as one who was willing to suffer as a follower of Jesus (2 Cor 11:16-30) and eventually died for his faith.

Prior to his martyrdom, Paul wrote several letters contained within the New Testament. As noted in

, Paul’s writings are typically dated earlier than the Gospels. The result is, in the words of Paul Barnett, a series of writings that are “remarkable for their closeness in time to the historical Jesus. And they are written by one who had been part of Christian history almost from the outset, first as persecutor, then as apostle.” Paul is quite a remarkable source indeed!

There are thirteen letters in the New Testament that open with Paul’s name explicitly stated for the reader:

■Romans

■1 Corinthians

■2 Corinthians

■Galatians

■Ephesians

■Philippians

■Colossians

■1 Thessalonians

■2 Thessalonians

■1 Timothy

■2 Timothy

■Titus

■Philemon

We know that Paul occasionally used a secretary to help him write these letters. For example, Tertius in Romans 16:22 states that he was the one who wrote the letter. Though Paul used people to help him write, he is still considered the author of the letter. In other letters, Paul indicates that others were with him while it was being composed. Sosthenes, for example, is mentioned with Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:1, while Timothy is present in 2 Corinthians 1:1. These provide incidental details that help us to better understand these writings and the developments of the early church, and these details come from a prominent member of the church.

While Paul does warn about the possibility of a letter being written in his name (2 Thess 2:2), one common reason more critical scholars today question Paul’s authorship is style and/or consistency concerns. We can agree with scholars that such objections seem rather subjective. Nevertheless, when it comes to Paul’s writings, even the most skeptical scholars recognize that at least seven are undisputedly Pauline. As we will see in

, two of these undisputed works, 1 Corinthians and Galatians, are incredibly important for understanding some of the best and earliest historical evidence for Christianity.

UNDISPUTEDLY PAULINE

Romans

1 Corinthians

2 Corinthians

Galatians

Philippians

1 Thessalonians

Philemon

Some of these letters were written to churches that Paul had founded (e.g., 1–2 Corinthians), and others were written to churches in cities Paul had not yet visited (e.g., Romans). As in-house letters written to those who already believed, these writings present the inner workings and beliefs of the early church. Not only that, but they were also undoubtedly written by one who had converted from a persecutor to a preacher.

THE GOSPEL AUTHORS

The authorship of the Gospels is a complex issue, so where is a good place to begin? It is helpful to start with three initial observations:

1. The names of any of the Gospel authors are not found in the body of the texts, as is the case with, for example, Paul’s letters (e.g., his greetings).

2. In the ancient world, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the only names attributed to the four canonical Gospels. These names were not contested, nor were any other names suggested in their place.

3. Two Gospels are connected to eyewitnesses: Matthew and John. The other two are believed to have been written by someone associated with an apostle: Mark (Peter’s interpreter) and Luke (Paul’s traveling companion).

Each of these points helps give us a handle to begin to grasp the complexities that encompass Gospel authorship debates.

My goal in the rest of this chapter is to introduce arguments demonstrating that the Gospels were not functionally anonymous. While they are technically anonymous in that the author’s name does not appear in the body of the text, they were not functionally anonymous—in other words, the authors were intended to be known. I will also highlight the consistency and uniformity of the four names connected to the Gospels.

Anonymous Gospels? Though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are uniformly associated with the four Gospels, many contend that the Gospels were originally anonymous. One of the main reasons for this contention is that there is no named author in the body of the work. Paul’s letters begin with his name in the text as part of his introduction, but the Gospels do no such thing. Thus, in this sense, the four Gospels are technically anonymous. However, does this mean that the Gospels are or were intended to be functionally anonymous works, with the original authors unknown?

Several scholars challenge the claim that the Gospels were functionally anonymous and/or circulated anonymously. There are a number of reasons for this. First, there are other technically anonymous works in the ancient world, yet we still know who wrote them. Two New Testament scholars, Richard Bauckham and Simon Gathercole, highlight examples such as Lucian’s Life of Demonax and Josephus’s Vita, which are similarly anonymous in that their names are not in the body of the text. Yet neither of these sources is considered actually (i.e., functionally) anonymous. We also know these were the authors despite the fact their names are not in the body of the text.

Second, there is what we might call the problem of practicality. Bauckham summarizes this as “the need for titles that distinguished one Gospel from another . . . as soon as any Christian community had copies of more than one in its library and was reading more than one in its worship meetings.” If there were multiple Gospels circulating in the early church, they would have needed to be distinguished from one another as a matter of practicality.

This would not have been a problem faced by the early church alone, for as just noted, other writings in the ancient world were also technically anonymous. In both cases, the name of the author could “be noted, with a brief title, on the outside of the scroll or on a label affixed to the scroll.” Thus, the Gospels, like other ancient works, would have needed ways to be identified by potential readers while they were being stored.

The uniformity of the Gospel names. The third and final consideration concerns the absence of positive evidence that ancient writers thought the Gospels were anonymous. Specifically, if the Gospels were initially intended to be anonymous or the original authors were unknown, we would expect to find a variety of different names attached to them as they circulated (an issue with the book of Hebrews). We might expect, for example, that if the Gospels were copied without names attached to them, then “a variation of titles would have inevitably arisen,” as the circulation of “anonymous works without a title would of necessity have led to a multiplicity of titles.”

Accordingly, for the Gospels-as-functionally-anonymous argument to work, it seems we would be required to believe the following. We would need to believe the Gospels were copied multiple times, by different people and different churches, across a wide geographic range, and over a period of time. Throughout this process, different churches in different areas of the Mediterranean decided to start ascribing names to these writings. It just so happens to be the case that they all agreed to the same name. Of course, this did not happen just one time but four. This scenario seems highly unlikely and rather ad hoc. The Gospels are likely to have had the same names precisely because they were not anonymous.

Moreover, as we saw, other technically anonymous works existed in the ancient world, and there were practical methods to identify such works. While there are other considerations regarding the names associated with the Gospels, we can ultimately agree with Gathercole when he writes, “It is a category mistake to say that a work is anonymous because it does not contain within it the name of the author.”

Earliest Gospel references. I noted that there is no positive evidence suggesting the Gospels were known by a multiplicity of names. Well, what do we know about the Gospel names? Gathercole provides an excellent and instructive article discussing the names associated with the four Gospels. He highlights about sixteen early sources that refer to one or more Gospel authors. One of the references is a well-known comment from Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was writing around AD 180 and states,

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, 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. (Against Heresies 3.1.1)

All four Gospels and their authors are mentioned here, with a brief background by Irenaeus. There is no indication that they went by other names or that these names were debated. Other citations by Gathercole similarly refer to the four Gospel names, each with differing levels of detail.

Gathercole’s list is also beneficial because it references manuscript titles (e.g., P66) as well as other ancient references (Ptolemy, Apollinaris, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, etc.). Significantly, all these sources date from roughly AD 100–200, or around a century after the last Gospel. “Taken all in all,” Gathercole concludes, “the first two centuries CE are populated by a good deal more references to Gospel authors than is commonly appreciated.” Indeed, his list is helpful because it provides the earliest references to the names of the Gospels, which were always Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

Ultimately, rather than seeing a diversity of names given to these Gospels, there is uniformity among the earliest references to their authors. As Bauckham argues, “No evidence exists that these Gospels were ever known by other names. The universal form of the titles and the universal use of them as soon as we have any evidence suggest that they originated at an early stage.” Indeed, this is precisely what we find with the Gospels.

CONCLUSION

We have covered a lot of territory thus far, and the conclusions of Brant Pitre offer a helpful summary. The Gospels are “ancient biographies written by the students of Jesus and their followers, written well within the lifetimes of the apostles and eyewitnesses to Jesus. As such, they provide us with a sound basis for investigating the historical question of what Jesus did, what he said, and who he claimed to be.”

It will also be helpful here to explore very briefly the backgrounds of the traditional authors. While two of them, Matthew and John, were considered eyewitnesses, the other two, Mark and Luke, were not. Instead, they were associated with the apostles. We learn in Matthew 10:3 that Matthew was a tax collector, and Irenaeus informs us that Matthew wrote his Gospel in the Hebrew dialect, something Papias claimed decades earlier (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15). John was the “beloved disciple” who is frequently considered to be John the son of Zebedee. Mark was Peter’s interpreter, something Papias reported decades earlier as well. The Mark who is being referred to here is often believed to have been John Mark, mentioned throughout the New Testament (Acts 15:37; Col 4:10; 1 Pet 5:13). Luke was Paul’s traveling companion, indicated by the various “we” passages in Acts (e.g., Acts 16:10-17). His work is associated not only with Paul but also other witnesses (Lk 1:1-4).

These same four names are universally attested in the early church. There were no competing names, and it seems highly unlikely that these works circulated as genuinely anonymous works. As we will see in

, the four Gospels were widely accepted as authoritative and included on various canonical lists. The names associated with these Gospels were well known from an early period without competitors.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: NEW TESTAMENT AUTHORSHIP

■In the New Testament, we have letters written by Paul, who was a persecutor of the church before converting to Christianity and preaching the message he had previously sought to destroy.

■There are thirteen letters that bear Paul’s name. Of these letters, even critical skeptics accept seven as undisputedly Pauline letters.

■Though the Gospels are technically anonymous, it is unlikely that they were functionally anonymous and intended to be anonymous.

■There is an incredible consistency regarding the names associated with each of the Gospels, originating early. The only names associated with the four Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

4 New Testament Authorship