In the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Who Wrote the Gospels – external evidence?

In the last post, I talked about the internal evidence for the anonymity of the Gospels. I’ve shown that the internal evidence points towards the conclusion that the New Testament Gospels were written as anonymous documents – without the ascribed authorship. It is enough to remember that each of these Gospels was written in the third person. In other words, they are composed completely in the third-person omniscient voice. They do not claim anywhere to be eyewitnesses themselves! Even when “Matthew” speaks about Matthew (Jesus’ disciple and a tax collector) he continues to speak in the third person! He never gives us any clue at all that he actually speaks about himself. Why wouldn’t he do that? That would exponentially increase the authority of his narrative! Nevertheless, he doesn’t do that. Furthermore, titles in the manuscripts (the earliest ones date to the beginning of the 3rd century!) have an aberrant form with the preposition κατα (“according to”) which clearly suggests that they were attached to the Gospels later on. However, in establishing the authorship of an ancient document, historians don’t look only at the internal but at the external evidence as well. What we do is try to find external attestations for the authorship of the document in question. Are there any other authors who can confirm that a document “X” was written by a person “XZ”? So, in what follows, I’ll focus on that particular question.

Since I used Tacitus as an analogous example, it seems best to proceed with the same strategy. With his work, we are on solid grounds. Already his contemporary and friend Pliny the Younger explicitly mention Tacitus and his work Historiae. At the beginning of the 3rd century, Christian author Tertullian refers to Tacitus as the author of the book entitled Historiae. From there on (up until the 6th century), we have numerous external attestations for Tacitus and his works. What about the canonical Gospels? Interestingly enough, the earliest external attestations to the Gospels refer to them without the traditional names attached. The following is the illustration of the external attestations for the Gospels – or the lack of it! Friendly reminder: New Testament Gospels were written between 65 and 100 CE!

Author or the WorkDateQuoting from the Gospels?  External attestation for the authorship of the Gospels?
Ignatius105 – 115 CEYESNO
Papias120 – 140 CENONO – more about this in the next post!
Polycarp110 – 140 CEYESNO
Didache100 – 120 CEYESNO
Epistle of Barnabas80 – 120 CEYESNO
Justin Martyr150 – 160 CEYESNO
Irenaeus170 – 180 CEYESYES

Every named author and a text (except for Papias) quotes the traditions that appear to correspond with the New Testament Gospels. However, each of the above-mentioned sources treats the gospels anonymously. In other words, they would cite a tradition from the Gospels without naming the author. Ignatius knows the story about the star of Bethlehem that helped visitors to find the birthplace of Jesus (story from the Gospel of Matthew), but he doesn’t mention Matthew in any way. In the Epistle of Barnabas, one finds an even stronger quotation from the Gospel of Matthew because the author asserts: “as it is written” before he quotes “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22, 14). Since he asserts “as it is written”, a reasonable conclusion is that the author is referring to a written source. However, he doesn’t mention Matthew’s name at all! Bishop Polycarp quotes material from synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) but he never gives any hint at the authors of those quotations. Didache quotes the Lord’s prayer from Matthew’s Gospels without naming the author. In fact, before the quoting of the prayer, the author of Didache explains: “Neither pray as the hypocrites; but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel (ο κυριος εν τω ευαγγελιω αυτου)”. He doesn’t say “as the Lord commanded in the Gospel of Matthew“. He only states that this is the Lord’s Gospel. This serves as an additional confirmation that the New Testament Gospels were originally anonymous documents. Justin Martyr writing in the middle of the 2nd century makes unmistakable references to the content found in the Gospels. Simply put, he extensively quotes from the Gospels. However, not once does he name any of the four evangelists. Instead of that, he refers to these writings simply as the “memoirs of the apostles (ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων)”. He explains that these “memoirs” were read communally on Sunday alongside the “writings of the prophets”. Despite the fact that he always refers to the “memoirs” anonymously, he still references his other sources by name when discussing or citing them. For example, Justin explicitly names Malachi or Zechariah from the Old Testament texts. He even mentions the Acts of Pilate thinking highly of this text even though we now know that this is a later legend without any historical accuracy. Still, he doesn’t mention the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John when he quotes from those Gospels. This is very indicative. It is strong evidence that those particular names of the authors were not yet attached to the texts themself. Finally, in the late 2nd century (c. 180 CE) Irenaeus is the first one to mention all four names (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in ascribing authorship to each of the New Testament Gospels. After that, the names are always attached to the Gospels – every single author after Irenaeus followed his example: Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, etc. Why is that? I think that the answer is simple: before the middle of the 2nd century, these texts (the New Testament Gospels) floated as anonymous documents among Christian communities.

What happened that prompted the change? I think that the probable solution is as follows. During the 2nd century, other Gospels appear. Some of them were allegedly written by the disciples Thomas and Peter. Others were allegedly written by Mary and Philip. Besides those, there were the so-called “Gospels of Ebionites” and the “Gospel of Nazarenes”. In a nutshell: all hell broke loose! And early Church leaders decided that the best course of action is to “save” and “secure” the four Gospels which really were both the oldest and the most popular ones! They concluded that the smartest way to do that is to ascribe the names of the authors to these four Gospels. Those authors had to be either the apostles themselves or the companion of the apostles. In that way, they would give them additional authority and prestige! It is probable that this happened in Rome around 160 CE by a scribe who collected four Gospels or a bishop – we’ll never know! However, there is one particularly important topic we have to discuss in detail – the witness of Papias – a bishop of Hierapolis who lived at the beginning of the 2nd century. He does say “something” about Mark and Matthew. Does that count as a good external attestation for the authorship of the New Testament Gospels? I don’t think so. But, we’ll explore that question in the next post!

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