The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[athrock]

What I'm asking is this: If the gospels were circulated anonymously for many years before being attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were are the copies of the manuscripts which do not have their names associated with them?

I'm not sure what it is you're asking?  By "the gospels" I have to assume you mean the NT proper.  Who thinks that the NT proper was circulated anonymously before attribution to the authors?  I'm certain that attribution was a very important component of determining the provenance of various stories circulating along the periphery of the christ narrative.  In determining what would be gospel and what would be apocrypha.  

I'm not speaking of the entire NT but of the individual books or gospels known as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And if there were copies of these books that did not say, "The Gospel According to Matthew" or "The Gospel of Mark", then where are they? Shouldn't there be lots of manuscript copies of the gospels that don't have a name associated with them? If so, where are they?

And how did the Church manage to label each and every single copy of these anonymous gospels without any record of this project being mentioned in the writings of the Early Church Fathers?

Again I have to ask you who thinks that they did?  

Anyone who denies that the gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The theory is that these books were written much later and that we really don't or can't know who wrote them. Questionable authorship and late dating are the breeding ground for all sorts of fanciful ideas held by skeptics who simply can't bring themselves to admit that the gospels are more reliable than they care to admit.

So, dear atheist, if you want to claim that we don't know who wrote the gospels, where is YOUR evidence of anonymity?

Attribution does not provide any reasonable certainty of the authors identity.  It provides a working concept to discuss the work apart from the identity of it's author.  We attribute tales to Aesop.  

Perhaps, but whether you do so correctly or not is a matter for careful study. The kind of study that suggests that in the case of the gospels, the traditional attribution of authorship is probably correct.

There is no need to provide evidence that I cannot say with certainty who the authors of the gospels where....this is precisely the problem..if I had some evidence I could tell you.  I'll I have are the things a story says about itself.........

If you believe that the gospels were published anonymously or by authors other than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, please present any physical evidence you may have.

And since I believe that logical arguments in favor of God's existence ARE evidence, I'll entertain logical arguments against the traditional authorship, as well.

Fair is fair, after all.