(December 21, 2017 at 4:38 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(December 20, 2017 at 4:00 am)vulcanlogician Wrote: Other books in the NT are considered to be written "in the name of" various apostles. Dishonest practice, but hey, it's religion.
"In the name of" or "according to" are both way of ascribing authority to a text, not necessarily its authorship. It's like when a low feudalistic official says, "You are hereby summoned in the name of His Majesty, the King." The low official is claiming the King's authority for whatever he is about to say.
Or,
A later claim to authority, very frequent in ancient documents. Try the Venerable Bede for one. Old stuff weren't written to modern standards, yet we have these endless arguments about biblical ones that contain weird stuff we would never countenance today.
