On the issue of Gospel authorship here I have found a video which summarizes things in a way that is fairly easy to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7s22DR9gaI
First of all, most histories at this time did not have the author refer to themselves within the body of work itself. At the same time, a work usually wouldn't be accepted if the author couldn't be identified by some other means. This is why the scroll would usually come with another piece of writing attached to it giving information about who the author was (sort of like the address on the outside of an envelope).
There were early church fathers, such as Papias, who would refuse to acknowledge a writing as scripture if an author could not be identified. He ended up identifying all 4 Gospel writers. We also have some fragmentary manuscripts which identify some of the Gospel authors such as P 66 and P 4. We also have other 2nd century sources such as Clement of Alexandria as well as Irenaeus who both were able to identify all 4 Gospel authors. And, for some reason, all of these sources point to the same 4 names being assigned to the same four Gospels, exactly as our modern Bibles attribute them.
This is all in contrast to the book of Hebrews, the one book of the New Testament for which we do not know the author. Given that this is the case multiple different authors have been speculated about such as Luke, Paul, Barnabas and Clement of Rome.
If the Gospels were anonymous then we would expect there to be a wider amount of speculation around who wrote them. Do you have any evidence in favor of a different author possibly being responsible for writing any one of the 4 Gospels?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7s22DR9gaI
First of all, most histories at this time did not have the author refer to themselves within the body of work itself. At the same time, a work usually wouldn't be accepted if the author couldn't be identified by some other means. This is why the scroll would usually come with another piece of writing attached to it giving information about who the author was (sort of like the address on the outside of an envelope).
There were early church fathers, such as Papias, who would refuse to acknowledge a writing as scripture if an author could not be identified. He ended up identifying all 4 Gospel writers. We also have some fragmentary manuscripts which identify some of the Gospel authors such as P 66 and P 4. We also have other 2nd century sources such as Clement of Alexandria as well as Irenaeus who both were able to identify all 4 Gospel authors. And, for some reason, all of these sources point to the same 4 names being assigned to the same four Gospels, exactly as our modern Bibles attribute them.
This is all in contrast to the book of Hebrews, the one book of the New Testament for which we do not know the author. Given that this is the case multiple different authors have been speculated about such as Luke, Paul, Barnabas and Clement of Rome.
If the Gospels were anonymous then we would expect there to be a wider amount of speculation around who wrote them. Do you have any evidence in favor of a different author possibly being responsible for writing any one of the 4 Gospels?
