The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[athrock]

If the gospels were in circulation for many years before they were ascribed to the authors whose names they now bear, shouldn't there be copies of the original documents bearing no name at all?

Okay that's a reasonable question. You can't expect us laypeople to answer it for you, you need to ask a new testament scholar. As you haven't done this, I'll have a guess for you. The writings were not in immediate circulation, they began circulation after a few decades of being written, sometime in the second century. We know from the records of early church fathers that the belief of who the gospel writers were was in place by early-mid second century, thus we can reasonably assume that the titles were added to the documents before this time. It's true that every early manuscript of the gospels that includes the first page has the title on it, but it's also true that it's not a part of the manuscript itself. I.e. the author didn't identify himself in the same way that Paul, James, and Jude do.

Aractus, I thank you for your thoughtful response to my OP. It is a pleasure interacting with someone who is actually interested in genuine dialogue.

I take issue with your statement that the writings were not in immediate circulation. Paul himself gave specific instructions that show the opposite to be the case:

Colossians 4:16
16 After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.

From this, we can see that Paul EXPECTED his letters to circulate, and that there were letters of his that were not canonized. After all, we have no Letter to the Laodiceans in the NT.

Additionally, I'm no scholar, but it is my understanding that when scribes completed a document (Paul composed his letters orally and only occasionally attached a greeting in his own handwriting), a second copy was made immediately so that the contents were not lost.

I agree that the ECF's certainly were referencing the names of the gospel writers by the mid-second centure, but I would push that even earlier for the reasons I gave to Jormungandr in a post above. And remember, Papias was a disciple of John, so the apostolic origin of this confirmation of authorship is almost certain.

If the gospels were in circulation for many years before they were ascribed to the authors whose names they now bear, shouldn't there be copies of the original documents bearing no name at all? And shouldn't some existing manuscripts show evidence of having been altered to include the authors' names later as was the case with the word "Chrestianos" in Tacitus' Annals?

No, not necessarily. As I mentioned, we have no page-1's from any gospels written before their known author-attribution in the early-mid second century.

And as we have no page-1's earlier than late second century, we wouldn't expect any of them to be altered to include the "author's" name.

Then what do you make of the writings of Papias? Did he simply make all this up? I think this unlikely since the ECF's were quite keen on passing on what they had been taught VERY faithfully.

I also consider it unlikely that the early Christians went to mass on Sunday morning and someone stood up and said, "A reading from the Holy Gospel according to...um...someone."

The early Church KNEW who the authors were. And why is this most probable? Because spurious and forged letters were KNOWN even during Paul's lifetime:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-3
Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, 2 not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.

IOW, Paul is saying, "Don't be alarmed by some letter that is allegedly from me." Why would he say that if there were no reason to be on guard against false letters? So, the Early Church was VERY keen on knowing the authorship of the letters and gospels that it considered genuine.

Make sense?

And if the gospels were written and circulated anonymously throughout the near East, North Africa and the Mediterranean basin among dozens if not hundreds of local churches, wouldn't that require some effort by someone to ensure the standardization of these new names of the gospels on every single flyleaf of every single manuscript in every single church in all of Christendom? If so,

No, not at all. That's a complete misconception - there are a number of textual traditions that scholars have identified in early manuscripts (I'm thinking more narrow than "Byzantine" type etc), however they all converge at one point. What we don't know - and what you certainly don't know - is precisely what happened between AD50 and AD130. What I think happened is that the Jerusalem church was completely destroyed by 70AD. No significant early church leader is known, or even thought to have lived beyond this time. Even in official church records from the second century they are all believed dead before then. This includes: Jesus, Judas, James, Joseph, Peter, Luke, Paul, Barnabas, John, and every single person of importance in the New Testament. The church rebuilt itself after this, but not from Jerusalem. From the Syrian and other "gentile" regions.

You've omitted John (he was in Ephesus), Clement (he was in Rome), and a boatload of other folks named in the New Testament who were either scattered by the persecution that broke out after the day of Pentecost or who were not actually from Jerusalem to begin with (such as Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos). Since Clement is named in one of Paul's letters AND considered the fourth bishop of Rome, I don't think the idea of "rebuilding" is correct. It is more correct that the center of the Church shifted from Jerusalem to the heart of the Empire.

More to the point, Papias was born in AD 70, and he was a disciple of John. Consequently, when he tells us who the authors of the gospels were based on what he heard from John (and others presumably), then I think we CAN know what what happening between AD 50 and AD 130). He and others (such as Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr) tell us.

When and how was this naming accomplished, and is there any written record of this project being ordered, undertaken and completed?

No one knows exactly. That doesn't make one theory more valid than another, but the evidence is not very strong for the supposed authors of "Matthew", "Mark", and "John". Let me explain why, but first let's take care of Luke. It is quite likely the author of Luke-Acts is Luke the physician, an associate of Paul's. This comes from the fact that he leaves himself out of events in Acts that he would have been present in. However, as it has been pointed out to me, there is another possibility that is just as likely and that is that Luke-Acts was written by a close associate of Luke. I'm comfortable enough to say it was Luke and it makes not much difference if it was Luke himself or one of his close associates (the only difference it makes is how well the author of Luke-Acts knew Paul - if Luke he knew Paul personally and knew him well, and if an associate of Luke then he may not have known Paul himself).

This may be the first time in my life that I'm going to invoke "Occam's Razor" since I think folks often do so to avoid considering all alternatives thoroughly. However, does it REALLY make sense to add a second anonymous person into the mix? Why stop there? Why not assert that it was actually a friend of someone who knew Luke? Or a friend of a friend of a friend of Luke? This would enable the skeptic to cast doubt on Luke-Acts completely.

See my point? Of all the gospels, Lucan authorship is probably the least contested.

The implausibility of Matthean and Markan authorship should not need to be explained to you. Mark is supposedly written by an associate of Peter's. Even if Peter was still alive when Mark was written, it's clear that the author is not an eyewitness of Jesus or someone who is closely associated with such a person. In fact Mark has literacy dependence on pre-existing material, just as Luke and Matthew have literacy dependence on Mark as well as at least one other source.

Papias states that according to John the Elder, Mark was an associate of Peter and wrote down Peter's sayings - though not necessarily in the correct order. Luke, therefore, made an effort to write an "orderly" account.

Matthean authorship has the same issue - if Matthew was a prominent disciple of Jesus then he wouldn't need literacy dependence on Mark (who wasn't) and whatever other document or documents he was using.

No, but that doesn't mean that he didn't copy from Mark in order to save time. Why re-invent the wheel, ya know?

Luke - well no one's claiming he sat down and had lunch with any disciples, and in the introduction of his gospel he states that he's used pre-existing material to complete his work.

Actually, that's EXACTLY what is claimed. Luke would have known Peter (he and Paul were both imprisoned in Rome), he probably met numerous other apostles during Paul's missionary journey's, and it is almost certain that he got much of his infancy narrative directly from Mary.

The Gospel of John - much like the books of the Pentateuch such as Genesis and Exodus - has at least three different authors.

Which is not quite the same as saying that the Apostle John (the unnamed disciple in several passages) was not involved in the authorship of the gospel which bears his name.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.  

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?  

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.

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.........

[athrock]

Did you know that in the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest "complete" New Testament (it actually contains two additional books), the "Gospels" do not include any description of the Resurrection?

I'm guessing nobody knew that because, well, it doesn't appear to be true. Unless by "the 'Gospels'", you simply meant Mark's Gospel, which is missing 16:9-20.

With respect to the OP, none of the Gospels show up until at least the second century, at which point there was plenty of time for different names to be ascribed to the traditional, and non-traditional ("The Preaching of Peter", "Apocalypse of Peter", "Apocalypse of James," "The Acts of John," "The Acts of Paul," "The Traditions of Matthew", etc.) texts, all of which were assumed to be authoritative as no universal canon had yet been arranged. It's not surprising that figures who were perceived as important in the early church - including Luke, Mark, Barnabas, Hermas, etc. - would have their names ascribed to a work, regardless if they were the actual author or not. This would lend credibility to the ideas in the work (which various factions at this point were combatively vying for) or it could allow the work to present itself as expressing ideas that at the very least were to be understood as consistent with the thought of said author.

When you say, "show up", what exactly do you mean? 

In the article cited by Jormungandr, you can see how early the gospels were being cited by the Early Church Fathers. Heck, even Peter references Paul's letters AS SCRIPTURE in 2 Peter 3:16.

I think we agree on this: that later works such as those you have named NEEDED to be written under the name of a more important author (such as Peter or Thomas) precisely because they did not have much in the way of tradition to vouch for them whereas the legitimate gospels had solid credentials passed down by word of mouth.

[athrock]

Among the many theories floating around the Interweb are the notions that the authorship of the gospels is unknown, that they were published anonymously, and that the assignment of authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came much later.

Apart from the obvious question of why the Early Church would ascribe the writing of a gospel to a hated tax collector (Matthew), a Gentile (Luke) and a young man who wasn't even present (Mark) rather than the "pillars" of the Church such as Peter or James, another question comes to mind:

Where are these anonymous manuscripts?

If the gospels were in circulation for many years before they were ascribed to the authors whose names they now bear, shouldn't there be copies of the original documents bearing no name at all? And shouldn't some existing manuscripts show evidence of having been altered to include the authors' names later as was the case with the word "Chrestianos" in Tacitus' Annals?

And if the gospels were written and circulated anonymously throughout the near East, North Africa and the Mediterranean basin among dozens if not hundreds of local churches, wouldn't that require some effort by someone to ensure the standardization of these new names of the gospels on every single flyleaf of every single manuscript in every single church in all of Christendom? If so, 

When and how was this naming accomplished, and is there any written record of this project being ordered, undertaken and completed?

Do skeptics have documentation of such a project found in the writings of an Early Church Father? Wouldn't Pope Clement, St. Ignatius, or St. Irenaeus have known of such an event and mentioned it AS A TRIUMPH OF CHURCH UNITY and as a SIGN OF THE APOSTOLIC ORIGIN of the gospels?

Surely they would. So...why the silence?

The English committee that wrote the Bible  gave the Gospels English names to show that it was an elaborate joke.  BTW, all of the "J" words were created in the Late Middle Ages after an Italian guy created the letter "J".

I'm not sure where you "learned" this theory, but there's simply no truth in it.

I recommend you read a good book on the history of the canon of scripture.

[athrock]

What I find weird is that the gospels are often assumed to have more credibility because we don't know who wrote them.

By whom?

How does not knowing make them more credible?

They are obvious fiction. If I state to a Christian some more modern obvious fiction, with a known author, they'll just say "it's fiction" and dismiss the entire works with two words.

When I do the same, I get all manner of ridiculous reasons why it is actually true.

"Obvious fiction"? This is just an assertion, rob...the kind of post that you are famous for.

What makes it so "obvious"? The presence of supernatural events? And what makes these miracles "obvious fiction", rob? Only the fact that you define them as such.

"Show me the evidence."

"Okay. Here is an account of an inexplicable event which suggests that God may exist."

"That can't be a miracle, because 1) supernatural events don't happen, 2) God does not exist. Show me the evidence."

It's a circular argument containing two presuppositions, and you make it over and over and over again.

[athrock]

I didn't mean they were written in the second century, I meant any reference to them or physical evidence by which we might evaluate the claims of the OP vis-à-vis authorship.

They are referenced extensively, including in the second century from other writings. I think what people forget is that a new testament manuscript exclusively refers to a manuscript that contained at least one book of the new testament (and most contained more than one book, it's only these really early ones that are only one or two books). The New Testament contains many quotes from the OT, and many more direct and indirect references as well, and second century church writings also quote from the OT, the NT, and even the apocrypha. The reason why you find quotes from the apocrypha in second century writings but not in any of the first-century NT writings is anyone's guess really, but I believe it's because most of the books were written by 66AD - including all three synoptic gospels. This was a time when the church was ruled from Jerusalem, and from 70AD on it wasn't - it was more decentralised and chaotic - and we don't really know what happened in the years following the destruction of the original church, but we do know what came of it later. Anyway, by the second century they had a greater appreciation for some of the writings that the Jews of the time rejected. This might have been why they began using Greek versions of the OT as well - perhaps it wasn't just for convenience, but because it separated them from the Jews that read it in Hebrew. We know by the late second century there were at least 4 complete translations of the OT (comprising all 49 books/22 scrolls as we know them).

The letters of Ignatius are written early second century (c. 107AD), and contain quotes from the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, the pastoral epistles, Hebrews, and James. And there's 1 Clement - again it's written either late first century or early second century, and contains a small number of NT quotes including Paul's letters, James, Hebrews, Acts, and 1-2 Peter.

So you're wrong, the earliest literary evidence is from the early second century, where there are not just references but direct quotes from many (but not all) of the NT books.

If you ask the Catholics, they will say that Clement was the fourth pope (after Peter, Linus, and Anacletus), and that his letter to the Corinthians provides evidence of the primacy of his see because the Corinthians asked for Clement's assistance and he did not hesitate to express himself authoritatively over another local church.

[athrock]

I don't taks these seriously as "historical", when they contains nonsense bullshit. This means the authors were either delusional, or in the business of making shit up. Or, in this case, believing stories which were obviously made up. Either way, none of these give me any confidence that the authors were interested in portraying truth.

If I had to guess, I'd actually come down on the side of the authors intending them to be non-literal stories, or fictional propaganda. Even if they didn't, integrity and accuracy were clearly of no concern to them as the gospels tell an increasingly ridiculous tale when viewed chronologically. Especially with Matthew going off at the deep end and adding a bunch of nonsense of his own.

You might be able to try and establish the existence of characters within the fictional story, but to just believe anything happened as written without verification is not something I'd ever do.

Also, the resurrection is supposed to be absolutely central to Christianity. Yet it's a forgery. It is quite incredible this doesn't cause Christians concern.

The reason this doesn't cause the atheists who become Christians concern is because after careful study, they recognize that the NT is far more credible than you appreciate.

At some point, you really need to admit TO YOURSELF that you are woefully ignorant of both scripture and the history of the early Church and that you are spouting OPINIONS that are based on the misinformation you have gleaned from the Internet.

[athrock]

If I had to guess, I'd actually come down on the side of the authors intending them to be non-literal stories, or fictional propaganda. Even if they didn't, integrity and accuracy were clearly of no concern to them as the gospels tell an increasingly ridiculous tale when viewed chronologically. Especially with Matthew going off at the deep end and adding a bunch of nonsense of his own.

Well it's a good thing we don't listen to unqualified hacks like yourself then. How do you know the author of Matthew "added" anything he didn't find in pre-written material?

How did they "invent" the sermon on the mount when James had already made about 20 direct references to it in an epistle of his?

[abaris]

I recommend you read a good book on the history of the canon of scripture.

And I hand that recommendation right back at your not so humble self. Maybe starting out with what the classical age understood as history and then moving on to the different concils compiling and rejecting scripts until they found something like a canon. Which, by the way, was forbidden to read in it's entirety for any layman in the Middle Ages.

Reading's always good. Especially when it comes to history. Prevents stupid questions.

[athrock]

Still getting worked up over Jesus, I see. Let it go man. I'm only giving my opinion. I'd love to not have to skip past all your posts like I do with so many other people.

That's right, rob.

You are ONLY giving your opinion. That's the whole problem with your posts...they are just the opinions of an ignorant man.

Wouldn't it make better sense to "give" what you know from reading good books by reputable authors - or better yet, the NT and the Early Church Fathers themselves?