Timothy Paul Jones writes an article exploring this question posted here.
According
to Bart Ehrman, [The New Testament Gospels] were written thirty-five to
sixty-five years after Jesus’ death, … not by people who were eyewitnesses, but
by people living later. …
Where
did these people get their information from? … After the days of Jesus, people
started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the faith. …
When … Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they
attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of
apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke the traveling companion of
Paul). …
Because
our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different)
titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar
names (e.g., “The Gospel According to Matthew”) do not go back to a single
“original” title, but were added later by scribes.
B. Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of a New
Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 248-249; B.
Ehrman, Lost Christianities (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005), 235; B. Ehrman and W. Craig, “Is There Historical Evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus?: A Debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman”
(March 28, 2006).
These comments raise a few questions:
1) Does
this absence of titles provide evidence that the Gospels circulated anonymously?
2) Why do
skeptical scholars continue to claim that the New Testament Gospels were
originally anonymous?
3) What
type of “wide variety” of titles is actually present in Gospel manuscripts from
the first few centuries of Christian faith?
4) What would have happened if the names had been fabricated
later?
5) Given
the wide geographic distribution of the Gospels in the second century, what do
you suppose would have happened if second-century Christians had suddenly
decided to start fabricating names for the Gospels to make them seem
authoritative?
6) In a
world where communication was far from instant and the church was
decentralized, how could the same authors’ names possibly have been linked to
the same Gospels with such uniform consistency?
The answers to these questions can lead us to the following reasonable conclusions:
1) There is virtually no evidence to suggest
that the New Testament Gospels ever circulated anonymously.
2) Before the end of the second century, the
New Testament Gospels were already a settled set of four books, with a clear
tradition traceable through eyewitness testimonies to four particular
first-century authors. But don't take my word for it, read the article, don't wait for the movie.
Have a little hope on me, Roger
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