In my last post, I discussed two very important claims that New Testament scholars (myself included) often make. 1) The Gospel titles (The Gospel According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) were added later than the composition of the gospels, and 2) the four canonical gospels are all anonymous.The main conclusion reached in the last post was that a common assumption that is made based upon these claims, that we have early gospel manuscripts without the titles, is an inaccurate assumption. In fact, the earliest manuscripts we have that have a space for a title, all bear the traditional gospel titles. The image to the right is a page of p75, a 3rd century manuscript that contains the gospels of Luke and John. In the image, one can see the title of Luke (euangelion kata loukan), marking the ending of Luke's gospel followed by a couple of line breaks, then the title of John (euangelion kata ioanen). As far as New Testament manuscripts, we don't have much that is earlier than the 3rd century, and much of that is fragmentary (meaning it would not contain a space for a title). So, the manuscript evidence demonstrates consistent naming of the gospels in the 3rd century. But, this is not surprising at all to NT scholars since the traditional titles of the gospels are certainly established in the 2nd century, so we would expect no less. Of course manuscripts from the 3rd century would bear the traditional titles. So, barring the discovery of earlier manuscripts, the manuscript evidence will not be able to solve the issue of gospel titles, how early they were attached to the gospels, and whether the gospels were originally anonymous.
Let's examine for a moment the claim that all four canonical gospels are anonymous? What do scholars mean when they say this? Well, if they are being careful, what they mean specifically, is that the gospels are formally anonymous. That is, leaving off the issue of the titles for a moment, and not seeking to answer the question of whether the titles were there originally or not, in the stories the gospels present, the author does not step forward and identify himself.* Nowhere in the four canonical gospels does the author say something like, "I, Matthew, am the one who witnessed these events," or "I, John, was the disciple who leaned against Jesus' breast." The gospel authors, within the stories themselves, do not self identify. This is what scholars mean when they call the gospels anonymous.
Now, each of the four gospels are different and need to be examined individually. So, the formal anonymity of Matthew and Mark are 100% with no concrete clues as to authorship (the tax collector named "Matthew" in Matthew and the naked young man in Mark are certainly not "concrete" identifications of authorship).
Luke and John do give slight clues. Let's take a look at Luke 1:1-4:
"1 Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed."The author of Luke identifies himself here in many ways, but not by name. A few things can be known about the author's identity from this passage.
1) The author knows of other attempts to write "gospels."
2) The author claims to depend on, but is not himself, an eyewitness.
3) The author has undertaken investigation.
4) The author wants to provide an orderly account.
All well and good, but none of these identifications get us closer to a name for the author.
Now look at John 21:23-25:
"23 So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”Here we have a tantalizing statement that seems to attribute authorship. This is an aside by the narrator of the gospel. The disciple in question is not given a name, but throughout the gospel of John this disciple is known as the "beloved disciple," who is never associated with John son of Zebedee within the gospel. On first glance, it would seem that the beloved disciple is the author of the gospel, but that cannot be. In verse 24, the author(s) clearly self identify as "we." "We know that his [the beloved disciple] testimony is true." So, this gospel is written by a "we" who are basing what they write on the testimony of the beloved disciple. Tantalizing? Yes. Any closer to identifying a name for the author(s)? No.
24 This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. 25 But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."
Well, that is enough for today. Come back next time for more.
*I am assuming the authors of the four gospels are male. I have no concrete evidence for this assumption other than the typical patriarchal nature of the first century Roman Empire.
"Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account..." It's odd that Luke doesn't name any of the people who wrote down an orderly account... Unless he did not know their names.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a naive question. But as the Gospel of John were written around 60 years after the Crucifixion, any living disciples would be really old. Could the comment about such a never-dying disciple simply be an attempt by the author(s) to increase the validity of their work, by making up an explanation for how an eye-witness still lived?
ReplyDeletePerhaps a naive question. But as the Gospel of John were written around 60 years after the Crucifixion, any living disciples would be really old. Could the comment about such a never-dying disciple simply be an attempt by the author(s) to increase the validity of their work, by making up an explanation for how an eye-witness still lived?
ReplyDeleteNot a naive question at all. I think you are right in the dating of John's gospel to somewhere around 90 C.E. But, I think that the evidence runs slightly counter to your claim that the beloved disciple still lived. I think that the verse is actually an attempt to cover over the idea that this beloved disciple is now dead. If there was a rumor in the community that this disciple would never die, and he was now dead, this needed to be addressed. Thus, what we find in the text. Again, pointing to authorship by someone (the WE) other than the beloved disciple. What do you think? Thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteNot a naive question at all. I think you are right in the dating of John's gospel to somewhere around 90 C.E. But, I think that the evidence runs slightly counter to your claim that the beloved disciple still lived. I think that the verse is actually an attempt to cover over the idea that this beloved disciple is now dead. If there was a rumor in the community that this disciple would never die, and he was now dead, this needed to be addressed. Thus, what we find in the text. Again, pointing to authorship by someone (the WE) other than the beloved disciple. What do you think? Thanks for the comment.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your reply!
DeleteTo be honest, I think your explanation seems more reasonable than mine. Though I didn't intend to claim that the beloved disciple still lived at the time of the writing, but that he was claimed as the source by the author(s), and that the long-lived disciple provided a convenient alibi for how they would have an eye-witness account so long after the actual events.. A convenient source, that no one could talk to and fact-check properly. This doesn't seem to run counter to your explanation, and the passage would then serve multiple purposes.
I should probably mention that I'm purely an amateur when it comes to history, and that I look forward to reading the rest of your essays on the authorship of the gospels!
Thanks for the good conversation here. Yes, I certainly think that the appeal to the beloved disciple, an eyewitness of Jesus living long after the events can be seen as an attempt to bolster the authority of the gospel.
ReplyDelete"The author of Luke identifies himself here in many ways, but not by name. A few things can be known about the author's identity from this passage.
ReplyDelete1) The author knows of other attempts to write "gospels."
2) The author claims to depend on, but is not himself, an eyewitness.
3) The author has undertaken investigation.
4) The author wants to provide an orderly account."
You say "A few things we can know" but aren't those just things that are said. We can't know things just because they are said. I mean this both in the sense that obviously the author has clear motive to embellish his credentials and sources, and also that clearly the narrative of the author is part of the text, and therefore may be part of the same . . . I don't have a good word for it, but part of the allegory of the text?
Specifically, "so that you may know the truth of what has been..." sure sounds more like something you would say at the beginning to cast your narrative regardless of the authors actual goals, rather than anything which conveys a specific meaning about the author's intention.
Kaelik,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. First of all, if you are using "know" in an absolute sense, then you are right. We cannot "know" anything from the distant past in an absolute sense. But, from the stand point of historical investigation, which aims at knowledge in a probabilistic sense, not an absolute sense, then I think that we can have that kind of knowledge.
Of course, all claims of an ancient text must be examined by historical methods to test their accuracy. Not everything Luke writes is necessarily factual. The question is, is there any good reason to question the claims that I have made above about the author's self identification in the preface to Luke? I don't think so.
For example, take #1 above: this seems to be an admission, that might actually make the author's task of convincing you to read his version all that much more difficult, since there are other options. So, I do not think that there is any reason to doubt the the claim that there are other versions of the Jesus story.
Again, #2. This could be embellishment to bolster the author's claims to authority. But, the interesting point here, and the one I drew is that this is clearly NOT a claim by the author to be an eyewitness himself. That again is an admission that does not help his case to be authoritative.
We could go through all four, but again, it is not that everything that is said is to be believed without question. It is that one must use historical methods and reasoning to determine the probability of the factuality of what is said. I see no historical bases for questioning any of the four claims about the author made above.
Nice blog post
ReplyDelete