RESPONDblogs: Who Wrote the New Testament Gospels?

You will often hear the claim that the New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – are not actually written by those people at all. Rather, they were written anonymously at some point late in the history of the early Church. And to give the books an air of authenticity and authority, they were given the names of central figures (like Matthew, for example) to pass them off as true. In other words – the Gospels are claimed to be forgeries.

 

Is this a reasonable claim?

I don’t think so. I think the New Testament Gospels were written by the people who they have traditionally been attributed to (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Let’s look at some of my evidence.

 

MARK:

There is compelling evidence from outside of the Bible that John Mark, who we meet in Acts, penned this Gospel.

Let’s look at what some of the early Church Fathers said of this account.

• Justin Martyr (AD 150) described Mark’s Gospel as the “memoirs of Peter” (Peter was one of Jesus’ original inner circle and an Apostle). It is suggested that it was written while in Italy to encourage the Roman Christians.
• Iraneus (AD 185) referred to John Mark as the Disciple and interpreter of Peter. This is in fact the relationship that we see playing out in the Acts account (although as we read it was quite a contentious and rocky relationship at times!)
• Papias (AD 70 to AD 155) said “Mark wrote down accurately whatsoever [Peter] remembered. …he took special care not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.”

And here’s a thought to ponder. If Mark’s Gospel was a forgery, why wasn’t it ascribed to Peter or one of the other Apostles? Surely if the aim was to pass it off as genuine…the scribe who falsely named the author would have chosen a top notch source. Instead – we see the author is John Mark – a well known but frankly minor character in the history of the Church.

 

LUKE:

Again, here we have a book claimed to be authored by an arguably minor character in church history. Luke the physician is not one of the direct eye witnesses to Jesus life and resurrection. He is a minor companion. He is certainly involved in the early Church, and we can see that from Paul’s letters (check Colossians 4:14, for example). But it would not make sense to ascribe a forgery to a minor individual.

Scholars compare the style of Luke’s writing and confirm that – just as both books claim –Lukes Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were both written by the same person.

What we see in Luke’s writing is a mixture of eye witness reporting and direct personal testimony. For example, in Acts 16 we see a shift in the language being used. It stops talking about “they and them” and begins to use the terms “we and us”. In other words, Luke is saying…and I remember this part because I was part of this! Certainly much of the detail we read in these later chapters must have come from someone who was there and witnessed it themselves.

In summary, both Luke and Acts show evidence of early eye witness reporting and personal testimony from someone known to be in the right place and time to record both.

 

JOHN:

The disciple John is mentioned over 20 times by the other Gospels, and judging by some of the jealousy that went on, John was a central figure in the group of Jesus’ first disciples. But John’s Gospel never refers to the individual John directly. Instead it continually uses the term, “the disciple Jesus loved” to refer to that person. Why would the author do that? Well – perhaps he assumed that the audience he was writing to would know who he was. Perhaps he had learned some modesty in his old age?

Further – at the end of the Gospel, in chapter 21, we read “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down.”

 

MATTHEW:

Matthew, like John, was one of Jesus original inner circle. Mark and Luke might have been minor characters in the events that unfolded. But John and Matthew were not.

Going outside of the Bible again to the church fathers, Origen (AD 185 to 254) says

“Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned the tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism.”

 

 

I’ve briefly laid out some of the internal and external evidence supporting the authorship of the New Testament Gospels. But really I think the question comes down to this. Who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the conspiracy theorists? Or are you going to trust the testimony of the early leaders of the Church who lived a few decades after the Gospels were written?

I for one – am going to trust the early church leaders. Surely that makes sense?

RESPONDblogs: Were Important Books Edited Out Of the New Testament?

A friend of mine recently commented to me, “Of course the writings of the New Testament are all about Politics and Power. Certain men decided what the Bible would say – and they omitted the books that did not fit with their message. I do not trust the Bible for this reason.”

 

The whiff of conspiracy is like the ignition of rocket fuel. People get interested! 15 years ago, Dan Brown built his career on it.

“The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds…it has evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.” – Leigh Teabing, The Da Vinci Code

 

Is my friend right? Or has Dan Brown’s fictional universe begun to replace history in popular thinking?

 

It is worth noting a few historical facts as we consider this.

 

FIRST – The Christian church was quickly scattered in the first century. Persecution by the Roman authorities was brutal. And so initially, no controlling church organization existed. Because people were scattered across Europe, Asia Minor, etc. In fact – if you read the New Testament (NT), you will notice that many of the books are actually letters written to individuals or churches at that difficult time.

 

SECOND – because the church was scattered in the first century, not every Christian church had every one of the important, authoritative writings. Not every early Christian believer had access to every letter. It was a more primitive time with regard to travel and communication.

 

 

So this comes to the heart of the matter! Who decided what was “Scripture” and what was “wanna-be Scripture”? Who controlled what was in, and what was out when it came to the NT? Is it true that it took hundreds of years before political winds finally blew todays NT canon together?

 

I would suggest that the evidence suggests – NO – this is not how the NT  canon was selected. So what does the historical evidence suggest, then?

 

FIRST – the majority of the canonical NT books gained acceptance from the earliest of times in the Christian Church. Even before the NT was complete,  significant letters were copied in part and as a whole and began to be circulated around the scattered church. This was essentially happening before the later NT books were even written yet. If we want evidence to support this theory, we don’t have to look very far at all. The Apostle Peter, who was a member of Jesus’ inner circle during his time on Earth, refers to Paul – Christian persecutor turned Evangelist to the Gentiles – in these terms.

“This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him— 16 speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture.” 2 Peter 3:15-16, NLT

 

In other words – Paul’s letters were considered to be authoritative during Paul’s lifetime and during Peter’s lifetime in the first century.

 

What this suggests to me is – that the first century Christian Church was simply recognizing the written works that held authority and had the power to change people’s lives. No council existed to decide which works held to the party line – the people either recognized divine authority in a book – or not.

 

By the way – notice that a crucial criteria for acceptance was – connection to the early Apostles. Much of the NT is written by these men themselves, some of it (like Mark and Luke) was penned by their close colleagues.

 

 

SECOND – a book or a letter was considered Authoritative if it’s teaching was consistent with the established Jewish canon – which Christians refer to today as the Old Testament

 

THIRD – by the end of the first century, all 27 NT books had been written and received and agreed to by various parts of the scattered church. Yet because communication was poor – not all the written works were available to all the early Christians.

 

FOURTH – A generation after the last of the Apostles had died, every one of the 27 NT books had been cited as being authoritative by one of the 2^nd century Church fathers.

 

FIFTH – Yes there were debates amongst the churches around some of the books. It wasn’t exactly clear who the author of the Letter to the Hebrews was. Yet its teaching was clearly consistent with the other authoritative works. A book called the Shepherd of Hermes was considered authoritative by some of the early churches. But when it was shared more broadly, people noticed that its theology was suspect. It taught that – if we sin after we have become a Christian – we have blown it and we will never get to heaven. This is at odds with the rest of the NT that teaches people are saved by God’s Grace when we put our trust and our faith in him; and he forgives us when we honestly ask for it. And so – the general consensus was – to reject the Shepherd of Hermes as an authoritative work.

 

 

 

In summary then – the NT cannon was not selected behind closed doors for power reasons. Rather, the fledgling Christian church recognized the authoritative books and so functioned with a working but growing canon from the earliest of times.

 

 

So what of the later Councils? What of the famous Council of Nicea that Constantine held in AD 325? Ironically there is no evidence that Constantine was involved in selecting the NT canon at all! It had already existed for decades. Rather – Nicea was all about a powerful leader gathering the Church together to debate heresies that were growing around the nature of Jesus Christ. Was he fully God as well as fully man?

 

Other later councils met to discuss the canon (Hippo in AD393 and Carthage in AD397). But this was not a politically engineered process. Rather the work of the council was simply to recognize what the growing church had decided years ago. Which books held authority and held the power to change people’s lives. And which did not.

 

Is the canon closed? Should any books be added to the NT? Was a mistake made? Enter the conspiracy theorists. But surely the question to those proposing a conspiracy is simply this. Show us your case? Present the book that should be included and explain why? If it wasn’t good enough for the early Christians then it sure isn’t good enough for the church of today!

 

 

 

Pop culture may have lost hold of this now…but The NT cannon was not selected behind closed doors for power reasons. Rather, the fledgling Christian church recognized the authoritative books. And they remain powerful life changing works to this day.

 

Points to Dan Brown, then. Fun book – tragic consequences on pop culture.