Here’s How We Know the Canonical Gospels Were Originally Anonymous

The four canonical gospels are traditionally attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew is said to have been a tax collector who became one of Jesus’s twelve apostles. Mark is a minor figure mentioned in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles who is said to have worked as a translator and secretary for the apostle Peter. Luke is said to have been a Greek physician who became a travelling companion of the apostle Paul. John is said to have been a fisherman who became one of Jesus’s twelve apostles along with his brother James.

Despite how well known these attributions are, however, New Testament scholars have realized for well over a hundred years now that the four canonical gospels were, in fact, originally anonymous works. They only became attributed to the authors to whom they are so widely attributed today in the second half of the second century CE, around a hundred years after the first of these gospels was originally written. In this article, I intend to explain the evidence for how scholars know this.

Dating the Gospel of Mark

Before we can talk about who wrote the canonical gospels, we first need to know when the canonical gospels were written. The Gospel of Mark (henceforth abbreviated as gMark) is almost certainly the earliest surviving gospel. Internal and external evidence strongly indicates that gMark was written sometime around the year 70 CE or thereabouts.

Possibly the strongest evidence that gMark was written sometime around this year is the way the gospel describes the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. gMark 13:1–2 states, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’”

In gMark 13:14, Jesus further warns, as translated in the NRSV:

“But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.”

Later, gMark 15:29–30 emphasizes Jesus’s prediction of the destruction of the Temple again, claiming that people mocked Jesus while he was hanging on the cross, misinterpreting his prophecy to mean that he claimed he was going to destroy the Temple himself. The passage reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV:

“Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’”

These passages almost unquestionably refer to how, in August 70 CE, the Roman legions under the command of the general Titus sacked and burned the city of Jerusalem. They utterly destroyed the Second Temple and all the buildings around it.

As the Temple and the buildings around it burned, the Roman legionaries erected their standards, bearing the images of the emperor and Roman deities, inside the court of the Temple itself, performed ritual sacrifices to them, and hailed Titus as emperor, amounting to the greatest sacrilege against the Jewish God and the Jewish religion. (This incident is recorded by the Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus in The Jewish War 6.316.)

Christian apologists regularly try to claim that Jesus could have genuinely predicted the destruction of the Second Temple forty years before it actually happened and that gMark therefore could have been written before the year 70 CE. Believe it or not, even though I am a skeptic through and through, I do think that the first part of this argument is actually plausible.

Although the predictions of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in gMark are accurate, they are also quite vague. As I myself have proven in the past, vague predictions about future doom and devastation are virtually always bound to come true eventually. gMark essentially portrays Jesus as predicting simply that the Temple will be destroyed at some point in the future, without any specific details about when or how this would happen. Jesus didn’t need to have the supernatural gift of prophecy to make this prediction, since, quite simply, this prediction was bound to come true eventually, since all buildings will ultimately be destroyed at some point.

This argument, however, has a major flaw that Christian apologists have, for the most part, ignored. The most significant part of the passages I have quoted above is not actually Jesus’s prediction itself, but rather the way gMark describes his prediction. You see, in gMark 13:14, the author inserts his own authorial comment to the reader: “ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω.” This means “Let the reader understand.” In making this comment, the author of gMark is clearly hinting to the reader in his own voice that the prophecy Jesus has just made had recently been fulfilled.

There is other evidence that gMark must have been written sometime around 70 CE or shortly thereafter, but the author’s comment hinting at the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem is probably the strongest individual piece of evidence.

ABOVE: The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, painted in 1850 by the Scottish painter David Roberts

Dating the Gospels of Matthew and Luke

The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke (henceforth abbreviated as gMatthew and gLuke respectively) must have both been written after gMark, because they both rely heavily on gMark as a source.

In fact, gMatthew and gLuke often directly copy long passages of text word-for-word from gMark with only minor alterations. Over half of the material in gMatthew and nearly half of the material in gLuke is copied from gMark. Because gMark, gMatthew, and gLuke are so similar for this and other reasons, they are known collectively as the “Synoptic Gospels.” (The word Synoptic comes from Greek and means “Seeing Together.”)

We know that gMark was written first and the authors of gMatthew and gLuke relied on it, rather than vice versa, for several reasons. These reasons have been covered in many places by many people. Indeed, only a week ago, Andrew Mark Henry, a postdoctoral fellow at the American Research Center in Egypt, posted a video on his YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast that covers some of the main reasons. I do recommend watching his video if you have time. He has an excellent channel with lots of extremely well researched educational content about different religions and their histories. Nonetheless, I will summarize some of the main reasons here myself.

One major reason why we know gMark came first is because gMark is written in extremely crude, simple Greek that is often very unidiomatic. gMatthew and gLuke often correct gMark’s language to make it more idiomatic and more pleasing to read. It makes sense why the authors of gMatthew and gLuke would correct gMark’s language in this way if we assume that gMark came first, but, if we assume gMatthew or gLuke came first and the author of gMark was relying on one of them, it would make no sense why the author of gMark would deliberately change gMatthew or gLuke’s grammar to make it less readable.

ABOVE: Diagram from Wikimedia Commons showing the Two-Source Hypothesis, the most widely accepted explanation of the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels among scholars, which holds that the authors of gMatthew and gLuke worked independently, but both relied on gMark and another common written source or body of sources known as “Q”

Another major reason why we can be reasonably sure that gMark came first is because gMatthew and gLuke include stories that are not included in gMark that it would make no sense for the author of gMark to leave out if he were relying on either of the other two Synoptic Gospels. The most striking case of this is gMark’s complete omission of any in-person appearance of the resurrected Jesus.

As I previously discussed in this article I wrote in February 2020 about textual criticism and the Bible, gMark originally ended abruptly with gMark 16:8. In the original ending of gMark, the women went to the tomb on the morning of the day after the Sabbath to discover that the tomb was empty. A young man in a white robe told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then women fled from the tomb and the author says that they told no one what they had seen, because they were afraid. Then the gospel just ends, without the resurrected Jesus ever making even a single appearance to anyone.

gMatthew and gLuke, on the other hand, include detailed descriptions of alleged post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. It is easy to see how the authors of gMatthew and gLuke might have been dissatisfied with the ending of gMark and therefore made sure to include detailed post-resurrection appearances in their own gospels.

By contrast, if the author of gMark were relying on gMatthew or gLuke, this would mean that, for some bizarre reason, he was reading a source that included multiple detailed descriptions of post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, but he decided not to include any of them in his own narrative and instead decided to end his gospel with the women fleeing from the empty tomb in fear.

ABOVE: Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb, painted in the 1590s by the Italian Baroque painter Annibale Carracci

A third major reason why we can be sure that the authors of gMatthew and gLuke relied on gMark and not vice versa is because, anytime all three Synoptic Gospels tell the same story, gMatthew and gLuke almost never agree with each other about what happened unless they also agree with gMark.

Sometimes gMark and gMatthew agree in contradiction with gLuke. Sometimes gMark and gLuke agree in contradiction with gMatthew. gMatthew and gLuke, however, never agree with each other in contradiction with gMark, except in a few very rare, unusual instances known as the “minor agreements.” In other words, gMark is always the “middle term” between gMatthew and gLuke.

Knowing that gMatthew and gLuke rely heavily on gMark provides essential information for establishing when the gospels were written and who wrote them. Because gMatthew and gLuke rely on gMark and we know that gMark was written sometime around 70 CE, we know that gMatthew and gLuke must have been written after this point. As I will discuss later in this article, however, external sources attest that both of these gospels were in widespread circulation by the early second century CE. They therefore both must have been written before around 100 CE.

Dating the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John (henceforth abbreviated as gJohn) is generally agreed to be the latest of the four canonical gospels. It is markedly different from the three Synoptic Gospels in terms of both its style and its content and it portrays Jesus in a radically different light. The author seems to demonstrate his awareness of the existence of earlier gospels in gJohn 20:30–31 and it is possible the author may have been aware of the earlier Synoptic Gospels. Nonetheless, gJohn is not obviously reliant on any of the other surviving gospels to a significant extent in the same way that gMatthew and gLuke are obviously reliant on gMark.

gJohn seems to much more overtly position Jesus in terms of Greek and Roman religions than the Synoptic Gospels. Notably, as I previously discussed in this article from December 2019 about the often-exaggerated similarities between Jesus and the Greek god Dionysos, gJohn makes much more extensive use of symbolism pertaining to wine and grapes than the Synoptic Gospels in a way that is reminiscent of Dionysos. (See, for instance, the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana in gJohn 2:1–11 and the Parable of the True Vine in gJohn 15:1–17.)

gJohn also contains much more blatant anti-Semitism than any of the Synoptic Gospels. (See, for instance, the confrontation between Jesus and “the Jews” in gJohn 8:21–59, in which Jesus calls his Jewish interlocutors children of Satan.) The increased use of imagery associated with Greek and Roman deities and increased anti-Semitism found in gJohn both seem to be reflective of the situation in the late first century CE and early second century CE, by which point Christianity was predominantly a Gentile religion and Christians were trying to distance themselves from Judaism to a greater extent than before.

The theology of gJohn also contains many elements in common with Christian Gnosticism, a movement which first began to emerge near the end of the first century CE. All of these factors, combined with other factors I haven’t mentioned, suggest that gJohn was written no earlier than the 90s CE.

Meanwhile, the earliest surviving fragment of a manuscript copy of any text that is now included in the New Testament is Rylands Library Papyrus P52, a tiny papyrus fragment bearing a portion of the eighteenth chapter of gJohn, which most likely dates to sometime roughly between c. 125 and c. 175 CE. gJohn was surely in circulation for several decades before the papyrus codex from which Papyrus 52 originates was copied. This means that gJohn cannot have been written any later than the middle of the first half of the second century CE.

Based on all this, the best estimate is that gJohn was most likely written sometime between c. 90 and c. 125 CE.

ABOVE: Photograph taken from Wikimedia Commons of the recto side of the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, the earliest surviving fragment of a New Testament text, which contains a portion of chapter eighteen of the Gospel of John and is dated to sometime roughly between c. 125 and c. 175 CE

The gospels’ internal anonymity

Now that we’ve established an outline of approximately when the four canonical gospels were written, we can talk about the evidence that indicates that they were originally anonymous. The first piece of evidence is the gospels’ own internal anonymity. As I have already mentioned and will explain in depth in a moment, the canonical gospels did not originally bear the titles by which they are commonly known today. These titles were most likely first attached to them in the second half of the second century CE.

Even most Christian apologists will concede that, if you ignore the titles, gMark, gMatthew, and gLuke say absolutely nothing about their authors’ identities. Nonetheless, many Christian apologists have tried to claim that the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which was certainly written by the same person as gLuke, contains clues to gLuke’s author’s identity and that the gJohn tells us its author explicitly. I will examine both of these arguments in turn to show how they are incorrect.

The “we” passages in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles

Virtually all scholars agree that the Gospel of Luke was written by the same person as the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (henceforth abbreviated as Acts). A few pieces of evidence that gLuke and Acts were written by the same person include:

  • Acts 1:1 explicitly references gLuke as the author’s “previous book.”
  • gLuke and Acts are addressed to the same person (i.e., someone named “Theophilos”).
  • Acts begins at exactly the point where gLuke ends as a direct continuation of the same narrative.
  • gLuke and Acts use extremely similar language and express fundamentally the same theology, with a consistent emphasis on certain themes throughout both works.
  • There are extensive cross-references between gLuke and Acts.

Unlike gLuke, Acts contains some passages that some readers have interpreted as providing information about the book’s author’s identity. Namely, in Acts 16:10-17, 20:5-16, 21:1-19, and 27:1-28:16, the author uses first-person plural verb forms—as well as the Greek first-person plural pronoun ἡμεῖς (hēmeîs), meaning “we”—to describe the travel group which included the apostle Paul. (Contrary to what some right-wing politicians have recently bizarrely suggested, the Bible does, in fact, contain pronouns.)

Readers since the late second century CE have interpreted these so-called “we passages” as evidence that the otherwise anonymous author of gLuke and Acts was a travelling companion of the apostle Paul. This interpretation, however, is probably not correct. For one thing, if the author of gLuke and Acts were really a travelling companion of the apostle Paul, we would expect him to explicitly identify himself as such to improve his credibility. Why would he cryptically hint about being a travelling companion of the apostle Paul by mysteriously using the first-person plural in a few instances, rather than simply state his identity outright?

There are several other possible interpretations of the “we passages” in Acts. One very popular interpretation holds that the author of gLuke and Acts may have been copying an earlier source that was actually written by a travelling companion of the apostle Paul nearly word-for-word and simply left the narrative in the first-person plural perspective without changing it.

The scholar Vernon Kay Robbins proposes a different interpretation in his paper “By Land and By Sea: The We-Passages and Ancient Sea Voyages,” originally published in pages 215-242 of the book Perspectives on Luke-Acts, edited by C. H. Talbert, published in 1978 by T&T Clark as volume five in the series Perspectives in Religious Studies, Special Studies Series. Robbins holds that the use of the first-person plural in the “we passages” may be a literary artifact derived from Greek and Roman accounts of sea voyages.

In any case, even if we assume that the author of gLuke and Acts really was a travelling companion of the apostle Paul, Paul had many travelling companions and we have no way of narrowing down which one wrote gLuke and Acts based on the works themselves, which are really all we have to go on.

ABOVE: Illustration of Luke the Evangelist writing his gospel from a French manuscript dated to c. 800 CE

The Gospel of John’s claim to have been written by the “beloved disciple”

The Gospel of John is the only canonical gospel that makes an explicit statement about its author’s identity. Nonetheless, gJohn still does not state its putative author’s name. Instead, gJohn 21:20–25 claims that the gospel was written by an unnamed disciple of Jesus. The author refers to this disciple throughout the text as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” The passage claiming that the “disciple whom Jesus loved” wrote the gospel reads as follows, as translated in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):

“Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?’ When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!’ 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?’”

“This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. 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.”

gJohn never clarifies who the “beloved disciple” actually was and, as we shall see in a moment, the earliest external references to gJohn simply attribute the gospel to an “apostle,” without specifying who this “apostle” was.

Starting in the second half of the second century CE, however, some Christians began to assume that the gospel was written by John, the son of Zebedee, because he is the most prominent apostle mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels who is not mentioned by name in gJohn and Christians came to explain his apparent absence by identifying him as the “beloved disciple.” Alas, it is impossible for us to know whether the author of gJohn intended the “beloved disciple” to be John or one of the many other disciples who are not identified in the gospel by name.

There is also very good reason to believe that gJohn’s claim to have been written by the “beloved disciple” is, in fact, a lie—or, if you prefer to put it more nicely, a literary pretense. As I mentioned earlier, all of our evidence strongly indicates that gJohn was written at the very end of the first century CE or even in the early second century CE. By this time, all of the original followers of Jesus must have been dead or extremely elderly. Even if we assume that the “beloved disciple” was merely a boy in his late teenaged years when he was a follower of Jesus in around 30 CE, he must have been at least in his eighties or older by the time gJohn was written, if he was even still alive at all.

The claim that the “beloved disciple” wrote gJohn is also sharply at odds with the language and contents of the gospel itself. The “beloved disciple” is supposed to have been a lower-class, Aramaic-speaking Jewish man from rural Galilee. It is unlikely that he knew how to read and write and even less likely that he knew how to read and write in Greek. He almost certainly was not intimately familiar with Greek and Greco-Jewish philosophy.

gJohn, by contrast, is written in a refined, literary variety of Koine Greek. It uses sophisticated classical rhetorical techniques and it makes extensive references to concepts from Greek and Greco-Jewish philosophy, such as the idea of the λόγος (lógos), which, as I mentioned in this previous article I wrote about the relationship between “paganism” and Christianity, originates with the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Herakleitos of Ephesos (lived c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) and is central to the Gospel.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that a lower-class, Aramaic-speaking Jewish man from rural Galilee of any intellectual capacity could have learned to write Greek like this and could have become so versed in Greek and Greco-Jewish philosophy, simply because the opportunities for a man from such a lowly and foreign background to learn to write Greek and study Greek philosophy at this level were extremely rare.

The fact that gJohn is overtly anti-Semitic at times is further evidence that it was not written by the “beloved disciple.” Whoever the “beloved disciple” was, he was certainly Jewish and most likely saw Jesus as Jewish also. If he had written about Jesus’s conflicts with contemporary Jewish people, he would have most likely framed them as religious conflicts within Judaism.

gJohn, however, portrays Jesus as not merely disagreeing with other Jewish people’s interpretation of Judaism, but openly hostile towards Judaism itself. This is strongly indicative that the author of the gospel was a Gentile writing at a time when Christianity was starting to become distinct from Judaism.

ABOVE: John the Evangelist, painted in the 1620s by the Italian Baroque painter Domenico Zampieri

External evidence for the anonymity of the canonical gospels

Christian apologists often try to explain away the fact that the canonical gospels do not name their authors by pointing out that there are many other surviving ancient writings that do not explicitly name their authors in their body texts that have never been considered anonymous and that we know have always been attributed to those authors ever since they were first written.

As an example of this kind of argument, here is an excerpt from the article “Are the Gospels Anonymous?” written by the Christian apologist Michael Horner for the Christian apologetics website The Life:

“Technically, Ehrman is right — the four Gospels are “anonymous”, in that the author’s name is not explicitly listed in the text, but that does not mean that they were initially presented as texts without authors! It does not mean that we can’t be confident who wrote them.”

“In ancient times the omission of an author’s name in a text was not an unusual practice. We have literature written by Plato, Plutarch, Lucian, and Porphyry that do not contain their name in the text itself and are every bit as ‘anonymous’ as the Gospels, in that sense. But this by no means suggests that we have no idea who the authors were.”

Horner is correct that, just because a work does not explicitly name its author in its body text, this does not mean that the text was originally circulated anonymously. Many surviving works of ancient literature that do not mention their authors’ names in their body texts had authors’ names attached to them from the beginning.

Horner’s argument, however, completely ignores the second and arguably more important piece of evidence that supports the conclusion that the canonical gospels originally circulated for a long time without authors’ names attached to them. The fact that the texts of the gospels themselves do not state their authors’ names is important, but it is only the first half of the argument.

The second half of the argument is that every single Christian source written before the second half of the second century CE that references the gospels that are now considered canonical in any identifiable way refers to them without naming any authors, despite the fact that these same sources always name the author when they reference any other kind of work.

This, combined with the fact that the gospels themselves do not name their authors, strongly suggests that early Christians until the second half of the second century CE did not know who wrote the gospels because authors’ names had not yet become attached to them.

The Didache’s apparent references to gMatthew as anonymous

Possibly the earliest surviving work that references any of the canonical gospels is the Didache, a Jewish Christian church order that was most likely written either at the tail end of the late first century CE or in the early second century CE.

The Didache evidently relies on a written source, which it references directly at several points. This source is most likely the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Matthew.” Interestingly, however, the Didache never once refers to gMatthew by this title, nor does it ever attribute gMatthew to Matthew the apostle, the former tax collector. Instead, it consistently references its source text as simply “the gospel” without reference to an author. The Didache 8.2 declares:

“ἀλλ’ ὡς ἐκέλευσεν ὁ κύριος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ αὐτοῦ, οὕτω προσεύχεσθε”

This means, in my own translation:

“But, as the Lord commanded in the gospel, thus you will pray:”

The Didache goes on to quote the Lord’s prayer using the exact same wording given in gMatthew 6:9–13.

Later, the Didache 11.3 seemingly references gMatthew using the expression “κατὰ τὰ δόγμα τοῦ εὐαγγελίου οὕτω ποιήσατε” (“you will do in this manner according to the decree of the gospel”). Later, the Didache 15.3 declares:

“Ἐλέγχετε δὲ ἀλλήλους μὴ ἐν ὀργῇ, ἀλλ’ ἐν εἰρήνῃ ὡς ἔχετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ·”

This means:

“And you will reprove each other not in anger, but rather in peace, as you have it in the gospel.”

The fact that the Didache seemingly references gMatthew, but does not reference any of the other gospels and simply refers to gMatthew as “the gospel,” without attributing it to Matthew the apostle, suggests that the Didache originates from an early Christian community that used gMatthew as its only or primary gospel and that gMatthew did not have an author’s name attached to it at the time the Didache was written.

ABOVE: Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles painted by the Constantinople Master in the early fourteenth century CE, now on display in the Pushkin Museum

Markion of Sinope’s attribution of a version of gLuke to Paul

Markion of Sinope (lived c. 85 – c. 160 CE) was an early Christian preacher and theologian who developed the earliest known attempt at a canon for the New Testament. Nothing Markion wrote has survived to the present day and we only know about him because later proto-orthodox Christian authors wrote works denouncing him as a heretic.

Markion is a fascinating figure, but his canon and his theology are not really important for the purposes of this article. If you want to learn more about him, I previously discussed him in this article I wrote back in August 2019 about the development of the New Testament canon.

All that is really important for the purpose of this article is the fact that the proto-orthodox writers who wrote works condemning Markion record that his canon included a shorter version of the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Luke.” Markion, however, did not call his gospel “the Gospel of Luke”; instead, he called it the “Gospel of the Lord” and claimed that it had been written by none other than the apostle Paul.

Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora’s identification of the author gJohn as simply an “apostle”

There was an early Christian Gnostic teacher named Ptolemy who lived in the second century CE who may have died sometime after the year 180 CE. Possibly the earliest surviving direct external reference to gJohn occurs in a letter that this Ptolemy wrote to a wealthy Roman woman named Flora, known as the Epistle to Flora.

Ptolemy’s Epistle to Flora has only survived to the present day because the proto-orthodox Christian apologist and heresy-hunter Epiphanios of Salamis (lived c. 310 – c. 403 CE) quotes the letter in its entirety in his book Against Heresies 33.3.1 – 33.7.10 in order to denounce it as heretical filth—thereby inadvertently preserving it for all posterity.

Early Christian apologists are, of course, notorious for accidentally preserving all kinds of sources and information about things that they regarded as depraved or heretical. As I discuss in this article I wrote in August 2021, some of the absolute filthiest stories about the ancient Greek deities in all of ancient literature have survived solely because the early Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria (lived c. 150 – c. 215 CE) retells them in his apologetic treatise Exhortation to the Hellenes in order to prove how depraved and decadent Greek religions supposedly were.

In any case, in the letter, Ptolemy quotes gJohn 1:3, attributing the gospel to an unnamed “apostle” without ever using the name John. This suggests that, at the time Ptolemy was writing, Gnostic Christians were not yet identifying the “beloved disciple” as John.

ABOVE: Fresco at the Gracanica monastery, near Lipljan, Kosovo, depicting how the artist imagined the early Christian heresy-hunter Epiphanios of Salamis might have looked (No one knows what he really looked like.)

Ioustinos Martys and the “memoirs of the apostles”

Ioustinos Martys (lived c. 100 – c. 165 CE) was a very early Christian apologist who is known for three works he wrote in the Greek language that have survived to the present day: The First ApologiaThe Second Apologia, and the Dialogue with Tryphon.

In his writings, Ioustinos Martys certainly references the gospels that are now attributed to Mark, Matthew, and Luke. He may also reference the gospel that is now attributed to John. Ioustinos Martys wrote his First Apologia sometime between the year 155 and the year 157 CE. In chapter 67, he describes how Christians would read from the writings of the Jewish prophets and/or from the “memoirs of the apostles” during every Sunday worship service. This indicates that, by the middle of the second century CE, multiple gospels had already acquired important liturgical significance within Christian communities.

Nonetheless, at the time when he was writing, the gospels were apparently still anonymous. Ioustinos Martys never at any point references any of the gospels by the titles by which they are known today, nor does he ever attribute any of them to the authors to whom they are now attributed. Instead, anytime he wants to reference a gospel, he references all the gospels collectively, calling them “the memoirs of the apostles.”

It is worth noting that the gospels are the only texts that Ioustinos Martys references in this manner; anytime he wants to reference a text that is not a gospel, he cites the author of the work by name. The fact that he only ever references the gospels collectively as “memoirs of the apostles” suggests that he was relying on a collection or a compendium of multiple gospels, all of which were still anonymous, but which were believed to have been written by apostles.

ABOVE: Engraving by the French engraver André Thevet, originally published in 1575 in the book Illvstree de diverses figvres des choses plvs remarqvables veves par l’auteur, & incogneues de noz anciens & modernes, depicting what the artist imagined Ioustinos Martys might have looked like. No one knows what he really looked like.

The fragments from Papias quoted by Eusebios in his Ecclesiastical History

Some of the more educated Christian apologists do, of course, have what they think is a thorough rebuttal to the argument that the gospels are always referred to as anonymous in Christian texts from before the second half of the second century CE. This rebuttal relies on some evidence that apologists interpret to mean that gMark and gMatthew were already attributed to Mark the secretary of Peter and Matthew the apostle by the late first century CE. I intend to show why this is not the case.

As I have already mentioned, gMark and gMatthew say absolutely nothing whatsoever about their respective authors’ identities. In the late first century CE, however, there was a prominent Christian known as John the Presbyter, who is most likely the author of the First, Second, and Third Epistles of John that are now included in the New Testament. Christians have traditionally identified John the Presbyter as John the Apostle, but, in reality, they were most likely two different men who simply both happened to have the name John, which was an extremely common name among Jewish men in the first century CE.

Papias of Hierapolis (lived c. 60 – c. 130 CE) was a younger contemporary of John the Presbyter. Papias became a Christian bishop and wrote a work in the Greek language titled Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, in which he claimed to rely on information that he had derived from John the Presbyter in some manner. (It is unclear whether he is supposed to have gotten this information from reading a work John the Presbyter wrote, from talking to John the Presbyter himself, or from talking to people who had talked to John the Presbyter.)

Unfortunately, Papias’s Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord has not survived to the present day. Nonetheless, the much later Christian historian Eusebios of Kaisareia (lived c. 263 – c. 339 CE), whose writings have survived to the present day, had access to a copy of the work. Eusebios comments on Papias in his Ecclesiastical History 3.39.14-17. He tells us with brutal honesty that he thinks that Papias’s writings demonstrate that he was a gullible idiot.

ABOVE: Seventeenth-century illustration depicting what the artist imagined Eusebios of Kaisareia might have looked like. (No one knows what he really looked like.)

Despite his obvious disdain for Papias, Eusebios quotes a couple of important passages that Papias wrote in his Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, supposedly relying on information derived in some manner from John the Presbyter. In the first of the passages that Eusebios quotes, Papias claims that Mark worked for Peter as an interpreter and he wrote an account of everything he could remember hearing about Jesus from Peter. Here is what Papias says in the first passage quoted in Eusebios’s Ecclesiastic History 3.29.15 in the original Greek:

“καὶ τοῦθ᾿ ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἔλεγεν· Μάρκος μὲν ἑρμηνευτὴς Πέτρου γενόμενος, ὅσα ἐμνημόνευσεν, ἀκριβῶς ἔγραψεν, οὐ μέντοι τάξει, τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου ἢ λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα· οὔτε γὰρ ἤκουσεν τοῦ κυρίου οὔτε παρηκολούθησεν αὐτῷ, ὕστερον δέ, ὡς ἔφην, Πέτρῳ, ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχ ὥσπερ σύνταξιν τῶν κυριακῶν ποιούμενος λογίων, ὥστε οὐδὲν ἥμαρτεν Μάρκος, οὕτως ἔνια γράψας ὡς ἀπεμνημόνευσεν· ἑνὸς γὰρ ἐποιήσατο πρόνοιαν, τοῦ μηδὲν ὧν ἤκουσεν παραλιπεῖν ἢ ψεύσασθαί τι ἐν αὐτοῖς.”

This means, in my own translation:

“And these are the things the elder [i.e., John the Presbyter] said: ‘Mark being the interpreter of Peter, he wrote down as many things as he could remember that had been said or done by the Lord with exact details, albeit not in order. For he did not hear from the Lord, nor did he accompany him, but later, as I said, accompanied Peter, who was in the habit of making his teachings for his needs, but not as though he was making the sayings of the Lord in order, so that Mark did not err by thus writing some things as he remembered them. For he made only one purpose: not to leave any of the things which he had heard out, nor include any falsehood among them.’”

Eusebios then goes on to quote another passage, in which Papias claims that the apostle Matthew wrote a collection of the sayings of Jesus. He writes in his Ecclesiastic History 3.29.16 in Greek:

“ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἱστόρηται τῷ Παπίᾳ περὶ τοῦ Μάρκου· περὶ δὲ τοῦ Ματθαῖου ταῦτ’ εἴρηται· Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ’ αὐτὰ ὡς ἧν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος.”

This means, in my own translation:

“These, then, are the things that are recorded by Papias concerning Mark; and, concerning Matthew, he says these things: ‘Matthew therefore collected the sayings [i.e., τὰ λόγια] in the Hebrew dialect [i.e., Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ], and each interpreted them as best as he was able.’”

If you tell a conservative Christian apologist who knows something about early Christian history that the gospels were originally anonymous, they will most likely try to claim that these fragments quoted by Eusebios are proof that Papias attributed the gospels we know today as the “Gospel of Mark” and the “Gospel of Matthew” to Mark the secretary of Peter and to Matthew the apostle respectively. Since Papias was most likely writing in the early second century CE, and was supposedly relying on John the Presbyter who lived in the late first century CE, conservative apologists will insist that this disproves the claim that the gospels were originally anonymous.

This argument, however, has a massive flaw. Papias does indeed claim that Mark wrote a gospel and that Matthew wrote a gospel, but, in the passages quoted by Eusebios, he does not describe the contents of these gospels in detail, nor does he quote them in any way that would suggest that he is talking about the same gospels that are known today as the “Gospel of Mark” and the “Gospel of Matthew.” In fact, what Papias does tell us about the gospels that Mark and Matthew supposedly wrote is markedly different from what we know about the gospels that are attributed to those men today.

Papias and the supposed gospel written by Mark

Papias says that Mark wrote down everything he remembered hearing about Jesus from Peter, but he did not write these things in chronological order. Modern scholars disagree whether the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Mark” is supposed to be written entirely in the chronological order of events, but there is no question that the major events that make up the skeleton of the gospel’s narrative are clearly in chronological order.

gMark as we know it begins with Jesus’s baptism, his temptation in the desert, the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, and his calling of the first disciples in chapter one. The gospel then describes Jesus’s ministry in chapters two through ten; his final trip to Jerusalem in chapters eleven through thirteen; the Last Supper, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, his arrest by the Romans, and his trial before the Sanhedrin in chapter fourteen; his trial before Pilate, his crucifixion, and his death in chapter fifteen; and the discovery of the empty tomb in chapter sixteen.

These basic narrative elements are clearly in chronological order because they would not make any sense otherwise. For this reason, it would very strange for someone to say that gMark as a whole is not written in chronological order. It would be even stranger to imply, as Papias seemingly does of the gospel supposedly written by Mark of which he speaks, that the author simply wrote stories down as he happened to remember them.

We can’t definitively say that Papias cannot possibly have been talking about the gospel we know today as the “Gospel of Mark,” but the discrepancy between Papias’s description and the gospel we know today suggests that Papias was probably talking about a different gospel that has since been lost.

ABOVE: Illustration of Mark the Evangelist writing his gospel from a manuscript dating to c. 823 CE

Papias and the supposed gospel written by the apostle Matthew

Although Papias’s description of the gospel that was supposedly written by the apostle Matthew is admittedly not especially detailed, it still differs drastically from the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Matthew”—to such an extent that it would take some outlandish contortions of the evidence to argue that Papias was talking about the work known today as the “Gospel of Matthew” at all.

Papias says that the apostle Matthew wrote a collection of “the sayings” (“τὰ λόγια”) of Jesus. Papias says nothing about this collection of sayings including any narrative about the life and ministry of Jesus whatsoever. The problem is that gMatthew as we know it today is quite manifestly not a collection of sayings; in fact, it consists primarily of narrative and all the sayings it does contain are embedded within this narrative. Thus, the form of the gospel described by Papias does not at all match gMatthew as we know it.

Papias also says that Matthew wrote his collection of the sayings of Jesus “in the Hebrew dialect,” by which he means either Hebrew or Aramaic. gMatthew, however, was almost certainly originally written in Greek. We can be reasonably sure of this for several reasons. One of these reasons is that, aside from this fragment of Papias, there is no evidence to suggest that a Hebrew or Aramaic version of gMatthew ever existed.

A second reason is because, when a text is a translation of a text that was originally written in another language, it usually bears certain features that give it away as a translation, such as idioms and linguistic elements that are distinctive of one language that don’t translate well into the other language. These features are, at the very least, not overtly apparent in gMatthew as we know it.

The third—and probably most compelling—piece of evidence, however, is that large portions of gMatthew as we know it are taken directly, word-for-word from the Greek text of gMark and, as I have already mentioned, there is compelling evidence that the author of gMatthew was relying on gMark, rather than vice versa.

If gMatthew had originally been written in Hebrew or Aramaic and only later translated into Greek, we would expect it to have markedly different wording from gMark, since the derivative parts of the gospel would be filtered through two translations, first from Greek into Hebrew or Aramaic and then back from Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek. Instead, we find that the wording matches almost exactly the vast majority of the time.

In short, Papias is almost certainly not talking about the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Matthew,” but rather about a different work—a sayings gospel originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic that has since been lost. Nothing Papias says in the fragments quoted by Eusebios demonstrates that any of the canonical gospels were attributed to the people to whom they are now attributed before the second half of the second century CE.

ABOVE: Saint Matthew and the Angel, painted in 1661 by Rembrandt

There is another reason, however, why we can be reasonably certain that the apostle Matthew did not write the gospel that is known today as the “Gospel of Matthew.” As I have already mentioned, over half the material in gMatthew is copied directly from gMark, often word-for-word without significant alteration. The apostle Matthew, however, is supposed to have been an eyewitness to Jesus’s ministry. Why on earth would an eyewitness who knew Jesus while he was alive copy the majority of his account of the life and ministry of Jesus from an account written by someone else who was not an eyewitness?

The case against Matthean authorship of gMatthew gets even stronger when we consider that the material gMatthew copies from gMark even includes the story of how Jesus called Matthew to become a disciple. This story is told in gMark 2:13–17 and gMatthew 9:9–13 with almost identical wording. If Matthew the apostle really wrote gMatthew, then why on earth did he copy his own biography nearly word-for-word from a source written by someone else without even adding any significant details or insights?

The notion that Matthew the apostle wrote the gospel that is now attributed to him is simply implausible in light of the evidence in the gospel itself.

ABOVE: The Calling of Matthew, painted in 1502 by the Italian painter Vittore Carpaccio

Eirenaios of Lugdunum and the earliest known attribution of the four gospels to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John

The earliest author who is known to have applied the names Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John to authors of the four canonical gospels is Eirenaios (lived c. 130 – c. 202 CE), who was the bishop of the city of Lugdunum in southern Gaul. In around 180 CE or thereabouts, Eirenaios wrote a work titled Against Heresies.

Eirenaios was evidently aware of the stories Papias had earlier recorded about Mark and Matthew having written gospels and he is the first person known to have identified the gospels allegedly written by Mark and Matthew with gMark and gMatthew respectively. He is also the first person who is known to have ever mentioned Luke as having written a gospel. (Remember that Markion had earlier attributed a version of gLuke to Paul.) Finally, Eirenaios is the first person who is known to have identified the “beloved disciple” who supposedly wrote gJohn with the apostle John. He writes in Against Heresies 3.1, as translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut:

“For, after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down [upon them], were filled from all [His gifts], and had perfect knowledge: they departed to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things [sent] from God to us, and proclaiming the peace of heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess the Gospel of God.”

“Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesos in Asia.”

Eirenaios’s Against Heresies became widely read among Christians throughout the Roman Empire. After he attributed gMark, gMatthew, gLuke, and gJohn to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John respectively, these attributions quickly became enshrined in church tradition.

Eirenaios probably did not invent the attributions of the gospels to their now-traditional authors himself; it is likely that some other Christians were starting to attribute the gospels to these authors in the decades leading up the time when Eirenaios was writing (i.e., in the 150s, 160s, and 170s CE). Nonetheless, Eirenaios certainly seems to have played a role in popularizing and standardizing these attributions.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a stained glass window created in the year 1901 by the artist Lucien Bégule for the Church of St Eirenaios, in Lyon, France, depicting how the artist imagined Eirenaios of Lugdunum might have looked

Other objections refuted

Michael Horner’s article “Are the Gospels Anonymous?” that I referenced earlier contains several more arguments that attempt to prove that the gospels were attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John from the very beginning. All of these arguments, however, fall flat on their faces. For instance, here is the first argument:

“Ancient Near Eastern people, especially Christians, distrusted anonymous and pseudonymous writings, but did not distrust the gospels. Therefore, they must have known who the authors were.”

This argument is circular and demonstrably false. Early Christians only seem to have been distrustful of anonymous writings if you explain away the dozens of anonymous gospels, epistles, apocalypses, and so forth that early Christians trusted by asserting that these works of Christian literature must not have been anonymous for early Christians. The gospels are far from the only anonymous works that circulated with authority among early Christians. For instance, the Didache, which I have referenced in this article, is definitely anonymous, but yet early Christians definitely used it.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is even more striking proof of the trust that early Christians were willing to invest in sources that even they acknowledged were completely anonymous. Early Christians widely disagreed about who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews and some even held that it was impossible for anyone to know who wrote it. Eusebios of Kaisareia in his Ecclesiastical History 6.25.14 quotes the early Christian theologian and scholar Origenes of Alexandria (lived c. 184 – c. 253 CE) as having written that “God only knows” who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Nonetheless, early Christians apparently trusted the Epistle to the Hebrews enough to include it in the New Testament canon, despite its well-known anonymity.

Additionally, just because Christians before the second half of the second century CE didn’t have names that they could give to the people who wrote the canonical gospels doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe that the gospels were written by people with serious credibility. Ptolemy’s Letter to Flora attributes gJohn to an “apostle” and Ioustinos Martys attributes the gospels to unnamed “apostles” as well. Early Christians clearly believed that the gospels were written by important and trustworthy people; they just don’t seem to have agreed on exactly who those people were.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of Papyrus 114, dating to the middle or end of the third century CE, bearing the text of the Epistle to the Hebrews 1:7–12

Here is another argument that Horner makes in his article:

“All the earliest gospel manuscripts (that contain the beginning) contain the titles in the form ‘The Gospel According to …’ — where the author’s name fills in the blank.”

This argument is easily dismissed by the fact that there are absolutely no surviving gospel manuscripts that contain the beginning of the gospel that date from the first or second centuries CE. By the time of the earliest surviving gospel manuscripts that contain the beginning of any of the gospels, the gospels were already attributed to the authors who are now considered traditional.

Saying that the gospels were attributed to the traditional authors by the time of the earliest manuscripts that contain the beginning of any of the gospels therefore is not really helpful, since the traditional attributions are attested in Eirenaios’s Against Heresies long before they are attested in any gospel manuscripts.

Horner’s article also claims:

“If there were no authors’ names placed on the outside extremely early, how did the title format achieve such uniformity in its unusual design and across such distances? If the gospels had circulated for more than 100 years, then we would expect them to have a variety of different title forms and authors.”

This is simply an argument from sheer ignorance. We know for a historical fact that various titles and authors were assigned to the gospels that are now accepted as canonical in the first and second centuries CE. We also know that different groups of Christians used sometimes significantly different versions of these gospels during this early period of Christian history.

As I mentioned earlier, the Didache simply refers to a work that is most likely gMatthew as “the gospel.” Around forty years or so before Eirenaios wrote his Against Heresies, Markion of Sinope applied the title “the Gospel of the Lord” to a version of gLuke, which he claimed had been written by the apostle Paul. Ioustinos Martys references all the gospels as “memoirs of the apostles.” Even in the late second century CE, after Eirenaios, a group of Christians in Asia Minor whom proto-orthodox writers call the “Alogians” claimed that gJohn was actually written by the Gnostic teacher Kerinthos.

The question of how the gospels came to receive uniform titles and how they came to be unanimously attributed to certain authors is a good one, but the fact of the matter is that we know that early Christians referenced them by different names and attributed them to different authors, so the answer cannot be that they were attributed to these authors with the titles we know today from the very beginning.

Author: Spencer McDaniel

Hello! I am an aspiring historian mainly interested in ancient Greek cultural and social history. Some of my main historical interests include ancient religion, mythology, and folklore; gender and sexuality; ethnicity; and interactions between Greek cultures and cultures they viewed as foreign. I graduated with high distinction from Indiana University Bloomington in May 2022 with a BA in history and classical studies (Ancient Greek and Latin languages), with departmental honors in history. I am currently a student in the MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies at Brandeis University.

30 thoughts on “Here’s How We Know the Canonical Gospels Were Originally Anonymous”

  1. I don’t have time to read it right now, but do you address Simon Gathercole’s “The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels” in the article?
    If not, what do you think about his paper?

    1. I had not read Simon Gathercole’s paper “The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels” until just now, because I was not aware of this paper until you pointed it out in this comment. Nonetheless, after seeing your comment, I searched for the paper and found it on The Journal of Theological Studies website. The paper definitely makes a better case that the gospels were attributed to their traditional authors from the beginning than the apologist article that I respond to in my article here.

      Nonetheless, nearly all Gathercole’s sources come from the second half of the second century CE, which is the point when scholars generally agree that the gospels became attributed to their traditional authors. His only sources from the early second century CE or first century CE are Papias and, through him, John the Presbyter, but he assumes that Papias is talking about the gospels that are today attributed to Mark and Matthew and, as I have argued in my article here, I don’t think that this is an assumption that we can make.

      1. Hello Spence!

        While the comments are closed on Can we know what Biblical texts originally said,
        it is linked to this article so I will shorten my reply and just get to the point.

        “apart from the seemingly abrupt ending and the unpolished language there is no evidence that the Gospel of Mark as we have it is unfinished.”

        Well sure there is. Casey argued, in Jesus of Nazareth, that ” the number of mistakes …. is so great that he [Mark] would have revised at least the majority of them, and that we should infer from them that this is an unfinished first draft of his Gospel.”

        And I’ll make two points re: this article.

        Papias: The most devastating criticism, apart from the talking grapes, imo, was made by Stephen Carlson

        > …Indeed, what the elder said is not by any means intact, but extracted, edited, and embedded by Papias into a different context of his own creation. Furthermore, Papias’s presentation of these remarks also does not come down to us intact, but only as preserved by Eusebius—and Eusebius’s agenda is different from Papias’s. Eusebius too extracted, edited, and embedded this statement into a context of his own making. We have to be cautious in interpreting it. As one scholar put it, “Papias says only what Eusebius wants him to say.” As a result, the most famous statement in antiquity about the origins of Mark and Matthew is a joint production of three different people, living at three different times, with three different purposes: the elder, Papias, and Eusebius. [https://ehrmanblog.org/the-writings-of-papias-guest-post-by-steven-carlson/]

        The we passages
        Ehrman argues that Luke is making a false authorial claim. That is, to being Paul’s companion

        >> By far the most surprising aspect of the we-passages, however, apart from their existence at all, is their frequently noted abrupt beginnings and endings. It is their sudden and unexplained disappearance that is most unsettling. When did the author leave the company and for what reason? These and other related problems can be seen in the first of the passages, 16:10–17. How is it that “we” included Paul in 16:10 and 11, but then are differentiated from Paul in 16:17? That may make sense if an author had wanted to start easing out of the use of the first-person plural as a narrative ploy, but it is hard to understand if the narrative is a historically accurate description of a real life situation by an author who was there. Moreover, if “we” were with Paul when he rebuked the spirit of the possessed girl, how is it that only Paul and Silas were seized, not “we”? Did the eyewitness leave the company in 16:18 suddenly and for no expressed reason? If so, why is he still in Philippi much later in 20:6?

        – Forgery and Counterforgery

  2. Something we both agree on. I still encounter (mostly non-denominationals an evangelicals) who assert otherwise but just about anyone familiar with the literature knows they’re anonymous. I would like to hear your take on the debate over the dating of Epistle to Hebrews. Strangely enough, it’s the mythicists like Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier who argue that Hebrews dates to 60AD or earlier whereas most Christians date it to the later decades of the first century. They do this because they see a verse in Hebrews as promoting Jesus Mythicism (can’t remember chapter and verse off the top of my head). I know I asked my Greek professor about that and he said Doherty’s translation is wrong.

    1. I haven’t really looked into the dating of the Epistle to the Hebrews all that closely, but my understanding at the moment is that it was most likely written at some point between 75 and 95 CE, within roughly the same time window as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

  3. Do you have any thoughts on the belief that Maricon’s “Gospel of the Lord” could be based on an earlier version of Luke (i.e. Proto-Luke)? And if so, do you agree or disagree that it’s a plausibility?

    1. That case is made well in Jason BeDuhn’s 2013 book, “The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon”. It basically boils down to an analysis of key differences between the Gospel of Truth (as reconstructed using Tertullian and other critics) and canonical Luke/Acts. In the light of this analysis it appears that the so-called “minor agreements” with gMatt against gMark (which are sometimes used to argue against the existence of Q ) are merely harmonizations introduced by a later editor. The fidelity of Q as preserved by Marcion speaks to his gospel’s overall primitiveness.

      1. Correction — I meant to say “Gospel of the Lord”, not “Gospel of Truth”. The latter is a Gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi codices.

  4. I’m going to disagree on your take on the phrase ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω.
    I don’t think that has anything to do with the timing of the writing. It has to do with instructions to the reader—the one who would have been reading the text in the congregation.
    Garland (1998:496), points this out as a note to not correct an uneven element of grammar in the text. Stein (2008:602-3) seems to agree with this position. Hooker (1997:314-5) notes the same odd grammar, but believes it’s meant to point to a double-fulfillment.
    I think it makes sense as a cue to the reader to not correct the grammar.

    1. The grammatical oddity in gMark 13:14 that you reference here is the fact that the gospel writer, for some reason, uses the neuter noun βδέλυγμα with the masculine participle ἑστηκότα. This may simply be a grammatical error. gMark has quite a few of these. I find it much more convincing that the line “ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω” is meant to hint to the reader that the prophecy Mark is describing has recently been fulfilled, especially since this line is immediately followed by the direct advice that the people of Judaea should flee to the hills.

      Even if you interpret the phrase “ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω” to mean that the reader should not correct the apparent grammatical error, then that still doesn’t necessarily get you out of gMark hinting that the prophecy has already come to pass. If this prophecy does indeed go back to Jesus, then he almost certainly delivered the prophecy in Aramaic. This means that any grammatical incongruities in the Greek text must originate with the author of gMark or one of his Greek-language sources, not with Jesus himself. If the author of gMark is hinting to the reader not to correct the apparent error, this indicates that the “error” is a deliberate hint by the author of the gospel to the meaning of the prophecy, which means that the author thinks he knows what Jesus was predicting. If we assume that the author does not have supernatural insight into the meaning of the prophecy, this makes most sense if he believes that the prophecy has already been fulfilled.

      1. I wish to draw attention to a vital point which fashionable “christian apologetists” wished to hide and which in fact doesn’t affect the theme of your article either way. In prophetic ministry, there are always facts beforehand. The point of the prophecy is that hearers are to discern partial analogies (not total similarities) in various future events. Given the range of significance in the term and concept “temple”, the instruction which includes the context in verses 3 to 12, is to be wary of the quality of organisational or ceremonial solutions, any time one of the relevant situations comes up. The spiritual meaning is expected to be fulfilled many times.

        The point of prophecy is to build on the likelihood of Jesus’ death that week and the probable trouble in for the building (given the attitude of hubris) just like it had suffered before, and like people of integrity had suffered before, in order to warn believers to discern in future. The theme concerns genuine and not false “communion” (which they were going to do that week), and being people of plain act towards each other and not ostentation; the context is also “drop your sacrifice outside and seek your brother elsewhere”, “leave that town” and “don’t go down into the house” i.e the ostentatious establishment; even “they went home another way” illustrates the same values. Recursions always did occur in all affairs and not just fern leaves or icicles.

        Jesus’ teachings had been heard by thousands over three years and their meanings discussed during subsequent years prior to the writings we have. In the culture of the time analogy was big and the attitude of ordinary people was nothing like the recent fashionable apologetists. This in fact doesn’t feed into your main subject either way. Some scholars believe the different accounts were compiled in different locations.

  5. I definitely agree that the four Gospels were originally composed anonymously, though I do think the section about Papias is a bit of mental gymnastics. Many authors in the 2nd century, besides Papias, claimed that the canonical Matthew was written in the Hebrew language. Similarly, many authors claimed that the canonical Mark was written by someone named Mark who knew Peter. The probability that these lost gospels so exactly fit the same (incorrect) claims being made by other early Christians regarding the surviving canonical Gospels is slim to none – it’s obvious Papias just made a bunch of silly errors in trying to describe our canonical Mark and Matthew. We can still accept the anonymity of the Gospels without going into these sorts of Bart Ehrman mental gymnastics to explain away every little detail that an apologist might appeal to.

  6. I feel both honored and horrified, that my previous comment might have been the contributed to the reason for this incredibly detailed and well organized post.

    But that said now that I know my own power I have an absolutely audacious request.

    I would very much like to see a compare and contrast between the childhoods and reigns of Constantine the 7th of the Byzantine Empire and Elizabeth the First of England.

    Why? The links between suffering in childhood, due to illegitimacy, and other reasons and their later rule and reign. I suppose the theme would be how tragedy can build empathy, how hearts of gold come from blood soaked halls….

    It’s just that after reading about the intrigues and meaningless abuses that abound in the histories of the halls of power I honestly wonder how any of them can ever turn out competent, tolerant, and moderately merciful. That is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

    I know that if I had been treated like a piece of precious metal from birth, my choices would have made much less not more of me as a human being.

    (The only source I have that went in depth into the childhood of Constantine the 7th beyond what is readily available online was Chapter 17 in the book “Lost to the West.”)

    I’ve sure this wouldn’t interest you but in return I offer to do some book hunting for you the used book stores where I live have a surprising good amount of decent old history books. . . I’m sure you have enough of them, but there’s always that one book you can never find or costs $500 plus dollars through online channels.

    Here’s a little known fact according to a book I have titled “Little Visits with Great Americans” the first really important thing that Thomas Edison did was … saving a boy’s life. This book came out in 1905.

  7. Great article! Have you read David Trobisch’s The First Edition of the New Testament? The thesis of his argument is that the NT had an intentional publication in the mid 2nd century. He points out many markers of a publisher: language (the NS), titles, book order, etc to advance his case.

  8. hey spencer I tried reaching out to you on quora
    I wanted some guidance regarding what books to read for approaching classics and studying civilization
    I request you to please Respond

  9. is there agreement in the attestation of the names attributed to the gospels ?
    i remember that robert m price said that there isnt an agreement.
    i read that on matthew fergusons blog which is no longer available.

    even if there is agreement in the attestation, is that proof that the names may be older than attestation in second century, but not neccessary that when mark was written it was known as “gospel of mark” ?

  10. No act of kindness can take away effect

    Of what they have done to your unknowing breast

    No kind words can have their desired effect

    When words have been the gateway to unwanted sex

    Humanity, humanity
    Have men no humanity?

    To act no better than dogs and engage in utter savagery?

    – I volunteered once in a women’s and children’s shelter. Many of the women there had never had a positive interaction with a man. After that experience I have never been more ashamed to be a man.

  11. Well-researched scholarship. Would be interested in your thoughts on the Diatessaron. It is my understanding that it was (supposedly) written by the late first century by Tatian. And although Tatian doesn’t mention any of the Gospels by name, the title “Through the Four” would seem to indicate his harmony was based on what came to be the canonical Gospels and that those four were well in circulation at the latest by the late first century. Thank you.

  12. There are many points in your article. I feel that many are appropriate. But there is one that does not make any sense to me. The fact that someone could not be born a Jew because he was expressing antisemitism flies in the face of absolutely overwhelming evidence. It’s not likely yes, but very far from impossible. I think it would be impossibly long and tiresome to establish a list of people raised in Christianism who were (are) stridently, foaming at the mouth Christianism haters. Love can turn to hate so easily, and it’s true for any kind of relation or creed. Even just now in my country there is a journalist of Jewish origins who is playing out antisemitic themes and displaying open admiration for deeply antisemitic historical figures, he is even toying with politics.

  13. I’m the author of Testimonia.pl, a historical blog about the bible and early christianity. Could you please contact me via email? I have questions about your posts and your blog. Thanks in advance

  14. Hi, have you read Maurice Casey’ “Jesus of Nazareth”? Casey isn’t an apologist of any kind (he denies historicity of the Jesus’ resurrection), however he make quite convicing case for very early date of gMark (about 40). Casey argues, that the Eschatological Speech (Mark 13) contain too many historical inaccuracies to be written after 70.

    1. I have actually read Maurice Casey’s Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, I actually used to accept his arguments that gMark was written around 40 CE. I have since changed my mind because I have read more of the arguments for a post-70 CE date and find that these arguments are too compelling, while Casey’s arguments are too weak.

      1. Can you expand on? I think that 40s suggested by Casey may be – as even conservative scholars as Carson and Moo point out – too early. However on the other side, I haven’t read so far convicing case for post-70 date, at least for Mark. So I would be very grateful for a detailed discussion or references to literature, dealing with the matter.

        1. The point I mentioned has nothing to do with how he dates Mark. The mistakes Casey mentioned aren’t dependent on Mark being that early.

  15. Before anything else, I understand that you prefer to use transliterated versions of the names of historical figures (e.g. Ioustinos Martys) over the more common English renditions (Justin Martyr), but it would be nice if, the first time you mention each one in an essay, you include the more common English renditions, perhaps in a parenthetical for greater recognizability. It took me a little while to figure out who “Eirenaios of Lugdunum” was supposed to be because I’m so used to seeing Irenaeus of Lyons. And if someone like me, who’s reasonably familiar with who Irenaeus was could get confused, I can’t imagine what could happen to someone who isn’t familiar with them.

    As to the article’s content itself, your points are reasonable, but I think the case is overstated. But I suppose, in the end, these debates just boil down to which arguments they find more persuasive. On the issue of dating, for example, think the point that Luke ends prior to Paul’s death is strong (though not definite) indication of a pre-70 AD date. I do know the counter-arguments to that, but I don’t find them persuasive in overturning the point. But some people do think those counter-arguments are more persuasive, and ultimately that is that.

    Though on that topic, I do want to express thanks for admitting that the prediction of the Temple’s destruction is a rather poor argument against it being written before 70 AD. For the reasons you give, it is perfectly plausible that the prediction could be made prior to 70 AD (whether by Jesus or by the gospel writer) even if one rules out any possibility of supernatural prophecy.

    But anyway, that brings us to the question of whether the Gospels were originally anonymous. As I noted, I think the case here is overstated. I won’t go through everything, because this comment is already way too long and others have gone through all of these things, but one that stuck out at me in particular were the cases of the early Christian writings that don’t refer to them by name. The question here is, though, did they have reason to need to refer to them by name? If the users of the Didache were primarily acquainted with Matthew’s gospel, nothing more than “the gospel” would have been necessary. Marcion’s gospel is believed to have been an edited version of Luke, so there would have been little reason for Marcion to refer to it by the original name and admit its origin (for that matter, we lack direct access to Marcion’s writings to know better what he actually says). Justin Martyr only uses the more vague “memoirs of the apostles”, but the quotations he offers sometimes combine things from multiple Gospels (or include information that aren’t even found in any of the canonical Gospels), indicating he is using some kind of Diatesseron-like document, and thus calling out specific names would have little purpose.

    The letter to Flora is a more powerful piece here, as there seems little reason to not specify “the apostle” being referred to (especially when elsewhere it refers to Paul by name), but the fact it uses the phrase “the apostle” indicates an apostle IS in view rather than a completely anonymous writer (perhaps it is simply in reference to the fact the author identifies himself as the beloved disciple, but it uses disciple there, not apostle). Even if we accept this as demonstrating anonymity, it would only do so for the Gospel of John, as it is the only one referred to as such–and the Gospel of John is the the one that has the strongest case of anonymity against it.

    Which brings me to another point: Far too many people seem to take an all or nothing approach, this essay included. Arguments seem to think that either all the gospels were anonymous or none of them were. Even if the letter is an argument against Johannine authorship (or at least attributed Johannine authorship), it doesn’t mean that for the others.

    In fact, to me, a strong argument against anonymity (which this essay does not address) is in fact one that applies to some, but not all, of the Gospels. And that is the question of who they were attributed to. Now, the idea suggested here is that the four Gospels were originally anonymous, and then sometime in the mid-2nd century the names were attributed to them. But if that was the case, why in the world would Mark and Luke be chosen? Neither Luke nor Mark were any of the original disciples, nor do they seem to have been particularly big names in the Bible or out of it, especially Luke. It seems improbable to me that, a century after the fact with the works being anonymous in the meantime, they would be names chosen for the gospels rather than someone like Thomas, Philip, or even prominent non-apostles like Barnabas. Those are the names that later apocryphal gospels or other pseudonymous works tend to be attributed to, not people like Luke or Mark who, if not credited as the authors of books of the New Testament, would be as unknown to most Christians as someone like Demas was. For Luke and Mark to be chosen, I feel either their names would have been attached to the gospels (that is, actually written at the start) or at the least there was a strong tradition during that intervening century apart from the manuscripts themselves that they were the authors.

    Granted, this argument applies to neither Matthew nor John (I have seen some suggest that Matthew’s status as a tax collector may have been reason to avoid using his name, though), which is why I consider Matthew and John as being originally anonymous more plausible.

    So my overall conclusion is that Mark and Luke probably had their names either attached directly to their gospels (that is, written on them) or, even if not written, there was a strong enough tradition for them. Matthew and John are more dubious, though I think it’s presuming too much say we “know” they were originally anonymous. Still, I think there are some reasonable arguments for them not being anonymous (even if they are not enough to conclude they were not). For example, I feel the point that there seems to have not been any disagreement as to their authors to be a stronger point than you give it credit. Compare, say, the epistle to the Hebrews, where we do see much more uncertainty and disagreement as to the author. You do appeal to the Alogi as disagreeing with the attribution to John, but the Alogi appear to have acknowledged the traditional authorship, they just claimed it was actually Cerinthus who wrote it, a claim that in my view makes little sense, indicating that they were just trying to find an excuse to write off John’s gospel. It must be admitted that the information about their arguments against the Gospel of John come from Epiphanius’s refutation of the Alogi, and thus hardly an unbiased source, but at the same time that’s the source for the claim they rejected the Gospel of John to begin with and thus we have to put at least some level of trust on his statements if we’re going to appeal to it to begin with to try to say people rejected John’s authorship.

    But, as I said at the start of this, most of this really just comes down to looking at the arguments pro and con and then deciding yourself which ones are more persuasive. Past a certain point there’s not really much that can be said. I clearly consider the arguments against anonymity stronger than you do.

    Finding a manuscript of a gospel that is from the 2nd century–preferably early 2nd century–that includes the beginning would do much to impact the argument, as we could see what, if anything, was written in the title. Unfortunately, the odds of that happening are rather low, due to the fragmentary nature of papyrus, meaning you not only have to be fortunate enough for one to survive, you have to be extra fortunate for it to have the first page, and we haven’t been that fortunate yet. Still, new stuff is being constantly discovered, so you never know…

    One final point I wanted to respond to, though a minor one, is the following:
    “One of these reasons is that, aside from this fragment of Papias, there is no evidence to suggest that a Hebrew or Aramaic version of gMatthew ever existed.”

    What about the testimony of early writers like Irenaeus, Origen, and Jerome? I’m not saying they’re necessarily right (I have my doubts about an original Hebrew Matthew myself), but they are still evidence. Now, perhaps you would say that they are simply relying on Papias, meaning it all goes back to Papias. While it is possible they go back to Papias, that is not certain.

    Maybe this post was a wee bit (or more than a wee bit) rambling, but for some reason I felt like I wanted to share some of my thoughts. The post did put forward a fairly good version of the argument in favor of original anonymity, even if I believe it overstated its conclusions.

    1. >On the issue of dating, for example, think the point that Luke ends prior to Paul’s death is strong (though not definite) indication of a pre-70 AD

      Not responding for Spencer, but

      1.) I think you mean Acts rather than Luke and
      2.) That Luke goes right up to Paul’s trial, but doesn’t give the verdict is rather odd. Take a look at Acts 20:17-35 and ask yourself if Luke knows of Paul’s death

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