Lindars, Barnabas; Edwards, Ruth; Court, John M. (2000). The Johannine Literature. A&C Black. p. 41. ISBN978-1-84127-081-4. Although this tradition continues to have supporters among modern scholars, the majority cling to it only in the most tenuous form, or abandon it altoghether. It is thus important to see the reasons why the traditional identification is regarded by most scholars as untenable.Hint: it only concerns the Gospel of John.
Ehrman, Bart D. (2004). The New Testament : a historical introduction to the early Christian writings. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 58–59. ISBN0-19-515462-2. Proto-orthodox Christians of the second century, some decades after most of the New Testament books had been written, claimed that their favorite Gospels had been penned by two of Jesus' disciples—Matthew, the tax collector, and John, the beloved disciple—and by two friends of the apostles—Mark, the secretary of Peter, and Luke, the travelling companion of Paul. Scholars today, however, find it difficult to accept this tradition for several reasons.
Holman Reference Staff (2012). Holman Illustrated Bible Handbook. B&H Publishing Group. p. PT344. ISBN978-1-4336-7833-2. Most critical scholars deny that Mark was the author or that he wrote on the basis of Peter's recollections
Craig, William Lane; Lüdemann, Gerd; Copan, Paul; Tacelli, Ronald K. (2000). Jesus' Resurrection: Fact Or Figment?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig & Gerd Ludemann. InterVarsity Press. p. 43. ISBN978-0-8308-1569-2. I wanted to use that quotation in order to show that the results of historical scholarship can be made known to the public—especially to believers—only with difficulty. Many Christians feel threatened if they hear that most of what was written in the Bible is (in historical terms) untrue and that none of the four New Testament Gospels was written by the author listed at the top of the text.
Jeon, Jeong Koo; Baugh, Steve (2017). Biblical Theology: Covenants and the Kingdom of God in Redemptive History. Wipf & Stock. p. 181 fn. 10. ISBN978-1-5326-0580-2. 10. Just as historical critical scholars deny the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, so they also deny the authorship of the four Gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. [...] But today, these persons are not thought to have been the actual authors.
E. P. Sanders (30 November 1995). The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin Books Limited. p. 103. ISBN978-0-14-192822-7. We do not know who wrote the gospels. They presently have headings: 'according to Matthew', 'according to Mark', 'according to Luke' and 'according to John'. The Matthew and John who are meant were two of the original disciples of Jesus. Mark was a follower of Paul, and possibly also of Peter; Luke was one of Paul's converts.5 These men – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – really lived, but we do not know that they wrote gospels. Present evidence indicates that the gospels remained untitled until the second half of the second century.
Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. p. 235. ISBN978-0-19-518249-1. Why then do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications,11 and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.
Nickle, Keith Fullerton (January 1, 2001). The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 43. ISBN978-0-664-22349-6. We must candidly acknowledge that all three of the Synoptic Gospels are anonymous documents. None of the three gains any importance by association with those traditional figures out of the life of the early church. Neither do they lose anything in importance by being recognized to be anonymous. Throughout this book the traditional names are used to refer to the authors of the first three Gospels, but we shall do so simply as a device of convenience.
Ehrman, Bart D. (November 1, 2004). Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 110–111. ISBN978-0-19-534616-9. We call these books, of course, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And for centuries Christians have believed they were actually written by these people: two of the disciples of Jesus, Matthew the tax collector (see Matt. 9:9) and John, the "beloved disciple" (John 21:24), and two companions of the apostles, Mark, the secretary of Peter, and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul. These are, after all, the names found in the titles of these books. But what most people don't realize is that these titles were added later, by second-century Christians, decades after the books themselves had been written, in order to be able to claim that they were apostolic in origin. Why would later Christians do this? Recall our earlier discussion of the formation of the New Testament canon: only those books that were apostolic could be included. What was one to do with Gospels that were widely read and accepted as authoritative but that in fact were written anonymously, as all four of the New Testament Gospels were? They had to be associated with apostles in order to be included in the canon, and so apostolic names were attached to them.
Bart D. Ehrman (2000:43) The New Testament: a historical introduction to early Christian writings. Oxford University Press.
Ehrman, Bart D. (2006). The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN978-0-19-971104-8. The Gospels of the New Testament are therefore our earliest accounts. These do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, and historians have long recognized that they were produced by second- or third-generation Christians living in different countries than Jesus (and Judas) did, speaking a different language (Greek instead of Aramaic), experiencing different situations, and addressing different audiences.
Ehrman, Bart D. (2000). The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN978-0-19-512639-6. We have already learned significant bits of information about these books. They were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus' death by authors who did not know him, authors living in different countries who were writing at different times to different communities with different problems and concerns. The authors all wrote in Greek and they all used sources for the stories they narrate. Luke explicitly indicates that his sources were both written and oral. These sources appear to have recounted the words and deeds of Jesus that had been circulating among Christian congregations throughout the Mediterranean world. At a later stage we will consider the question of the historical reliability of these stories. Here we are interested in the Gospels as pieces of early Christian literature.
Boring, M. Eugene (2012). An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. p. 522. ISBN978-0-664-25592-3. Beginning with Papias in the second century, a tradition developed in various forms that attributed the authorship of the Gospel of Mark to this John Mark, who had been the companion of both Paul and Peter (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15). In all its variations, the ancient tradition makes clear that Mark's Gospel was accepted and valued in the church, not because of its historical accuracy, but because it represented Peter's apostolic authority. The Gospel of Mark itself makes no claim to have been written by an eyewitness and gives no evidence of such authorship. While most critical scholars consider the actual author's name to be unknown, the traditional view that Mark was written in Rome by a companion of Peter is still defended by some scholars who begin with the church tradition cited above and do not find convincing historical evidence to disprove it.6 For convenience, in this book we continue to refer to the Gospels by the names of their traditional authors.
Ray, Ronald R. (2018). Systematics Critical and Constructive 1: Biblical-Interpretive-Theological-Interdisciplinary. Pickwick Publications. p. 123. ISBN978-1-5326-0016-6. Authorship by an apostle was so unimportant to early recognition of a writing's authority that names of apostles (Matthew and John) or names of people thought to be associated with apostles (Mark and Luke respectively with Peter and Paul) were only attached to the four Gospels at the beginning of the second century, after those had gained recognition primarily because of churchly appreciation of their content. Having studied the content of John and Matthew, historical-critical scholarship massively doubts that the Hellenistic Fourth Gospel was authored by the apostle John, and widely doubts that the First Gospel was written by the apostle Matthew. That the author of Mark was Peter's associate also seems unlikely, since that Gospel is very Hellenistic and Peter—according to both Acts and Paul—was highly Jewish. Similarly, that the author of Luke was Paul's companion is most improbable, since Acts's accounts concerning Paul conflict much with what Paul's epistles report. Again, had any of the Gospels been written by apostles, why were their names attached so late?125 Nor would apostle associates have been apostles!
Foster, Douglas A. (2012). The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 176. ISBN978-1-4674-2736-4. During this period Disciples scholars such as Willett began to study at interdenominational theological schools and secular universities, and for the first time the Stone-Campbell Movement engaged historical criticism as the primary perspective on biblical interpretation. While Campbell's "Seven Rules" had advocated a kind of historical criticism, traditional conclusions about authorship, date, and the nature of biblical documents had been assumed, so that no one in the first generation had supposed that the consistent application of Campbell's own principles would lead to results that challenged and overturned these conclusions. By the end of the nineteenth century, those who followed the critical method arrived at a new set of conclusions that made the Bible look entirely different. Among these new conclusions: the Pentateuch was not written by Moses but represented a long development within history, the prophets were not making long-range predictions about Jesus and the church, but spoke to the issues of their own time; the Gospels were not independent 'testimonies" that provided "evidence" for the historical facts about Jesus' life and teaching, but were interdependent (Matthew and Luke used Mark and "Q"); also, the Gospels were not written by apostles and contained several layers of reinterpreted traditions.
Leach, Edmund (1990). "Fishing for men on the edge of the wilderness". In Alter, Robert; Kermode, Frank (eds.). The Literary Guide to the Bible. Harvard University Press. p. 590. ISBN978-0-674-26141-9. 5. The geography of Gospel Palestine, like the geography of Old Testament Palestine, is symbolic rather than actual. It is not clear whether any of the evangelists had ever been there.
Hatina, Thomas R. (2014). "Gospel of Mark". In Evans, Craig A. (ed.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. Taylor & Francis. p. 252. ISBN978-1-317-72224-3. Like the other synoptics, Mark's Gospel is anonymous. Whether it was originally so is, however, difficult to know. Nevertheless, we can be fairly certain that it was written by someone named Mark. [...] The difficulty is ascertaining the identity of Mark. Scholars debate [...] or another person simply named Mark who was not native to Palestine. Many scholars have opted for the latter option due to the Gospel's lack of understanding of Jewish laws (1:40-45; 2:23-28; 7:1-23), incorrect Palestinian geography (5:1-2, 12-13; 7:31), and concern for Gentiles (7:24-28:10) (e.g. Marcus 1999: 17-21).
Millard, Alan (2006). "Authors, Books, and Readers in the Ancient World". In Rogerson, J.W.; Lieu, Judith M. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 558. ISBN978-0199254255. The historical narratives, the Gospels and Acts, are anonymous, the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being first reported in the mid-second century by Irenaeus
Reddish, Mitchell (2011). An Introduction to The Gospels. Abingdon Press. pp. 13, 36, 42. ISBN978-1426750083. Evidence in the Gospel itself has led many readers of the Gospel to question the traditional view of authorship. The author of the Gospel does not seem to be too familiar with Palestinian geography. [...] Is it likely that a native of Palestine, as John Mark was, would have made such errors?" [...] Also, certain passages in the Gospel contain erroneous statements about Palestinian or Jewish practices.
Cousland, J.R.C. (2010). Coogan, Michael David; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Newsom, Carol Ann; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1744. ISBN978-0-19-528955-8.
Cousland, J.R.C. (1 March 2018). "The Gospel according to Matthew". In Coogan, Michael David; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Newsom, Carol Ann; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1380. ISBN978-0-19-027605-8. It is, of course, possible that some of the Gospel's unique materials (M) do originate with Matthew, the disciple, but most scholars hold that the author/editor is someone other than the disciple Matthew (even if, as here, he is referred to as Matthew out of convenience).
Watts Henderson, Suzanne (2018). "The Gospel according to Mark". In Coogan, Michael; Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1431. ISBN978-0-19-027605-8. Though the author's identity is unknown, scholars find clues about its author in the Gospel itself. For example, its awkward style suggests that Greek was not the author's first language. Other details, such as the imprecise citation of Jewish scripture (1.2), the over-generalized portrait of Jewish practice (7.3–4), and problematic geographical details (5.1,13) suggest that the evangelist was a Hellenized Jew who lived outside of Palestine.
Soards, Marion L. (1 March 2018). "The Gospel according to Luke". In Coogan, Michael David; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Newsom, Carol Ann; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1467. ISBN978-0-19-027605-8. The Third Gospel, traditionally called the Gospel according to Luke, is a unique literary and theological contribution to the story of Jesus Christ. By the late second century, the author of the Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, was identified as Luke, a physician who was a traveling companion and co-worker with Paul (Philem 1.24; Col 4.14). At times Luke is further described as a Syrian from Antioch, but practically nothing else is remembered of the writer of the Third Gospel. Scholarly analysis of the Gospel and Acts raises questions about the attribution of these writings to the Luke who was Paul's associate. The strongest argument for identifying Luke the physician as the author of the Gospel and Acts is the obscurity of this figure in the New Testament. Yet, even defenders of the traditional identification recognize difficulties with that connection. Though Luke's familiarity with Judaism is extensive, he seems to have more book-knowledge than practical experience of its particular rituals and beliefs. Similarly, when Luke provides details about Palestinian locations and practices, they exhibit a tendency toward setting the story in an urban environment rather than the predominantly nonurban village culture that Jesus would have known. Above all, Luke never mentions in Acts that Paul wrote letters and only seldom does he use theological themes from the letters of the apostle.
Conway, Colleen (1 March 2018). "The Gospel according to John". In Coogan, Michael David; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Newsom, Carol Ann; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1519. ISBN978-0-19-027605-8. Like the other Gospels, this one never names an author. Since at least the late second century CE, tradition has attributed the authorship of the Gospel to Jesus's disciple, John the son of Zebedee, who purportedly wrote the Gospel in Ephesus. Doubts about the accuracy of this tradition have existed since antiquity. Eusebius mentions a different figure, John "the Elder," living in Ephesus (Hist. eccl. 3.39.3). The conclusion to the Gospel (21.24) points to the memories of the "disciple whom Jesus loved" as a source of its traditions. But the narrative never identifies this figure, although if the "other disciple" in 18.16 is a reference to this same disciple, it may suggest that he is from Jerusalem rather than Galilee. Today most scholars think that Johannine traditions stem from an unidentified follower of Jesus, not one of the twelve disciples. This anonymous disciple developed a group of followers, a "Johannine school," who were responsible for writing down his witness. This figure was idealized in the community, as the model believer who is called the "beloved disciple" in the Gospel narrative (19.25–27).
Burkett, Delbert (2019). An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity. Introduction to Religion. Cambridge University Press. p. 219. ISBN978-1-316-80009-6. Most scholars, therefore, treat the Gospel as an anonymous work, retaining the name "John" out of convenience, or simply calling the author "the Fourth Evangelist," and the Gospel "the Fourth Gospel." The adjective "Johannine" comes from the German form of "John."
Duling, Dennis C. (2010). "The Gospel of Matthew". In Aune, David E. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 301–302. ISBN978-1-4051-0825-6. much can be said about the unknown author of Matthew on the basis of internal analysis.
Wansbrough, Henry (22 April 2010). Muddiman, John; Barton, John (eds.). The Gospels. Oxford University Press. p. 243. ISBN978-0-19-958025-5. Finally it is important to realize that none of the four gospels originally included an attribution to an author. All were anonymous, and it is only from the fragmentary and enigmatic and—according to Eusebius, from whom we derive the quotation—unreliable evidence of Papias in 120/130 CE that we can begin to piece together any external evidence about the names of their authors and their compilers. This evidence is so difficult to interpret that most modern scholars form their opinions from the content of the gospels themselves, and only then appeal selectively to the external evidence for confirmation of their findings.
Hagner, Donald Alfred (1995). "MATTHEW, GOSPEL ACCORDING TO.". In Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (ed.). International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume III: K-P. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 287. ISBN978-0-8028-3783-7. Matthew, like the other three Gospels is an anonymous document.
Senior, Donald; Achtemeier, Paul J.; Karris, Robert J. (2002). Invitation to the Gospels. Paulist Press. p. 328. ISBN978-0-8091-4072-5. All four of the Gospels are anonymous, that is, they themselves do not tell us who their authors were. The Fourth Gospel indicates, as we shall see, that "the disciple Jesus loved", who figures prominently in the second half, was responsible for this Gospel, but even he is anonymous.
Bruce, Frederick Fyvie (18 October 1994) [1983]. The Gospel of John: Introduction, Exposition, Notes. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 1. ISBN978-0-8028-0883-7. The Fourth Gospel, like the three Synoptic Gospels, is anonymous: it does not bear its author's name. [...] It is noteworthy that, while the four canonical Gospels could afford to be published anonymously, the apocryphal Gospels which began to appear from the mid-second century onwards claimed (falsely) to be written by apostles or other persons closely associated with the Lord.
Flanagan, Patrick J. (1997). The Gospel of Mark Made Easy. Paulist Press. p. 16. ISBN978-0-8091-3728-2. As far as its own author is concerned, the Gospel is anonymous. The same is true of the other Gospels.
Ehrman, Bart D. (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford University Press. p. 42. ISBN978-0-19-512474-3. But are these traditional ascriptions correct? The first thing to observe is that the titles of the Gospels were not put there by their authors—as should be clear after just a moment's reflection. Suppose a disciple named Matthew actually did write a book about Jesus' words and deeds. Would he have called it "The Gospel According to Matthew"? Of course not. He might have called it "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" or "The Life and Death of Our Savior" or something similar. But if someone calls it the Gospel according to Matthew, then it's obviously someone else trying to explain, at the outset, whose version of the story this one is. And in fact we know that the original manuscripts of the Gospels did not have their authors' names attached to them.1 1. Because our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different) titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar names (e.g., "The Gospel according to Matthew") do not go back to a single "original" title, but were later added by scribes.
Fredriksen, Paula (2021). "6. Paul, the Perfectly Righteous Pharisee". In Sievers, Joseph; Levine, Amy-Jill (eds.). The Pharisees. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. PT205. ISBN978-1-4674-6282-2. Retrieved 8 October 2023. 2. All four gospels are anonymous. The fullest attributions of authorship, with fictive biographical backstories, traces back to traditions ascribed to Papias (second century), as preserved in Eusebius (early fourth century), Hist. eccl. 3.39.
Wyrick, Jed (2004). The Ascension of Authorship: Attribution and Canon Formation in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Christian Traditions. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature. Vol. 49. Harvard University Press. pp. 426–417. ISBN978-0-674-01661-3. Retrieved 8 October 2023. 21. The earliest strata of Christian writers, in contrast to the more Hellenized later periods, reveal the same dislike of personal attribution as is found in Jewish letters. F F. Bruce states, for example, "It is remarkable, when one comes to think of it, that the four canonical Gospels are anonymous, whereas the 'Gospels' which proliferated in the late second century and afterwards claim to have been written by apostles and other eyewitnesses." F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, p. 257.
Campbell, Gordon (2022). "Mark, Gospel according to St". In Louth, Andrew (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. OUP Oxford. p. 2716. ISBN978-0-19-263815-1. Retrieved 12 August 2023. All four canonical Gospels were anonymous, and there is no reason to attribute this Gospel to any particular person in the Bible.
Burkett, Delbert (2019). An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity. Introduction to Religion. Cambridge University Press. p. 219. ISBN978-1-316-80009-6. Retrieved 12 August 2023. Most scholars, therefore, treat this gospel as an anonymous work, retaining the name "John" out of convenience or simply calling the author "the Fourth Evangelist" and the gospel "the Fourth Gospel."
Carson, D.A.; Moo, Douglas J. (2009). An Introduction to the New Testament. Zondervan Academic. p. 141. ISBN978-0-310-53955-1. Retrieved 12 August 2023. But most scholars think of the four canonical gospels as anonymous, not pseudonymous.
Stein, Robert H. (2008). Mark. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Publishing Group. p. 7. ISBN978-0-8010-2682-9. Retrieved 13 February 2024.
Criterion of inclusion: either the author is prestigious (e.g. full professor), or the publisher is prestigious (e.g. Oxford University Press), or both. The Holman bibles have been edited by a Southern Baptist full professor.
Some are overtly WP:RS/AC (speak of "consensus", "majority of scholars", or "most scholars"), some are WP:RS/AC by implication (they say what we/scholars now know, or what is academic stock knowledge), others are not WP:RS/AC.
E.g., regardless of what his opponent says in the same book, Lüdemann made a WP:RS/AC claim by implication.
B&H Publishing Group, InterVarsity Press, Wipf & Stock, Westminster John Knox Press, Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, Pickwick Publications, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Abingdon Press, Paulist Press, Zondervan and Baker Books are Christian publishers.
