Who do you believe wrote the Gospels?

[JLord]

I have been studying the origins of the Gospels. The dates, authors, sources, etc. I have noticed something that puzzles me. It seems as though the scholarship on the gospels is split into what mainstream scholars believe and what conservative Christians believe. It seems to me that many people for reason want to rely on their faith to show when the documents were written. Other people start with a position rooted in faith and then selectively look for evidence supporting that position. I think either is wrong. Scholars should be looking at the evidence with an open mind. (btw, I don't really have any opinion right now on when or how the Gospels were written, so I'm not taking either side) I have a few questions for Christians here:

1. Is the dating of the Gospels important to your faith? (so if it was somehow proven as a fact that the gospels were written around 140 AD as many scholars believe, would this make a difference to your faith?)

2. What do you think the motivation is for some Christians to want to date the gospels as early as possible?

3. Does the authorship of the Gospels make a difference to your faith? (mainstream scholars have very different views about authorship than traditional church teachings)

4. Why do you think some Christians find it very important to hold firm in the belief that Matthew was actually written by Matthew, Mark by Mark, etc.?

5. Who do you believe wrote the Gospels? When were they written? What was the source?

 

[sojourner]

I have been studying the origins of the Gospels. The dates, authors, sources, etc. I have noticed something that puzzles me. It seems as though the scholarship on the gospels is split into what mainstream scholars believe and what conservative Christians believe. It seems to me that many people for reason want to rely on their faith to show when the documents were written. Other people start with a position rooted in faith and then selectively look for evidence supporting that position. I think either is wrong. Scholars should be looking at the evidence with an open mind. (btw, I don't really have any opinion right now on when or how the Gospels were written, so I'm not taking either side) I have a few questions for Christians here:

1. Is the dating of the Gospels important to your faith? (so if it was somehow proven as a fact that the gospels were written around 140 AD as many scholars believe, would this make a difference to your faith?)

2. What do you think the motivation is for some Christians to want to date the gospels as early as possible?

3. Does the authorship of the Gospels make a difference to your faith? (mainstream scholars have very different views about authorship than traditional church teachings)

4. Why do you think some Christians find it very important to hold firm in the belief that Matthew was actually written by Matthew, Mark by Mark, etc.?

5. Who do you believe wrote the Gospels? When were they written? What was the source?

Scholars do look at the evidence with an open mind. There is no proof that the canonical gospels were written by Mark, Matthew, Luke, or John. There is, however, evidence that points to a late enough dating of the texts that the authors could not have personally known Jesus. Mark is the earliest gospel, and it was written after 70 c.e. Forty years following the crucifixion. people just didn't live that long back then.
The other three, being later than that (John around 90 - 100, I believe) just hold no possibility of being contemporaries of Jesus.

We want to date them as early as possible in order to verify their authenticity. If you accept the Source Theory, which places a hypothetical Q as a common source for the synoptics, and if you accept Thomas as a valid source, then we can place the sources very early. The communities that produced Q and Thomas separated very early, possibly prior to 40 c.e. That would place their separation only about 7 years following the crucifixion. Yet there are many instances of muultiple attestation between the Q text and Thomas. Those instances would appear to verify the passages in question as authentic.

Dating, authorship, etc. do not affect my faith, but these scholastic issues do affect my Biblical scholarship and, ultimately, my theological construct of scripture.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

1. Is the dating of the Gospels important to your faith? (so if it was somehow proven as a fact that the gospels were written around 140 AD as many scholars believe, would this make a difference to your faith?)

It is important to Christians who want to have interaction between myth (Christian dogma) and history. Our message is that God interacts in history in important and meaningful ways. The Gospels are intended to be the first record of this interaction, the witness of the life and ministry of Jesus and his disciples.

2. What do you think the motivation is for some Christians to want to date the gospels as early as possible?

Traditionally, the motivation is to clearly separate orthodoxy from heresy. The traditional argument is that orthodoxy came first - so the earliest dating of the Gospels and the latest dating for other heretical writings are proposed.

3. Does the authorship of the Gospels make a difference to your faith? (mainstream scholars have very different views about authorship than traditional church teachings)

Possibly.

4. Why do you think some Christians find it very important to hold firm in the belief that Matthew was actually written by Matthew, Mark by Mark, etc.?

It sustains the earliest date.

5. Who do you believe wrote the Gospels? When were they written? What was the source?

Dunno.

 

[joeboonda]

Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

 

[slabbey06]

Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

How did you know that's what I was going to post?

 

[wizanda]

Gospel of:
John = the Pharisee Nicodemus = False!
Mark = John-Mark fisherman
Luke = Physician
Matthew = Tax collector

 

[Inky]

1. Is the dating of the Gospels important to your faith?
Why yes, Luke took me out for pizza last night and he was very charming. Sorry, bad pun.

Any significant historical information about the Gospels would be important to my faith, because they help us research who Jesus actually was and what he actually said. I suppose the date they were written does make a difference, but only with this end in mind, and it wouldn't bother me to find out they were written as second or third-hand sources, especially since that already seems likely to me.

2. What do you think the motivation is for some Christians to want to date the gospels as early as possible?

If you want to believe that the content of the Gospels is literally true or at least highly accurate, you want to think they are first-hand accounts, or at least were written soon after Jesus's death.

3. Does the authorship of the Gospels make a difference to your faith? (mainstream scholars have very different views about authorship than traditional church teachings)

It makes a difference in the way I described in number 1.

4. Why do you think some Christians find it very important to hold firm in the belief that Matthew was actually written by Matthew, Mark by Mark, etc.?

Same answer as number 2.

5. Who do you believe wrote the Gospels? When were they written? What was the source?

I think they were written some years after Jesus's death, but I'm not educated enough on the subject to give a good personal estimate, or to give a good guess of who wrote them. I think it's likely the authors viewed early Christian communities as the target audiences, and even that the different Gospels were geared toward different groups and regions.

 

[powder21]

1. From what I understand. It's generally an accepted fact that the gospels were NOT written by the apostles, but rather, descendants of the apostles/early Christians whom the stories had been passed down to. This makes a profound difference in faith which I will explain later.

2. Conservative Christians wish to date the gospels as early as possible because the more time between the stories the actual apostles told and when it was actually written down, the more room you have for error. This makes it very difficult to convince people that it is the infallible word of God.

3. Yes. As I mentioned before, if you believe that the apostles wrote the gospels (either while Jesus was alive or just after he died), the easier it is to believe that everything in there about Jesus or about what Jesus said is more accurate and less biased. The "fact" that it was written much later AND that the gospels in the Bible were collected and CHOSEN by the church (leaving out 30 something others) leads me to study the Bible as literature as opposed to the "Word of God".

4. Answered in number 3.

5. I strongly believe that the gospels were written by "descendants" of the apostles or early Christians 150-300 years after Jesus' death (The 300 years after being when the church collected the four gospels into the Bible and burned many others as heresy.) However, I do believe that the source IS the stories that the apostles continued to tell of Jesus after his death, which leads me to believe very strongly that the Bible/New Testament is NOT the "infallible Word of God", but rather, a good literary reference to the time of Jesus.

 

[joeboonda]

From what I understand. It's generally an accepted fact that the gospels were NOT written by the apostles,

Not generally accepted fact by me or the great theologians of the ages.