Who wrote the Gospels

[Nous]

I saw this thread yesterday, and for what it's worth I just wanted to note that back in the 90s, the PBS program Frontline produced a series called “From Jesus to Christ”. I found it so very interesting and informative. I strongly recommend it anyone who has the slightest interest in the history and documented facts relating to the earliest Christians, which includes the various communities from which the Gospels arose. Years later when I found series online, I watched it again.

As it concerns writing of the Gospels, to the best of my recall, the show revolves around some version of the two-source synoptic gospels theory, where Matthew and Luke use Mark as their source along with the hypothetical Q. My understanding is that that is the predominant theory among Biblical scholars these days. I recall the show noted that the earliest transcripts of Mark show the book ending at 16:8, the first time I had heard of that.

A lot of the interviewees are apparently Jesus Seminar theologians/historians. I was not familiar with that group. The always enjoyable Elaine Pagels is another of the primary interviewees. Much information is provided on the extant Gnostic writings.

 

[blü 2]

what do we know about the origin of the First Gospel?

The crucifixion is traditionally dated around 30 - 33 CE. The earliest we meet Jesus in history is in Paul, from 50 CE on ie about 20 years later. Paul knows next to nothing about an historical Jesus.

For that we start with the gospels. The synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke, and they get their name from the sheer amount of material they have in common, often word-for-word, as well as sequence-for-sequence. Then on that common frame they add their own distinguishing touches.

When I came on the now-general idea that the first gospel written was Mark, everything clicked into place.

I think it unlikely that Mark was written before 75 CE (ie about 45 years on). Matthew and Luke follow in the next decade. John, the odd man out, is from around 100 CE (ie 70 years on).

Mark is thus the original purported biography of Jesus, and the only one, since the other three take their basic information from it. It's notable that in Mark Jesus is simply a human, and that Yahweh adopts him as his son when Jesus is baptized by JtB, following Jewish tradition and particularly Psalm 2.

Matthew and Luke change this with their tales of Jesus' magical birth by divine insemination, a Greek idea. At the crucifixion they also change Mark's despairing, defeated Jesus into a much more dignified figure (and John goes the extra mile and makes him the cool MC of the show).

The most significant thing about Mark is how so much of it can be mapped onto the Tanakh. It's as if Mark's author had only the most rudimentary idea of the life of Jesus and devised his tale by preparing a list of what he took to be messianic prophecies in the Tanakh, and then moving his Jesus through these situations, ticking them off as he went.

Indeed, in any of the gospels, if you remove the miracles and the fulfillment of prophecy stories, whether so noted or not, you're left with some sayings and not many biographical possibilities. The argument is available that no historical Jesus is necessary in order to account for the first, hence all four, gospels.

I don't rule out an HJ, but I think the question is far more open than most people allow. One possible authentic biographical detail is the way that Jesus fights with his family, and is routinely aggressive towards his mother (Mark 3:31, Mark 6:3, Mark 15:40, Matthew 10:35, Luke 11:27. John 2:3) with the sole exception, John 19:26, of telling the Beloved Disciple to look after her.

The question is not whether anything in the gospels is false. It's whether anything in them is a true statement about a real person.

 

[allfoak]

Many Christian conservatives believe that two of the Gospels, Matthew and John were written by disciples who were first hand witness to the words of Jesus they heard. Many scholars argue that none of the Gospel writers were actual witnesses any of the events they wrote.

What is the evidence that would support these conflicting views?

To what extent if any does it matter whether the Gospels were eye witnesses or not?

They were eye witnesses to an internal experience of the coming of the messiah, not an historical (external) experience.
The "gospels" are accounts of this ezperience. They are written using an historical narrative but are not historical.
There was a man named Jesus and he did overcome and become his own messiah.
The gospels tell us how to do the same.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.
The reason for this is because there is no messiah outside of ourselves.

 

[Ubon]

One person wrote the gospels without touching quill to scroll and did it feom beyond the grave.

That would not explain the contradictions of which there are many.

 

[Grandliseur]

Many scholars argue that none of the Gospel writers were actual witnesses any of the events they wrote.

That should not surprise anyone. That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected. When people exist only some 72 years after WWII who do not believe the concentration camps happened and that the Nazis exterminated millions of people in their camps, including Jews - it is obvious that it is so much easier to cast doubt on something that happened nearly 2000 years ago,

If you are a believer, it is water off a ducks back. If you are atheist, it is bread for your paradigm.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The four Gospel's were Written by Holy men of God, which were instructed by God what to write down.
As were all Scriptures that make up the bible.

Bible means, Book's within a Book.

Who wrote them? Names please. Just saying Holy Men of God seems rather pointless as it pertains to authorship.

 

[blü 2]

That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected.

If the question is, What's true in reality? why should the NT documents be treated any differently to other ancient documents?

If the question is not, What's true in reality? then what's the question?

 

[Twilight Hue]

That should not surprise anyone. That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected. When people exist only some 72 years after WWII who do not believe the concentration camps happened and that the Nazis exterminated millions of people in their camps, including Jews - it is obvious that it is so much easier to cast doubt on something that happened nearly 2000 years ago,

If you are a believer, it is water off a ducks back. If you are atheist, it is bread for your paradigm.

I think the compare evidences of the Holocaust with the "evidences" of the Bible is being disingenuous at best. There is simply no contest between the two as to how these type of things are determined.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

That should not surprise anyone. That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected. When people exist only some 72 years after WWII who do not believe the concentration camps happened and that the Nazis exterminated millions of people in their camps, including Jews - it is obvious that it is so much easier to cast doubt on something that happened nearly 2000 years ago,

I can go to a concentration camp site, though. What was Jesus' address again?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That should not surprise anyone. That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected. When people exist only some 72 years after WWII who do not believe the concentration camps happened and that the Nazis exterminated millions of people in their camps, including Jews - it is obvious that it is so much easier to cast doubt on something that happened nearly 2000 years ago,

If you are a believer, it is water off a ducks back. If you are atheist, it is bread for your paradigm.

That we don't know who wrote the different books of the Bible is just accepted scholarship.
Who Wrote The Bible and Why It Matters | HuffPost

 

[Grandliseur]

If the question is, What's true in reality? why should the NT documents be treated any differently to other ancient documents?

If the question is not, What's true in reality? then what's the question?

Reality dependent
You speak as if this reality you claim exists for all is simple to see. Yet, our awareness is colored by our paradigm, our senses, and our mental abilities, our rationality. These are not constants across the board of all humans.

Some people who are blind may not believe you if you claim that there is a beautiful rainbow following the heals of Irma, e.g..

My long time "friend" who has an electric / energy related education (don't know his exact diplomas) may be having better math skills than I - though I love math and am getting long in the tooth - yet, he is blind, cannot see, mathematically, geometrically that the evening shadow of the sun that at times throws my shadow up on a nearby wall making an image as tall or a little taller than myself -cannot be made by a sun hovering above a flat earth.

Programming and reality
In today's computer controlled world, programming is the key to all things. We know by experience how much trouble it is; programmers keep (Android, Apple) issuing new versions of their apps, because of improvements, fixes, and what not, and that goes for PCs too. Just look at the terrible Windows being updated relentlessly to improve it. Yet, atheists claim shamelessly that our DNA programming is auto-written. If you call this being anchored in reality, I think you have a ghost boat with its mirage anchor, and a reality that only you and fellow believers exist in.
Holocaust
If then we have people who claim that the holocaust is all lies (Illuminati conspiracy or the like) being only about 72 years ago that the evidence was brought out, how do you expect things nigh 2000 years old to have the nailed down evidence you demand? This means that the Bible critics, the unbelievers have a field day in proposing God is man made and his word that of shepherds, uneducated and uninspired.
Reality of individual: my_reality =! your_reality
In other words, your true reality is only as true as you alone think it is until the universe at large forces a reevaluation.
Here I find people who reject the Bible because of skepticism they claim necessary - lacking this same essential skepticism in regard to the rock soup that interacted with oceans in hot sea bottom vents and miraculously created life, DNA, that then kept on reinventing itself, rewriting itself until we have sexes, and an uncountable multitude of organisms simple and ultra complex in balanced ecosystems, climaxing with a human brain that is supposed to work in up to 10 or 11 dimensions according to some science article.

Why is that?
Does programming happen spontaneously in your reality? It doesn't in mine. I used to do programming. One period, one semicolon off, and you could spend hours trying to debug the program written going through the whole program line by line to finally 3 hours later, or so, finding one irritating period lacking.
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I know that Evolutionist have a definition of a term for what I just asked about. That does not change the facts, or reality.

 

[Grandliseur]

I think the compare evidences of the Holocaust with the "evidences" of the Bible is being disingenuous at best. There is simply no contest between the two as to how these type of things are determined.

The point is that if people only about 72 years later can dismiss something as fictitious, as many indeed do, how much easier isn't it for unbelievers to put doubt on something that is nearly 2000 years old.

Showing how hard it is to prove something is not doing either the holocaust not the gospels a disservice.

 

[Grandliseur]

That we don't know who wrote the different books of the Bible is just accepted scholarship.

I know.
My brother studied Bible criticism at University. He is now an atheist. His children, from when they were young spouted terrible things about Christ and the Bible.

The Inquisition killed any they could lay their hands on who read, taught, translated, and studied the Bible. Today, this task is now a mental killing done by the successors of the Catholic holder of accepted knowledge. Those of us who accept the Bible, then as now, are Heretics, we are the uninformed, the looked down upon scholarly:

1 Corinthians 1:
26 For consider your calling, brethren, that there are not many wise according to flesh, not many powerful, not many high-born. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world, that he may put to shame the wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world, that he may put to shame the strong things; 28 and the ignoble things of the world, and the despised, has God chosen, and things that are not, that he may annul the things that are; 29 so that no flesh should boast before God. 30 But of him are *ye* in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption; 31 that according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord.​

It is not a question of being in line with, being accepted by Scholars of Higher Education.
It is a question of being in approved state once you have to stand before the Judge, Christ Jesus.
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If you saw my link to the internal evidence in the NT that demonstrates clearly how the early Christians were up-to-date with the writings of the Apostles, and the Elders who knew Jesus (Jesus' own brother James, one of these). Thus the claims of Bible critics is water on a duck's back for the believer, and food for the atheist paradigm.

 

[Dawnofhope]

That should not surprise anyone. That unbelievers mock and make unholy claims about the Bible is not surprising, but is to be expected. When people exist only some 72 years after WWII who do not believe the concentration camps happened and that the Nazis exterminated millions of people in their camps, including Jews - it is obvious that it is so much easier to cast doubt on something that happened nearly 2000 years ago,

If you are a believer, it is water off a ducks back. If you are atheist, it is bread for your paradigm.

Thank you for your response. We should all be very positive about scholarship. I'm surprised you are not as some scholars support the conservative Christian world view. The OP question is about looking at the evidence. Jesus encouraged us to courageously search for truth, not blindly imitate the traditions of our forefathers. The truth shall set us free.

 

[Grandliseur]

The truth shall set us free

Yes, but what truth will set us free?
I do not belong to any church any longer since none have the simple Bible truth. I go by a total Sola Scriptura approach using as many translations and Interlinear Bibles as needed to get to the Bible truth. In other words, I go by the Bible.

If you imply that we should accept Higher Bible Criticism as taught at universities, I think (sorry to be blunt) that this truth is the truth of the devil. My brother took that road, while I took the 'road less traveled' - accepting the Bible as God's word.

I have found nothing to refute it; all I have found are my own inadequacies. If you should have any Bible questions, feel free to ask me.

If you were to think (?) that this world ever shall accept God's word, the events in the Bible, no matter the weight of evidence, you will find that in every case that there is serious evidence for e.g. the Exodus, the entry of Israel into the Promised Land, that this will be swept under the rug, with a big big broom and a very large and heavy rug.

 

[Dawnofhope]

Yes, but what truth will set us free?
I do not belong to any church any longer since none have the simple Bible truth. I go by a total Sola Scriptura approach using as many translations and Interlinear Bibles as needed to get to the Bible truth. In other words, I go by the Bible.

If you imply that we should accept Higher Bible Criticism as taught at universities, I think (sorry to be blunt) that this truth is the truth of the devil. My brother took that road, while I took the 'road less traveled' - accepting the Bible as God's word.

I have found nothing to refute it; all I have found are my own inadequacies. If you should have any Bible questions, feel free to ask me.

If you were to think (?) that this world ever shall accept God's word, the events in the Bible, no matter the weight of evidence, you will find that in every case that there is serious evidence for e.g. the Exodus, the entry of Israel into the Promised Land, that this will be swept under the rug, with a big big broom and a very large and heavy rug.

Regardless of academic questions and answers, the nature of God, the reality of Jesus and the very essence of our existence shines intensely from the exalted sacred words enshrined in the Bible. I have no need for either conservative or liberal Christian to define for me the love in my heart.

 

[Faithofchristian]

Who wrote them? Names please. Just saying Holy Men of God seems rather pointless as it pertains to authorship.

The Authorship of the Gospel's is God. The Holy men only Written down what was instructed to them what to write down by God.

 

[blü 2]

You speak as if this reality you claim exists for all is simple to see.

I know you can see it ─ you're posting here.

Yet, our awareness is colored by our paradigm, our senses, and our mental abilities, our rationality. These are not constants across the board of all humans.

True, and the remedy is to cultivate objectivity. This we best do with rational enquiry, not least scientific method.

he is blind, cannot see, mathematically, geometrically that the evening shadow of the sun that at times throws my shadow up on a nearby wall making an image as tall or a little taller than myself

He can nonetheless feel heat, understand the EM spectrum, understand the geometry of light rays, and so on. In other words, the concepts are all available to him.

Yet, atheists claim shamelessly that our DNA programming is auto-written.

Worse, they shamelessly take movies of RNA in the process of duplication. Or are you arguing that a windstorm can't create a 747 in a junkyard? Now there's a shameless argument!

how do you expect things nigh 2000 years old to have the nailed down evidence you demand?

If supernatural beings have objective existence, exist outside of the imagination of individuals, then why does no one ever give us a satisfactory demonstration? And the quality of the 2000 year old 'evidence' is very poor by any standard ─ genuinely incapable of persuading an impartial onlooker of its correctness.

This means that the Bible critics, the unbelievers have a field day in proposing God is man made and his word that of shepherds.

Rather, it means that these critics can't be answered with evidence to the contrary. When I find myself in that position, I re-examine my position.

In other words, your true reality is only as true as you alone think it is until the universe at large forces a reevaluation.

Not only do I think that objective reality exists, but so do you ─ that's why you're posting here. So the question is the one I first posed ─ what's true in reality?

Here I find people who reject the Bible because of skepticism they claim necessary - lacking this same essential skepticism in regard to the rock soup that interacted with oceans in hot sea bottom vents and miraculously created life

Then we can both sit back and watch as science seeks a possible natural path from chemistry to biochemistry. I have no doubt we'll crack the code eventually. Have you looked at the reasons why the thermal vent hypothesis is favored, by the way? At the very least, it's highly intriguing.

DNA, that then kept on reinventing itself, rewriting itself until we have sexes, and an uncountable multitude of organisms simple and ultra complex in balanced ecosystems, climaxing with a human brain that is supposed to work in up to 10 or 11 dimensions according to some science article.

Ain't nature grand!

Does programming happen spontaneously in your reality?

Please stop trying to smuggle a ghostly designer onto the set with words like 'program'. Instead try to understand the basics of the theory of evolution ─ descent with modification and natural selection; and then get into the more subtle stuff like mutation, gene-swapping, gene duplication, gene splicing, epigenetics &c ... it's all out there on the net by way of introduction, and endless good books on the science.

Out there in reality we've never found magic. It only looks like magic till we understand it.

 

[Twilight Hue]

The point is that if people only about 72 years later can dismiss something as fictitious, as many indeed do, how much easier isn't it for unbelievers to put doubt on something that is nearly 2000 years old.

Showing how hard it is to prove something is not doing either the holocaust not the gospels a disservice.

The problem is you're putting existing evidence on par with speculative theories based entirely on ancient literary works and archaeological fragments that prove vague at best.

The Authorship of the Gospel's is God. The Holy men only Written down what was instructed to them what to write down by God.

That doesn't help much either. It's like saying some holy guy walked down the mountain with two stone tablets carrying the Ten Commandments or some holy person chosen by God baptized Jesus.

You got to have names for something so important right?

 

[Faithofchristian]

The problem is you're putting existing evidence on par with speculative theories based entirely on ancient literary works and archaeological fragments that prove vague at best.

That doesn't help much either. It's like saying some holy guy walked down the mountain with two stone tablets carrying the Ten Commandments or some holy person chosen by God baptized Jesus.

You got to have names for something so important right?

You said it all, when you said, it's like saying some holy guy)
You just told on yourself.
Now why would I want to waste my time with you. Go Figure