The Gospel Writers

[Realworldjack]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

[We_Are_VENOM]

So, for example, some will cite passages in "Luke" as showing that the author must have been a physician. They do this because the tradition holds that Luke was a physician.

Tradition? Paul explicitly states that Luke was a doctor (Col 14:4).

[Mithrae]

Some commentators have tried to pick out aspects of these works as providing internal evidence for these associations. So, for example, some will cite passages in "Luke" as showing that the author must have been a physician. They do this because the tradition holds that Luke was a physician. But it is hard to do these kind of correlations in a rigorous way which does not smack of confirmation bias.

Tradition? Paul explicitly states that Luke was a doctor (Col 4:14).

That may not have been written by Paul. But Elphidium's point is that the chain of reasoning goes "Luke supposedly wrote the gospel/Acts -> Luke supposedly was a doctor -> so here are some passages in the gospel/Acts which look like they might have been written by a doctor." Used as internal evidence for the identity of the author, such reasoning is usually quite weak.

(Of course it's also worth noting that the weakness of such reasoning applies across the board; so for example the reasoning that "John supposedly was an uneducated fisherman -> here are some things in the gospel that don't look like they were written by an uneducated fisherman -> so John didn't write the gospel" suffers from the same shortcomings.)

[We_Are_VENOM]

That may not have been written by Paul.

Um, the books starts off with...

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God", and Paul habitually began his books by introducing himself.

But Elphidium's point is that the chain of reasoning goes "Luke supposedly wrote the gospel/Acts -> Luke supposedly was a doctor -> so here are some passages in the gospel/Acts which look like they might have been written by a doctor." Used as internal evidence for the identity of the author, such reasoning is usually quite weak.

Yup, I am aware of that reasoning. I wouldn't say it is bad circumstantial evidence, but rather weak, as you classify it.

(Of course it's also worth noting that the weakness of such reasoning applies across the board; so for example the reasoning that "John supposedly was an uneducated fisherman -> here are some things in the gospel that don't look like they were written by an uneducated fisherman -> so John didn't write the gospel" suffers from the same shortcomings.)

Your modesty is noted. In the case of John, my heart leads me in the direction of "The Gospel according to John".

What that means is, he didn't necessarily write the book, but this is the Gospel according to him...meaning that someone wrote his testimony according to his direction/authorization.

I am under the strong opinion that uneducated people don't right books, so I think that is the best explanation.

[Difflugia]

That may not have been written by Paul.

Um, the books starts off with...

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God", and Paul habitually began his books by introducing himself.

Ephesians, 1-2 Timothy, and Titus all start that way and nearly all scholars agree that they probably weren't written by Paul. More scholars think Colossians is genuine, but it's not as accepted as, say, Romans or Galatians, which nearly all scholars accept as Pauline.

[We_Are_VENOM]

Ephesians, 1-2 Timothy, and Titus all start that way and nearly all scholars agree that they probably weren't written by Paul.

Wellll I wouldn't say "nearly all"...in fact I think the majority of scholars agree that Paul wrote all 4 of those letters.

Of course, there will always be opposition when it comes to historical inquiries, which makes things all the more interesting.

[Difflugia]

Wellll I wouldn't say "nearly all"...in fact I think the majority of scholars agree that Paul wrote all 4 of those letters.

Then you would be wrong.

From the HarperCollins Study Bible's introduction to Ephesians:

Marked differences in style, phrasing, and viewpoint between this Letter and the seven unquestionably authentic Pauline Letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon) have cast significant doubt on Pauline authorship of Ephesians. It is more likely that a disciple of Paul wrote the Letter in Pauls name, probably after the apostles death.

And its introduction to 1 Timothy:

The letters to Timothy and Titus are distinctive within the Pauline collection. They are very similar to each other in style, vocabulary, theology, and content and very different in those regards from the other Letters. Since the eighteenth century they have been marked out as a unit by a collective name, the Pastoral Letters (or the Pastorals), and since the early nineteenth century questions have been raised about their authorship.

These letters present Paul as their author, but very few scholars now accept that claim. In addition to their distinctive vocabulary and style, key Pauline concepts such as faith, righteousness, and being "in Christ" are treated quite differently. Moreover, there is a new emphasis on sound teaching, apostolic tradition, culturally acceptable patterns of behavior, church order, and a level of church organization that far surpasses anything found in the undisputed Letters (Romans, 12 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon). Though a few scholars continue to affirm Pauline authorship, often by placing them very late in Pauls career or by ascribing their un-Pauline features to a secretary, most assume that an unknown authorprobably the same author for all three Lettersused Pauls name to give authority to his attempt to address problems in some post-Pauline churches.

The Oxford Bible Commentary on Ephesians:

Was the Letter Written by Paul? The traditional view, from the second century onwards, is certainly in the affirmative. The writer names himself as Paul in both 1:1 and 3:1. But for the past 200 years the issue has been disputed, and though several prominent contemporary scholars still hold to Pauline authorship (e.g. Earth 1974 and Bruce 1984), the majority have concluded that it was most probably written by someone else.

And on the Pastoral Epistles:

While a small and declining number of scholars still argue for Pauline authorship, most prefer to see the author's modesty and his admiration for Paul behind his pseudonymity; he was passing on Pauline tradition and the credit was due to Paul rather than to him.

From The New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman:

While the arguments against the Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians and especially of Colossians have persuaded a number of scholars, with the letter to the Ephesians the matter is even more clear cut. The majority of critical scholars are convinced that Paul did not write this letter.

Up to this point I have tried to show why scholars continue to debate the authorship of the Deutero-Pauline epistles, but when we come to the Pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, there is greater scholarly unanimity. These three letters are widely regarded by scholars as non-Pauline.

Summaries from An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond E. Brown:

Ephesians:

DATE: If by Paul, in the 60s. If pseudonymous (about 80 percent of critical scholarship), in the 90s.
TO: Pauline Christians (probably as imaged in western Asia Minor).
AUTHENTICITY: Probably by a disciple of Paul (perhaps part of a "school" at Ephesus) who drew on Col and some of the undisputed Pauline letters.

Titus:

DATE: If by Paul, ca. AD 65. If pseudonymous (80 to 90 percent of critical scholarship), toward the end of the fi rst century, or (less probably) early second century.
TO: Titus in Crete (newly founded churches?) from a Paul depicted as recently departed from there and now in coastal Asia Minor (Ephesus?) or western Greece (Macedonia?), on his way to Nicopolis.
AUTHENTICITY: Probably written by a disciple of Paul or a sympathetic commentator on the Pauline heritage several decades after the apostles death.

1 Timothy:

DATE: If by Paul, ca. AD 65. If pseudonymous (80 to 90 percent of critical scholarship), toward the end of the first century, or (less probably) early second century.
TO: Timothy in Ephesus (with the possibility that Ephesus may represent churches already in existence for quite a while) from a Paul depicted as recently departed from there and now in Macedonia.
AUTHENTICITY: Probably written by a disciple of Paul or sympathetic commentator on the Pauline heritage several decades after the apostles death.

2 Timothy:

DATE: Written either first or last of the Pastorals. If by Paul, perhaps through a secretary, ca. 64 or shortly after (if written first) or 6667 (if last). If pseudonymous (80 to 90 percent of critical scholarship), in the late 60s shortly after Pauls death (if written first) or decades later, most likely toward the end of the first century (if last).
TO: Timothy (in Troas? In Ephesus?) from a Paul depicted as imprisoned and dying in Rome.
AUTHENTICITY: Probably written by a disciple of Paul or a sympathetic commentator on the Pauline heritage (either soon after Pauls death with historical memories, or decades later with largely fictional biographical content). Yet it has a better chance of being authentically Pauline than do the other Pastorals.

[We_Are_VENOM]

Then you would be wrong.

LOL. First off, I don't mean to go on a tangent here, but hey.

I retract what I said about how the vast majority agree that Paul wrote all 4 of those letters (except maybe for Ephesians).

But notice the common reason why the shift of positions, even in your quotes; they all make it seem as if it is impossible for someone to change their style or vocabulary over time....or not just over time, but under circumstances.

My hero and fellow Christian Apologist William Lane Craig; his writings, lectures, or teachings for layman audiences may be different than his writings, lectures, or teachings that are directed towards scholarly or academic audiences.

Heck, even during my tenure on various religious forums for the past 8-10 years, my style of typing/writing has changed...I use more semicolons in my sentences now more than I did years ago, I bold my words now more so than I did years ago, and my overall vocabulary has changed more so now than it was years ago.

So if someone was to compare my style now compared to years ago, I guess I am not the same person, based on that logic.

I said all of that to say this; even though I concede your point about the general consensus of the authorship of the books in question, I believe the reasons given for the consensus are very weak...and it is a slap in the face for not only what I know to be true in general, but from my own personal experiences.

Second, instead of basing my belief that Paul wrote Ephesians upon the majority opinion of "scholars" who are at least 2 centuries removed from the event in question, I will just base my belief on someone who was much closer to the event...

Ignatius of Antioch said in his epistle to the Ephesians..

"And ye are, as Paul wrote to you,one body and one spirit, because ye have also been called in one hope of the faith." https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.v.ii.vi.html

And he is quoting what Paul said in Ephesians 4:4-6.

The closer you are to the event, the closer you are to truth value.

Third, again, as I stated before about Ephesians; Paul introduced himself in the beginning of the book. Your response was something like; but Paul's "introduction" is in most of the books, even ones that he probably didn't write.

But if you look at the end of the book...

"21 Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. 22 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you."

The problem is threefold..

1. If an impostor wrote this epistle, how far would this deception have gone if Tychicus never showed up to the destination that "Paul" sent him (because "Paul" never sent him)?

2. If Paul was alive during a time that an impostor falsely attributed his name to an epistle, Paul would have been alive to dispel this attempt at deception, ("Hey, I didn't write a letter to you guys").

3. If Paul was long dead after the writing of the epistles, then his recipients would have been like ("Hey, how is Paul writing us a letter and he has been dead X amount of years?").

Now, if the epistles remained anonymous, then you wouldn't have these problems. But when the books are dropping names, you run into these obvious progressive issues.

These same issues applies to all 4 books in question. So we have good, internal and external reasons to conclude that Paul is the author of all 4 books.

[Willum]

Well, so everyone agrees they were written by very fallible multiple people who made obvious mistakes everyone in the discussion agrees upon.

Well if they made mistakes about obvious and mundane issues, how much more likely is it that they got spiritual and ephemeral issues wrong?

What if they did not understand the divine logic and unintentionally made it humian? Just one of many problems divinely inspired authors would face, were there such a thing.

I do wish Christian and Judaic people luck in following which instruction interpretation from which author is right.

[Difflugia]

LOL. First off, I don't mean to go on a tangent here, but hey.

Tangent away. If anyone objects, start a new thread.

But notice the common reason why the shift of positions, even in your quotes; they all make it seem as if it is impossible for someone to change their style or vocabulary over time....or not just over time, but under circumstances.

I'll point out first that in a broad sense, if you think that the refutation of any scholarly consensus is simple and self-evident, then you are probably misunderstanding (or at least oversimplifying) the arguments involved. That's not only true here, by the way, but plagues many topics that get discussed on this forum.

The quotes I picked were to show that scholars in general agree that Ephesians and the Pastorals are pseudonymous. When they incidentally touched on the actual arguments, they are simplified to the point of omitting underlying details. The overall argument is more than just a change in style and vocabulary per se. The genuine epistles themselves show obvious differences due to identifiable development in Paul's theology and vocabulary during the progression of Paul's ministry. The scholarly claim is that the differences between the genuine epistles and the pseudo-Paulines are of the kinds and quantity that they must be from different authors. Unless, therefore, your argument is that there is no possible pattern of changes that would make different authors probable, then you haven't actually addressed any of the relevant arguments and are instead addressing a straw man.

A while ago, I posted links to several books about the Pastoral Epistles that can be at least partially read online. Additionally, chapters 3 and 4 of Bart Ehrman's Forged expand on some of the arguments.

I also previously wrote a couple of posts about them in this thread. If you don't feel like wading through the whole thing, the individual posts are here and here.

As I noted, if we're just talking about Paul's vocabulary, it does change through the letters accepted as genuine. There's even an overall increase in density of novel words in the proposed order that the epistles were written, which matches your point about your own vocabulary growing and changing through time. The Pastorals, though, have almost twice as many novel words per page than any of the other epistles. Second, an inordinate number of words that are shared by the Pastorals aren't found in any of the other of the other Paulines. Third, many of the words that are shared between the Pastorals and the other epistles are used in different ways and with different meanings than they are in the genuine Paulines. Finally, while many of those words may not found in the other epistles, they more closely match the vocabulary of second-century church writings.

I said all of that to say this; even though I concede your point about the general consensus of the authorship of the books in question, I believe the reasons given for the consensus are very weak...and it is a slap in the face for not only what I know to be true in general, but from my own personal experiences.

Second, instead of basing my belief that Paul wrote Ephesians upon the majority opinion of "scholars" who are at least 2 centuries removed from the event in question, I will just base my belief on someone who was much closer to the event...

Ignatius of Antioch said in his epistle to the Ephesians..

"And ye are, as Paul wrote to you,one body and one spirit, because ye have also been called in one hope of the faith." https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.v.ii.vi.html

And he is quoting what Paul said in Ephesians 4:4-6.

The closer you are to the event, the closer you are to truth value.

I see no reason to think that Ignatius was in a better position than modern scholars to evaluate the accuracy of traditions he received. Ignatius never justifies why he thinks Ephesians is genuine, only that he does. Unlike the arguments of the modern scholars, we have none of his reasoning to examine.

Third, again, as I stated before about Ephesians; Paul introduced himself in the beginning of the book. Your response was something like; but Paul's "introduction" is in most of the books, even ones that he probably didn't write.

But if you look at the end of the book...

"21 Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord, will tell you everything, so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing. 22 I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you."

The problem is threefold..

1. If an impostor wrote this epistle, how far would this deception have gone if Tychicus never showed up to the destination that "Paul" sent him (because "Paul" never sent him)?

If this was written more than a decade (see below) after any such appearance was supposed to have taken place, who do you suppose would have pointed out the deception?

2. If Paul was alive during a time that an impostor falsely attributed his name to an epistle, Paul would have been alive to dispel this attempt at deception, ("Hey, I didn't write a letter to you guys").

3. If Paul was long dead after the writing of the epistles, then his recipients would have been like ("Hey, how is Paul writing us a letter and he has been dead X amount of years?").

If this epistle is pseudonymous, it is almost certainly based on Colossians. Since Colossians was written (if indeed it was written by Paul; Colossians is itself disputed) while Paul was imprisoned shortly before his martyrdom, then Paul was either dead or indisposed when Ephesians was written.

If Paul was dead, the question wasn't "why is Paul writing to us now," but "why hadn't we found this letter before?" We obviously don't know the details, but "look at this Scripture I just found in the attic" isn't without precedent, even within the Bible itself.

These same issues applies to all 4 books in question. So we have good, internal and external reasons to conclude that Paul is the author of all 4 books.

I agree that there are reasons, but not that they're good ones.

[Hawkins]

What can we know (demonstrate) about the authors of what we call "The Gospels"? Notice carefully that I am not talking about opinions here, but rather what we can know to be a fact, and how we would go about demonstrating it to be a fact we can know?

Humans lack the ability to get that fact. Unless you are trying to leverage the inability of humans to make a point, I don't see how much it is related to the truth of the gospels.

For your reference, in Chinese history. One of the most important and legitimate series of books is "Records of the Grand Historian" or Shiji (in Chinese). It is a series of books thought to be finished around 94 BC by author Sima Qian. The problem is, he wrote about not the history of his time but history beginning from 2500 BC. It is a 2500 years of history written by a historian lived around 94 BC. Take the history 1000 years ahead of this historian, what is the author of the materials he used to compile his books about what happened 1000 years ago? In a nutshell nothing is traceable today about the materials or sources he used with their authorship.

The fact is simple he wrote about what happened since 2500 years ago before he's born, without any authorship of those histories referenced in his books. It's like you are now writing about a history which occurred 2500 years ago but without any authorship of your material used ever mentioned. Yet later on your book is reckoned as the only legit history of all time (Shiji is actually referred as the greatest series of books in Chinese history).

It is so because only the credibility and reliability of this single author Sima Qian is said to be examined (or capable of being examined) by people back to the point when he's alive. Only based on this we trust that his series of books about a history 2500 years before him can be a truth. Do we (or the Chinese) have an alternative? We don't!!!!! It is out of human capability to track down the original authors who lived 2500 ago.