Authors of the four gospels?
Matthew , Mark , Luke and JohnAnswerAll the Gospel writers was/were anonymous. Search the web yourself to confirm.. AnswerSearching the web certainly gives loads of information on many things. In this case, a careful search will reveal two different perspectives. The one stated above is widely held by many who wish to dis-credit the Bible, as if anonymity discredits the truth of what is contained therein. However, it is not factually correct to say the gospels were anonymous. They were all attributed to the authors mentioned at an early date. The titles in Greek kata matthion, kata markonetc were put on the scrolls to differentiate them from other documents in much the same way as we have titles on the binding of our modern books. There is near absolute unanimity among ancient sources, who were in a position to know, regarding authorship. If they were anonymous it would have been expected that various authors would have been suggested by ancient writers. This is not the case.Thus the Gospel writers were indeed Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.Response to Above AnswerActually the previous statment is true the gospel writers are indeed unknown they cannot be the original followers of christ given that the earliest written biblical gospel (Mark) dates to 65 AD at the earliest the death of Jeasus occurring in Circa AD 30, these texts are of unknown authorship, with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John simply being tags ascribed to the texts by early christian tradition. Given that the books were first writen during the reign of Nero and following the attempted purge of the christians in AD 65 it would have been sheer ideocy for a writer to use his name, which is why none of the gospel authors identify themselves. Although the gospel of luke has a preface in which the author gives the circumstances of his writing and dedicates the work to a man named Theophades (the spelling of that name is incorrect but i don't have a bible so cannot look it up) Infact these early biographic gospels simply draw on information found in the word of mouth of the teachings of those old enough to have heard Jeasus's origanal deciples speakand information provided in earlier Apocraphal Gospels none of which made it into the biblical cannon as they are diverse in nature, with books such as the gospel of truth, or the gospel of hillip being little more than theological tretises rather than stories of Jeasus, others suc as the gospel of Thomas are belived to be little more than collections of the sayings of Jeasus, which were drawn on by the writers of the biblical gospels.The reason that no one in the ancient world suggested alternative authorship is due to the fact that at this period (end of Julio-Claudian Dynasty) the christian comunity was a largly annonmous one and so it would benift no christian writers to identify themselves or others. Writers of the silver age of Latin literature and the Second Sophistic (contemopry greek and roman writers) were entirly disintrested in the subject, and i can think of no surviving text from this period of antiquity that discusses the topic of christian authorship in any way. Although early christian writers dating to the mid second century AD (around 60 or so years after the publication of the earliest biblical gospel) all agree on the authorship, they are at too far a remove in time to properly support these claims, and recent christian theological schollarship has largly discredited these claims.None of what i am saying is anti christian it is simply accepted historical theory. None of this is challanged by christian theologians and while it cannot be presented as fact, due to the difficulty of dealing with a period of time at such a vast remove, the is little else in the way of alternative theory and is widely accepted.Answer / correction of aboveAbove writer claims that the earliest gospel dates to around AD60. While it may be true that the current extant (existing) gospel fragments we have date to around this period (with some margin of error either way) It is not correct to cite this as this as the oldest ever written gospel.It is highly probably that there were many older recordings of the gospel accounts which were destroyed or lost during the formative years of the christian church under persecution from both Jews and Romans.Given Jewish tradition the accounts would also have been passed on very accurately orally during the early period.When people talk about the earliest gospel being written 30 or so years after Jesus's death and resurrection, they are making a dubious assumption that the current earliest gospels are the first ones written when it is highly likely there were many others prior to this which were destroyed, or have been lost and not yet uncovered.So it is important to be aware of this.
