Yesterday I turned in my paper on the formation of the Christian canon…woohoo!
It was a lot of hard work, and it was fun too…I’m a nerd. So sue me.
There was a lot I learned from doing the research. One great resource I read was Mark D. Roberts’ book *Can We Trust the Gospels?*
One argument he addresses in the book involves who wrote the Gospels. Skeptics often argue that the names aren’t authentic. Mark didn’t write Mark, Matthew didn’t write Matthew, etc. Rather, they were attached to give authority to the writings, kinda like the noncanonical writings like Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Bartholomew, etc
Roberts’ answer: “the main flaw in that argument is that two of the biblical Gospels were named after relatively inconsequential characters who did not actually know Jesus in the flesh. If you were a second century Christian wanting to make up an author for a Gospel, you would never choose Mark, and you would never choose Luke because he had not direct connection to Jesus at all, even though he played a bit part in the writings of Paul. If second century Christians were fabricating traditional authorship for the canonical Gospels, surely they could have done a better job. (48-49)
“So, ironically, the tendency of the noncanonical Gospels to assign Gospel authorship to prominent disciples actually increases the likelihood that the traditions concerning New Testament Gospel authorship are true, at least with respect to Mark and Luke. And if the orthodox tradition can be seen as trustworthy in these cases, then the presumption of suspicion about the tradition must be wrongheaded. We should accept the ancient tradition unless we have good reason to do otherwise. Moreover, the anonymity of the biblical Gospels bears the stamp of truth whereas the pseudonymity of the noncanonical Gospels suggests their falsehood. (49)”
One small, but significant point. What do you think?
**FINALLY, a post on Jesus (or at least directly related to Him)…huzzah.
I’ve been reading the book “Who Wrote the Gospels?” by Randal McCraw Helms. He makes the claim that the Gospel of Mark comes from a third-hand account by some bishop named Papias in the second century who was a self-proclaimed collector of stories from the old men who knew the men who knew Jesus. According to Helms, the only written source we have of a guess who wrote that Gospel is from Papias quoting an old traveler as saying that Mark was an interpreter of Peter’s who “got the chronology mixed up” in his gospel because he was writing from memory years later. There is another tradition that it was a John Mark, a nephew of Peter’s, or some other relative.
Also, it appears that both Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily from Mark. Matthew uses 600 of Mark’s 666 versus—many word-for-word and the rest only slightly reworded, for the most part. It would be odd for a supposed Apostle to copy from a second-hand source, you would think.
I’m not trying to be contrary here. I’m not entirely convinced of the above myself, but thought it interesting in light of your quote from Roberts here.