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The following article was written as an example of a response to those who disparage certain parts of the Bible.  It could well have been written for any part of canonical scripture, Old or New Testament.  For the sake of example, I have established a scenario in which the authorship of the Synoptic Gospels has come under attack by a university professor.

Introduction 

A member of a College and Career Sunday School class has returned from a semester at a nearby state university where he has been taking an introductory course on the New Testament.  The professor teaching the course has stated that the Synoptic Gospels were not actually written by specific individuals by the names Matthew, Mark, or Luke, but rather by various communities of authors.  This paper is a response to that student to correct the erroneous information he has been given concerning the authorship of the Gospels.

The Call for Evidence

To accept a person’s position on a particular issue on the simple basis that that person is titled or holds impressive credentials, as with a university professor, is to attribute to that person a degree of infallibility.  This becomes obviously untenable when it is discovered that other people of equally impressive stature hold quite opposite positions on the same issue. 

Therefore, one must not look at who supports a particular position, but rather what the evidence is to support said position.  Likewise, one must consider the evidence to the contrary.  To do less would be tantamount to putting a man on trial for a crime with no provision made for a defense attorney.  If only the prosecution is allowed to speak, the verdict is determined before the trial has begun. 

The position that this present paper intends to refute is that the Gospels are not what they purport to be.  Most specifically, the question at hand is whether the Synoptic Gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  It has been alleged by one hiding behind his esteemed professorship that the Gospels are actually the fabrications of early Christian communities, the position that liberal textual critics have held for the past century and a half.

A professor of equal credentials, in a work discrediting the liberal position, has stated that this “liberal insistence that criticism has proved the Bible errant is pure propaganda and should be regarded as such.”[1]  Another scholar voices the same sentiment:

 . . . we are not bound to accept every wild critical theory that any critic may choose to put forward and assert, as the final word on this matter.  We are entitled, nay, we are bound, to look at the presuppositions on which each criticism proceeds, and to ask, How far is the criticism controlled by those presuppositions?  We are bound to look at the evidence by which the theory is supported, and to ask, Is it really borne out by that evidence?  And when theories are put forth with every confidence as fixed results, and we find them, as we observe them, still in constant process of evolution and change, constantly becoming more complicated, more extreme, more fanciful, we are entitled to inquire, Is this the certainty that it was alleged to be?  Now that is my complaint against much of the current criticism of the Bible – not that it is criticism, but that it starts from the wrong basis, that it proceeds by arbitrary methods, and that it arrives at results which I think are demonstrably false results.[2]

To carry on honest debate, it is understood that a conclusion is reached by the weighing of evidence.  But one must also understand what constitutes good evidence in a question of a historical nature, as is the question at hand.  One scholar observes that “the real gains in a century of biblical criticism have not been in the slippery field of literary reconstructions, but in the fields of archeology and linguistics.”[3]  Archeology is a digging into the past, and the linguistics in question is an effort to understand ancient languages.  

Evidence for historical matters is notably different from evidence for matters of science.  In historical matters, one is looking for what was at one time known.  In science, one is looking to discover what has never been known.  If something has never been known before, as in the existence of an unknown planet, by its discovery one has moved from a position of “no knowledge” to “knowledge.”  However, if one is dealing with something that has been at one time known (for instance, whether Matthew, Mark, and Luke actually wrote their respective Gospels), then one must return to that knowledge which has already existed.  Nothing new is discovered, only relearned.  History is not learned by studying the present, but rather the past, when it occurred.  Therefore, one must seek to understand what was known at a time more contemporary to the time in question.

One does not suddenly arrive at new knowledge without new evidence.  All the new evidence, in the historical sense of learning from the past, has only served to reaffirm the old knowledge.  Those who have a new knowledge by which the authenticity of the Scriptures is drawn into question must be challenged to show some evidence other than their own musings.

The Evidence of the Church Fathers

The further in time one finds oneself from an event, the less one can know of that event if left to one’s own means.  To gain knowledge of any event in the past outside one’s experience, one must receive the witness of someone who was contemporary to the event.  If such is not possible, one must move as close to that event as possible and seek corroboration among multiple witnesses.

The oldest testimony of the authorship of the Synoptic Gospels is that of the early church fathers.  They are the ones who heard the testimony of eyewitnesses or were only a generation removed.  A conjecture made more than two thousand years later will not stand up to these ones who were drastically more contemporary to the actual writing of the Gospels and were thus in a better position to bring an accurate report of what had occurred.

The earliest recorded statement on the authorship of the Gospels is that of Papias, who was the bishop of Hierapolis in A.D. 130.  His writings, Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord, were preserved by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History III.39.  Eusebius wrote: 

‘The Elder [as per previous reference in this writing, John the Elder, the Apostle John] used to say this also:  Mark became the interpreter of Peter and he wrote down accurately, but not in order, as much as he remembered of the sayings and doings of Christ.  For he was not a hearer or a follower of the Lord, but afterwards, as I said, of Peter, who adapted his teachings to the needs of the moment and did not make an ordered exposition of the sayings of the Lord.  And so Mark made no mistake when he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them; for he made it his especial care to omit nothing of what he heard and to make no false statement therein.’  This is what Papias relates concerning Mark. 

Now concerning Matthew it is stated:  ‘So then Matthew recorded the oracles in the Hebrew tongue, and each interpreted them to the best of his ability.’[4]

Another early testimony is received from Irenaeus, who was bishop of Lyons in Gaul in A.D. 180.  Irenaeus grew up under the tutelage of Polycarp, a disciple of John.[5]  In his work Adversus haereses (Against Heresies – Obviously, some of the same erroneous teachings were cropping up then as are prevalent today, to which Irenaeus provides this information as part of his corrective response.)  Irenaeus wrote:

Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there.  After their departure Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching.  Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher.  Then John, the disciple of the Lord who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel, while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.[6]

A further record is contained in the Muratorian fragment, named after L.A. Muratori who discovered it in 1740.  Though this list of canonical books was written in “barbarous Latin, by careful and ignorant scribes, in the eighth century,”[7] its Greek original has been dated around the end of the second century.  The fragment is mutilated at the beginning, but evidently mentions Matthew and Mark for it then proceeds to describe Luke as the third Gospel, after which it speaks of John as the fourth.  The fragment begins as follows and attests to Luke being the writer of the Gospel by his name:

  . . . at which he [? S. Mark] was present and thus set them down.

The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke . . .  He set down the events as far as he could ascertain them, and began his story with the birth of John.[8] 

There can also be said to be a resounding argument from silence from the early church fathers concerning the authorship of the Gospels.  Despite a total of 36,289 quotations of the New Testament (19,368 from the Gospels) in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Eusebius (dating from A.D. 130 to 258), no question is ever raised concerning the authorship of the Gospels.[9]  It should seem strange that now, two millennia from the event and with no further evidence, one would begin to raise such questions.

The Evidence from Motive

Besides the testimony of early records verifying the authorship of the Gospels, there also arises the question of motive.  In many legal proceedings, motive is a key argument.  The question here is to what motive anyone would have for using the names of Matthew, Mark, or Luke as a name under which to write.  First of all, if Matthew were not the writer of the first Gospel in the New Testament, it would make little sense to attribute it to him..  Matthew was comparatively obscure among the apostles.  If some person or group other than Matthew had actually written the Gospel and wanted it to gain notoriety, it logically would have been produced under the name of a more renowned apostle.  Besides this, Matthew had been a tax collector and as such would have had a negative reputation among the populace of the day.

That Mark was a figure in the activities of the early church is attested to in Acts and the letters of Paul and of Peter.  However, his record is not untarnished, being most remembered for deserting Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13:13.  Not being of renown as a stalwart of the faith, one wonders why any person or group would write a Gospel and attach Mark’s name to it.  The logical conclusion, absent any evidence to the contrary, is that Mark himself wrote the Gospel.

Luke was an associate of Paul, noted in Paul’s letters Colossians and 2 Timothy.  He is called a physician and was obviously educated and capable of doing the kind of research the opening verses of the Gospel of Luke show him to have done.  However, if Luke did not write the Gospel, then once again the question must be raised, why choose Luke as a pseudonym?  Only being mentioned twice in the New Testament, far from being a key leader in the early Christian community, he would not be a logical choice.

The idea that not just one, but all three Synoptic Gospels would be written under the names of relatively obscure men unless they had really done it is beyond reason.  As Dr. Craig L. Blomberg states:

Contrast this with what happened when the fanciful apocryphal gospels were written much later.  People chose names of well-known and exemplary figures to be their fictitious authors – Philip, Peter, Mary, James.  Those names carried a lot more weight than the names of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  So to answer your question, there would not have been any reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people if it weren’t true.[10]

The Evidence of Style

Each of the three Synoptic Gospels has a character that is unique to it.  Matthew consistently draws attention to the Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ.  Mark is a Gospel of action, dealing with the works of Christ and having much less to say about His teaching.  Mark gives more space to the miracles than any other Gospel while citing only eighteen of the parables and parabolic utterances.[11]  Luke demonstrates a more researched approach, both in a literal and historical sense.  Luke is the only writer to provide dating in his narrative.  This Gospel also stands apart for its literary quality, offering four beautiful poetic passages within the first two chapters: the Magnificat (1:46-55), the Benedictus (1:67-79), the Gloria in Excelsis (2:14), and the Nunc Dimitis (2:28:32).[12]

This kind of consistency of individual style in the clear telling of narrative is not in keeping with the work of a community developing a work from various traditions.  One need only read the hodgepodge of the Koran to see the difference.  Muhammed was illiterate, and what was finally written down generations later of his alleged revelations is dramatically different from the orderliness of the Gospels.

Conclusion

Much care was taken during the formation of the New Testament canon, as can be verified by the fact that certain writings, though of ancient character, were left out.  The earliest records available attribute to Matthew, Mark, and Luke the authorship of their respective Gospels.  The character and style of each Gospel lends support to that which has been held to be true until recent times.  Those who have sought to change the understanding of who wrote the Gospels have done so without evidence.  One scholar pulls no punches in summing up this position when he says:

I am not rejecting this kind of critical theory because it goes against my prejudices or traditions; I reject it simply because it seems to me the evidence does not sustain it, and that the stronger evidence is against it.[13]