Who wrote the New Testament?

Why this matters to Muslims

A solo lecture summarizing how mainstream critical scholarship dates the four Gospels and treats the names attached to them

A solo lecture summarizing how mainstream critical scholarship dates the four Gospels and treats the names attached to them · Paul Williams (Blogging Theology) ↗

• 0:45 ↗ Williams opens his run through the mainstream dating with Matthew. He gives the date scholars propose, and points out that the book itself names nobody, whatever the title above it says.

  “The first Gospel is the Gospel of Matthew. This was written, they say, around 80 to 85 AD. The author is unknown. I know it says the Gospel of Matthew, but in fact the Gospel doesn't claim to be by anyone in particular. No named individual is attached to the Gospel if you read the text itself.”

• 8:58 ↗ He then dates the four familiar names. The earliest record he knows of anyone attaching them to these books is late second century, in the church father Irenaeus.

  “Well, the earliest historical record we have of anyone calling the four Gospels, which are anonymous, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is towards the end of the second century in the writings of an early church father called Irenaeus.”

• 10:14 ↗ His argument against apostolic authorship rests on language and schooling. The Gospels are polished Greek, and he holds that Galilean fishermen had neither the language nor the literacy for it, which is why he relays the scholars' verdict that the four are second-generation compositions rather than the work of first-generation eyewitnesses.

  “They were written in sophisticated Greek, a language that your average fisherman from Galilee would not have been able to speak to that level. And they couldn't read and write anyway. They were peasants, basically. So it's virtually impossible that they could have written it themselves.”

A single-presenter livestream on the New Testament documents: who the traditional authors are said to be, and when the Gospel titles appear in the surviving copies

A single-presenter livestream on the New Testament documents: who the traditional authors are said to be, and when the Gospel titles appear in the surviving copies · EFDawah ↗

• 0:47 ↗ The presenter starts with where the four names come from. In his account they reach us through church tradition rather than from the books, the information is late second century, and the names arrive in the manuscripts later still.

  “Through church tradition we've been told that the Gospels were written by four historic individuals, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, this information comes from the late second century, and we find that in the oldest and complete manuscripts of the New Testament that their names were added in much later.”

• 2:23 ↗ He sums up his own survey of the copies of Matthew, which he has published as a paper. On his reading the third-century copy carries no title at all, and in the fourth-century codex the name is added above a Gospel that had already been written out without one.

  “So just to recap: third century, no title. Fourth century, you have Codex Sinaiticus already published and someone later coming to add the name of Matthew to it.”

• 6:13 ↗ His next point moves from authorship to the collection. Since Paul's letters came first, he argues, the earliest churches had no set of Gospels to appeal to, so believing in a New Testament was not asked of the first Christians.

  “The earliest generations of Christians did not know of a New Testament and had no requirement to believe in it.”