The authorship of the Gospels with Dr. Stephen Boyce 

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Zakir Naik gets millions of views with nonsense content, but this channel is so underrated, this feels really sad.

Steven Boyce is Awesome

Great interview. Love the in-depth content.

Wow, I haven’t heard of anyone talking about the legitimacy of the letters through the carriers. This is fascinating thank you not quite all the way through it yet

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Constructive and pedagogical, well done.

Thank you so very much🤍!

I was thinking before this video, I wonder to what degree the Gospel Authors were more like editors and publishers rather than single authors writing alone (perhaps with a single scribe). It sounds like you confirmed the hunch I had. That would also rebut the arguments from silence that some critics have about Justin Martyr (for example) not citing the Gospel authors by name. It could be that the Gospels were more associated with a group at that time than with the single author, even though it would be well known that the author was the active principle within that group. I would be interested to hear your thoughts about the supposed arguments from silence from the Didache and Justin Martyr regarding the alleged anonymity of the Gospels.

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Great discussion. I really enjoyed listening. ^^

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Maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The reasons for the canonical Gospel names are easy: Mark because Peter was illiterate Mathew because he was a disciple with some literary skill. Luke because he was a companion of Paul (Paul was dead or disappeared to Spain decades before the Gospels). Plus Luke stated he was not an eyewitness. John because was deemed to be alive for the longest time. Thus All of them have “credibility”. They were all accepted for various reasons- “Mark” because it was the first and linked to Peter. Mathew was the first to include the virgin birth. Luke was the first to add the resurrection in Jerusalem (the other 2 claimed resurrection in distant Galilee) John has the highest christology and advanced theology. They were not opposed only because: Christianity was still quite small in the second century - to contest them would take a lot of expense and time on the part of critics. You are correct in saying that some groups like to claim first person authorship (eg Gospel of Peter) Anonymity has power- as OT books have shown. Moses writing was anonymous for example. You keep saying church fathers but you should’ve specific- Justin Martyr does not name the Gospels for example - he refers to them as “The Memoirs of the apostle” or “Memoirs” or “In the Gospel it is written..” No evidence that Polycarp knew John- he never quotes from the Gospel of John while quoting extensively from Mathew, Mark and Luke. If Polycarp knew John would he refer to words from his Gospel rather than the letters of Paul and the other gospels? The churches and leaders met regularly as Paul’s letters indicate. Marcion was the first to set up a canon. He coined the word “New Testament”. Messianic discourse from the Dead sea scrolls and books like Daniel and Enoch (not written by Daniel and Enoch by the way) indicate that the Messaih was a divine being with authority to be worshipped- who would reign in an everlasting kindom (restored to the 12 tribes of Israel). So some critical scolars are wron in claiming that Jesus did not claim to be divine- if he claimed to be the Messiah: then that meant being partly divine (not unlike how Caeser was deemed to be a god). 42:20 - We don't have the entire extant Gospel of Peter to understand why christian leaders rejected the Gosel: did it have strong Gnostic inclinations for example? We cannot this draw strong conclusions from the rejection of the Gospel of Peter. Women were the first at the scene as per the culture- they were the ones to prepare the body with spices usually. The Thomas and disciples doubting scenario is a narrative to dispense doubt among early beleivers who probably had the same doubts. You calling origin a textual critic is laughable. And talking about consensus of church fathers is riduculous because they had a horse in the race. So talking about the chain of custody is a logical fallacy. The enlightenement changed discourse because of discussions among scholars- yes scholars can be wrong because they are human- so things can change after discovery of new data. Apologists talk like the church fathers are supernaturally correct about their dispositions. 54:10 You date the Didache to the first century?! As per Metzger its second century. But I am open to Didache used as source material for the Mathew and Luke. Jesus disciples were expecting the world to end being apocalypic Jews- it is very unlikely they took "notes". If Jesus saying were so important to the Jerusalem church- why don't we have quotations from the earliest books? No qotations from Paul's undisputed letters, Hebrews for example. And if the Didache was a collective work from the highest rank of disciples- why didn't it succeed? At 1:01 you conflate Philip the disciple with Philip the evangilist "who was one of the seven" not one of the 12- see Acts 21:4. The authos of the Gospels were not idiots- they were likley elite,schooled writers- they KNOW what biography in the believable biography in the ancient world looks like and would quite possible for reasons of propaganda try and duplicate eyewitness like accounts. The best example for this is John's gospel- if was one of the inner 3 then the sayings, narratives should line up closely to Peter (or Mark's) narrative. This is simply NOT the case- I except there can be differences in accounts and anecdotes; but It is much more likley in the era of psuedonymity, that "John" placed himself to sell his theology. This is why the "I am" discourses are not found in its Mark to the same extent. Hugo Mendez refers to this in his article on the so called Johanine community. The adding of the other disciples in the narrative in John's gospel eg Thomas is to likely introduce themes and also to add authority to the text. Peter would have been educated- right. In the local Galilean public school right? You are conflating John the disciple with John the presbyter/ the elder who wrote the Apocalypse in 1:12. The vocabulary of Apocalypse and John's disciples are very different eg the words for "Lamb of God" If John wrote end of the 1st century in Ephesus it would have been received MUCH earlier- its not quoted until late in the second century (earliest).

Around @54:00. I don't see why his premises lead to his conclusion. Just because Matthew was the most popular, and spread out the most, and the Didache quotes it a lot, and the fact that it was translated from Hebrew to Greek at some point, none of that really gives good reason to think Matthew was written by a group. I think the fact that it was called "the Gospel of the Lord" makes it seem like it's less about the author, and more about the story, and that "could" allow for a community to be writing it, but that's a pretty weak inference, in my opinion. That's a pretty big inferential leap. He mentioned Matthew using an epithet to refer to himself. What's he referring to here? Is there something in the text where we can see Matthew, the author, showing us he's the author, by his grammar?