The Flimsy Folklore of Gospel Authorship 

I get so frustrated that “theologians” try to pretend they are historians. It’s like an astrologer trying to tell an astronomer they don’t know what they are doing.

At this point, these guys speaking is not them giving arguments, it's them chanting slogans to keep themselves from a breakdown

"Ever since I've been on TikTok..." Well that's your first mistake.

"all kinds of books don't mention my name, I wonder if I wrote any of those". Now that is some top quality snark!!

That panel must be exhausted after all of that tap dancing. 🙄

Mathew was trained to read the Talmud?! A commentary that wouldn’t even be written for 300 years?! Now THATS a miracle

“Excusogist” is more snarky than we usually get from Paulogia. I like it!

The Gospels should be titled, "The Gospel of Some Dude," "The Gospel of Some Other Dude," etc.

It's got to be a good feeling when you're debating a topic, and your opposition has that many compliments for your arguments.

If mental gymnastics were an Olympic sport... these guys would be world class.

I'm baffled at how any challenge to an apologist's fundamentalism is perceived by them as a huge affront. Why can't they concede something as innocuous as gospel authorship? Is their faith in Christ, or in later Christian traditions that developed after Christ? It's like if they think that if they concede on one issue, they'll have to acknowledge there may be reasons to investigate and reexamine all their other beliefs, and the whole thing may come down crumbling. That doesn't strike me as faith; that strakes me as fear. They cannot afford to lose any ground, or they have...nothing.

Fantastic job, Paul. These kinds of re-responses are very important but very time consuming. I really appreciate you taking the time to rebut and showing how most replies are simply people talking in circles.

Dearest Theophilus, New York City hot dogs are awesome! Yours truly, Spider-Man

Remember when you listen to all of this discussion...this is *****EXACTLY****** the way god wanted it. The most powerful being in the Entire Universe had a plan to come to earth, visit a few people, leave nothing behind, leave zero evidence, have NOBODY write anything down during his visit...then have people a 1,000 miles away write down some crap they heard about the visit and do it 100's of years later. Facepalm THROUGH my HEad.

Paul, you have them in a panic.

The real problem here is a presumed all-powerful god that has failed the church completely. The fact that we are debating this stuff 2000 years after the fact because their god couldn't have figured out the importance of authorship and reasonable evidence speaks a lot about the validity of the bible, church, jesus and god..

3:44 - Paul is nothing, if not fair. That's one of the main reasons he's so damn effective at what he does. Of course, it never hurts to be on the correct side of an argument, either! ;-)

The amount of straws grasped by the panel is enough to reduce oceanic pollution

About the "Theophilus" thing. I agree the "Luke was writing to this person" interpretation is reasonable, but I think there are two other possibilities worth keeping in mind. 1. Theophilus is not anyone in particular, it is an honorary title Luke gives to the audience he is writing for. "Theophilus" means "friend of God" in Greek. 2. Luke is a forgery and this "Theophilus" thing is a verisimilitude. If Luke is a forgery claiming to be a traveling companion of Paul (see the "we" passages), it would make sense for him to address his writing to a specific person to make his account seem more believable, even though he was actually writing later to no one in particular. Edit: I missed Paul bringing up my first alternate explanation.

It is hard for us to properly imagine a time when literacy was so limited.

Every time I hear someone say "needs context", I hear "Twist the facts to fit our narrative."

Boyce is just... woof. He always makes this concession that the Gospels have a committee authorship?! Which completely destroys "eyewitness" and "independence" I never understand how awesome he feels when he gets there.....

I just saw this in my feed. I’m in so much pain, and I’m going to lie down on a block of ice and hope your soothing voice helps me out. Then again, it could go the other way with their bad arguments worsening my migraine…but let’s hope their arguments are good!

I don't get why Christians would favour an improbable explanation, instead of accepting the most straightforward story that the evidence is pointing to in many of these historical questions.

Apologists are only interested in what is possible, not what is probable

MrDeity is a real one for coining "Excuseigist" 😂

As much as I LOVE the gentle way you normally present information the vast majority of the time, I love seeing you hit back a little more firmly. Being so explicit about the Excusigetics is really important, showing exactly how IP, Testify, etc are trying to weasel around the tough reality that is known about Gospel authorship.

Paul really says ":/" in all photos of him lmao

On the question of whether names were important, yes, the early church valued names. This is evidenced by their use of St Peter, the martyr they based the new church in Rome around. This is also evidenced by their use of body parts from various martyrs and saints. They were grasping at every straw they could to tie their authority to people who they could make a case for being as directly associated with Jesus as possible. The fact the gospels lack this clear sourcing suggests they couldn't make such a case even back then.

This is why we need to better educate ourselves on what is obfuscation. Cuz a lot of Excuseagists really use “benefit of the doubt” or plausible deniability as a way to justify some wild stuff

I'm still waiting for the multi-hour panel discussion on the correct metaphorical interpretation of the smell of magical rainbow unicorn farts.

It’s astounding that they made your point and then published the video as if they had created a rebuttal… your cartoon persona LITERALLY sat there silent and motionless for HUGE swaths of this video and they just went on to corroborate your thesis! They can’t be this dense, can they?

Mr. D is my hero...thanks Bri Bri Paul, your style of deep look is always a pleasure to experience...

I love that the apologists literally said "no one can know for sure, so lets just assume the thing i believe."

Man, this is painful to watch. I wonder if those guys ever stop to think "Gee, maybe I'm going too hard on the mental gymnastics and should reevaluate things?". Probably not. But still, it's weird for me to see a guy like Inspiring Philosophy, who seems like a smart dude, being so absurdly delusional when he defends his faith.

Outstanding work, as usual, Paul. I know it can be time consuming, but the body of work you are producing is making a difference.

The gospels were anonymous writings. The gospels are not historical or even biographical writings at least not in the modern sense.

Papias also tells us about a crazy story about how Judas died that isn’t compatible with his death in the gospels. Very strange.😉

Apologists continually overlook the fact that they are asking people to believe: 1) God oversaw the production of these texts and wants people to believe their content. 2) Failure to embrace their content results in eternal damnation. These are substantial claims, the acceptance or rejection of which come with substantial consequences. Why then is the evidence in support of their contentions so vague, mostly amounting to church tradition with no real corroboration -- to the point where apologists have to engage in endless speculation as to why the evidence isn't better? God has the power (and allegedly the motivation) to have ensured that these supremely authoritative texts came down to us with an excellent history of transmission and with excellent corroboration. So why didn't he? To be honest, the Calvinists are the only believers who have a decent explanation to account for this: God simply doesn't care about most of humanity and supernaturally enables belief in his elect, thereby making evidence largely irrelevant. Believers don't need it and unbelievers can't benefit from it anyway, so why bother?

For those curious as to why some scholars think that Theophilus isn't a real person, and Luke/Acts addressing him is a rhetorical device, consider that his name literally means "lover of god" in the language the book was written in. Does seem a tad off, no?

I am to the point in my journey away from Christianity that I find myself giggling when Christians talk about or debate the gospels. It's all so silly😂

The lesson is clear: it takes four apologists to take on one Paulogist

I'm amazed how you are consistently able to calmly, carefully, and methodically completely destroy their inadequate "arguments"

Their argument: If we redefine anonymous to mean whatever we want it to mean, then we can have our cake and eat it too.

The comment about all the books you might have written and “…the 9 Bible references that are literally on the screen now” has me ROFL!😂😂😂😂 So awesome

This is why I started my journey into atheism: because I had high standards for the Bible and when I discovered an apparent contradiction, the only defenses were excuses that I wouldn't even accept from myself, much less an omniscient, omnipotent God. 2 Timothy 3:16 "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," The following is how I thought the Bible was written: Matthew 10:19-20 "But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you." The biblical authors didn't need editors, researchers, fact-checkers etc, because they weren't really the ones writing the Bible: God was writing it through them and he's perfect so how could there be any mistakes? There couldn't even be things that are technically not mistakes but sure look like errors: 1 Thessalonians 5:22 "Abstain from all appearance of evil." (Note. I normally quote the NIV but here I used the KJV. I grew up with the KJV and my Dad made a big deal out of this interpretation and it was part of our theology). Thus on Easter Sunday morning of 2013 while reading the crucifixion story in John, when I came across John 19:14 I felt a sense of dread. "It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. “Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews." I was sure I read in a different gospel that Jesus was on the cross from 9:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the afternoon. I combed through the other gospels and found it: Mark 15:25 "It was nine in the morning when they crucified him." I couldn't believe I'd never noticed it. How could my parents and brother who didn't countless Bible studies not notice it? God knew me before I was born. He knows how many hairs are on my head. He knows how many atoms are in the universe. How is it even conceivable that he can't remember when he was crucified? Or what he said earlier? If there is a contradiction between two gospels then at least one is wrong which means God didn't write it. I remembered reading in Haley's Bible handbook that in the first couple of centuries, there were a lot of forged gospels and Epistles. Did some of them make it into the Bible? How am I going to tell the difference between man's word and God's word? How many Christians think the book of John sounds more distinctly man made than the book of Mark? An apologetics website and later my brother both gave the same defense of the contradiction: Mark was writing for a Jewish audience and John was writing for a Roman audience. The Jews count the hours from sunrise and the Romans count the hours from midnight. This fails on so many levels. There was no evidence provided that this was true. The Bible wasn't written for a particular generation or nationality. God avoids even the appearance of wrong. Apologists often try to blame the Bibles problems on the human authors, but that's like typing a document on a typewriter then saying "I didn't write it. I only interfaced with the typewriter. The typewriter wrote the document and it made the mistakes." Lastly, I couldn't put my faith in something lesser than myself. Putting my faith in a god who couldn't write the Bible as clearly as I or the apologists can is like trusting your safety to a security guard that you can beat up. Most apologetics are excuses, and they always fail because the people making the excuses conveniently forget that "with God, all things are possible." And God knows everything, and God hates even the appearance of wrong. "God had to permit slavery. The Jews were stubborn..." Had to? "It just looks like a failed prophecy..." God looks like he doesn't know the future? "Ancient people couldn't understand a globe earth or plate techtonics, or evolution so God had to use mythical terms..." God couldn't make them understand? You get the picture. Thanks for reading.

*Faith In The Gospels ;* Faith in the hearsay stories of _men that "claim" to speak for Jesus._ (an unavoidable fact)

I think I'll start my own channel and call it Polycarpogia

Do these excusigists also argue against all the other forgeries? Because these also suggest the church fathers weren't good at verifying authorship.

Paulogia, you are doing amazing job on daily basis. Thank you really much!

Wow, Paul this is great authorship. Thank you. Here are two sayings; There are many lies but only one truth. Oh, what tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. This sums it up for me.

Thanks! Keep up the great work, I find it amusing that you can defend your video so well and so easily.

Your research is top notch Paul. None of the apologists have any reasonable response to your points 😂😂😂.

'I that [Paul] was quite fair on some of the pushback he presupposed he would get'. Acknowledging the counter arguments to one's position before elaborating on it is good academic practice. Spending hours making excuses for a lack of evidence is...kind of the opposite.

The attempts of Christian apologists to assign authorship to the gospels speaks volumes about their desperation & nothing at all about what’s true. Very informative, thanks Paul 🙏✌️

I would have to describe their Excusegetics as a lack of integrity. Instead of agree with you, they’d rather take the ball over to their friend group who will affirm them and just… not affirm you.

Yes! I'm finally a stick figure! I've officially arrived as an apologetics somebody! I can scratch this off my bucket list. I'm getting away from responses for now as sometimes they lead to talking past each other and can be time consuming, but I'd be happy to have another discussion sometime, whether it's this topic or when get to doing your videos on Acts.

I can’t believe I missed this but your illustration of Tertullian goes so damn hard

It's incredible to me the lengths some of these apologists will go to quibble over minute details of an argument while tacitly admitting that they agree about the most substantial aspect with the skeptic. The whole point about the debate about whether the gospels are anonymous works or not is precisely to call into question our confidence in traditional authorship. If all of the panelists in both videos agree ultimately that the gospels were by-and-large collaborative works, then what the hell was the point in dragging it out into hours-long conversations?

"4 guys no arguments"

Mister Deity’s idea of “excusagist” is definitely one of the reasons I left Christianity. I was getting tired of coming up with excuses for God, and when I sought out help from apologists, they weren’t any better than my excuses on average.

Whenever a theist says it requires more context I break out my bald assertion counter and settle myself in for a real workout.

Good for you, that you got so much attention for your video! Such an important topic to discuss

It is kind of amazing how presumed truths evaporate upon closer inspection

You're in rip-snorting form , Paul. You really deserve many more followers.

Danke!

You knocked another one out of the park, Paul.

“Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.” Maimonides

I wish they had YOU on the panel.

Another well researched video by Paul.

I love your face expressions! I love it because you have the face of someone that is listening, something you’re good at. You take in the other side before formulating a response, love that!

Apologists only care about defending the faith, they care little to nothing about the evidence or reason.

So modest... with a background working for Industrial Light and Magic (I presume, I know you said you worked on Star Wars movies). Yeah, you have the editing skills. More important here, you also bring the facts.

What makes me sad that we still debate about the bible, is the fact that if we could finally agree that there's no god, we could also start treating revelations as a cosmic horror novel!

It is hilarious that they accuse Paul of engaging in speculation and just-so-ing, then they just go off on total speculation about how the apostles did their work in composing the gospels.

25:44 - IP really loves to just declare that his own explanations are "simpler" and then refuse to explore the evidence beyond that starting point.

I watched your first video. I was just kind of like okay. Like, none of this is really controversial. I never expected anyone to put together a four-person panel to talk about it for hours.

Thanks! Brilliantly done as usual!

Thank you.

Your video first, then Dan McClellan's video commenting on IP specifically. Nice Wednesday morning. Thanks

At least IP doesn’t ban people who criticise him, unlike that sad case called Testify.

Or maybe he was called Levi because he was fond of denim jeans?

I don't want to say thy cropped out the citations footnotes intentionally, but I am now curious whether the full panel were able to see the full video on their own screens, or if they only had access to the cropped version we see in the stream?

Fantastic videos Paul These apologists .. or excusigists struggle when they are confronted with someone who has outstanding knowledge of the source material And As always the videos are delivered with humility, they are informative, polite, have a humorous streak. A+

I think Paul gave us the best label for them …excuseologists

The biggest problem I have with Eric Manning's arguments (like so many other apologetic arguments) is that they're highly speculative.

Another great video. Paul, if these guys are Protestants, you may want to include in a future video the fact that after hundreds and hundreds of years, Protestants decided that the Roman AND Eastern orthodox churches had actually been wrong about how many books should be considered authoritative scripture and created a new canon of Scripture that rejected generations of Christian tradition. If Protestants believe that church tradition could be wrong about which books are inspired by God, why would it be a problem for a Protestant to admit that church tradition was also wrong about who authored the so-called Gospels???

Great video, you have to love it when the people critiquing your work can only agree with it say nuh-uh in response.

Omg, how do you know so much about the bible Paulogia? Your ability to research is mighty impressive. Imagine having to know that much about all the religions one rejects, insanity!

Apologists are just so obvious. For any sane stance apologetics are not needed. The fact that they feel the need to defend a position says it all

Excellent scholarship Paul 👍.

Love your presentations

It seems to me that an omnipotent god could've simply preserved the authorship proofs necessary. It can turn a woman into a pillar of salt instantly but doesn't understand preservation?

IP is not impressed by the arguments: aka the academic consensus. A layman with no credentials is not impressed

"Excuseagists." I used to be one...and yes, it's a great term, a perfect balance of truth and sarcasm.

I have caught myself making that "Paulogia face" the last few months when I'm feeling incredulous about claims my kids make.

I noticed that they all doubled down on the "unanimous" rhetoric when that was clearly shown to be false. When 4 different "Johns" are mentioned as the author of John's gospel, that's not "unanimous." InspiringPhilosophy moved the goalposts to "but they're unanimous in that the author of John was a disciple of Jesus" when that wasn't the original claim.

It doesn't really matter who wrote the gospels, unless they can demonstrate that the events described in those stories actually happened they're essentially arguing over authorship of what amounts to ancient comic books and dime store novels.

"Crazy non-believers are just making up wild stories with no evidence!!! Also all the magical stories in the gospels are true."

There was a Greek historian and possibly a geographer named Theophilus who was referenced by Josephus in his post-Antiquities work "Against Apion I." It's not clear if he was contemporaneous or was from an earlier period. Other references to who was quite possibly the same person come from Plutarch and Ptolemy. Josephus describes Theophilus as one of the Greek historians who "have made distinct mention of us [=Judaism, as defended in this work]." The author of Luke/Acts might indeed have been addressing these works to this Theophilus. This seems more a literary device, however, as we would expect that if this were sent to Theophilus exclusively, that its spread would have to have originated with Theophilus, something for which we have no evidence. These were more likely at best open letters, and quite possibly something never actually sent specifically to Theophilus himself, even if he were still alive when they were circulated. Even if Theophilus were personally delivered a copy of these works, if they are open letters, then there's little reason to suspect Theophilus was familiar with the author at all. He would be more likely to be familiar with the author if these were private correspondence, but it's still quite plausible for him to not be familiar with the author even in this case. Certainly more plausible than the origin of the books of Luke and Acts resulting from Theophilus circulating them himself without any historical indication that he had done so. Expecting Theophilus to even know who the author was lies on quite unlikely circumstances, let alone the fact that Theophilus even being very familiar with the author in no way implies the author was Luke.