I wouldn't say it was completely agreed upon until 400 AD, but anything is better than Ehrman who is not just non-Christian but (somewhat) secretly belongs quite specifically to the most anti-Christian demographic there can be.
Do u have any EXTENT copies of any SOLID FIRST MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPELS if so please direct us to it ? secondly Eusebius called PAPIAS basically a IDIOT Eusabious himself was of questionable personal quality and integrity this is well known he is a nan sho justified the use of what is false a an effective tool in hyping Jesus I wait an answer !!???? Before I forget the muratorian Conan is 85 sentences long in his its entirety what is was written in dates to late 8th to 9th centuries many scholars date its actual base to late 4th century there close to 65,000 words in the 4 gospels the Canaan u speak of here is a FRAGMENT all be it larger than the other 99% of new test fragments that are as small as cut up Business cards also Christian scholarship considers later manuscripts as in the codexes to be more reliable which is one hell of an admission
Scholars just enjoy casting doubt on ancient... everything. Scholars tell us Homer didn't really write Homer's plays, and Shakespeare didn't really write Shakespeare's plays. In a couple hundred years, they'll be telling us Tolkien didn't really write Lord of the Rings.
The major difference between Homer's Play and Shakeara's plays is that they are not the word of God. There will be no law created because of it there will be not society created because of it. Works of fiction are for entertainment and should stay just that, no one should claim it's reality then get surprised that people will question it.
@@user-ws1li8ed2cthis isn't talking about whether the bible is fiction or not this is talking about authorship that's why it's called a double standard , u people say because it's supposedly a book from god we can't know anything but we can know about things like authorship
The question of who wrote the bible has no bearing on whether it's the word of god, because it's authorship is not the basis for that.@@user-ws1li8ed2c
I never understood why these “scholars” ignore all the early Christian writings that unanimously tells us who wrote the Gospels. How’s that not substantial evidence?
Because Irenaeus wrote about it around 185-190 and the gospels were written in 70-110. the gospels were written by highly educated greek-speaking christians. that can be seen based on an analysis of the writing styles, vocabulary, and literary techniques used in the Gospels. the gospel authors demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the classical literature and the greek language indicating a level of education that would have been uncommon among the lower classes in ancient Judea.
@@Contagious93812 1) So Ireneaus writings start earlier 175-185 is a more accurate range 2) The date of Ireneaus is not most important, it's that he wrote that he received his knowledge from Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John. 3) The Gospels were written 55-65 AD. These "scholars" try giving later dates until you actually look at the evidence yourself they are much earlier 4) Jesus and all the apostles spoke Greek from average to very good. Protestants don't realize they destroy Christianity when they say Jesus and the aposltes didn't know Greek, in effort to deny this to back up their scripture. Matthew and Luke were well educated and wrote their gospels. Matthew worked as tax collector for the Roman Empire, he can write Greek. John had someone that could. It's not that unbelievable to find someone that can write Greek for them. 5) Justin Martyr and Papias of Heiropolis wrote before Ireneaus on the authors of the Gospels early 2nd century. The Apostle John lived to the second century. All consistent with authorship and copies. And Hegessipius early 2nd century wrote Simeon who is Jesus's cousin lived to the 2nd century, another Jesus eye witness. There was plenty to attest to the gospels written by actual eye witnesses.
@@SugoiEnglish1 Nope. Early Christian writers don't mention the names. The only people from whom we got the names are Iraneaus (185, almost a hundred years after the gospels were written) and probably Papias (Papias said Matthew was in Hebrew or Aramaic). Actually it wasn't really Papias but Eusebius quoting Papias. So Papias was also an unreliable source who told tall tales about Judas literally exploding and was described by Eusebius as a man who "seems to have been of very limited understanding." Scholars (majority are Christian) don't accept the Gospel autorship because the early Church fathers don't mention the names.
Have you ever read Saint Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus, which is 135 biographies of the first Christian figures, not all are Christian but important witnesses, starting with the apostles. It’s short. But he writes the years of existence, the gospels, etc. There’s a bunch of early Christians he writes that knew the apostles, and ones that know the witnesses to the apostles
Great video as always. Out of all the Christian apologetic channels out there I'm confused why you don't have more subs. Your content is well presented, tackles important objections and is overall 🔥
Thanks! I'm working to improve my content, presentation and consistency. I know I got a ways to go but I'm feeling more confident as I go. I've tried to do a blog and a channel at the same time and just kept defaulting to my comfort zone, but this time the focus for this year is RU-vid.
@@TestifyApologetics I have watched only this video from you and I can say that the information is very well presented and explained. I think you just need more advertisement.
@@Random-ut7jw Not true. Authors were not anonymous. Not many contradictions between gospels. See how I did that? No evidence backing up your claim, no response to the video above. You'll convince everyone like this.
Because the authors of these gospels did not self-identify their names, their books are technically anonymous, regardless of whether or not Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually wrote them.
@@Random-ut7jw that's how haters act.. say ANYTHING; especially outrageous things, yet never bring evidence to back any of them up 😔 (Muslim handbook)
I use a Blue Snowball with a stand and mic pop filter. It's a very affordable set-up. I use Audacity to do a lot of editing and effects. I'd still like it to sound better, but glad to know it sounds right you! I'll take that is a sign I'm on the right track.
If the gospels were truly anonymous, then why did the early church (and even the dissidents in general) have no problem agreeing on the authorship of the gospels?
Because ascribing those authors add weight to the veracity of what's written in the gospels and therefore makes Christianity more believable. Surely you understand that this also takes weight away from their claims because they have so much to gain by lying.
If that were the case, why wouldn't they have just changed the names to people closer to Jesus like Peter? Mary? In fact, they threw out those documents as fakes. So, the truth is it's extremely unlikely that they just forged some names. And no, they had no reason to lie, either. They were all being persecuted and killed, so whether they had names on documents or not wouldn't have mattered. They gained nothing.
@@dwiii1635Dude, do you know who emperor Nero is? He literally caked up early Christians in wax and set them alight. And threw them to a lion circus. Not to mention executed them on the regular. Not persecution? And do you know how the apostles died?
They originally didn't. In fact, none of the authors felt it was important to mention who they were in their own gospels. That's why the authorship tradition is contested. (I am not saying the tradition is right or not BTW.)
@@amazingcaio4803 well I would have to admit that's the first I've heard of that. Definitely food for thought and I will have to research more about that. Thank you for the new information brother!
While Justin Martyr's mention of "The Memoirs of the Apostles" is significant, it doesn't conclusively prove traditional authorship. Instead, it highlights the existence of early Christian writings without specifying their authors. Justin's reference aligns with the idea of anonymous authorship, suggesting that attributing the Gospels to specific individuals might have come later.
@@raUser9982 Papias’s testimony is not without issues. His writings suggest that he was more concerned with the oral traditions and the transmission of Jesus' teachings rather than the specific identities of the Gospel authors. His references to the Gospels do support the idea that they were based on earlier traditions and teachings, but they don’t provide conclusive evidence of the traditional authorship. Papias's views on authorship reflect later attributions rather than direct evidence from the apostolic era.
@raUser9982 Justin Martyr does not refer to Mark’s Gospel as the “Memoir of Peter” in his surviving works. The term “Memoirs of the Apostles” appears in Justin’s writings, but he does not specify which apostles or Gospels are included under this term. The idea that Peter was involved in the creation of the Gospel of Mark comes from church tradition and is not based on direct, concrete evidence but rather on the testimony of early church figures and subsequent tradition.
@@josephhamilton6724 "And when it is said that He changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and when it is written in the memoirs of him that this so happened, as well as that He changed the names of other two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means sons of thunder." - Dialogue with Trypho 106 In all writings, only Mark's Gospel mentions jesus calling the sons of Zebedee Boanerges By memoirs of Peter, Justin Martyr refers to the Gospel of Mark
Because Old testament books were converted into Greek language by the Jews, which is known as Septuagint. So most Jews had access to Greek Old testament books than Hebrew.
They were meant to be widespread and even in Palestine, many people could speak Greek. If you went anywhere in the known world in the 1st or 2nd century you could reliably find someone fluent in Koine Greek. So the gospels were written in greek because it was the common tongue of the time.
The same reason educated people today usually write in English, even if their native language isn't English. Or wrote in French, in the 18th century. Or wrote in Latin, in the Middle Ages.
It is interesting the Erhman will say one thing to a popular audience and something completely the opposite to scholars. It’s almost as if he won’t try to deceive those who can dispute his claims through historical evidence.
I’m less interested in who write them, and more interested in why should we believe them. Even if you know for certain who wrote them, that does not mean what they wrote was true. And The gospels were written anonymously. There is nowhere in any gospel does the author identifiy themselves. If there is I’d like someone to point it out
The same standard can be applied to the quran. It is a collection of writtings by various people that recite the life and teaching of Mohammed. But, how many collections were made? Going back to the originals made. There was a diffrent number of surahs, order of surahs, and the wording of the verses. I remember vaugly ather scolar who collected the various versions, and there is around 30 diffeent qurans in use today. The same cannot be said of the bible.
Well that's the struggle with apologetics. All the skeptic needs to do is disprove the veracity of scripture. The apologist must not only affirm that scripture was written by men who had reason to know but also that the claims were true.
I would encourage everyone to examin the case for anonymous authorship. Afterall the idea is neither original too nor belived only by secular scholars.
Which one are you referring to? I will eventually work my way to the resurrection but I think if we can establish that the gospels are reliable and based on eyewitness testimony, Paul's criticisms of the minimal facts go out the window. I'm wanting to build a more cumulative case and contest some of the assumptions that modern scholars make rather than take the popular minimal facts approach.
@@TestifyApologetics I think that the best naturalistic explanation is offered by him... The fact that the only eywitness claiming to see the Risen-Jesus is a strong case against the resurrection...
I think this idea comes in large part from Old Testament scholarship. The documentary hypothesis is built on the idea of post-Exilic redactors, anonymously splicing together sources and presumably fudging the transitions and details. For a century this concerted, unilateral effort to undermine the credibility of the Old Testament proceeded, unabated, without much opposition in academia. Just a giant chasm forming between the Church and the academy, never the twain shall meet. So by the late 20th century, for you to get any attention as a biblical scholar, the only big sensational claims left to make were about the credibility of the New Testament. Since most biblical scholars already accepted the anonymous authorship of most of the OT, it seemed like a safe (yet still spicy) bet that the New Testament was anonymous too. Given all the anti-Catholic bias in academia it seemed equally safe to disregard the uninterrupted chain of testimony of the fathers. It's part of a general attitude of assuming the worst. It infects us at every turn. They did the same thing regarding camels in the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch never mentions anyone domesticating camels in Israel, only patriarchs of the Israelites using camels in one way or another. But it does say that the pharaoh of Egypt gave Joseph camels. 150 years ago, we didn't have much evidence for camel domestication in Egypt. So, skeptical scholars, being as arrogant as they are, started claiming that the lack of evidence for camels in Egypt in the time of Joseph proves that the Pentateuch was written or significantly edited much later. And the claim quickly ballooned from there, everyone jumping on the bandwagon. Pretty soon, every mention of camels in the OT was dissected with a fine-toothed comb. Even lied about. There are still skeptical critics misleadingly implying that the Bible says camels were domesticated in Israel in the 2nd millennium BC. It definitely doesn't, but the claim gets repeated anyway. That way they get to point to a dozen articles proving that strawman wrong, while ignoring the fact that the Bible only says the camels came from Egypt and Arabia. Keep in mind it was all built on the claim that there were no camels in Egypt in the 2nd millennium BC. And in the last 100 years, numerous examples of many different media have proven that Egyptians had domesticated camels perhaps as early as the 3rd millennium BC. They most likely traded for the one-humped dromedary with Arabians, and then bred their own from Arabian stock. Exactly as you would expect for one of the greatest empires in human history, like two weeks' journey on foot from Arabian camel traders. But that still hasn't stopped atheist polemicists from repeating this claim. It's like a syndrome, like the opposite of religious credulity. Instead of a willingness to uncritically accept anything, it's a predisposition to assume that everything you read in the Bible must be wrong. I had this syndrome pretty bad before my conversion, a tendency to interpret anything Christian as uncharitably as humanly possible, and to pounce on any lack of corroborating evidence as evidence of falsehood. After all, even if the Bible _did_ claim that camels were domesticated in Israel in the time of Abraham (which it doesn't, because Abraham was from Mesopotamia), the lack of evidence for camel domestication in Israel in the 2nd millennium BC can only ever prove that we haven't found any evidence. Sometimes, things happen and don't leave a sign that survives for 4000 years in the desert. And sometimes, archaeologists just aren't looking in the right places. Double standards are a big component of it. You can't take any Christian at their word. If a church father says something about the authorship of the gospels, well, they're just repeating some fake tradition. After all, we know from "scholarship" that the OT authors also wrote books falsely claiming to have been authored by patriarchs. We can safely assume that everything thought to be written by someone important was actually written by some maniacally cackling conspirator in the 4th century, hoping to repress society and stop women from having abortions. But what happens when you apply that rule to literally any other ancient source? Why do we think the works of _any_ ancient author were written by that author? While some people might realize that this double standard shows that they're wrong to treat the Bible with such prejudice, there are some examples of historians and textual critics who are seriously doubling down on it. Unwilling to open their mind to Christianity, to admit that maybe they were a bit overzealous with respect to biblical conspiracy theories, they literally have applied that rule of aggressive skepticism to non-Christian sources. Today you can find many serious scholars challenging the existence of Homer. Why? Because they challenged the existence of Jesus and the Apostles on even shakier grounds than the ones on which they challenge the existence of Homer. From their point of view, if they can't see Jesus and touch his gaping wounds themselves, then he's just a myth. So, some ancient documents attest to some ancient people who attested to his existence. So what? If anything, that just proves that ancient polemicists existed, willing to make up stories to make some kind of point. They hate modern Christians for everything they stand for, so why should ancient Christians be any different? But there isn't any better reason to believe Homer existed. A smaller number of manuscripts, and they're much, much later. We have lots of ancient sources that seem to assume the reality of an author called Homer, but they could just be repeating some tradition that assumed Homer's existence. The further down the rabbit hole you go with this hermeneutic of suspicion, the more likely you are to come to the conclusion that "Homeridae" is just the name of some kind of poetry guild, meaning "sons of hostages." That's literally what Homer skeptics claim. That ancient, roving songwriters just wandered around Greece, concocting wild confabulations to entertain the masses. The trade, and the vague templates for the stories, were passed from father to son, and only much later were some of them ever written down, after having been developed by perhaps a dozen or more generations of Homeric bards. Somehow these bizarre theories, claiming really elaborate things about the development of Homer, things that would require a massive guild to exist all over Greece, without ever being mentioned by a _single_ ancient source, seems more plausible to historical critics than the story believed by the ancient people closest to the events. It's just a fundamental worldview difference. For me, I have zero chance of knowing anything about Homer. I'm simply not in a position to know about Homer, since he lived thousands of years ago. I can use my imagination to envision what _might_ have been true about Homer, but I should take my ideas with a gigantic grain of salt. If I want to really know anything about Homer, I can examine the testimony of those people who lived closest to him. There may not be any testimony close enough that I'd put much stock in it. But at the very least I'm gonna put more stock in it than in my own rambling visions. I might not stake my life on the ancient Romans having had the right idea about who Homer was. But I'd be better off operating under that assumption, than operating under the assumption that some story I completely invented in my own mind, that contradicts all the ancient sources and is supported by no direct testimony, is correct. Obviously the same is all true about any biblical subject. Before I was open to Christianity, I just sort of smugly accepted the "scholarly consensus" as if it was some kind of magic oracle. But scholars consent to a completely fantastical story about the Bible, a story that isn't attested to by _any_ historical sources, that nobody even thought of, let alone believed, until the 19th century at the very earliest. The story keeps getting more fantastical every year. It has spiralled into utter chaos, with more theories about the "historical Jesus" than there are Jesus scholars. There are so-called academics claiming Jesus was a feminist revolutionary. It's totally out of control because these people think they have license to basically write historical fiction about Jesus (and the biblical topics more generally) and lather it in a thin veneer of scholarship and call it history. They go into historical sources and, instead of accepting the testimony of the ancient person (who's in a far better position to know the truth than them) with a grain of salt, they cherry-pick tiny details and call them subtext, or call them cultural context, and extrapolate from there to yield a wild fantasy that sounds plausible but has literally zero attestation. I could make up a story about Julius Caesar having a secret gay relationship with one of his slave boys. It sounds... plausible, I guess? The Greeks and Romans were notorious pederasts, after all. But 1) no contemporary source tells us this, 2) no secondary source within 2000 years of Caesar's life tells us this, and 3) you can easily identify an underhanded sociopolitical motive in my "theory." It sounds exactly like the kind of theory a 21st-century textual critic (viz. an LGBT "woke" activist with tenure) would come up with. Just like the theories of Jesus as some kind of Marxist zealot, or as a New Age spiritist opposed to organized religion and imperialism.
Also note that the Homeric skepticism requires you to believe that people in Classical Greece were so stupid, so incompetent, so illiterate, that for hundreds of years, they failed to remember, notice, and write down that a guild called the Homeridae, with hundreds of members, even existed (let alone that they were the source of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and that these stories were passed down by oral tradition and came in hundreds of versions). It strains credulity, it's anachronistic, and it's frankly _insulting_ to the memory of the ancients. If the Homeridae existed and were responsible for such monumental works of literature, I think someone would have thought to record that fact, especially considering we're talking about the very same culture that was so committed to literature and posterity that it recorded the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves. Why would they record the stories yet fail to record any true information about their authors? It's just absurd. But this is the kind of thing that the humanities breed in a modern, consumerized academic system. The spirit of academia is so competitive, it's bound to result in spectacular displays of oneupmanship like this. Unlike the natural sciences, where we can set up elaborate experimental apparatuses to test hypotheses, the humanities often spiral out into aggressively insane conjecture, as opposed to the academic mythology we often hear about "gradually honing in on the truth through iteration." That legend is true of science at its best, but certainly not of historical criticism at its worst. If that's the identifying mark of scholarship, then historical criticism is simply not scholarship. And why would it be? Just look at related disciplines like critical theory, gender studies, even political science. Its most significant contribution to humanity in the last generation has been an avalanche of manure of unprecedented scale and impact. Someone like Bart Ehrman, whose life is devoted to his scholarship rather than God, has completely failed at life if he isn't noticed by the public, by his peers, by institutions that could fund his research, etc. But how can one scholar get noticed? All the reasonable claims about the texts he studies have already been made. All that's left is to make some really wild claims, so scandalous they'll appeal to atheists and conspiracy theorists alike, and so counterintuitive that they just might be true. The craziest thing is that, as insane as it is, Homeric skepticism is vastly more reasonable than skepticism of New Testament authorship, early dating, sincerity, etc. Our earliest manuscripts are vastly closer for the NT than for Homer. Our earliest independent attestation is way earlier and more numerous for the NT than for Homer. We have a trans-mediterranean Church being formed on the basis of the NT in the mid first century AD, within a couple decades of the crucifixion. There's no evidence of Homer's impact for hundreds of years, and none of its impact really relies on Homer being a single person rather than a guild of people. And yet it's still absurd to believe that Homer did not exist, despite many ancient manuscripts that say he did, and instead believe that a guild of people, never mentioned in any manuscript, was responsible for Homer's works, that have never been attributed to said guild. Like, as poor as the historical corroboration for Homer's existence is, it's vastly more plausible than this Homeridae claim, which is simply not attested. We have to believe that everyone who wrote about Homer was lying or mistaken AND believe that nobody ever bothered to mention the real Homeridae. It's exactly the same situation with the New Testament, except that on top of the extremely low prior probability of all the ancient sources being wrong, we have a huge abundance of documentary evidence within the first generation and exponentially growing thereafter. We have a Church forming rapidly within the first generation, a Church that would have no reason for existing if skeptical theories of the New Testament are true. So if we reject the sensational claims about Homer being some kind of symbol or stand-in for a guild, we should find it even harder to believe sensational conspiracy theories about the New Testament. But there are many, many more skeptics of the NT than skeptics of Homer. Obviously, this is because accepting traditions about Homer wouldn't require that you accept the divinity of Christ, the deposit of faith, the authority of the Church, the sinfulness of many contemporary indulgences and political ideologies, the judgment of your soul, the possibility of eternal suffering, etc. We can afford to be reasonable when it comes to Homer. But with the New Testament, we need to use _motivated reasoning_ to evade responsibility. That's what the documents are all about. They're a call to take charge of your life, to wrestle with your salvation, to subject your will to principles rather than forming your principles based on the will of the world. Whereas, for modern people, Homer is just a collection of fun stories. It's... the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the 1st millennium BC. So, there is simply no reason to doubt the ancient traditions surrounding it, _except_ to stay consistent. The only reason to cast doubt on it is if people have pointed out to you the double standard of suspicion you apply to the Bible and nothing else. This has really blown up in the case of Homer, as some of the most notable ancient sources aside from the Bible. But really, it should be applied to every ancient document, and it still isn't. All of history begins to unravel when we apply the rule consistently. It's pointless to even list examples, literally every ancient historian should have "Pseudo-" prefixed to their name. So far they're only doing it to Homer, so the double standard has just been expanded a bit. Expanding it further is unsustainable, because it threatens to undermine everything we think we know about the ancient world.
Yeah. Okay. You got me. It was me and Morty who wrote the Gospels. We got drunk and wanted to pull off a bit of a scam. Turned out to be bigger than we thought. You know... time machines and all that. Anyway. Thought I'd clear that up.
Yeah, it have always felt weird to me that the further you go back in time there was less and less confusion about who the authors were. And now it seems like you can be a "scholar" and just question everything based on almost nothing. Basically they seem to pretend to have more knowledge while they most likely have less knowledge than the scholars of yore.
Was there any reason to doubt the traditional authorship at the time? The historical-critical method was only developed in the early modern period. Besides, it's not like the question is revelant, as it doesn't concern Christian dogmas.
“ Matthew was originally written in Hebrew “ fun fact; there are copies of at least 3 gospels in Hebrew existing today preserved in the archives of the Vatican.
Really? So how is it that no-one has ever produced any evidence to back up the claim? Answer: it's an urban myth peddled by people who'd like us to believe the Vatican is involved in a conspiracy to hide an unfavorable version of the Gospel.
The apostle Paul wrote the Christian gospel, Paul said it was his gospel, and preach no other gospel but his, he said he got all of his information directly from Christ through the abundance of Revelations 2nd Corinthians 12.7, Paul wrote 20 years after the crucifixion of Christ that's 30 years before the four gospels were ever thought of, Paul got his gospel directly from the horse's mouth so to speak, Paul the author of Christianity.
Actually earlier than 150, and they crop up all over the world and have uniformity in their views. Also, the lack of any competing claims of authorship, as well as any idea who would’ve written them if not the supposed authors, is good evidence that the Gospels authors actually wrote them.
Hey this video was great, but John claims to be a disciple of Jesus who’s writing this down at the end of the book. Isn’t that an indication John wrote his Gospel?
Yes that's internal evidence but John isn't explicitly named as the author within the gospel named after him. To find that out simply internally we need to do some detective work. I'll do a whole video on internal evidence in John in this series.
@@purposedrivennihilist7983 That is coming too. Or you can read my blog here if you don't want to wait: isjesusalive.com/did-matthew-write-the-gospel-of-matthew/
Men have been trying to discredit the gospels for 2000 years, to no avail. Modern cynics have shifted the burden of proof onto us gospel spreaders not knowing it would strengthen us, because Truth is a living person.
Occam’s razor would suggest, and given the context of the time period we’re discussing here, that the simplest answer would be they were who they said they were, and everyone agreed because it was simply true that they were the ones who wrote it. Why convolute names as if though this matters more than the substance of the content itself? Even from the ancients’ point of view, they likely regarded the writings as more important than getting the exact name of authorship correct, but because they knew who it could be attributed to, there was no guessing game that had to be played to guess who wrote them. If the name is on the document, the name is on the document.
So I don't know if you understand what occam's razor means by your comment. Typically it refers to constructing an argument with the smallest possible set of elements or assumptions. The fact that the Synoptic gospels and John do not tell us who wrote them (They are anonymous with no Author indicated in the text) then by definition adding any authorship would be literally adding an additional element. You could literally accept them as true with reliability in the information contained and adding a author to the works would be a violation of Occam's razor.
@@dondindac what the hell are you talking about that their authorship isn’t in the texts? Yes it is, it’s literally right there have you ever opened a Bible?
@@TheBanjoShowOfficial Yes, I have. I have also read the introduction to the gospels and read the writings of historians and textual critics. Are you simply unaware that the headers "The gospel according to..." were not on the original manuscripts? And that the names we have today were added hundreds of years after the texts were first written by early church fathers who didn't have any special first hand knowledge of authorship?
@@dondindacdid anyone ever know who wrote the gospels or do you think someone found them on the side of the road, picked them up and thought they were fascinating stories?
@@DUDEBroHey The short version is that we don't know who wrote the gospels. Most Biblical Historians and Textual Critics believe they were oral traditions present in the early christian population that were written down sometime between 70-120 CE. Of course that would be the original versions of the gospels which we don't have and the actual manuscripts we can study are copies of copies of translations of copies. So literally the people who wrote them (i.e. pen to paper) were unknown scribes and early church leaders who likely were reading and copying ancient texts (now lost) and adding stories they thought should be included.
We don’t know who wrote the Harry Potter novels. We know Lemony Snicket wrote “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” clearly, because Lemony Snicket made it so clear. If JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter novels, if she actually did write them (which she didn’t) why would she have not announced herself clearly in the text of the Harry Potter books? But she didn’t. Clearly it is a near-certainty the JK Rowling is not the actual author of the Harry Potter series.
It's nearly cartoonish how Ehrman continues to spout unending conjecture and just outright fabrication of "evidence" that is regularly, roundly, and easily refuted under even the most basic interrogation. Yet, he still has rabid acolytes and book deals making him quite financially comfortable.
Yeah, easily. Because the manuscripts they found come with no name. In their time period, they didn't put their names because they labeled their works off the codex they wrote with, hence why the early church fathers put it in the book. They had the originals labeled with the authors, and they put the names of those authors as the writers of the books. It really is that simple.
Tertullian lived much later than the supposed authors of the Gospels, around 160 to 225 AD. This means his claims are based on the traditions and beliefs of his time rather than direct evidence from when the Gospels were written. The idea that Mark’s Gospel is based on Peter’s preaching, and that Matthew and John wrote from their own memories, isn't backed by modern research. Mark didn’t mention Peter as his source and likely used different stories and writings. Matthew’s Gospel, written in Greek, used Mark and other sources, not just ''his'' own memories. John’s Gospel is very different and focuses on deep theological ideas, not just filling in gaps. These claims come from early traditions, not solid historical proof. The claim that Irenaeus of Lyon was a student of Polycarp, who was a disciple of John, comes from Irenaeus himself. He wrote this in the late 2nd century to bolster his authority. However, there's no independent evidence to verify it, and his motivation to establish a direct link to the apostles for credibility could mean he exaggerated or selectively remembered events. Modern scholars are cautious about accepting this claim without more proof, recognizing it may serve Irenaeus' theological goals rather than being a straightforward historical fact. The Muratorian Canon, dating from the late 2nd century, lists books accepted by the early church but doesn't provide direct evidence about who wrote the Gospels. It reflects the beliefs and traditions of the church at that time, not firsthand information from when the Gospels were written. Since it relies on established tradition rather than historical investigation, it's not solid proof of the Gospels' authorship, just a record of what the church believed centuries later. Justin Martyr, writing around 150 AD, referred to the Gospels as the "memoirs of the apostles" but did not name the authors or provide proof of who wrote them. The Diatessaron, created by Tatian around 160-175 AD, combines the four Gospels into one narrative, showing they were used together by then. However, this doesn't prove who wrote them; it only shows these texts were recognized and harmonized by early Christians. Both Justin's writings and the Diatessaron reflect early church traditions rather than solid evidence of the Gospels' authorship. Papias, writing around 110-140 AD, claimed that Mark was Peter's interpreter and that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. However, these claims are based on oral traditions, not direct evidence. Scholars find no proof that Mark’s Gospel comes from Peter's preaching-it’s written in Greek and doesn't mention Peter. There’s also no surviving Hebrew version of Matthew; it’s in Greek and uses sources like the Gospel of Mark. Plus, Papias’ writings are only known through later authors like Eusebius, making his claims less reliable. These statements reflect early beliefs rather than solid historical facts.
John not much at all, Mathew on parts he wasn't present for like the beginning of Jesus' ministry and other points. And Luke because he openly says he is building off of eye witness testimony in the beginning of his gospel.
@G_Loves_Jesus Who would that be? There is no record. There is no definitive authorship. There are no signed originals. There are no eye-witness testimonies with their signed declarations. It's all he said she said etc.
@@knightd00b again, they weren't just floating around with no name attached to them. Every single manuscript we've found all have the same 4 gospels connected. No more, no less. If it truly did come with no name, there would 100% be variation. The only argument that people like Bart Ehrman have is that there's "wide variety" in the documents. This, however, is a lie. These varieties consists of things like "The gospel according to," or "according to," not the names within them. All the names are the same within them. And btw, they wrote on codex's, hence why they didn't have a signature or anything on the document. They labeled their names with something else and preserved it so they knew who it was from. It's well known all the early church fathers agreed on the authors since they had relations with them. They were still alive when these came about.
@@knightd00b Why are you being so obtuse, here? You certainly don’t believe they all “just kept the con going”? I thoroughly understand the importance of chain of custody, but from the sources that we have (patristics and this video), the authors of the Gospels are the Men whose names are the titles. I know you don’t like us(Christians), but we kept our records together. Barring any kind of catastrophe(fires, war, natural disasters), our records are still intact. If not the men whose names are the titles are the authors, then who? Are you “ghostwriter” trolling??
Jesus early followers would have spoken Aramaic and would probably not been able to write. The gospels were written in Greek. Due to passages where they match nearly word for word, it's pretty certain that the writers of Luke and Matthew had Mark as a source, except they did change the words in places.
THIS ^^ why on earth would Matthew (a supposed eye witness) cut and paste from the non-eyewitnesses? The idea that these are “independent accounts” becomes absurd when we see editorial injections “ (let the reader understand) “ !! I mean seriously. You expect us to believe that an independent “eyewitnesses” (in the case of Matthew) used the exact same (GREEK) interjection!!! (Mt 24:15/Mt 13:14) Similarly: Mt 9:6/Mk 2:10/Lk 5:24; or how about Mt 27:18/Mk 15:10. Independent? Eyewitnesses!!
Matthew came first. If you read Mark critically, and without any prior assumptions, it reads exactly like an abridged summary of Matthew. I challenge you to do this
@@lyongreene8241 That's a lie. For one, mark leaves out the birth narrative, and originally ends with an empty tomb and women running in fear and saying nothing to anyone. It doesn't make sense and doesn't seem reasonably plausible that a believer in jesus would have matthew and make mark from it. mark has a lesser version of jesus in it than in matthew. mark sees jesus as a messiah and a son of god, but leaves out a divine birth narrative, theological teachings, and a completed resurrection where jesus meets the apostles. So no, mark didn't have matthew when he wrote it. If mark wanted to write a shorter version of matthew, he would have kept in matthew's fundamental principles of jesus. Stop being a suck up to a false religion. Grow up.
@@FinalFantasy8911debater Just because Mark leaves out the virgin birth doesn't prove anything. Marcopolo never mentioned the great wall of china when he was there, Ulysess S Grant never mentioned the Emancipation proclamation. This is an argument from silence, so it doesn't work. Mark had his reasons for leaving out the virgin birth since his focus was the ministry of Jesus. He kept the highlights but left out some details because that's what a summary is. It's not a verbatim copy of the original text but a short concise highlight of the major points. Mark has a high view of Jesus: Mark 12:35-44 "35 While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? 36 David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared: “‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ 37 David himself calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?” The large crowd listened to him with delight." Here are some other verses: Mark 1:1-3 Mark 2:6-7 ("Why does he talk like that? ... who can forgive sins except for God alone?") Mark 2:19 Mark 2:27 (Jesus identifies himself as Lord of the sabbath) And that's just in the first couple chapters. How can you read all that and conclude that Jesus isn't God? Then there is the transfiguration (Mark 9). The last time we see Moses and Elijah on a mountain is in the Old Testament where God tells them to look away while his presence passes by them lest they see his face and die. Well in this scene they see the face of God. Now all this doesn't prove that Jesus is God but that you're a bad textual critic if you don't see Mark's true intention here which is to equate Jesus with God. That's just understanding the author's purpose which is something they should have taught you to do in school. On the resurrection in Mark's ending: Jesus foreshadows his ressurection in Mark 14:27-28 27 “You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written: “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ 28 But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” So the original manuscript ending might have just been lost or Mark intentionally left it out as a stylistic choice in order to leave the story on a cliff hanger.
@@lyongreene8241 You are an absurd CLOWN. mark leaves out MORE THAN the virgin birth, he leaves out many other fantastical claims of the other gospels. How do you know that mark INTENTIONALLY left out the virgin birth, instead of it not even being invented yet? All the gospels include things like jesus's baptism, jesus's ministry, and him getting crucified. There's no good reason for them all to lack things like a birth story narrative, IF it actually happened. That's a reasonable fact. NO, mark didn't leave out a birth story because he wanted to focus on the ministry. mark WAS INTERESTED on jesus' nature AND ministry. NONE of those verses teach that jesus is god, you clown. YOU are the bad text critic and NO I shouldn't have been taught your BS. mark's first verse TELLS you what he thinks jesus is: the SON of god, not god as in yahweh. Simple as that. mark also teaches that jesus is the messiah too, through peter's claim that he is. The old testament teaches that a son of god is a righteous human being. mark idolizes jesus as that, plus adds that jesus has a holy spirit, which jesus uses to do miracles (as mark teaches, so without the holy spirit, jesus would have no divine powers). mark teaches that jesus, being a man, was chosen by god to be able to have power similar to yahweh. THAT is what mark teaches. The only reason you silly christians like to think jesus is god is because john teaches that, and you want to pretend john has the same christology that mark does. Its pathetic. NO, there's no good reason to think mark's ending was lost or that he did that on purpose. The oldest manuscripts of mark have women fleeing in fear and saying nothing. How would you know some original manuscript got lost or that mark left out important facts on purpose?
Yet, despite the testimony of early Church Fathers, modern scholars dismiss this tradition. They argue that it does not fit with modern 'scientific' analysis of the gospels. 'Mathew's gospel is written in Greek and not Hebrew/Aramaic as tradition tells us. Furthermore, it seems to be based on Mark. Why would an Apostle have to base his work on the testimony of a non -eye witness ? etc. We cannot simply ignore the claims of modern scholars and dismiss them all as atheists or 'higher critics'. Many conservative scholars agree with many of their claims .
I'm actually gonna reference a point with testify, because Mathew wasn't there for the entirety of Jesus' ministry. The fact he wasn't present for the beginning would explain why he would refer to mark on chapters 1-8 and he also wasn't present for its end explaining the coping of the passion narrative.
@@JP-rf8rr : Don't you think he could have found out? Don't you think if he witnessed the resurrection and ascenion he could have learned the facts. Was he not 'inspired' by holy spirit? So many questions.
@@gerryquinn5578 Seeing the ascension doesn't equal being given a lecture about all the information relating to Jesus' early ministry. Being inspired doesn't mean giving a download of information. If Mark accurately records Peter's witness of the early church then why not include it?
@@gerryquinn5578 So what? Unless there is valid reason to throw away all historical testimony a couple generations after the apostles then I don't care. We allow them in nearly all other historical inquiries, why not this one?
@@TestifyApologetics I'm aware of several prominent New Testament historians who agree that they're anonymous. They definitely weren't written by any of the disciples as they were written many years later and in High Greek.
John's Gospel was not written in high Greek. I really don't care what your prominent historians say when their reasoning is poor. You're mostly making an argument from proxy and just kind of pounding the table.
@@TestifyApologetics I don't know the term "high Greek" but I am aware of the historical term that biblical textual critics use called Koine Greek. And it is true that the Gospel of John (or the beloved disciple) was written and originally composed in Koine Greek. After all, the story of Nicodemus and Jesus referencing being born again (John 3:4) shows that the greek term used included a double meaning that caused confusion to the pharisee. That confusion could not have been in Aramaic as no such double meaning is apparent in that language for those words. So it is a story composed in narrative Koine Greek as opposed to being later translated into that language...
I promise you, if you just left, one breath between your sentences your videos would be so much easier to understand. Your content is excellent ; The video is excellent ; It is just very distracting, trying to understand what you were saying because you are talking way too fast . My apologies for being rude . I’m just trying to understand the video without having to rewind it many many times . I wish you all the best
Humility is not considered a good virtue by some Bible scholars. They somehow think they know more than the Church fathers even though they are separated from the actual events by almost 2000 years
I am uncertain why you would say "the early church fathers were unambiguous and united about who wrote the gospels". That is an odd thing to lie about as no early church father quoted in structured form (like John 3:16 indicating a Canon like manuscript) nor extensively described anything identifying about what they called these gospels. It was not until the late 2nd century that Irenaeus actually specified identifiable writings as the gospels and asserted their authorship. While many church fathers would quote sayings of the apostles or cite versus found in the later attributed texts they never gave specific identity to a manuscript until 2nd/3rd century. I wouldn't say that is all the early church fathers in that time frame...
No, there isn't, and that's the problem. By the time the church fathers were writing the accounts were already being heavily modified. The ending of Mark is just one example, but the gospel of John is really the smoking gun. I'm not sure how anyone can read that and not see that it's clearly a matured theology. Some of John's arguments seem to be a direct response to "heresies" that didn't crop up until the mid to late 2nd century at the earliest. To me, John is the biggest problem to deal with in regards to gospel authorship.
the writings are from the 2nd century not the church fathers themselves, just like the gospels the original would have been written way earlier but either hasnt been found yet or hasnt survived at all, succeeded by copies to preserve the content of the text
You should discuss your thoughts on Matthew privately with Dr. Ehrman. Matthew would have been more Aramaic than Hebrew, but they are close enough. It is thought that part of Matthew was written by someone using a Greek translation of the Old Testament, but the "young woman" v "virgin" issue could have cropped up when Matthew was translated to Greek.
Basically he just confirmed the gospels were written anonymously. The earliest documents were from the second centurry. But even if they were written days after Jesus's death you have to prove jesus was magical being.
That's to be expected. It doesn't invalidate their evidence, though, any more than it would invalidate the evidence given by a friend of yours if you were on trial.
While it's true that Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyons, the Muratorian Canon, Justin Martyr's mention of the "Memoirs of the Apostles," and Papias are all early sources discussing the Gospels, their writings don't provide direct, indisputable evidence for traditional authorship. Firstly, they were writing several decades after the Gospels were composed, relying on oral tradition and earlier texts, which could have been subject to alteration or interpretation. Secondly, they often referred to the Gospels anonymously or in a way that doesn't explicitly attribute authorship to specific individuals. Additionally, their interpretations may have been influenced by theological agendas or traditions within their respective communities. Therefore, while these sources are valuable for understanding early Christian beliefs and practices, they do not serve as definitive proof of traditional authorship.
@@Berean_with_a_BTh While Papias and John were contemporaries, it's important to note that Papias's accounts, which are only known through later sources, relied on oral tradition rather than firsthand written evidence. This means that while Papias's testimony is valuable, it doesn't provide direct, indisputable proof of traditional Gospel authorship, as it is based on interpretations and traditions that could have evolved over time.
@@josephhamilton6724 Using that standard, almost nothing we know of history before 1900 can be relied on. Yours is the kind if logic that gives holocaust deniers great comfort.
@@Berean_with_a_BTh It's important to differentiate between healthy skepticism and outright denialism. Acknowledging the limitations of ancient sources isn't about dismissing them outright but understanding their context. Historians rely on corroborating evidence, multiple sources, and critical analysis to piece together historical events. My point isn't to discredit early Christian writings but to recognize that oral traditions and later testimonies, while valuable, may not offer the same level of certainty as direct, contemporary evidence. This approach doesn't lead to denialism but encourages a nuanced and careful examination of historical claims.
rhymining pairs in hebrew as memory devices, use of kingdom of heaven instead of kingdom of God due to hebrew sensitivities, early hebrew language transcripts, known extrant late 2nd century.
Hello, I am a skeptical NT scholar. I'm not seeing how apostolic authorship of the gospels makes it even slightly more rational to accept Jesus into my heart. If you would insist that Jesus wants me to repent, you'd have to show that he intended to address 21st century people in addition to his contemporaries. Is the evidence that Jesus intended to reach 21st century audiences so clear and compelling that only fools would disagree? Or is that evidence something less than clear? Otherwise, it appears that when I ignore the gospels, I'm only ignoring things that the authors never intended for me to consider in the first place. How then could my ignoring such things possibly be unreasonable?
The early Church fathers did NOT say who wrote any of the Gospels, and it is interesting that the video speaker does not QUOTE the early Chruch fathers, but only attempts to paraphrase them, and in so doing he distorts what they wrote.
Why should Pagan critics be described as ‘Rabid’? That charge could also easily be laid onto not only on Christian preachers, iconoclasts and inquisitors, but also on top of the heads of Biblical prophets and most importantly their violent narcissistic character called god!
That's actually how we find the authors of most ancient writings. Plus the fact there is no anonymous gospel ever found, the gospels under a different name found. And uniform testimony across the medetarian world in a disconnected church along with testimony from pre nicean enemies who would be happy to claim the gospels weren't written by any apostles never making such claim.
Interesting video. Where I get hazy is that you're quoting well-known early church fathers attesting to Mark writing the recollections of Peter, while Matthew writing his own account (as an eyewitness), and the church fathers seemed to be in agreement on this. We know that the gospel of Matthew can be more accurately described as a copy of Mark (in about 80%) - or vice versa, depending on who copied whom - , sometimes we have almost the same identical phrases. My question is, if what the church fathers say is true, why did Matthew as an eyewitness had to rely so heavily on the account of a non-eyewitness? Although I must say that from my understanding as a fraud analyst who regularly compares data, since Mark contains the least amount of unique material not found in Matthew and Luke (about 3%), "Mark" must have copied the contents from these 2 almost as a summary/amalgam of the 2 already existing accounts. It really is the most logical assumption one can come to. So that would date Mark as the 3rd in chronological order. However the problem with this is that Luke mentions in his gospel that there were others (notice the plural) who already wrote an account of the life of Jesus, and if one of those wasn't Mark, who else wrote besides Matthew? It's impossible to know, but there's definitely something in the Q source hypothesis, perhaps a sayings gospel that was lost. Matthew's gospel was also considered by some early church fathers to be the first. Papias was surely wrong about either Matthew or Mark, because you can't have 2 so similar accounts coming from 2 different sources (Matthew as an eyewitness vs. Mark as a non-eyewitness, but relying on Peter's tellings). But there's another issue with what Papias claims. If we regard John to be the most authentic of the gospels as it claims to have been written by an eyewitness and mentions Peter being present at the grave, how come Mark has no account of the resurrection as we know the earliest manuscripts of Mark do not contain 16:9-17 and they were added later in the 4th century by contemporary church fathers. How could Peter not mention such a CRUCIAL detail to Mark??? It's entirely unlikely. You're correct on the dating of the gospels being very biased (explained in your other video), because this is almost exclusively based on Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple - those who completely reject the idea that Jesus could have predicted such a thing will of course start dating the gospels after the destruction of the temple. I acknowledge you did have a valid point there. The authorship of Luke was first mentioned by Irenaeus in 180 AD which is a long shot and based on oral tradition only, but I think he might be right about it. We know that the gospel was written by the perspective of a gentile, and there's also a consensus among scholars that Luke-Acts was written by the same author and most likely a companion of Paul. That still wouldn't prove Luke in itself, but there's only 3 gentiles mentioned by Paul in his letters: Epaphras, Demas and Luke. The first 2 can be ruled out on literary grounds, leaving only Luke as the possible author. Also he was educated and a Greek native (which is undisputedly a very important factor), fits the profile more than Mark or Matthew for their own. We're dealing with probabilities here, but there's absolutely some merit in considering him to be the author of both the gospel and Acts. The authorship of the last gospel is hugely problematic and perhaps generates the most debates, mainly due to the John 1, 2 and 3. Textual analysts have concluded that their authors are not the same (despite 1 John claiming to be an eyewitness, just like the author of the gospel) which lead most scholars to believe that they were written by a group of followers of John, known as the Johannine community. But this raises more questions rather than gives any answers as there's hardly any mention of the gospel, or quotations from it until the 3rd century, although there were several early followers of John who actually wrote letters and other texts. So how come such an important gospel which is the most unique and contains perhaps the most important revelations could have been so neglected? I really can't explain this. Also there's the issue of late add-ons to the gospel, perhaps the most important being John 3:16 which is the only verse in the Bible explicitly explaining the Trinity, which cannot be found in earlier manuscripts. So I'm really confused about this one. My take on this is that based on probabilities Matthew and Luke were very likely written by their purported authors, although Matthew certainly via proxy, i.e. interpreters (as attested by Papias, and common sense - Matthew probably didn't speak any Greek at all), with John Mark almost certainly not writing the gospel, nor would his be the first to have been written. I'm really uncertain about John. I'm curious on what your thoughts might be.
Tom, the original authors of the gospels are John the Baptist and the three brothers James, Peter and John. Their writings have been tainted and hijacked by their enemies to fit their own agenda.
@@TheDarkChemicalBond , the disciples were scribes. Peter, John and James being the closest disciples to Jesus naturally got a lot to write of his teachings. Remember the two of them were JTB's former disciples. Isn't it unusual that they just leave JTB and follow Jesus? No, They have JTB's approval and instructions, to witness and write Jesus Ministry and he was the editor in chief. Remember the prophet Jeremiah? Does he have a scribe? Of course he has. Prophets has scribe(s) to help them. Now, where is the book of one of the important prophets in history?
Remember John at the crucifixion, what was he doing there when everyone of the team has run away out of fear of the roman boy scouts? Because at least one has to witness ( not rumors) that event and to record it accurately and by doing the will of God, he was gifted to live a long life in island arrest.
@@eunicechannel837 Please don't take this negatively, as I certainly don't mean it that way, but can you clarify that statement a bit? Where are you getting the idea from that Peter was a scribe? Or am I misinterpreting your position? My understanding of the current scholarship is that we're not even close to knowing who wrote the gospels. Paul seems pretty rock solid, as there's enough intertextual and historic proof to say that he did exist and probably traveled where he said he did. However, authorship for the gospels themselves seem murky, at best. I really hope that we find another treasure trove of period writings before I die. There's a lot of non-canonical writings that tease at a vein of early Christianity that we're currently missing. "The Secret Sayings of Jesus," to me, is an incredibly important collection. I want to believe that we will find more writings that shed light on the early dissemination of Christian ideas and thought.
That's kind of a circle jerk argument. You need actual contemporaneous evidence, not claims. And that simply isn't there, because it's not in any of the texts. It's literally the same argument the early church used.
@david52875 Exactly - there are some good pieces of evidence for certain facts, like there is a Plate with David's name on it, written in Canaanite, suggesting he lived, but everything about his history, is debatable.
This is funny! Basically, king of double standarts complaining about double standart. More than half of theistic arguments and "evidence" include double standart (aka special pleading). Few example of them. -I had a vision of Jesus/He had a vision of Prophet Muhammed. I literally saw Jesus/He must have been hallucinating -After I gave myself to Jesus my life got better. After I gave myself to Vishnu my life got better. Jesus literally helped me/ That must be psychological. - This oil cured me/This water cured me. Miracle/Placebo. - Jesus resurrected himself. There were 500 witnesses/Muhammed split the moon arab merchants saw it. Both have witnesses, both is written. Resurrection is true, moon split is wrong. -Disciples went to their death, they wouldn't go their death for a lie./Companions went to their death but they died for a lie. - God kills people, he has mysterious ways/Allah kills people, he is evil or doesn't exist. -Jesus sends natural disasters to good christians/he is testing us. God sends natural disasters to bad christians(Or non-christians)/he is punishing them. You see I can give maybe dozens of example. But you are the one complaining about DOUBLE STANDART
This argument is flawed. To be clear, no scholar ever says, the gospels were not written by the accepted authors. They merely say, we cannot be certain and there are signs that cast doubt. Just because the earliest account of doubt regarding authorship is 400 years later, it does not mean people were not sceptical before that time. The oldest manuscripts of the gospels we have found are not named. The text never mentions the author's name (this alone is not definitive because we find it with other non-biblical books) The text never mentions the authors being eyewitnesses, which is strange. Saying, "I can personally testify to this as a witness" would surely be one of the most convincing arguments for the divine Jesus. In external references, by later priests and scholars, to books by Mark and the others, the descriptions of the books do not match with the gospels we have today. Even if we choose to believe the authors were who the church claims, it is unimportant because the authorship still does nothing to authenticate the narratives. The numerous contradictions between them, the seemingly vital and important stories in one but missing from the others, the account of events where even the disciples could not have been present, all show the gospels to be works of faith, not history.
You lost me when you said Matthew was written first, and some of the Gospels were originally written in Hebrew. This is so outside what we know today I don't know who actually believes that. Neither is really true. Certainly not that some were written originally in Hebrew. The Gospels were written in Koine Greek. I don't know of any Biblical scholars that believe that they were written in Hebrew. And Mark is widely accepted as the first Gospel written, not Matthew. This is just not consistent with what we know today on the history and transmission of the New Testament. And technically the four Gospels are written anonymously. The authors don't tell us who they are. Not until Irenaeus in the late second century do we have them referred to by the names we know them by now. Possibly by Papius earlier, but his writings are lost so we don't really know. I look forward to your upcoming videos though. A really interesting subject!
I'm reporting what the early traditions are, and we should take them seriously and not indulge in chronological snobbery. It is entirely possible there was a Matthew that was translated soon after it was written, and there are more modern scholars who hold to Mathean priority like Griesbach or Farmer.
@@TestifyApologetics Exactly! It's tradition that ascribes the authorship, not evidence. If you had evidence you wouldn't be relying on tradition. You know, traditional snobbery. And sure, Matthew could have been translated soon after it was written. It could have been written in Spanish, German, Arabic, Aramaic or any other language. But all the oldest manuscripts and manuscript fragments we have are in Greek. There's just no evidence that it was written in any other language, but there is evidence that it wasn't. As you probably well know, there are passages that make no sense in anything but Koine Greek if you translate them. And there are many good reasons for Markan priority, and no good argument for Mathean priority that is convincing to the majority of people that spend their lives studying this. Doesn't make then right, sure, but it just means that for people who devote their lives to studying this, the arguments are not convincing. And I'm sorry but Griesbach is not a modern scholar. He was writing in the 1700's and early 1800's, and Farmer in the 1960's. Not exactly modern....
This doesn't do away with Augustine's complaint against double standards and if Papias and Irenaeus were in a good position to know, then the burden of proof would be on the critics to show they are wrong. Especially since the early traditon is closer to the apostles. People can look at internal evidence and that is fine, I'm not saying I'm married to Matthean priority. I think there are plenty of good internal clues that Matthew and John wrote the gospels named after them. Go to my blog and you can see what I have to say about it, or within a few weeks I'll be doing videos looking at that internal evidence as well as critical complaints against traditional authorship. And 1960s isn't that old, sonny boy. Haha. A lot of Ehrman and others arguments are warmed over German criticism from the 1800s.
@@nickbrasing8786 There is a really interesting book called The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus, there are chapters on semantics, word order and phrase construction after alleged translation of Matthew and you will se why they think it was probably written in Hebrew because it fits great in Hebrew sentence construction. I am not saying it's true but it is an interesting read nevertheless
This is not just double-standards - these are the outright lies that Bart Ehrman likes to put out randomly, with no new evidence or support, whatsoever.
The Gospels clearly are meant to be read as history, and the early recipients received them as history. See comments from Julius Africanus, Papias, Justin Martyr, etc. There's an unbroken chain of claims that they weren't seen as being written in some kind of fictional, legendary genre.
@@TestifyApologetics You say that there is an "unbroken chain of claims" that they were not intended to be "fictional, legendary genre" but isn't the question not what the writers intended but if they were actually writing history? As in if anonymous authors wrote down legends in a different language than the people in the stories likely spoke then how could that not be "fictional, legendary genre"? Add to that decades of oral tradition and whether or not the authors wanted to write a legendary account how could it not be? Even if it contained large sections of accurate historical fact mixed in with the (forgive me) game of telephone?
Because that would have been impossible to create a myth of that size in such a little amount of time, especially when everyone would've been alive to refute them. The fact that Luke names many specific people and eyewitnesses that could have been refuted proves that he was providing as much evidence as possibe.
The earliest extant source you mentioned for Gospel authorship is from the late 2nd Century. The earliest referenced source - Papias - of whom we have no surviving direct works, from around the mid 2nd Century (and who Eusebius did not believe to be credible). That’s about a whole CENTURY of zero authorship evidence from when the gospels were written. That is not an “unbroken chain.” Not to mention we have earlier Patristic writings - the letters of Ignatius and Clement, the Didache - which give no authorship to the gospels. Mighty suspicious, no?
The double standard is the New Testament gospels claim to be the "word of God" and those others, Plato and others, claim to be what they are, the words of men.
The argument of this video demolishes evangelical Protestantism and any others who abandon study of the Church Fathers. There are some extremely early attestations about Christian practice which almost no Protestants acknowledge, admit, or even admire. I'm thinking especially of both relics and martyrs.
Checking by yourself you would find out that Mathew and Luke are editions of Mark. that is a Fact, Mark agreed with Paul and not with peter.That show us how misused their autority position the church's fathers trying to misguide us!
No. Papias did not say the Gospel of Matthew was written by the apostle Matthew. He said a manuscript which claimed that Judas became so obese that his head could not longer fit through the door was written by the Apostle Matthew. But this manuscript was most certainly not the Gospel of Matthew found in the Bible.
Papias of Hierapolis, c.125-150AD, wrote in an ambiguous passage: _"Matthew collected the oracles_ (logia - sayings of or about Jesus) _in the Hebrew language_ (Hebraïdi dialektōi - perhaps alternatively "Hebrew style") _and each one interpreted_ (hērmēneusen - or "translated") _them as best he could"._
@@Berean_with_a_BTh So, the evidence this video cites about Papias is that someone who is so bad at reading Hebrew that he thinks the gospel of Matthew contains a story about Judas becoming so morbidly obese that his head could not fit through the door, concluded that what he found was written by the apostle Matthew? Forgive me if I don't find that compelling.
@@christopherblaisdel I'm not defending Papias. I was simply addressing your claim that "Papias didn't say the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew". The passage I cited has, in fact, been interpreted to mean just that (e.g. GM Lamsa).
@@Berean_with_a_BTh Yes. It "has" been interpreted that way, such a claim was even made in this very video, which is exactly why I pointed out the obvious and incontrovertible evidence that either, whatever manuscript Papias found was clearly not the gospel of Matthew, or Papias is so terrible are reading Hebrew that it 1.) he thought Matthew said Juad grew a giant obese head that would not fit through the door and 2.) would be dishonest to include anything he said on the matter as evidence. Not to mention, the idea that an entire narrative about an obese head is "just a mistranslation" is patently effing absurd.
@@christopherblaisdel Doubtless you are also aware the are two recensions of that passage, the far longer of which makes the ridiculous claim about Judas' head. There is no evidence Papias was responsible for that. Indeed, it it is well established that copyists tended to embellish their sources rather than to abbreviate them. A healthy skepticism ought therefore be taken to the authenticity of the longer recension.
