Let us continue our examination of some of the opinions of Bart Ehrman, a leading member of the contemporary Bible studies establishment. On p.8 of his book, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, he asserts that the titles to the Gospels we know today “were not found in the original texts of these books. Instead, their authors chose to remain anonymous.”
As I showed last week, an absolute assertion of fact about the originals strikes me as unwarranted. At best, one has to theorise concerning the matter. Ehrman could have written: “Although we do not have the original texts of the gospels, there is reason to speculate that they did not have the titles they now have, and that the evangelist intended to be anonymous.” Had he done so, I would concede that his approach was fair-minded; for some academics do argue that the titles to the Gospels were added after they had been written. Yet, later on in his book; he declares that we do not have the first drafts, but only copies from copies at some indeterminate distance from the original. My first point, then, is that Ehrman produces the false impression that his hypothesis is an established fact of history.
He harps on the idea that “all of the New Testament Gospels are anonymous: their authors did not sign their names.” (70) On the same page, when he refers to St Luke, he adds in parentheses “(we do not know his real name).” Fitzmyer in his Anchor Bible Commentary, states that St Luke’s like all the Gospels were anonymous, for: “Nowhere in it does its author reveal his identity, and it cannot be deduced from the extant text.” (35) The natural conclusion would be that the Gospels are of less authority if anonymous, and not from the circle of the apostles and disciples of the Lord. Besides, they are certainly suggesting that the evangelists were doing something different; yet as we shall see, few ancient writers gave their names in their texts. Some did, but most did not. Also, there is good reason to believe that the Christians did in fact distribute the Gospels knowing from the start that it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to a certain evangelist.
But before we come to that, it is not only Ehrman and Fitzmyer who makes this assertion. Davies and Allison in volume 1 of their study of the Gospel of St Matthew acknowledge that the title Gospel according to Matthew appears by the year 125, and the only variants on the title all contain the name of the evangelist (70 and 129). They declare that the title was not on the autograph, without disclosing how they know that.
Similarly, Joel Marcus in his Anchor Bible Commentary on Mark acknowledges that the majority of ancient manuscripts give the name of the evangelist Mark with his Gospel, but he states that as the title is sometimes given at the start of the Gospel, sometimes at the end, sometimes at both, or else along the sides, it is likely to have been added “independently by different later scribes.” (17) One might ask: what is the reason for thinking that the various placement of the name means that St Mark had not attached it? I would have thought the significant matter is that it is written at all. Further, if the “different later scribes” all independently came up with the same name for the evangelist, this would be quite remarkable: of the four oldest New Testaments, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Ephraemi Rescriptus all have “according to Mark,” while the Alexandrinus text has “Gospel according to Mark.”
Marcus acknowledges that Hengel offered arguments for believing that the titles of the Gospels as “The Gospel according to this evangelist” were present when the Gospels first circulated. However, Marcus dismisses Hengel’s thesis without giving any reason, only his conclusion that “he is not able to produce a convincing argument that the Gospel titles were an original part of the text.” (17) But in Studies in the Gospel of Mark, Hengel shows that the three earliest copies of Gospels which are sufficiently well preserved to have an opening or closing page, do indeed bear the name of the evangelist (66); that there is substantial second century evidence in Latin and Coptic manuscripts, and from various writers for the name of the evangelist (66-72). Further, he showed that within Judaism, an author’s name had started to be associated with the document by the second century BC, which had long been the case in the Hellenistic world, and was followed in Christianity with the epistles of the New Testament having titles (even Hebrews), and in those of St Ignatius and others. (73)
Hengel notes that Galen the physician said he did not attach titles to those works not intended for circulation, but, Hengel observes, the Gospels were (74-5). Titles were given so that the text could be cited, and to avoid the suspicion which attended anonymous untitled works (74-75). This especially applied when writings were to be used in worship, and we have early testimony of St Justin Martyr, who died about 165, that the Gospels were so used. More importantly, in 1 Timothy 4:13 and Apocalypse 1:3, we have reason to see the reading of scripture – including the Apocalypse itself – in first century Christian worship (recall that 2 Peter refers to the epistles of St Paul as being “scripture.”) (76-77)
Hengel shows that early Christian communities had book cabinets in which they stored their writings (78); and features such as the consistent and widespread use of the nomina sacra (a way of writing holy names) points to a distinctive, well-planned scribal tradition in the early Church (78-79). The Shepherd of Hermas, an ancient Christian text, includes directions that copies of a letter be given to Clement, to “send it to the cities abroad, for that is his task.” (81) If the writing and distribution of documents was entrusted to someone, it must have been a rational and orderly undertaking. Even if, Hengel argues, the name had not been attached to the Gospel by the evangelist, it must have been at the time Gospels were being sent “to the cities abroad” by this specialised officer. Hengel concludes: “The titles were necessary for the arranging of the Gospels in community libraries and for liturgical reading. This is the only explanation for their great age and the complete unanimity in them towards the end of the second century.” (81)
I doubt that many readers of Joel Marcus’ casual dismissal of Hengel’s arguments would even have suspected that so strong and extensive a case had been made. That, of course, is one of my major objects in this series: to show that the informal Bible studies establishment regularly speaks authoritatively without having made any good case for their dogmas, and likewise can make high-handed dismissal of contrary views. All they have to do is be on the right side of the orthodoxy, and the poor methodology will be waived through.
Now, as we saw last week, there is clear evidence that the ancient practice, certainly for papyrus rolls, was that they bore a title in the simplest form, giving only the author’s name and the title of work, while within the roll even the author’s name was omitted. That was the custom. There are many ancient writers whose name do not appear in their works, for example, Euripides’ name does not appear in his plays: but that hardly means they were “anonymous.” They had been performed in public. Then we can take the Enneads of Plotinus. These philosophical tracts were written by Plotinus but gathered and published by his pupil Porphyry. Plotinus’ name does not appear anywhere within them, but it is securely attached to them because they were written and passed on by a school. Although Plotinus did not himself publish the writings, they were not anonymous within what was, for the author, the critical circle.
Is that what Ehrman, Fitzmyer, Marcus and others mean when they speak of the Gospels being “anonymous,” and the evangelists “choosing to remain anonymous”? If so, they are not saying much, because that was the ancient custom. If not, then what exactly do they mean? I would describe as anonymous a modern author who positively does not want anyone to know his name. The book may be attributed to “anonymous.” It is called “pseudonymous” if it is published under a false name. But an author might write a text, and disseminate it without his name, not with any intention of hiding his identity, but simply because he saw no reason to provide it; or if his authorship was known to the person to whom he gave it, and he thought writing it to be gratuitous. Those do not strike me as being “anonymous texts” because their authorship was known within the circle where they would circulate.
There is yet a further aspect of this question: “Gospel” is a unique genre. As Martin Hengel has pointed out, the titles are The Gospel according to whomever. In The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, Hengel provides evidence that when the Gospels were written, it was presupposed that there was only one Gospel or “message of salvation” but told according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. I am paraphrasing Hengel when I speculate that the reason the names of the evangelists do not appear in the text of their Gospels, as that of the author, is deliberate: it is because they were presenting their perspective of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus, grandson of Sira, placed his name in the text of the book which came to be known as Ecclesiasticus. He claimed credit, saying that his statements poured forth from his understanding (50:27). The evangelists, I suggest, would not make it appear that the message was theirs, or that they possessed the only valid perspective. They witnessed to the one Gospel, and abased themselves. This may be why St John obliquely refers to himself only as the “beloved disciple” and the name of the Apostle John never appears in his Gospel, while Matthew mentions himself only in passing.
In some ancient books, the name of the author appears, but in others it does not. I do not claim to know whether each evangelist fixed to his gospel the title of “Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John,” as the case may have been; although I believe that Hengel’s thesis is quite satisfactory and even compelling. But this is not the critical issue, as the instance of Plotinus shows. The issue is the factual circumstances surrounding the writing of the gospels, and whether they were disseminated in a situation where one would expect them to have the author’s name attached, and, if not, whether the identity of that author were otherwise securely known. If Plotinus’ writings did not go forth anonymously because they were disseminated from within his school, then the same might well be true of the Gospels, disseminated from within the Church.
I reiterate: it must be significant that, despite the academics’ idea that we do not know who the evangelists were, and they all worked in separate communities, there is not a single recorded case of any of the four Gospels being known by any other name. No one is known to have ever attributed the Gospel of St Matthew to St Bartholomew or to St James; and neither has the Gospel of St John come down to us under the name of St Mark. This suggests that this was the unanimous and reliable tradition of the Church. There is good reason to think that the Gospels are not simply a series of books that four separate people produced, and which happened to outsell competitors on the ancient book market. However, the main purpose of what I am writing in these podcasts is not to show that Ehrman and his confreres from the establishment are wrong, and I am right, but more modestly, to show that they are unjustifiably asserting their theories as matters of fact; and often doing so dogmatically.
The Gospels were produced in a specific historical context: the early Church. They are the documents of the early Church, in a very real sense. I am not even sure that contemporary ideas of anonymity apply here: the Gospels were written within the doors of the church, so to speak. What the Gospels record is the message of Our Lord, not of any one human being, no matter how eminent, and the Church realised that multiple perspectives were needed, just as different perspectives on a landscape may enable us to see what we would miss if we only had one vantage position. But that suffices for this week, and we shall develop some of these ideas in future programmes.