Who wrote the synoptic gospels?
Are the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke anonymous? Their names do not appear in the text, so yes, in that regard, they are anonymous. But the contexts of “anonymous” begs a definition. We’re not talking about anonymous in the context of a Junior-high love letter or Wiki leaks informer.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought …” Who wrote that? Everybody knows who wrote that, even if they haven’t seen the originals. What if the originals were stolen, burned by an anti-constitutionalist, then claimed false or illegal to recite. How many years would be “long enough” to produce “experts” that claim the Gettysburg Address was not written by Abraham Lincoln? Interestingly enough, and I quote, “Additional versions of the speech appeared in newspapers of the era, feeding modern-day confusion about the authoritative text.” But the naysayers couldn’t gain any traction. People knew better.
Too many of us are familiar with Lincoln’s words from 1893, though we are not eyewitnesses of his character, or his speeches. Take away the originals, and one would still be hard-pressed, even eighty years from now, to convince the vast majority that the Gettysburg Address was a fabrication.
Now to my point. We do not have synoptic gospels penned and sighed by the authors themselves. However, the church father, Papias, writing around 130 AD, records “Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language…” The letters were accepted by the early church fathers, preceded by a significant presence of faithful and persecuted Christians.
“Reporting on Emperor Nero’s decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed Rome in A.D. 64, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote:
Nero fastened the guilt . . . on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of . . . Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome. . . .”
“Another important source of evidence about Jesus and early Christianity can be found in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trajan. Pliny was the Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In one of his letters, dated around A.D. 112, he asks Trajan’s advice about the appropriate way to conduct legal proceedings against those accused of being Christians. Pliny says that he needed to consult the emperor about this issue because a great multitude of every age, class, and sex stood accused of Christianity.
At one point in his letter, Pliny relates some of the information he has learned about these Christians:
‘They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food–but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.’”
Back to my point. Considering both the persecution and proliferation of the early church, it stands to reason that the claim of gospel authenticity stands the test. These persecuted Christians lived too close to the times of the well-known disciples to accept “anonymous fabrications”. They knew who wrote the letters, copied and circulated them, the earliest probably being the gospel of Mark. And no, Mark and Luke were not eyewitnesses of Christ, but disciples of those who were.
To deny the reliability of the synoptic gospels based on the absence of the author’s personal address, is a blind eye turning against the most reliable text ever written; a collaboration of multiple authors spanning over a thousand years, yet producing a seamless narrative that continues to frustrate the skeptics.
It doesn’t amaze me that the authorship is the point of so much contention. The problem isn’t the authorship, it’s the message. Discredit the author—discredit the message. But here we are almost 2,000 years after the death of the Jew from Nazareth, and the gospel message of hope still rings true for millions of people all over the world.
an apologetic by Kari Rimbey, quotes taken from the following:
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm
https://bible.org/article/ancient-evidence-jesus-non-christian-sources
Image: Wiki Commons
