It's time for another one (or two) of those cross-post projects with Planet Wisdom. Topic #1 is Gospel Dates and Authors. We'll see if anyone on PW takes up a gauntlet. I am also having to cut portions because of space limits.
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Authorship and date are important; but equally important, if not more so, is whether what is in the Gospels is true. Regardless of who wrote the Gospels and when, if they reflect reality correctly, then it points to their being written by eyewitnesses, or having eyewitnesses as their source. Thus, even if the traditional authorship and earliest dates are disproved - and it is my contention that the arguments against them are inadequate - it matters very little, we may surmise, who wrote them and when. (Hengel [Heng.4G, 6] notes that we have only one biography of Muhammed, written 212 years after his death, which used a source from about 100 years after his death, and yet "the historical scepticism of critical European scholarship is substantially less" where Muhammed is concerned!)
...I have noted that in making arguments, critics never explain to us how their arguments would work if applied equally to secular ancient documents whose authenticity and authorship is never (or is no longer) questioned, but are every bit as "anonymous" in the same sense that the Gospels are. If it is objected that the Gospel authors nowhere name themselves in their texts -- and this is a very common point to be made, even among traditionalists -- then this applies equally to numerous other ancient documents, such as Tacitus' Annals. Authorial attributions are found not in the text proper, but in titles, just like the Gospels. Critics may claim that these were added later to the Gospels, but they need to provide textual evidence of this (i.e., an obvious copy of Matthew with no title attribution to Matthew, and dated earlier or early enough to suggest that it was not simply a late, accidental ommission), and at any rate, why is it not supposed that the titles were added later to the secular works as well?
In order for readers to appreciate the magnitude of this situation, I would like to present here a listing of external evidences for the authorship of the works of Tacitus. I wish to thank Roger Pearse for helpfully sending me copies of relevant pages from the works of the Tacitean scholar Mendell, from Tacitus: The Man and His Work. Mendell surveys evidence for knowledge of Tacitus throughout history; we will only look at evidence up to the sixth century (for reasons noted in Mendell below). In doing this we would challenge potential respondents to compare this record to that of the Gospels. We will present Mendell's comments and intersperse our own.
THE Annals were probably "published" in 116, the last of the works of Tacitus to appear. Only Pliny of Tacitus' contemporaries mentions him, and his writings and the evidence of subsequent use up to the time of Boccaccio is slight. It is not true, however, that Tacitus and his writings were practically unknown. They were neglected----possibly, in part at least, because of his strong republican bias on the one hand and because, on the other, the church fathers felt him to be unfair to Christianity. Vopiscus in his life of the emperor Tacitus (chapter 10) indicates the state of affairs in the third century: "Cornelium Tacitum, scriptorem historiae Augustae, quod parentem suum eundem diceret, in omnibus bibliothecis conlocari iussit neve lectorum incuria deperiret, librum per an-nos singulos decies scribi publicitus evicos archiis iussit et in bibliothecis poni" (the text is obviously corrupt in the reading evicos archiis).
Nevertheless, Tacitus is mentioned or quoted in each century down to and including the sixth. In fact, the seventh and eighth are the only centuries that have as yet furnished no evidence of knowing him. The following are the known references to Tacitus or use of Tacitean material after the day of Tacitus and Pliny until the time of Boccaccio. The material was well collected in 1888 and published at Wetzler by Emmerich Cornelius, but a considerable amount of new material has turned up from time to time since.
About the middle of the second century Ptolemy published his Gewgrafikh& 'Ufh&ghsij. In 2. 11. 12 (ed. C. Muller, Paris, 1883) he lists in succession along the northern shore of Germany the towns of Flhou&m, and Siatouta&nda. The latter name occurs nowhere else and has a dubious sound. The explanation is to be found in Tacitus, Ann. 4. 72, 73: "Rapti qui tributo aderant milites et patibulo adfixi; Olennius infensos fuga prae-venit, receptus castello, cui nomen Flevum; et haud spernenda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani praesidebat." The governor of lower Germany takes prompt action, the account of which winds up: "utrumque exercitum Rheno devectum Frisiis intulit, soluto iam castelli obsidio et ad sua tutanda degressis rebellibus." The source of Ptolemy's mistake is obvious.
Note here that Ptolemy's obvious use of Tacitus is taken as a signal of the Annals existing. This is in stark contrast to how quotes in patristic writers from the Gospels are excused asway as "floating, independent tradition" rather than evidence of the Gospels. Note as well that Ptolemy does not name Tacitus. We still do not have an attribution of authorship to work with some 40-50 years after the writing.
It is hard to believe that Cassius Dio (who published shortly after A.D. 200) did not know at least the Agricola. In 38. 50 and 66. 20 he mentions Gnaeus Julius Agricola as having proved Britain to be an island and in the later instance tells the story of the fugitive Usipi. If we make allowance for the method of Tacitus, which leaves his account far from clear, and for the use of a different language by Dio, there can be little if any doubt that Tacitus is the source for Dio. We know also of no other possible source today. The last part of the section, dealing with Agricola's return and death, confirms the conclusion that Dio drew from Tacitus, and it sounds as though Tacitus had left the impression he desired.
Notice we still do not have an attribution, and we are now 80 and more years past the publication of these works by Tacitus. We are already at or past the number of years Papias was from the Gospels.
In the third century Tertullian cites Tacitus with a hostile tone. He had spoken without respect of the Jews and had implied that the Christians were an undesirable sect of the Jews. It is not a surprise, therefore, to have Tertullian (early third century) refer to him as ille mendaciorum loquacissimus. The Apologist is defending the Christians against the charge that they worshiped an ass. The origin of this scandal he ascribes to Tacitus, Hist. 5. 3, 9. Apologeticus 16...
This is the first direct attribution of something to Tacitus -- apparently over 100 years later! Tertullian also cited Tacitus in two other places.
Lactantius, in the time of Diocletian, is at least once (Div. inst. 1. 18. 8) somewhat reminiscent of Tacitean style but that is as far as it is safe to go in claiming him as a reader of Tacitus, in spite of something of a resemblance between Lactantius 1. 11, 12 and Germ. 40.
At about the same date, Eumenius of Autun, in his Panegyricus ad Constantinum 9, quite clearly has Agric. 12 before him. He follows Tacitus in the error of thinking that the nights are always short, and he assigns as reasons the same that the Roman had...Not only the actual quotation from Tacitus is of interest but the careful substitution of synonyms.
Vopiscus, still in the fourth century, cites Tacitus with Livy, Sallust, and Trogus as the greatest of Roman historians...Ammianus Marcellinus, about 400, published his history, which began where Tacitus left off, indicating a knowledge at least of what Tacitus had written. At about the same time Sulpicius Severus of Aquitaine wrote his Chronicorum libri and, in 2. 28. 2 and 2. 29. 2, used Tacitus, Ann. 15. 37 and 44 as his source. On the detailed matter of Nero's marriage with Pythagoras and the punishment of the Christians the verbal resemblances make it impossible to think that he was drawing on any other source....Jerome in his commentary on Zacchariah 14. 1, 2 (3, p. 914) cites Tacitus: "Cornelius quoque [i.e. as well as Josephus] Tacitus, qui post Augustum usque ad mortem Domitiani vitas Caesarum triginta voluminibus exaravit." He gives no proof of having read Tacitus----he may not even have seen his works at all----but he did know of a tradition in which the thirty books were numbered consecutively. Claudian cannot be safely claimed as a reader of Tacitus in spite of his suggestive references to Tiberius and Nero. 8, Fourth Consulship of Honorius...Servius, on the other hand, at the end of the fourth century, while his reference is to a lost part of Tacitus, evidently had read the text. Hegesippus made a free Latin version of Josephus' Jewish War with independent additions, many of which seem to come from Tacitus' Histories. An example is 4. 8: "denique neque pisces neque adsuetas aquis et laetas mergendi usu aves." Compare Hist. 5.6: "neque vento impellitur neque pisces aut suetas aquis volucres patitur." There is a certain studied attempt at variation of wording without concealment of the source. Of the fifth-century writers, two, Sidonius Apollinaris and Orosius, have left evidence of considerable familiarity with Tacitus as well as respect for him as a writer. In Ep. 4. 22. 2 Sidonius makes a pun on the name Tacitus. After comparing himself and Leo to Pliny and Tacitus he says that should the latter return to life and see how eloquent Leo was in the field of narrative, he would become wholly Tacitus. The name as he gives it is Gaius Cornelius Tacitus. Again in Ep. 4. 14. 1 he quotes Gaius Tacitus as an ancestor of his friend Polemius. He was, says Sidonius, a consular in the time of the Ulpians: "Sub verbis cuiuspiam Germanici ducis in historia sua rettulit dicens : cum Vespasiano mihi vetus amicitia" etc...The citations in Orosius are naturally quite different from these casual references and general estimates. Orosius is always after material for argument, and it is the content rather than the style that interests him. He refers to Tacitus explicitly and at length. He compares critically the statements of Cornelius Tacitus and Pompeius Trogus and again of Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus. The quotations and citations from Tacitus are all in the Adversus paganos and all from the Histories. In 1. 5. 1 Orosius says: "Ante annos urbis conditae MCLX confinem Arabiae regionem quae tune Pentapolis vocabatur arsisse penitus igne caeleste inter alios etiam Cornelius Tacitus refert, qui sic ait: Haud procul inde campi . . . vim frugiferam perdidisse. Et cum hoc loco nihil de incensis propter peccata hominum civitatibus quasi ignarus expresserit, paulo post velut oblitus consilii subicit et dicit: Ego sicut inclitas . . . cor-rumpi reor." The quotation is from Hist. 5.7 and, in spite of some interesting variants, it is reasonably exact. The same is true of his quotation of Hist. 5. 3 in Adv. pag. 1. 10. 1...
Cassiodorus is a sixth-century writer who seems to have used Tacitus as source material. He does not, however, seem to know much about his source, for he speaks of "a certain Cornelius"; but he draws on Germania 45...Perhaps a hundred years or less after Cassiodorus, Jordanes wrote his De origine actibusque getarum which he took largely from Cassiodorus' history of the Goths. That one or the other of these two must have known Agric. 10 is shown by the following passage in Jordanes (2. 12, 13): "Mari tardo circumfluam quod nec remis facile impellentibus cedat, nec ventorum flatibus intumescat, credo quia remotae longius terrae causas motibus negant. Quippe illic latius quam usquam aequor extenditur . . . Noctem quoque clariorem in extrema eius parte menima quam Cornelius etiam annalium scriptor enarrat. . . Labi vero per earn multa quam maxima relabique flumina gemmas margaritasque volventia." The textual confusion memma quam is usually taken to come from minimamque but we should expect brevemque. The very last item is probably from Mela. The Scholiast to Juvenal 2. 99 and 14. 102 refers to the Histories, ascribing them in the one case to Cornelius, in the other to Cornelius Tacitus. The first note is as follows: "Hunc incomparabilis vitae bello civili Vitellius vicit apud Bebriacum campum. Horum bellum scripsit Cornelius, scripsit et Pompeius Planta, qui sit Bebriacum vicum a Cremona vicesimo lapide." The second is a twofold description of Moses: (a) "sacerdos vel rex eius gentis"; (b) "aut ipsius quidem religionis inventor, cuius Cornelius etiam Tacitus meminit" (cf. Hist. 5. 3).
Comparably speaking, this evidence is vanishingly small compared to the incredible number of attestations and attributions by patristic writers, some few earlier than (but many as late as) those listed for Tacitus above. How can someone dealing with the evidence fairly claim to be sure of Tacitus' authorship of his various works (where such external evidence is concerned) and dismiss the Gospels, which have far better external evidence? I have recently checked a book titled Texts and Tranmission (Clarendon Press, 1993) which records similar data for other ancient works. Throughout the book classic works from around the time of the NT whose authorship and date no one questions (though some have textual issues, just like the NT) are recorded as having the earliest copy between 5th and 9th century, earliest attributions at the same period (for example, Celsus' De medicina is attested no earlier than 990 AD, and then not again until 1300!), and having so little textual support that if they were treated as the NT is, all of antiquity would be reduced to a blank wall of paranoid unknowingness. If the Gospels are treated consistenly, there will be no question at all about their provenance, but that is clearly the last thing critics want to do.
Not that lack of a name on a text automatically equates with anonymous authorship anyway: In this era prior to publishing, and just prior to the advent of the codex, the equivalent to a spine or dust jacket was a tag on the outside of a scroll identifying the work in question -- since there would be no other concrete way to discern what was inside a scroll and differentiate it from other scrolls (other than external appearance). Whenever and by whomever the Gospels were written, it would not be left "unauthorized" or "unidentified" if for no other reasons than practical ones: It would need a title/descriptor at the very least, especially if it was intended to be read by more than one person or small group of people. Hengel notes [Heng.4G, 48]:
Anonymous works were relatively rare and must have been given a title in libraries. They were often given the name of a pseudepigraphical author....Works without titles easily got double or multiple titles when names were given to them in different libraries.
Since even critics admit that the Gospels were intended for a wide audience (at the very least, a "community" of believers) they must explain why these practical factors would be irrelevant and allow a Gospel to remain "anonymous" and then later not be attributed to multiple authors.
Skeptics and critics would have a better case if they could find a copy of Matthew that is instead attributed to, say, Andrew, or to no one at all; or a copy of what is obviously Mark that is attributed to Barnabas. But the titles are unanimous and unequivocal -- there is no variation in them at all, and critics have also not provided any examples of Gospel texts with no title, and cannot: "There is no trace of such anonymity [concerning the Gospels]," and the testimony to their authorship is unanimous across broad geographic and chronological lines [Heng.4G, 54]. It is hard to see why this evidence is not enough for the Gospels when far, far less is accepted for secular works and their attribution.
Notwithstanding such titular subscriptions: How do secular historians determine authorship (and date) of an ancient document? Since we have started with Tacitus' Annals, we'll work with that example where we can. (As we have noted elsewhere, in the 19th century there were some who alleged that all of Tacitus' works were late forgeries -- in spite of the titles attached to them! -- Tacitean studies has long left that issue in the dust, and if the evidence used by secular historians is good enough for Tacitus, then it should be good enough for the Gospels.)
Interior corroborative evidence. Needless to say, if a work of Tacitus tells us that Nero opened a refrigerator, took out a burrito, and stuck it in the microwave oven, we have some cause to doubt a second-century author like Tacitus was responsible for that material! On the other hand, one would also expect that Tacitus would write his works like a government official of Rome would write; he would have a high level of education, decent grammar, and a sophisticated tone suitable to the Roman upper-crust. He would not have a work full of spelling errors and country-bumpkin mistakes; he would get governmental terms right (but maybe not, say, farming terms); he would exhibit a certain attitude common to a member of high-class Roman society.
We will see that some of the individual objections to the Gospels center upon supposed words and/or concepts that are supposed not have existed when the authors wrote their work. We will also see that some objections argue that a certain individual would not write a certain way. Of course, if there are no word- or concept-anachronisms, and if the work shows signs of having been written in a style that the named author would write, then this is positive evidence for that person's authorship. A number of NT commentators (even in the traditionalist camp) tend to treat such evidence as less than definitive; I would ask, if it is good enough for secular scholars to use as confirmation, why not here also?
External corroborative evidence. If Tacitus is referred to by other people, or if he is found in other records, and if others attribute a work to him, then this is clear testimony that he wrote the document in question (see above). On the other hand, if some writer at some point (the closer to the time of Tacitus, the "better") either denies that Tacitus wrote a given work attributed to him, or else attributes (without reference to Tacitus) the work to another, we may have reason to suspect Tacitus' authorship. At the same time, if the works of Tacitus are found referred to in other documents, this may be taken as evidence for the date of Tacitus' works, in accordance with the dates of the works quoted, again as noted above. (Absence of such quotes would not necessarily prove a later date, but it would add suspicions if other reasons to be suspicious were present.)
If the Gospels are anonymous, why is there no other surviving tradition of another author for the Gospels? Second-century testimony is unanimous in attributing the four Gospels to the persons that now carry their name. This suggests that they received their titles early; for if they had not, there would have been a great deal of speculation as to who had written them - "a variation of titles would have inevitably risen," as had happened with the apocryphal gospels. [Thie.EvJ, 15]; see also [Heng.Mark, 82] It is rather harder to believe that the Gospels circulated anonymously for 60 or more years and then someone finally thought to put authors on them -- and managed to get the whole church across the Roman Empire to agree!
Why then were such unlikely characters chosen as authors? Luke is mentioned a few times by name in the NT, a very obscure personage. Mark was a rotten kid; he abandoned Paul (
Acts 15). Matthew was an apostle, but he was also a tax collector - would you pick the IRS man, and an obscure apostle, to author your Gospel? [Wilk.JUF, 28] Only John is a logical choice for a pseudonymous author. The strength of this point is demonstrated in that some will use the excuse that obscure persons were deliberately chosen as authors in order to fool us into thinking that this would mean they were authentic!
How could the early Christian community honor the Gospels as authoritative unless they knew who had written them? Even granting such a late date as some critics surmise, it is doubtful that the Gospels could have gotten anywhere unless they were certainly attributable to someone who was recognized as knowing what they were writing about. (On the other hand, I must say that some critics assume a high degree of gullibility in the first-century church!) To this end, Hengel [CarMoo.Int, 66] has argued that the Gospels must have received their titles immediately - not in the second century. For an anonymous author to have penned a Gospel, and have it accepted as from the hand of one of the Quartet or any authoritative person, would have required them to first produce the Gospel, then present it as the work of another; they would have to concoct some story as to how it came peculiarly to be in their possession ("My grandmother knew Matthew and he gave her a copy...I don't know why she never told our family about it!"); get around the problem of why a work by such a person disappeared or was previously unknown; then get the church at large, first in his area and then throughout the Roman Empire (and would not the claimed discovery of such a document cause a sensation, and controversy?), to accept this work as genuine! Can any critic explain how these logistic difficulties were overcome? I have noted that they do well in waving around generalities, but never get down to the specifics of how Joe Gentile could have managed to pull off such a shebang on the church as a whole. Is there any parallel to this in secular history, where an enormous group at large was bamboozled by (and continued to be bamboozled by) not just one forgery, but four, attributed in a couple of cases to members of an inner circle, in widely separated places and times? And I'll add that under the "Q/Marcan priority" hypothesis, how is it they suppose that "Matthew" and "Luke" would choose to use an anonymous document as a source? Mark could not be recognized as authoritative until it was known what source it came from; yet if the critics are right, "Mark" was considered authoritative enough to use not by just one, but by two others working independently of one another. (One way around this scenario is to hypothesize Christian "prophets" through whom these works might have been received and recognized; for a response to this, see below.)
At the beginning of the second century, there would have been first-generation Christians alive who recalled the apostles and their teaching, and many more second-generation Christians who would have had information passed directly to them. We have early witnesses to the authorship of some of the Gospels. Papias wrote around 110-130, and he surely did not design the authorship of Matthew and Mark on the spur of the moment. That being so, how could anyone have dared to attribute the Gospels to anyone other than the genuine authors with these first- and second-generation witnesses still alive? Believers in the 70s-90s, when critics suppose that the Gospels were authored anonymously, would have known of no works of Matthew and the others; believers after the 90s who descended from this generation and lived into the lifetime of Papias would have had no tradition of such
documents.
