The Cumulative Case For The Authorship Of The Biblical Documents

In a thread at the Stand To Reason blog, I've been discussing some of the evidence for John's authorship of the fourth gospel. I mentioned five lines of evidence that all point in the same direction, toward authorship by John, son of Zebedee:

1.) internal data (e.g., The fourth gospel portrays its author as having an unusually close relationship with Jesus and Peter and as somebody involved in fishing. The other gospels, Acts, and Galatians assign those attributes to John.)

2.) early Christian sources

3.) early manuscripts

4.) early heretical sources

5.) early non-Christian sources

There are many articles in the Triablogue archives arguing for each of those five lines of evidence. See, for example, the relevant posts linked here. If you search the archives, you can also find articles addressing Richard Bauckham's argument for authorship by another John, Ben Witherington's argument for authorship by Lazarus, and other relevant issues.