Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Where To Begin In Discussions Of Gospel Authorship
I've become increasingly convinced that Luke 1:1-3 is a good place to start in discussions about gospel authorship. Luke refers to his use of prior sources in the opening of his gospel, and the written nature of his own work makes it unlikely that he's referring only to oral sources. (To read more on the subject, go here.) There's widespread agreement that Luke used at least one of the other canonical gospels as one of his sources. And once two or more gospels of such prominence were in use, there would be a need to distinguish among them in libraries, when using them during church services, and so on. We have a lot of evidence that the gospels were distinguished in such contexts by means of authorship attributions from the second century onward. And continuity is more likely than discontinuity. It makes more sense that the gospels were distinguished by means of author names in the first century than that they weren't. That scenario better explains the widespread acceptance of the practice later and the absence of any comparable or better alternative. If somebody is going to argue that the gospels circulated anonymously early on, he should be asked how he thinks the pre-Lukan documents Luke refers to in the opening of his gospel were distinguished from one another (the pre-Lukan context) and how Luke's gospel was distinguished from those other sources (the context from the time of Luke onward).
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I've been studying several commentaries and other sources recently on the Johannine texts and have been somewhat surprised to learn that even conservative, Reformed scholars hold the position that the Gospel of John as we have it in Scripture is probably a post-mortem edit of a previous letter (draft source) written by John, but revised and circulated after his death by his inner circle. These same scholars hold that 2 and 3 John were probably not written by the Apostle at all, but by a contemporary John known as "the Elder" whose name was also John, but who is distinguished by Papias as cited by Eusebius from the Apostle. Jerome also cites Papias to reach the same conclusion about the authorship of 2 & 3 John, i.e. that it was the elder (or presbyter) John and not the Apostle.
ReplyDeleteMoreover in Eusebius's own comments about Papias's statements he says the other "elder John" was probably the author of Revelation as well.
Disconcerting stuff for a rube like me who always assumed Johannine authorship of the 4th Gospel, 1-3 John, and Revelation.
I've written a lot of posts over the years in response to claims about an alleged second John, like here. Anybody who's interested can find many more such posts in our archives. Regarding the closing verses of John 21, see my post on an article by Charles Hill on the topic here. Read the comments section of the thread as well, since I added some significant material there. Lydia McGrew responds at length to Richard Bauckham, one of the primary advocates of attributing one or more of the Johannine books to another John, in her recent book, The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021). I'll be posting more on the subject after I finish reading Lydia's book. Probably sometime in April.
DeleteCurious...which conservative Reformed scholars did you come across that held that position?
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