Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona recently debated the subject. I listened to the debate while doing something else and didn't take notes, so I'll just be summarizing some points that have come to mind after listening to the debate. Mike had some good things to say, but I want to supplement what he offered.
Bart argues that people like Matthew and John are highly unlikely to have been able to have composed documents like the gospels attributed to them. Matthew and John probably didn't know much Greek. They probably didn't have the literary skills needed to produce documents like the gospels attributed to them. And it's unlikely that they had secretaries or others helping them produce such documents, given the lack of evidence for a literary convention that involved secretaries or other assistants having as large of a role in producing such a document as they'd need to have in order to make up for what Matthew and John lacked.
Bart didn't offer much of an argument that Mark and Luke didn't have the relevant abilities. I'll focus on Matthew and John.
Upfront improbabilities that somebody like a first-century tax collector or a first-century fisherman would be literate, would know Greek, and so forth are just some of the factors to take into account. Other factors need to be considered as well. For example, though left-handed people are a small minority, the initial unlikelihood that a crime was committed by a left-handed individual can easily be outweighed by other factors: eyewitness testimony that the crime was committed by a person known to be left handed, secondhand testimony about reports that the person who committed the crime seemed to be left handed, video footage of a left-handed person committing the crime, etc. You have to move beyond the initial improbability that the crime was committed by a left-handed person. There are other factors that also have to be taken into account. The same principle applies to a consideration of gospel authorship.
There were thousands of Christians in the first century. Only two non-apostles are claimed to have written gospels. Only two of the original twelve disciples are claimed to have written gospels. The Twelve would have had an unusually high level of motivation to acquire better literary skills or literary help as time went on. That higher level of motivation means that you can't treat them as if they're the average person, the average illiterate first-century Jew, or some such thing. Take John, for example. He was a fisherman. But he was also an apostle, one of the most prominent of the apostles, etc. He's widely reported to have lived an unusually long time and to have not written until late in life, meaning that his ability to compose such documents is more plausible accordingly. He had five documents widely attributed to him, including by sources of the first and early second centuries (more on that below). That reflects well on how the plausibility of his composing documents was perceived by his contemporaries and people who lived shortly after his time. And so on. You have to take such factors into account, along with the factors people like Bart give the most attention to, rather than just isolating the factors that favor a conclusion like Bart's, such as John's being a fisherman. He was a fisherman, but also an apostle; of low prominence in the eyes of most Jews of his day, but also of high prominence in the eyes of Christians; etc.
Bart can't be as dismissive as he is about Papias and the gospel of Matthew. Even if Papias wasn't referring to the canonical gospel of Matthew, his comments provide evidence of an early belief that Matthew was literate and had the interest and ability, by one means or another, to produce the document Papias was discussing, whatever you think that document was. Those are significant lines of evidence that go against Bart's claims. Arguing that Papias was referring to a document other than our version of the gospel of Matthew doesn't address everything that needs to be addressed in Papias' comments about Matthew.
On the problems with Bart's suggestion that Papias was referring to a Markan document other than the canonical gospel of Mark, see here. It's likely that Papias was referring to canonical Mark, for reasons discussed in the post just linked.
Concerning the supposed high unlikelihood that people like Matthew and John would have gotten the help needed to produce a gospel from secretaries or other assistants, see the post here that I wrote in response to Bart on that subject in 2011. That post quotes some comments from Ben Witherington and E. Randolph Richards, one of Bart's sources. See my comments here as well. And go here to see a section of the question and answer segment of the debate between Bart and Mike, in which somebody in the audience cites some examples of ancient sources getting some degree of help composing a document. Bart dismisses the Cicero example, because it involved a different genre and a document that was much shorter. But why think those differences are relevant? He goes on to contrast Cicero's situation with a scenario in which somebody other than Matthew or John was "writing twenty unique chapters". It's not as though any person or group helping Matthew or John would have to do as much as Bart is suggesting. Any help that was received could have ranged across a wide spectrum, with some degree of back-and-forth between Matthew/John and the individuals providing the help. The situation wouldn't have to be identical to the one with Cicero in order for Cicero to illustrate some of the factors involved to some degree. How does Bart supposedly know that Matthew and John could only receive help to the degree that Cicero did? And Bart admitted that he wasn't familiar with the other example cited, involving Tacitus.
Returning to Cicero, Darrell Bock wrote:
"He [E. Randolph Richards] wrote me to thank me for defending his look at the use of secretaries in the NT and noting that Bart Ehrman really has not discussed his position correctly in talking about his work. In our discussion Ehrman claimed that there is no solid, widespread evidence of secretaries having a major writing role in the works of others. He claims only Cicero is put forward as giving such evidence. The issue is important. We know secretaries were used in certain letters and the idea one goes to the trouble of using a secretary but not using their skills in doing so makes no cultural sense. Richards is clear that Josephus used collaborators to help him with his Greek (Josephus, Against Apion 1.50). Cicero knew a letter from Pompey had the help of a secretary, Sestius (Att 15:3). Richards cites many such examples in his work (Letter Writing, 74-77). Richards notes examples in the Michgan papyri as well (especially book 8)"
Here's part of what Richards writes in the section of his book cited by Bock:
"However, the papyri also are filled with examples of well-formed letters, with all the appropriate language and phraseology, being sent by an illiterate writer who could scarcely scratch a closing farewell. Obviously, the secretary took quite a bit of license in shaping those letters, well beyond merely correcting grammar or phraseology. Since the ancient letter had such a rigid structure, often with a predetermined arrangement of the contents, and stereotyped formulae, a secretary's expertise was quite welcome, if not essential, for the marginally literate....an author could request that a letter be written to a local official assuring him of compliance with all the latest ordinances. The secretary would then compose a suitable letter. In this role the secretary was actually the author of the letter, although the stated author assumed full responsibility for it." (Paul And First-Century Letter Writing [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004], 76-77)
And there's a lot more there. I'm just citing a couple of passages. Richards' view seems substantially different than Bart's.
Then there's the fact that the large number of ancient sources who commented on the authorship of the gospels - Christian, heretical, Jewish, and pagan - seem to have thought that individuals like Matthew and John could have composed such documents by one means or another. Those ancient sources who influenced perceptions of and commented on the authorship of the gospels lived in the historical context in question, and they don't seem to have shared Bart's skepticism.
And keep in mind what I said earlier about an initial improbability being outweighed by other factors. I wouldn't expect every literary practice in the ancient world to be fully spelled out, or even partly spelled out in some cases, somewhere in our extant sources. As Mike repeatedly said during the debate, it's very probable that the ancient Christians would have wanted a written record from one or more of the Twelve. They'd likely have departed from literary conventions in order to get that sort of document, if they had to depart from the conventions of their day. But I doubt that any such departure was needed.
Bart kept referring to how nobody names the gospel authors before Irenaeus. (Keep in mind his suggestion that Papias wasn't referring to canonical Mark or canonical Matthew, which would make Papias irrelevant under Bart's scenario.) But in addition to the fact that Bart is wrong about Papias, as discussed above, see the other examples of pre-Irenaean sources here. Notice how diverse those sources are in terms of their locations, theological views, etc.
That page just linked also discusses some other lines of evidence that didn't come up during the debate. We have evidence that there was interest in the authorship of the gospels as early as the first century, which works against Bart's notion of gospels that were circulating anonymously early on. And there would have been a need to distinguish among the gospels and similar documents as early as the first century. The gospels were distinguished by means of author names from the second century onward, and continuity is more likely than discontinuity. Distinguishing among the gospels (and similar documents) by means of the names of the authors is the most likely scenario in the first century. Another line of evidence discussed on the page linked above is John 21:24, a passage Bart is wrong about, as discussed here. As far as I recall, 1 John 1:1-3 didn't come up in the debate. But notice that it offers corroboration that the fourth gospel was written by somebody who claimed to be an eyewitness of Jesus. See here for further discussion.
Bart brought up the third-person language of Matthew's gospel, especially the account of Matthew's calling in chapter 9. But the New Testament itself (e.g., 2 Corinthians 12:2-5) and even the gospels in particular (John 19:35, 21:24-25) provide us with examples of authors referring to themselves in the third person. That includes Paul discussing a supernatural experience that was highly important to him and John's discussion of significant experiences he had with Jesus. And the account of Matthew's calling in the gospel attributed to him is substantially different than the accounts in the other Synoptics. See my post here. As that post explains, it isn't just Matthew's calling that the gospel attributed to him treats differently. There's also other material that's different in a significant way, such as how Matthew is mentioned in the lists of the Twelve. So, the gospel of Matthew is different than the other gospels in ways that single out Matthew in particular, not just some broader category (tax collectors, people who refer to certain financial matters more than usual, etc.).
Bart didn't cite any examples of ancient sources who agreed with him about the original anonymity of the gospels or any ancient source who named an alternative gospel author Bart thinks is the likely one. And there were many actual and potential ancient sources who had an interest in bringing up such information if they thought it was credible enough (Jewish critics of Christianity, pagan critics, heretics who opposed certain apostles, Christians who had doubts about the traditional authorship attributions, etc.). It's not as though we'd expect Bart's alternative scenario to leave so little trace in the historical record if true. We'd expect it to leave some trace, and it doesn't leave the sort of trace we'd expect. That's probably because it's false.
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