I've sometimes linked a collection of resources I put together on the best and earliest evidence for the authorship of the gospels. A mistake that can be made when evaluating that kind of evidence is to view the information in too isolated a manner. There's a cumulative effect to the evidence, and sometimes two or more things take on an added significance when considered together, a significance they wouldn't have if considered individually.
For example, critics of the traditional gospel authorship attributions often object that Justin Martyr doesn't name the gospel authors. (See my post here on what I think is the best explanation for why he doesn't name them.) He refers to the gospels as having been composed by apostles and their associates, which is consistent with the traditional authorship attributions, but he doesn't tell us who the authors are by name. There's one place where he uses an apparent citation of the gospel of Mark and refers to it as coming from the memoirs of Peter, which corroborates the traditional view that the second gospel was composed by an associate of Peter who had Peter as his primary source. But it could also be taken as a reference to authorship by Peter, though that's much less likely. Either way, Justin knows more than he tells us in most places about the authorship of the documents, as demonstrated by that occasion where he makes the reference to Peter. And as my post linked above notes, Justin also tells us elsewhere that John composed the book of Revelation, which demonstrates that Justin thought John had the ability to compose documents, by whatever means, had an interest in doing so, and had done it on at least one occasion.
Skeptics can object that all of that still doesn't get us to the traditional gospel authorship attributions. But it does get us partway there. By multiple steps, in fact, not just one step. And some of the steps go against common skeptical claims, such as their opinion that John wouldn't have been involved in composing documents.
And we have more than Justin to go by among the pre-Irenaean sources. Papias tells us that Mark and Matthew also were interested in producing documents and had the ability, by whatever means, to do so. And he specifies that those documents were at least similar to the gospels we have, and he likely was referring to what we have today at least in the case of Mark. You can see my first post linked above for my argument that Papias also likely affirmed that Matthew and John wrote gospels, probably the ones we have today.
That first post linked above also refers to how Marcion and his earliest followers corroborate the Pauline association of the third gospel, which offers partial support for the traditional view that the third gospel was authored by Luke, a companion of Paul. I also explain how the early Marcionite use of Galatians 2 corroborates the authorship attributions of the other gospels.
And so forth. You can consult my first post linked above for more of the relevant details. My point here is that there's a big cumulative effect to what all of these pre-Irenaean sources tell us. Though Justin doesn't name the gospel authors for us, he and Papias tell us that Matthew and John had the relevant interests and abilities involved in producing such documents, and they refer to some documents those apostles produced. So, Matthew and John are more plausible candidates than, say, Andrew and Judas the son of James. We need to recognize the significance of what the pre-Irenaean sources tell us instead of being overly focused on what they don't, or allegedly don't, tell us, the fact that they don't give us the information we want in as easy a manner as we'd like, and so on.
One way to appreciate what these early sources give us is to think of how well the traditional authorship attributions explain what we see in these sources and how much worse the alternatives explain what we see. An anonymous gospels hypothesis or a hypothesis involving named authors other than the traditional ones provides a far worse explanation of what we see in the sources before Irenaeus.
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