A Lengthy Argument Against The Anonymity Of The Gospels

David Pallmann recently released a good video on the alleged anonymity of the gospels. It covers a lot of ground and includes a large amount of valuable material, much of it rarely discussed. It's six hours long, but is arranged in much shorter sections.

Papias' Acceptance Of The Synoptics And John

Another early example of what I discussed in my last post, though a less significant example, is Papias. It's well known that he thought highly of the Synoptics, as cited in Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15-16. Something that gets discussed much less is how various phrases and concepts found in the Johannine literature are found in Papias' writings as well, including in forms very unlikely to be merely coincidental. In all likelihood, Papias was familiar with the Johannine documents in the New Testament and thought highly of them. As I wrote in a post several years ago, "I've already noted Papias' use of 'the elder', a term that John applied to himself. In most lists of the apostles, Peter's name appears first. But in Papias' list, Andrew comes before Peter, followed by Philip. That order (Andrew, Peter, Philip) is identical to the order in which Jesus calls the disciples in John's gospel (John 1:40-41, 1:43). The same passage in Papias uses the phrase 'truth itself' (3 John 12), which is somewhat unusual." For a discussion of some other evidence for Papias' high view of both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of John, see the sixth paragraph here. Just after discussing Papias' high view of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Eusebius noted that Papias "uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John" (Church History 3:39:16). And he was a premillennialist and is reported to have corroborated the book of Revelation in some sense (see section E2 here). The sort of high regard for the writings of John suggested by all of these lines of evidence is furthered by Papias' reference to an elder named John who seems to have still been alive for some part of Papias' life and whose testimony Papias is interested in (Eusebius, Church History 3:39:3-4). For an argument that the John Papias refers to there was the son of Zebedee, see here. And see my recent post here for evidence that Irenaeus likely had the son of Zebedee in mind when he referred to Papias as an eyewitness of John (Against Heresies 5:33:4). Papias was a bishop in Asia Minor, the region where the seven churches of Revelation resided. He and the audience for whom he wrote provide further examples of what I referred to in my last post, people who seem to have held views that harmonized what's found in the Synoptics and the fourth gospel. Papias was closely associated with John in a variety of ways (as an eyewitness of John, as somebody who lived in an area of the world where John lived and had a lot of influence, as somebody who thought highly of the New Testament's Johannine documents, etc.), and he held a high view of the Synoptics.

A Good Way To Think About Papias

He's one of the earliest extrabiblical sources who comments on Christianity, he addresses some significant issues, and many people think (probably correctly) that he had met the apostle John. But he's also highly controversial, in a lot of contexts, and there are widespread disagreements about how to interpret him. You can access an archive of our posts about Papias here.

What I want to focus on in this post is a good way to think about Papias in an important context in which he's often brought up, the authorship of the gospels (and related issues, like the origins of the gospels more broadly). He's often treated as if he's an isolated figure in the context of gospel authorship. He'll sometimes be referred to, wrongly, as the only individual who named any gospel authors before Irenaeus did so. (See here for a correction of that mistake.) People will try to undermine his credibility by various means, suggesting that we therefore don't have any reliable sources on gospel authorship in the earliest generations of Christianity, that he doesn't cause much of a problem for the hypothesis of the original anonymity of the gospels, etc. But Papias is connected to other sources in this context:

- He names a predecessor he got at least some of his information on gospel authorship from, a man he refers to as "the elder" (in Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15).

- The reason why people like Eusebius could quote Papias is that he wrote some material that was still extant in later generations. And the best explanation for why he wrote about gospel authorship is that he thought his audience was interested in the subject.

So, although Papias is just one individual, he relied on at least one earlier source on issues of gospel authorship (the elder), and he wrote about gospel authorship for an audience he probably thought was interested in the subject. Interest in and information about the authorship of the gospels (and other matters pertaining to the origins of the gospels) predate Papias and are present in some of Papias' contemporaries, not just Papias. It's helpful to think of him in connection with those other sources, the elder and the audience for whom Papias wrote.

The Cumulative Effect Of The Pre-Irenaean Sources On Gospel Authorship

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.

Early Extrabiblical Sources On Jesus' Childhood

It's sometimes argued that the infancy narratives were added to Matthew and/or Luke sometime after the documents were originally published, perhaps even as late as around the time of Marcion. Or an infancy narrative will be considered part of the original document, but the document will be dated late, such as in the 90s or even sometime in the second century.

What if men like Papias and Polycarp weren't eyewitnesses of the apostles?

I've argued, in other posts here and elsewhere, that they were. But if they weren't, what would follow?

There still would have been other individuals in early church history who had been an eyewitness of one or more of the apostles. There would have been many eyewitnesses, and some of them would have lived well into the second century. That's the nature of life. Skeptical challenges to the eyewitness status of individuals like Papias and Polycarp don't change that. It's not as though the presence of eyewitnesses depends on the status of particular individuals who have traditionally been thought to have been eyewitnesses of the apostles. The fact that eyewitnesses would have existed and have lived until well into the second century can't reasonably be denied. Keep that in mind when you see people questioning the eyewitness status of certain people.

And even those who weren't eyewitnesses could have been in a good position to have had significant information. They were contemporaries of the apostles, lived in an area where one or more apostles had been, etc. Think of the evidence for the apostle John's long lifespan and his interactions with Christians and churches in Asia Minor, for example. On his long lifespan, see here. For a discussion of the evidence for his influence on the Asia Minor region, go here. That post is focused on Ephesus, but much of what's said there is also applicable to Smyrna and other locations in the area. It's not as though Polycarp had to be a disciple of John in order to have had significant information about John and other eyewitnesses of Jesus. Polycarp was in the right place, at the right time, in the right sort of leadership position to have had a lot of reliable information about Jesus and the apostles, even if he wasn't a disciple of John (though the evidence suggests he was).

Anytime skeptics raise doubts about an issue like whether a certain person was an eyewitness of the apostles or whether a New Testament author was an eyewitness of whatever type, it's helpful to begin by asking what's at stake. Even if the skeptic's position were granted for the sake of argument, what would follow from it? Often, even if we granted the skeptic's position, the source in question still offers a large amount of evidence against the skeptic's view of Christianity.

What type of extrabiblical tradition?

Since so many Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox evaluations of Protestantism involve criticizing sola scriptura without making much of a case for an alternative, we should consider what's at stake. Not only does rejecting sola scriptura not leave you with Catholicism and Orthodoxy as the only Christian options to choose from, but it doesn't even come close to doing so.

Let's say that somebody found Papias' extrabiblical traditions about premillennialism convincing and added those to scripture as his rule of faith. Would accepting such extrabiblical traditions give you Roman Catholicism? No. Would it give you Eastern Orthodoxy? No. Would it give you the rule of faith of any of the other groups outside of Protestantism that claim apostolic succession, for example? No. Rather, it would give you something different than sola scriptura, but vastly closer to Protestantism than to those alternatives.

We need to keep in mind that there's a large gap separating sola scriptura from something like the rule of faith of Roman Catholicism or that of Eastern Orthodoxy. You can reject the former (sola scriptura) while still being much closer to the former than the latter (the rule of faith of the groups mentioned). When people refer to the importance of sola scriptura, they often have alternatives like Catholicism and Orthodoxy in mind. It doesn't follow that there's so much at stake when alternatives to sola scriptura are considered more broadly. When a Catholic or Orthodox tries to cast doubt on sola scriptura in a way that would still leave you a long distance from those two alternatives to sola scriptura, that long distance is important to note. We should also note the shortness of the distance between sola scriptura and other alternatives. In my example involving Papias and premillennialism, much less is at stake than would be involved in something like a conversion to Catholicism or a conversion to Orthodoxy. Or think of how individuals like Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 1:10:1-2) and Tertullian (The Prescription Against Heretics, 13) defined the apostolic tradition of their day. It was vastly different than what Catholics and Orthodox are advocating in our day.

Often, it seems that those who suggest that there's a narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura have certain assumptions in mind that they haven't articulated or justified, assumptions their opponents don't accept. If the narrower range of alternatives to sola scriptura depends on those assumptions, then framing the discussion around that narrower range of alternatives is only as good as those assumptions.

Examples Of First-Century Sources Passing On Information To Second-Century Sources About New Testament Origins

When skeptics put forward hypotheses in which second-century Christians speculated about New Testament origins without having received much information on those issues from their predecessors, those hypotheses aren't just highly unlikely in the abstract. They're also contrary to the testimony we have from multiple first- and early-second-century sources. So, one way you can respond to such skeptical claims is by citing such testimony. Here are a few examples.

What if Papias wasn't referring to the canonical gospels?

It's become popular to argue that when Papias attributed some documents to Mark and Matthew, he wasn't referring to the canonical gospels we have today. Here's a response I recently wrote to that objection in a YouTube thread:

The New Testament's Historicity Evidenced In The Earliest Extrabiblical Sources

It's common to cite Josephus, Tacitus, Clement of Rome, and other early sources to corroborate certain parts of the New Testament. But the extent to which they support the historicity of the New Testament is underestimated, because so many of the details seldom or never get discussed.

Problems For The Anonymous Gospels Hypothesis

I've argued elsewhere that Papias was a disciple of John the son of Zebedee, that the elder he cites when discussing a document by Mark was John, and that the Markan document is our gospel of Mark. Notice, though, that even if we grant the skeptic's position on all three of those issues, the fragment of Papias in question (cited in Eusebius, Church History, 3:39:15) is still problematic for the idea that the gospels circulated anonymously until sometime in the second century. Even under the skeptic's scenario, we have two individuals (the elder and Papias) who lived at least part of their lives in the first century and were likely at least contemporaries of the apostles showing interest in the authorship of a document similar to our gospels. That's problematic for the notion that authorship attributions for our gospels didn't originate until the second century. Furthermore, just after the passage in Eusebius cited above, he goes on to quote some comments from Papias on something Matthew wrote. Again, even if we reject Papias' status as a disciple of John the son of Zebedee (or another disciple of Jesus named John) and assume that the Matthean document in question isn't our gospel of Matthew, we still have Papias showing interest in identifying the author of a gospel-like document.

What Needs To Be Addressed In Gospel Authorship Disputes

Discussions will often focus inordinately on one Christian, like Papias or Irenaeus, or a small group of Christian sources. Some of the evidence that most needs to be addressed won't even come up. For example, what about the practical issue of how the gospels and similar documents were distinguished from one another in contexts like their use in church services, their being stored in libraries, and in the process of looking up information in them? In modern contexts, we use means such as titles on the covers of books and titles on book spines to distinguish one book from another. How were distinctions made during the earliest years when the gospels circulated (not just the second century and later)? We know that distinguishing among the relevant documents by means of author names was widely practiced from the second century onward, and continuity makes more sense than discontinuity. Since those who think the documents were distinguished differently in the first century or who want us to be agnostic on the subject bear the burden of proof (given the discontinuity they're giving credence to), what proof do they have to offer? Another significant issue that often gets neglected is what non-Christians (heretics, Jews, and pagans) said about authorship issues, not just Christian sources. People often suggest that somebody like Papias or Irenaeus had a Christian bias that makes him unreliable. How, then, do they explain the gospel authorship attributions of non-Christians? There's also the fact that people so often underestimate the Christian sources, such as their earliness, number, variety, and credibility. Both Christian and non-Christian sources frequently questioned traditional authorship attributions (e.g., Christian doubts about Revelation, non-Christian doubts about Daniel) and left documents anonymous or attributed to a group rather than an individual (e.g., The Martyrdom Of Polycarp). They were capable of doing the same for the gospels if the evidence warranted it. For a collection of resources on issues like these, see here. And here's one about Matthew in particular.

Since Papias comes up so often in these discussions (but see the posts just linked for examples of sources other than Papias before the time of Irenaeus), do a Ctrl F search for "Papias" here for responses to common objections related to him. I wrote a review at Amazon of a book about Papias, a review you can read here, and it addresses some relevant issues as well. Keep in mind that even if Papias' comments that are typically cited about the writings of Mark and Matthew are about documents other than our canonical gospels (an unlikely scenario), his comments would still provide evidence for the traditional gospel authorship attributions. It would be a lesser and more indirect form of evidence, but, on balance, it would still be evidence for the traditional attributions. His comments would still provide evidence that Mark and Matthew were literate, that they had interest in writing about gospel-related issues in particular, etc. If Papias was referring to something Matthew wrote that was roughly analogous to the hypothetical Q document, for example, instead of our canonical Matthew, that would still increase the plausibility of Matthew's having written the canonical gospel attributed to him. It's not as though ancient authors were only capable of writing one document. Since so many of Eusebius' citations of Papias are about lesser-known traditions he commented on (about Judas' death, about premillennialism, etc.), it would be plausible that Eusebius also cited some of Papias' comments of that nature related to Mark and Matthew. Or the Mark comments are about our canonical Mark, whereas the Matthew comments are about a previous writing of Matthew that Papias discussed in the process of addressing the canonical gospel attributed to him. Whatever the scenario, none of the typical skeptical objections to Papias' comments amount to much with regard to Papias, and they're even less significant with regard to the evidence for the gospels' authorship more broadly.

Quadratus As A Supplement To Papias

Papias is one of the early church figures often made out to have been more influential than he actually was, often blamed for originating or popularizing ideas that are opposed by the people doing the blaming. Others will blame Paul, Irenaeus, Eusebius, or whoever else. But Papias is one of the individuals most often brought up. Supposedly, he originated the traditional gospel authorship attributions or is said to have had a major role in popularizing the attributions or the gospels themselves, for example. In addition to being blamed for allegedly originating or popularizing supposedly bad things, he's often dismissed as too unintelligent to be reliable, too discredited by false claims that he made, and so on.

I've written a lot in response to such criticisms of Papias: whether he was a disciple of John the son of Zebedee, whether he had that relationship with some other John instead, Papias' influence on gospel authorship attributions, his alleged gullibility, his material on Judas' death, etc. There are many other posts in our archives on such issues, such as the ones included here, in my collection of links addressing skeptical myths about the church fathers. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is discuss another line of evidence that can be cited against objections like the ones mentioned above.

The Underestimated Value Of Papias' Comments On Mark

In his Church History, Eusebius cites some comments Papias made about the gospel of Mark. Those comments are often brought up in certain contexts, like discussions of the authorship of the second gospel. But the passage has been neglected in other contexts.

It's quoted below. I suspect all of the comments in the passage are from Papias, but the closing sentence could be taken as a comment by Eusebius. And the extent to which Papias is quoting the source he refers to as "the elder" (or "the presbyter") is disputed. In the quote below, I'll use regular text for the words of Papias, italics for the words of the elder, and bold for the words of Eusebius. This assumes a more pessimistic interpretation of the passage, in which Papias only quoted a smaller rather than larger amount of what the elder said and the closing comments came from Eusebius rather than Papias. I suspect this sort of interpretation is overly pessimistic. But let's assume it for the sake of argument, since I want to point out how much valuable information can be drawn from this passage even under such a pessimistic interpretation:

How The Historicity Of The Bible Gets Obscured

R. Alan Culpepper just published a commentary on the gospel of Matthew (Matthew: A Commentary [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2021]). (It was due out last year, but got delayed, so it has a publication date of 2021. It didn't come out until earlier this month.) I've read about 50 pages of it so far, including the introduction and his comments on Matthew's first two chapters. I was struck by some remarks Culpepper makes that are wrong and should easily be recognized as wrong. I'll discuss a few examples.

Rewriting History Is Harder And Rarer Than Often Suggested

Late last year, I discussed Stephen Carlson's recent book on Papias. Among other things, the book documents several dozen passages about Papias in various historical sources, spanning about 1500 years. You notice some recurring themes as you read through those passages. One of them is the widespread opposition to premillennialism during most of those centuries. Over and over, there are negative comments about the premillennialism of Papias and some other sources (Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.). Notice not only that so many documents and fragments of documents advocating premillennialism were preserved for so long, but also that even the opponents of premillennialism kept discussing the subject, acknowledging the belief's existence and the fact that early sources like Papias and Irenaeus advocated it, etc. We see the same kind of thing in other contexts, such as later sources acknowledging that an early form of church government was different than what developed later. That doesn't go well with the notion that the early Christians had the ability and the will to rewrite history to the extent that skeptical hypotheses often require.

Another approach to take toward this issue is to think in terms of the differing circumstances of individuals within groups. If thousands or millions of people across countries and continents were opposed to something (Papias' premillennialism, a claim about the authorship of a certain book, a passage contained in a book considered scripture, or whatever), how likely is it that all of those individuals would simultaneously have sufficient motivation and opportunity to do something like destroy copies of a document or change its text? People range across a spectrum in terms of their interests, moral standards, how much risk they're willing to take in a given situation, their health, the responsibilities they have, etc. The fact that two people oppose something like the premillennial beliefs of Papias doesn't prove that both would be willing to do something to suppress what Papias said, that they'd both have sufficient opportunity to do so if they had that interest, that they'd agree on taking one approach toward the situation rather than another (e.g., destroying copies of Papias' writings rather than changing the text of those documents), and so on. Critics of Christianity often put forward hypotheses that would require an inordinately large amount of coordination among the people involved. The fact that people are sometimes dishonest, for example, doesn't justify a hypothesis involving a far larger degree of dishonesty than we typically see. If skeptics are going to increase the number and variety of people involved in that sort of activity, they need to increase their argumentation accordingly. It's one thing to forge a document written to an individual on one occasion, such as a letter from Paul to Philemon. It's something else to forge multiple documents written to a much larger number of people on multiple occasions, such as two letters of Paul to the Corinthians. It's one thing to speculate that one or two of the individuals who allegedly saw Jesus after he rose from the dead were hallucinating. It's something else to suggest that most or all of the witnesses were hallucinating. We have to make these distinctions.

A Review Of Stephen Carlson's New Book On Papias

Here's a review I recently posted on Amazon.

Stephen Carlson Interviewed On His Upcoming Book About Papias

Here's an interview he did with Michael Bird.

John Before Papias, Pothinus Before Irenaeus

It's popular among modern critics of Christianity to overestimate the influence of individuals like Papias and Irenaeus. Supposedly, gospel authorship attributions during the patristic era were inordinately derived from Papias, for example. I've responded to that kind of assertion on other occasions, like here. On the alleged lack of traditional gospel authorship attributions prior to Irenaeus, see here.

A point that hasn't been made enough when these issues come up is how much Papias refers to his reliance on other sources. Read the discussion of him in section 3:39 of Eusebius' Church History, for example. Papias was gathering information from sources who were older than him and in other ways more prominent than he was, men like Aristion and the elder John. That's true even if you don't think the John in question was the son of Zebedee. Papias had influence on later generations (though less than is often suggested), but he also was influenced by those who came before him. And one of the subjects those earlier sources influenced him on was the origins of the gospels, including their authorship. Papias tells us that he tried to get information on Jesus and his disciples from anyone who was in a relevant position to inform him on the subject. It would be unreasonable to think that he only got information from the people he names for us in his extant fragments (e.g., Aristion) or their disciples. A church leader like Papias who was so interested in the subject, lived so long, and lived in such a significant part of the world surely would have heard from more sources than the ones whose names happen to appear in the fragments of his writings we have today. Irenaeus is obviously correct when he refers to how there were many people alive at that time "who had received instructions from the apostles" (Against Heresies, 3:3:3). But even if we were to limit the sources who influenced Papias to the people he names in his extant fragments, the fact would remain that he was influenced by multiple individuals who came before him, including on issues pertaining to the origins of the gospels.

Similarly, not much attention is given to Irenaeus' predecessor in the bishopric of Lyons, a man named Pothinus, who died beyond age ninety in the late 170s (Eusebius, Church History, 5:1:29). He was a contemporary of the apostles at a young age and a contemporary of the apostles' disciples as a grown man. When discussing a textual dispute over a passage in Revelation, Irenaeus appeals to copies of the book that were "ancient" in his day (Against Heresies, 5:30:1). He probably also saw old copies of the gospels, with the authors' names attached in one way or another (in a document title, on the spine of a codex, etc.). These are just a couple of examples of sources Irenaeus would have been influenced by (Pothinus, old gospel manuscripts), and more could be cited. Irenaeus names Papias as a source he consulted, but it would be absurd to suggest that he got his information on a subject like gospel authorship only from Papias or that all of his other sources, or even most, were relying only on Papias.

I was recently reminded of a relevant, but seldom discussed, passage in Nicephorus (fragment A7 here). He refers to a man named Pancratius and describes him as a disciple of the apostles who was active around the time when Papias wrote. As far as I know, we don't have much information about Pancratius. Nor do we know much about the individual named Aristion who's referenced by Papias. And there are many individuals referred to in the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, etc. about whom we have little information. But they were in some ways more known and more prominent in their day than today, and men like Papias thought highly of them and sought information from them and about them. They had already shaped people's views about the origins of the gospels on a large scale before anybody like Papias or Irenaeus had an opportunity to do so.

Was The Fourth Gospel Written By A John Other Than The Son Of Zebedee?

Steve Hays recently pointed me to a post by Michael Bird regarding the authorship of the fourth gospel. In that post, Bird refers to a White Horse Inn radio program that features interviews with several scholars commenting on the gospel's authorship (Craig Blomberg, G.K. Beale, Justin Holcomb, Richard Bauckham, D.A. Carson, Andreas Kostenberger, and Lydia McGrew). The page Bird links doesn't seem to contain the relevant audio, but Patrick Chan found it here. I looked for the program through the White Horse Inn search engine, and it appears that the program originally aired in December of 2019. Apparently, you can't listen to the program at the White Horse Inn site, but you can listen at the site Patrick found. Contrary to what Bird reported, the host who favored something like Richard Bauckham's view of the gospel's authorship was Shane Rosenthal, not Michael Horton.

Some good points are made during the program, but some of the best arguments for authorship by the son of Zebedee aren't mentioned. Here's an article I wrote in 2017 in response to the second edition of Bauckham's book, Jesus And The Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017). In that article, I discuss a lot of New Testament and patristic evidence not addressed by the White Horse Inn program.

I should add that Dean Furlong recently published a book that's relevant, based on his doctoral thesis, The Identity Of John The Evangelist (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020). His book doesn't say much about the New Testament, but is instead focused on the extrabiblical evidence. He argues that the John of Papias and other early sources was somebody other than the son of Zebedee. I disagree with him, for reasons like the ones referred to in my response to Bauckham linked above. But he makes a better case than Bauckham does, and I agree with some of the other points Furlong makes (the strength of the evidence for the martyrdom of John the son of Zebedee, the fact that Papias attributed the fourth gospel's authorship to his John the Elder, etc.). He provides a large amount of information on Johannine issues, and you don't have to agree with him about everything to find his book useful in a lot of contexts. It's a good resource to have, no matter what position you take on the identity of the author of the fourth gospel, who Papias' elder was, when Revelation was written, and the other issues involved.