Anonymous Gospels

You don't say how Pitre addresses that, but I doubt his arguments is very compelling …

Thanks for your reply! I also appreciate /u/psstein’s evaluation and I took some time overnight to summarize a few of Pitre’s points so I apologize if some of them are clunky or overlap:

  • There’s an absence of anonymous Gospel manuscripts – they don’t exist. As such there’s no text-critical manuscript evidence to support anonymous Gospels.

  • There is “absolute uniformity” in the authors to whom each of the books is attributed in every language. (Here Pitre references Michael Bird.) Pitre concedes the titles at times are abbreviated but the familiar names are found in every single manuscript we possess.

  • The earliest and best copies of the four Gospels are unanimously attributed to Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. There is no manuscript evidence (thus no historical evidence) to support the claim that “originally” the Gospels had no titles. (Pitre references Martin Hengel.)

  • It is implausible that a book without a title was circulating the Roman Empire for almost a hundred years, then at some point someone attributed an author, and yet there are no traces of disagreement in any manuscripts. “And by the way, this is supposed to have happened not just once, but with each one of the four Gospels.” If the authors were assigned much later, why aren’t there Gospel manuscripts with conflicting authorship? (Here Pitre notes that the book of Hebrews was anonymous and we have manuscript evidence that it has been attributed to different authors.) Pitre states that you don’t find that with the Gospels and that there’s no debate among the Gospel authors among ancient Christians.

  • If authorship were added at a much later date to give them “authority”, then why choose Mark and Luke – neither of whom was an eyewitness to Jesus? Why not attribute them to Andrew, Peter or Jude?

Pitre states that NT scholar Simon Gathercole has demonstrated that the ancient manuscripts are unanimous in attributing these books to the apostles and their companions.

They were given those attributions in the late 2nd Century by Irenaeus based invalid reasoning. You don't say how Pitre addresses that, but I doubt his arguments is very compelling, if his specious appeal to extant manuscript copies is any indication.

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