[squirt]

is it possible to be an intelligent, critically thinking person and still believe that the four gospels were written by the people whose names have been attached to them? it's important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous, but the uniform testimony of the early church was that Matthew, also known as Levi, the tax collector and one of the 12 disciples, was the author of the first gospel in the New Testament; that, John Mark, a companion of Peter, was the author of the gospel we call Mark; and that Luke, known as Paul's "beloved physician" wrote the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, there are no known competitor's for these 3 gospels, apparently, it was just not in dispute, but would anyone have had a motivation to lie by claiming these people wrote these gospels, when they really didn't? Remember that these were unlikely characters, Mark and Luke weren't even among the 12 disciples, Matthew was, but as a former hated tax collector, he would have been the most infamous character next to Judas Escariot, who betrayed Jesus, contrast this with what happened when the fanciful apocryphal gospels were written much later, people chose the names of well known and exemplary figures to be their fictitious authors, Philip, Peter, Mary, James, those names carried alot more weight than the names of Matthew, Mark and Luke, there would not have been any reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people if it weren't true, what about John? he was extremely prominent, in fact, he wasn't just one of the 12 disciples, but one of Jesus' inner 3, along with James and Peter, John is the only gospel about which there is some question about authorship, the name of the author isn't in doubt, it's certainly John, the question is whether it was John the apostle or a different John, the testimony of a Christian writer named Papias, dated about AD 125, refers to John the apostle and John the elder, and it's not clear from the context whether he's talking about one person from 2 perspectives or two different people, but granted that one exception, the rest of the early testimony is unanimous that it was John the apostle, son of Zebedee, who wrote the gospel, what specific evidence is there that these men are the authors of the gospels? the oldest and most significant testimony comes from Papias, who specifically affirmed that Mark had carefully and accurately recorded Peter's eyewitness observations, in fact, he said that Mark "made no mistake" and did not include "any false statement", then Irenaeus, writing about AD 180, confirmed the traditional authorship, these are Irenaeus' words ... Matthew published his own Gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there, after their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter's preaching, Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book of the Gospel preached by his teacher, then John, the disciple, himself produced his Gospel while he was living in Ephesus in Asia ... if we can have confidence that the gospels were written by the disciples Matthew and John, by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter, and by Luke, the historian, companion of Paul, and sort of a first century journalist, we can be assured that the events they record are based on either direct or indirect eyewitness testimony ... Craig L Blomberg PH.D.