Ahem ... Hi, Godmachine (bit of a contradiction, that, I would have thought — or rather, I hope He's not!). Despite the introduction of my good friend ACOT, I'm not here to handbag you! (Especially not a handbag concealing a large and weighty copy of the Bible!)
I think it was this question that ultimately led me to renounce the faith of my family - Catholicism - as I grew up.
Well that's a pity, but I would point out that authorship of the Gospels is not an article of faith — you don't have to believe in the 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on'. Catlicks are obliged to assert the Gospels were written under Divine inspiration, but that's all we have to 'fess up to!
Dei Verbum, Vatican II's constitutional document on Divine Revelation, never mentions the authors my name, for this very reason!
(As an aside when I did my degree in theology, and we had many a delightful wrangle over this question, let me tell, you, my course director, something of an expert in the field, suggested that Holy Mother Church was in dire need of a document discussing the distinctions between revelation and inspiration.) I would have thought the miracles and declarations of divinity a lot more contentious, whoever wrote the text!
Ironically it was my mother, a staunch Catholic, who told me I should always "consider the source" of what I read.
Good for her ... sound Catholic teaching.
I mean after all, they were the gospels and everybody knows the gospels are the absolute (gospel) truth. Right?
Not if you're Catholic, the view is more nuanced than that.
Something ought to be known about them.
Why? They weren't writing for personal fame or glory, and they were writing in an age when the text was more important than the author. They just weren't famous enough in their own day to be the subject of useful biography. Mark's Gospel, for example, scores very poorly if examined from a purely literary perspective. We ought to know something about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, perhaps the most famous of the founders of philosophy, but we know hardly anything with certainty, a lot less than we know about the authors of the Gospels!
I read the works of supposed experts and scholars, both believers and nonbelievers.
But I think I can say that they, believer and nonbeliever alike, would not place the question of authorship as a significant reason for believing or not believing in the Christian Faith. I think both camps find the Catholic orthodox response sound, logical, rational and well-argued. In the end it boils down to were they inspired by the Holy Spirit, or were they deluded? Social status is no guarantee of critical insight.
As it turns out, there is very little information to be found about the gospel writers.
But I think there's shedloads more than what we know about the authors of the great
sacra doctrina of the world. The Buddhist scriptures were not put to paper until 400 years after the Buddha had shuffled off his mortal coil, but that doesn't hinder Buddhists half as much as it troubles us, but that's largely down to mindset and philosophical process.
Nobody even knows if the names we attribute to them were their real names (probably not).
Well that depends ...
Matthew's Gospel is attributed to 'Matthew' by the Tradition, there is no author's signature. All we know is that the author of Matthew was an educated and erudite Jew, most probably a rabbi from his knowledge of Scripture, who lived in Syria and was writing to the Christian community there (primarily Jewish converts) to assert that the Lord was, indeed, the fulfillment of the divine promises made to israel. This at a time when relations between Christian and Jew was foundering in mutual acrimony. Definitely not an eye-witness, he uses Mark for his chronology, which wouldn't make sense if he was. Unless he had a terrible memory, which would then throw the whole thing into doubt ...
All we know of Mark is that he was the least educated and erudite of the four — his Greek is pretty poor and probably not his native tongue. His audience was Greek-speaking Gentile converts — he explains Jewish traditions for the benefit of the uninitiated, and also defines the Aramaic terms he uses. Irenaeus (c200AD) places him in Rome, his gospel largely centered on Peter's testimony. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp (they both came from Smyrna in Asia Minor), who was a disciple of John. Papias, another early source, almost contemporary with Irenaeus, and who was a Bishop of Hierapolis in Turkey, also asserts Mark was written in Rome, founded on Peter's testimony, and states that he was told so by John the Elder, who has been identified as either John the Evangelist, or a John who was the Evangelist's disciple and who authored the Johannine epistles. (And who might well have had a hand, but was not the source, of John's gospel.)
With Luke we're on (slightly) firmer ground. A native of Antioch in Syria (a Hellenist city), Colossians refers to him as a doctor (physician) and a companion of Paul. Highly educated, very erudite, he constructed his Gospel on the 'journey' motif which was a widely-used device in Greek literature (half of Luke's Gospel takes place on the way to Jerusalem). In his own words he claims to have put his gospel together from extensive investigation of the sources available to him, one of which, according to the Tradition, was the Blessed Virgin herself. He wrote the Gospel and Acts, and archaeology continues to turn up evidence to confirm that Luke was accurate in many instances where, for a long time, it was assumed he was in error or guilty of literary fabrication.
As an aside, secular historians agree that Luke's observations on the Roman occupation of Jerusalem (viz. the huge escort that spirited Paul out of Jerusalem in the dead of night) is an unrivalled source of 'the man in the street' testimony. All other histories of Rome were written by members of the upper echelons of Roman society. Luke paints a telling picture of just how volatile relations were between the Romans and the Jews and the Christians.
John ... ah, John. The only one who claims to be an eye-witness, and the one whom everyone wants to knock off his perch! Simply put, line up all your contenders, and the John who was the close companion of Christ comes out way in front in terms of credibility. Again, archaeology has since proven that John, who's Gospel is littered with those little observations that speak of first-hand knowledge, knew the Jerusalm that Our Lord walked. Notably, it was always contended that John was making it all up when he spoke about the healing pool at Siloe (John 9:7), because there isn't one ... and then they found it.
Another aside — we commonly assume, and our naughty teachers who should know better are happy to let us continue to do so — that the disciples were 'simple fishermen'. Well, not quite, or at least, not all of them. It is pretty definite that Peter and John were the sons of a well-to-do 'fisherman' who probably owned a fleet of boats and who was something in the Jewish hierarchy. John, as is evident from his testimony, was well-known in higher circles of Jewish society and moved easily in those circles, again, really well educated.
Yet another aside — it was long held that John's Gospel was steeped in Greek and even Gnostic thought ... now scholarship throws light on the fact that Judaism of the day was not simply a case of Pharisee, Sadducee or Essene. Jewish mystical contemplation was quite sophisticated and John's Gospel is riddled with Jewish, not Greek and definitely not Gnostic, ideas and imagery. The term Logos, for example, can be seen as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Memra...
After the Gospels, one of the most incisive texts (for theologians) in the canon is the Letter to the Hebrews, and while this was traditionally attributed to Paul, it was well known by the 2nd century (at the very latest) that he didn't write it! Yet, even as a kid, I can remember the lector saying "a reading from the letter of St Paul to the Hebrews".
Aside again: One of my co-students argues vehemently that Paul was the author and that writing in a different style was just a sign of divine inspiration. He and I were on the same page with regard to almost everything else, but I could never understand why he defended this impossible position. But then he was a convert to Catholicism, and any cradle-born knows what a royal pain in the *** a convert can be! Lord knows, just look at what the converts of the Early Church got up to! (Running street battles with the Jews in Rome, for example.)
So where do I stand?
I like to think that if the author of Matthew chose that name it was because Matthew the disciple was the least among the Jews (he was a tax-collector, the last thing any self-respecting Jewish momma wants her kid to grow up to be). In short, a traitor to his kind. But he's a very canny writer, and a very Jewish one, crafting his text in a chiastic 'ring-structure' that's both sophisticated and revealing. It's possible that this Matthew utilised the now lost 'Gospel to the Hebrews' perhaps written by the real Matthew, a collection of sayings of Our Lord.
Mark? You just want to put a hand on Mark's shoulder, look him in the eye and say, "Whoa! Take a breath, calm down, and start again, from the beginning, but slowly this time!" (Nor do I buy the 'low Christology' argument of Mark being early v John being later and an evolved 'high Christology'.)
Luke, the Gospel of Social Justice, and the Gospel of the Holy Spirit (as Acts is sometimes called), speaks for himself. The evidence is there, increasingly so, he doesn't need me to defend him, he's way better at this stuff than me.
John? He's the bosom companion, by a clear mile. He saw it with his own eyes, and told it how it was. He's luminous.
