I’ve been getting the same question a lot lately, which suggests an old Christian apologetic trend has risen from the dead and is making its rounds, zombie-like, across the internet: “I’m being told it was normal in the ancient world to publish histories anonymously, that Suetonius and Tacitus and Caesar did that, so the anonymity of the Gospels doesn’t indicate their unreliability. Is that true?” No. Not even a single part of that sentence is true. But I wrote on this elsewhere so long ago that it deserves its own resurrection, and (as Paul said of Jesus) into an even better, superior body. So, here we go. Wolverine versus rotting zombie.
The Gospels Were Anonymous
Let’s start with the problem: it’s well known in mainstream scholarship that the “names” attached to the Gospels were all assigned later, by whoever assembled the four Gospels into a single edition to be published together. Moreover, their titles use the designation not of authorship, but of source: kata Markon does not mean “by Mark,” it means “according to Mark,” which in ancient parlance meant Mark was not the author of the Gospel, but the purported source used by that author. What author? We’re never told. Thus, some third party was attaching this claim to the Gospel. It was not put there by the Gospel’s original author. And so likewise all the other Gospels. See my discussion in Three Things to Know about New Testament Manuscripts; though this is most directly explained in Trobisch’s The First Edition of the New Testament; and see the points made by Doston Jones; and even though Simon Gathercole’s 2018 article “The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels” in The Journal of Theological Studies is a work of Christian apologetics, it remains an excellent survey of the scholarship and evidence, regardless of any follies in its reasoning (such as a gullible trust in Papias as a source).
This is deeply suspicious. Anonymous sources are not regarded as reliable, but as typically unreliable sources. Historians in all fields expect to be able to identify and thus vet the reliability of even an ancient source: who are they, and why should we trust them? It goes beyond just knowing their name, but also how they know anything they claim to know, and how they themselves evaluated or fact-checked it, and even what their agenda might be. If we can’t do that, that’s a big black mark against a source. We don’t trust what we can’t vet. Of course even when we get vettable information, that is necessary but it is still not sufficient to trust a source. But when a source doesn’t even meet a necessary condition, it certainly doesn’t meet a sufficient one either.
So it’s even more alarming that the first time any Gospel even claims to have an eyewitness source, which is the late, and wildly divergent and fictional, “Gospel according to John,” it still doesn’t even tell us their name. Not only is John anonymous (its author never claimed to be John; that claim was added later by someone else, whoever it was who assembled the four-Gospel edition we now know), but even John’s purported source is anonymous! So we have an anonymous source citing an anonymous source. Hearsay rule, anyone? It’s all the worse that that anonymous source is obviously completely made-up (as I document in On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 10.7). Which is a common problem in ancient mythography: the fabricated source. Alan Cameron devotes a whole chapter to that trend in Greek Mythography in the Roman World.
Of course, we also know our copy of John has gone through multiple redactions, so no single author composed every part of it; and the version that mentioned this made-up witness clearly meant it to be the resurrected Lazarus, as fictional a character as ever was (as I also document in On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 10.7). And the anonymous authors (and they do admit to being plural) don’t say they met or talked to this guy. They say they found something he wrote, and then just “insist” they know what he wrote is true—they never say how or why they know that. In other words, the authors of John just gullibly believed another anonymous Gospel, which they could offer no actual defense of as having any real authenticity whatever.
This is exactly what the author of Luke does: he says he just ‘believes’ that the prior Gospels he used as his sources preserve a “tradition” handed down by eyewitnesses; he does not say those Gospels were written by those eyewitnesses, or had eyewitness sources, or that he did; nor does he mention any way anyone even could know their content actually came from eyewitnesses at all. We know now that the author of Luke simply meant Mark and, probably, Matthew—but note, once again, Luke means he used anonymous sources. He does not name them…because they had no names attached to them when “Luke” wrote. This is precisely the kind of garbage we never trust from the ancient world. Reliable sources explained where they got their information, and why they trusted it, or how they vetted it, or at least who is saying all this.
True, real ancient historians and biographers were not as meticulous about this as modern historians are—and therefore all ancient sources are much less reliable than modern ones—but they at least often mentioned sources, and gave some indication of why they, and thus we, should trust them. They never ask us to “trust” anonymous sources, much less anonymous hagiographies. Even when they use such sources, e.g. as in Plutarch’s biography of the non-existent Romulus, or Herodotus’s frequent repetition of anonymous legend and rumor, we now especially don’t trust them on those details. But more importantly, even they didn’t ask us to. Herodotus is routinely clear that skepticism was acceptable, that he was merely relating what “people said,” not defending it as true. Plutarch likewise, who admits his sources conflict, don’t have reliable sources themselves, and whose accounts are possibly apocryphal.
This is not what we get from the Gospels. Which is why honest historians don’t trust them. It is highly unusual that an author would not even mention who he himself was, or who his sources were, either by name or in respect to why anyone should believe them, or both. It is so weird as to be outright suspicious that John simply “insists” we believe their unnamed source, but gives no explanation why. Likewise it is very odd, and thus outright suspicious, that Luke says he “used” some written sources that he is “sure” were preserving a reliable tradition, without ever saying who his sources were or why we should believe them (or believe they preserve eyewitness information). Luke and John are thus emulating the mere “appearance” of reliable histories of their day, while conspicuously avoiding the very thing that made them reliable. And that is about as red a flag as you can get.
But, But, Lots of Histories Were Anonymous! (Oh?)
It has been said that ancient authors often omitted their names from what they wrote. But this is not true for any other complete ancient work of real history that I know of. It was only true for forgeries and fictions, and political or religious propaganda (the entire Torah and all of the historical writings in the Bible are anonymous)—and the Gospels. And honest folk admit what that signifies. By contrast, no ancient work I know of, which claims to be factual and for which we have the complete text, truly went unsigned—other than mythology. Yes, you’ve heard otherwise. But you were lied to; or snowed with equivocation fallacies. Which typifies Christian apologetics—one of the reasons you should never trust a Christian apologist. Even if they are smart enough to avoid this particular con, they typically resort to some similar con or other—or have themselves been duped thereby, because they are also, oh so typically, painfully gullible. So let’s go through the usual Fake News they repeat on this point.
Someone has suggested, for example, that the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar and the Dialogues of Plato went unsigned. But as for the Gallic Wars, if you are an amateur, many modern editions and translations make it seem as though the work is anonymous, particularly since Caesar writes in the third person. But all written manuscripts of De Bello Gallico (including the oldest, the codex Paris Latinus 5763, from the 9th century) begin incipit liber gaii caesaris belli gallici iuliani, “Begins Gaius Caesar’s Book on the Julian War in Gaul.” There are otherwise only minor variations. For instance, incipiunt libri gaii caesaris belli gallici iuliani appears in a marginal note in the codex Parisinus Latinus, but that merely reverts the singular (Book) to the plural (Books), as suited conversion of the books from scroll to codex format. The plural was certainly the original form, as the codex format was adopted centuries later. It was only in scroll form that there were multiple “libri,” i.e. one scroll per “chapter.” Which again attests this incipit’s authenticity. Ultimately, no manuscript of the Gallic War is anonymous.
In that work later commentaries did convert the adjective iuliani to a noun, moving it back to join the name as iulii, which was clearly a scribal attempt to improve the text, and was not the original form—for the other version, by omitting that nomen and instead relating it as an adjective modifying the book’s title, is less expected, and scribes did not correct texts to make them stranger, but more in line with their expectation. When the text was typeset for the first printed edition in 1477, the title was changed to Iuli Caesaris commentariorum de bello gallico, and the abbreviation for Gaius (“C.”) was added in the following century. And this is how the standard Oxford critical edition reconstructs the text, being the most familiar to educators, but the original beginnings are supplied in the apparatus beneath. Besides all that, one old manuscript (codex Amstelodamensis 81, from the late 9th to early 10th century) misattributes the text to Suetonius, clearly an error, one made centuries earlier, tripping up the 5th century author Orosius, who mistakenly thought the book was indeed written by Suetonius. But even that is an attribution, not “anonymous.”
Thus, in short, the Gallic Wars of Julius Caesar was not anonymous. One should certainly not mistake writing in the third person (not then uncommon a practice) for “anonymous authorship,” or think that English translations omitting the title line are correctly informing you of the actual content of the Latin manuscripts themselves. Those are amateur mistakes.
It should also be noted, of course, that besides the title lines on actual ancient books, some scrolls might also have tags or ribbons attached, or writing on the lip of the exterior verso, with the title and author, to make them more identifiable on a shelf (Gathercole helpfully references the scholarship establishing this). Needless to say, obviously, one way or another, scrolls had to have the authors attached, as otherwise ancient library catalogs could never identify them. Hence the largest we know of (the 120 volumes of the Pinakes of Callimachus, which we can assess from a few surviving fragments) not only reliably identifies every book by its author, but even decides to catalog them alphabetically by author. Other extant library catalogs demonstrate this practice as standard. Librarians did not know the authors of thousands of scrolls by magic. Obviously those scrolls had their names on them. That can only have come from their authors.
Many More Examples
As for Plato’s works, but for at least one exception, they are all fictional dialogues. Which does not mean they are forgeries, because they admit they are fictional. Even the Apology of Socrates, which is not titled as fiction, is written in the first person as if recording the words of Socrates directly, but admits it is written by Plato. The title in Greek reads literally Platônos Apologia Sôkratous, “Plato’s Apology of Socrates.” So, not anonymous. All of Plato’s dialogues were known as “experimental” fictions. As Diogenes Laertius informs us (in his Lives 3.58), the Dialogues began with the title ἡγεῖται Εὐθύφρων ἢ περὶ ὁσίου ὁ διάλογος δ’ ἐστὶ πειραστικός, or “The Experimental Dialogue Held with Euthyphro, or On Holiness.” It then proceeds in a theatrical format, like a play. In no way did anyone expect what follows was historical fact. It was simply Plato thinking out loud, using characters in a play. So even if he did not append his name (we actually don’t know, because we only have these in medieval collections naming them as the work of Plato), this is not biography or history, but fiction.
Other examples forwarded include Livy, Tacitus, Pausanias, and the biographies of Plutarch. But all have titles that include the author’s name, in all extant manuscripts, as is clearly stated and shown in the Oxford and Teubner editions of these texts. All manuscripts of Livy begin T. Livi Ab Urbe Condita. The sole manuscript we have for the first book of the Annals of Tacitus begins Cornelii Taciti Ab Excessu Divi Augusti Annalium. And the sole manuscript we have for the first book of the Histories places it as a direct continuation of the sixteenth book of the Annals, with the title Decimus Septimus Ab Excessu Divi Augusti, “the seventeenth” book of the annals. Likewise, the Agricola begins Cornelii Taciti De Vita Iulii Agricolae. And all manuscripts contain this material, some only adding additional elements (e.g. “…vita et moribus…,” “life and ways” of Agricola rather than just the Life of Agricola). Likewise the Germania begins Cornelii Taciti de Origine et Situ Germanorum. And again all manuscripts contain this, some only adding minor elements. The text of Pausanius begins Pausaniou Hellados Periêgêseôs, “Tour of Greece by Pausanias.” And likewise all manuscripts agree (again with only minor variations) that the biographies of Plutarch begin Archaiologias Ploutarchou Parallêlôn, “A Historical Study of Parallels by Plutarch.” None anonymous.
Notice that not one of these attribution lines matches what we have now in the Gospels. These all say they are “by” the named person, with a genitive of origin. No such attribution exists in our Gospels. They all instead give the form as kata plus the accusative of source, not of author. No other work in history was so titled, other than Gospels. So whoever did this with our Gospels was the first to invent it. In all other Greek literature this formula indicates a source rather than a composer. For example, when Plutarch cites Diodorus as a source, he says kata Diodôron. The sense is “according to,” as in “derived from.” Not “written by.” The original intent may have been to distance the editors of the fourfold Gospel from too bold a claim as to who actually wrote them; but Christian propagandists rapidly disregarded that caution and began reinterpreting this formula as a claim to authorship. Which it had never been before in the whole of Greek literature. But since no author would write that (only someone who wasn’t the author would), these title lines do not come from their authors; they come from later editors. Which means originally the Gospels had no names attached to them at all. They were circulated in emulation of the Holy Scriptures: anonymous, resting entirely on the authority of piety and God.
There were certainly many anonymous works of fiction in antiquity (the Lives of Aesop, for example). There are also works for which the inscription, sometimes along with the beginning of the work, is lost, leaving us to guess at the author, as is the case with certain rare works of Sophocles. For example, someone suggested that the works of Suetonius are unsigned, but that’s untrue: rather, we simply don’t have the page that would have had the title on it. So “we don’t have it” becomes telephone-gamed by equivocation fallacy into “he didn’t include it.” Wrong. The first several pages of his collected lives are lost; but we can be sure if we had them, they’d have his name in the title, as all other works of the kind did. Likewise, his treatise the Twelve Ceasars in our only extant copies begins abruptly at the death of Caesar’s father, when Caesar himself was already fifteen years old. We thus are missing the first few pages. Had we those missing pages, they would surely include Suetonius’ name. His Lives of Eminent Men likewise only survives in fragments.
Other claims of “anonymous” works include:
- Xenophon’s Hellenica and Anabasis (false: his historical works have his name on them, e.g. Xenophôntos Kyrou Anabasis, “Xenophon’s Anabasis of Cyrus,” Xenophôntos Hellênika, “Xenophon’s Hellenica,” etc.)
- Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities and Life (false: the JA begins τῶν Ἰωσήπου ἱστοριῶν τῆς Ἰουδαϊκῆς ἀρχαιολογίας, “Histories of Jewish Antiquity by Josephus”; the Life begins Ἰωσήπου βίος, “Life of Josephus,” and routinely identifies its author by name throughout)
- Polybius (false: his work begins ΠΟΛΥΒΙΟΥ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΩΝ ΠΡΩΤΗ, “Beginning of the Histories of Polybius”)
- Diodorus Siculus (false: his work begins τῶν Διοδώρου βίβλων, “The Books of Diodorus”)
- Arrian (false: his Anabasis begins ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ ΑΝΑΒΑΣΕΩΣ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΠΡΩΤΟΝ, “First Book of Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander,” his Cynegeticus begins ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΚΥΝΗΓΕΤΙΚΟΣ, “Arrian’s Cynegeticus,” his Tour of the Euxine Sea begins ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΠΕΡΙΠΛΟΥΣ ΕΥΞΕΙΝΟΥ ΠΟΝΤΟΥ, “Arrian’s Tour of the Euxine Sea,” his Tactics begins ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΤΕΧΝΗ ΤΑΚΤΙΚΗ, “Arrian’s Art of Tactics,” and so on)
- Sallust (false: his text begins C. Sallusti Crispi Bellum Catilinae, “Cataline War by Gaius Sallustius Crispus”)
- Florus (false: we actually have no original works by Florus; and his Epitome of Livy identifies itself as an Epitome of Livy—and all manuscripts ascribe it to one or another “Florus”)
- Philo (false: our editions only strip his name from the titles and remove it to the beginning of their collection, a modern conceit; we know from early papyri that back then each title had his name on it, e.g. Philônos Peri Tôn … Kain Eggonôn, “Philo’s On the Posterity of Cain”)
- Lucian’s biographical writings (false: Lucian did not write any biographies—his “lives” are all satirical fiction; but his auto-biography is titled ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΕΝΥΠΝΙΟΥ ΗΤΟΙ ΒΙΟΣ ΛΟΥΚΙΑΝΟΥ, “On the Dream or Lucian’s Biography“)
- Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius and Lives of the Sophists (false: ΦΙΛΟΣΤΡΑΤΟΥ ΤΑ ΕΣ ΤΟΝ ΤΥΑΝΕΑ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΟΝ, “Philostratus’s Things Concerning Apollonius the Tyanean”; ΦΙΛΟΣΤΡΑΤΟΥ ΒΙΟΙ ΣΟΦΙΣΤΩΝ, “Philostratus’s Lives of Sophists”)
- Cornelius Nepos (false: no complete work of Nepos survives to claim this of; all we have are fragments or interior sections of lost works)
By contrast with all of these, the Gospels are addressed like fiction. If you want to claim they were intended as fact, and that they are complete (and they are), yet they were all unsigned when first composed (and they were), then their anonymity is effectively unique among all factual works of antiquity and therefore suspicious. It matches only the dubious model of Sacred Scripture—better known as mythology.
Hopes dashed on that score, some have resorted to pointing out that other Christian works, like the letters of Clement of Rome, are unsigned. However, that isn’t actually true: the author is named in that text as “the church of God which sojourns at Rome.” In other words, it is an administrative letter authored by an institution, not an individual. That the individual composer was named Clement can honestly be doubted (that name may have been appended later, thus making that attribution as fake as for the Gospels). In all the other collections of letters that survive, the letters or their collection are signed (and the genuine letters of Paul do indeed fit this tradition: they all have his name on them, even in the text of their incipits). Institutional letters may have been common as well, and only Christians preserved any to judge by. Otherwise, the anonymous letter (like Hebrews) is largely a peculiarity of Christian literature (or other propaganda, such as pamphlets leveling what were typically false or even outlandish accusations against politicians).
Of course, we may be too quick to judge in the case of Clement, since only one manuscript of his letters exists, and that manuscript—a Bible—plainly attributes the letters to Clement in its table of contents, so the erasure of the title and its removal to the front of the codex may have been an act of scribal license, or the outcome of carelessly extracting such letters from a larger collection now lost, and thus does not mean the letter originally went unsigned by an individual. But odds are better that it was originally signed, rather, by the institution claiming authorship of it, specifically to erase the vanity of its content being from any single individual. Which is not properly anonymous. If you get a letter from the IRS today, you would not say you got an anonymous letter from the IRS.
On the other hand, ancient letters tended to have the names of their author and addressee and the date of their composition (while their destination would typically be written on the reverse side, and thus not included in subsequent published copies of the text). The fact that the dates have all been scrubbed from Paul’s letters is among the abundant evidence we have that they’ve been edited for publication, resulting in important information being removed, even whole sections removed. In fact our copies appear to be select pieces of multiple letters stitched together to look like one long letter (one might suspect that “1” and “2” Corinthians means not the first and second letter, but the first and second volumes of letters Paul sent to Corinth, which were stripped and compressed by later editors into single letters). The date of Clement’s letter is similarly scrubbed, and with that the original author’s name might also have been deleted (it might not in fact have been Clement; conjecturing names for things is also a Christian tradition).
In any event, there is nothing about 1 Clement that supports the conclusion that ancient historical books (as opposed to fiction or propaganda) ever went unsigned. 1 Clement is signed by its endorsing institution (and may even have been signed by its individual author). A better candidate is Hebrews. Though it’s doubtful it began without a name (which the editing process likely stripped), even if it did, it is, quite self-evidently, religious propaganda, not a history book; and its anonymity actually reduces its trustworthiness to modern historians, exactly as that does in every other case.
Conclusion
One might notice that Gathercole’s analysis (in the apologetical article cited earlier) admits everything here stated, and only remarks on the fact that many authors were content to sign their work only in the title line and not otherwise identify themselves in the work itself. Claims like this might be getting telephoned on the internet into “the works of Xenophon were anonymous,” for example, when that isn’t what Gathercole said. They were signed. They just weren’t always doubly identified by the author explaining who he was in sentences in the book itself. The distinction is moot. Because when Xenophon is writing about himself, he does name himself (hundreds of times), as does Josephus in his autobiography, and so on, which a reader can then identify from the title line.
This is unlike the Gospels, where in every case the later-purported author never appears in the story at all—with the possible exception of Matthew, but there is no evidence this was originally imagined to be the author (the character appears in only one scene and one list, with no acknowledgement of their being even a source); and when they compose anything in the first person, it is still anonymous, as in Luke, John, and Acts. There is no analogy here to Xenophon, or Josephus, or any other real historian. The Gospels are peculiar in ancient literature for having no original attributions, and even anonymizing their sources. This characterized fiction and propaganda (including, you might notice, Jewish scripture); not memoirs, histories, or biographies.
I’ve recently come across an argument from Micheal Goulder on Papias that I find convincing. It’s from “Luke: A New Paradigm”,p.33:
David Landry uses this to argue against the existence of Q(which Goulder would be agreeable to). Goulder’s logic would entail that Papias does know the name of the Gospels, but is only mistaken in how they came to be. It seems to be evidence that the Gospels did have their names at this time. Papias does seem to describe the contents of the Gospels correctly. He says Mark wrote from memory which indicates that it is shorter and only that Matthew is in order. His remark about Hebrew doesn’t imply that he has a copy of Matthew in Hebrew as he says “each one interpreted them as best he could”. Meaning he actually has a Greek Matthew and this is just an apologetic excuse for the inconsistencies with Mark.
I’m not aware of any strong arguments for the idea that the Gospels actually lacked attribution. Only some weak arguments from silence. It doesn’t seem to me that the Gospels are quoted all that much until the later half of the second century, when they would for sure have had names by then. Christians were not in the habit of giving attribution when quoting the Gospels as they don’t seem to do it very often with the Old Testament either. I will need to read the additional material you provided.
First, all I am seeing here is a hypothesis (a speculation); not any evidence for it. It might be as plausible as a dozen other hypotheses. We need evidence before we can settle on one. And we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that there might not be any.
Second, all this would do is help us roughly identify either when Papias wrote or when the Anti-Marcionite edition (the fourfold Gospel) was published (there is no non-circular way to do either); it does not show the names were appended before that.
We actually cannot date Papias reliably. And we actually cannot rule out the presence of the other two Gospels in his account—because we don’t have it; that Eusebius only quotes his words for Mark and Matthew does not mean the rest of Eusebius’s chapter on the Gospels isn’t just a paraphrase of Papias (so, every legend Eusebius offers for Luke and John may actually be from Papias too; Eusebius only quotes him as an afterthought to add miscellaneous remarks to his summary). I point out evidence for this in my most recent discussion of Q.
And that’s at best. At worst we cannot even establish that Papias means our Gospels (his descriptions sound quite poor; and Goulder is only speculating as to why); or that he isn’t relying on an urban legend of their authorship. Because in what we have, he does not quote the actual manuscripts, so we cannot establish that these names were in the manuscripts at that time. And so on.
There simply isn’t enough information available to resolve any of these questions. That’s how poor the data is—and how problematic it is to try and reach conclusions through Eusebius’s heavily edited and mediated “retelling” of what Papias said or even when. This is the folly of not having Papias, and Eusebius being an established liar—all as well documented lately by Vinzent (see my recent review).
So in the end, there isn’t any way to “get there from here” as they say. Papias is worthless for this purpose.
By contrast, on the other side, we have:
(1) The very unusual attribution formula appears all at once for all four Gospels (which suggests it was added to them all at the same time by an idiosyncratic editor), in manuscripts that derived from the fourfold edition (no manuscript we have is a copy of any earlier edition, as demonstrated by Trobisch from internal scribal evidence).
(2) Luke does not appear to know the names of Mark or Matthew (otherwise he would have named them in his preface), yet surely used them and means them in his preface; so Luke appears to be written before those attributions existed (indeed, as well, the legends attached to them, also unknown to Luke—or else he would have exploited their rhetorical value for his agenda).
(3) Likewise John was originally ascribed to Lazarus (proved by abundant evidence I survey in OHJ, Ch. 10.7), a feature scrubbed from its final redaction which is the one we have. It therefore cannot have originally been assigned to John.
(4) And it does not appear Marcion knew them by any names either (none of the data we have indicate his knowledge of them having names, or their authors having histories to discuss at all, other than the vague belief that they had unspecified apostolic authority; not even “his” Gospel, a redaction of Luke, or predecessor to Luke if you buy that model, was named—as confirmed explicitly by Tertullian).
The attribution of “Luke” to that Gospel (complete with connection to Paul) appears intended to destroy Marcion’s claim that his Gospel had direct apostolic authority; and the attribution of Matthew and John to apostles, and Mark to Peter the original apostle, appears intended to undermine Marcion’s rejection of those Gospels. Much of this point is discussed in Trobisch’s latest book (also reviewed with Vinzent’s).
For all of this to be the case is highly unlikely if these Gospels had names appended from the moment of their publication or even by the time of Marcion. Experts are most convinced by the manuscript and textual evidence (the unusual choice of the kata construction and its unique association with the anti-Marcionite edition). But the other evidence stacks with that. Papias offers nothing usable to the contrary.
I don’t know very much about Marcion, so that’s the most compelling evidence you have provided.
In regards to Luke’s gospel introduction, I would have to imagine that Mark and Matthew were referred to in some way. They couldn’t be referred to as just “the gospels”. As soon as there are two we would need a way to differentiate between them when we wanted to talk about them. So Luke could have referred to them specifically if he choose to do so, so I don’t see this as compelling evidence that they didn’t have names attached at the time of Luke. Luke also doesn’t say when he uses Josephus, but there is a compelling case to be made that he did.
I also wonder if it’s possible that Mark that came up with the “Kata Markon” designation. As a reference to 1 Cor 15 “kata tas graphas”. Mark is indicating to his readers that his gospel is not to be confused with the real gospels, whose source is scripture, but from himself Mark. Then the gospels intending to replicate Mark just carry on with that same title structure. I am making a distinction between title and lore here. The original authors would have picked the name (their own?) and later Christians came up with the stories about who they were using the name they had.
I don’t understand your reasoning. All other ancient authors when discussing their sources name them. That is the point of discussing a source. It is bizarre to describe your sources but forget to even say what they are or who wrote them.
And Paul’s kata reference to scripture is a source attribution (to the Bible, collectively, as he then knew it, since he is not quoting one verse but summarizing a pesher of disparate verses). It makes no sense for Mark to append “according to Mark” on his own book. That would designate Mark as his source (like Paul is designating the Bible as his source), rather than as its author. That is not only inherently unintelligible, it is wholly unprecedented. Mark would sooner have written “According to Peter” (or “According to Paul” or even “According to the Lord”).
This is why it is bizarre to see it done four different times, and only once all four are published together by the same editor. It is more likely, as all scholars agree, that one person invented this strange formula for attribution, than than subsequent authors kept replicating one author’s strange and unintelligible decision to use it. Because it only makes sense as a third-party assignment (the person who added these titles is not claiming to be the author).
This explains all the other data, from ignorance of the names in Luke and Marcion, and beyond; like why Luke had no name when Marcion used it and why John was originally attributed (as, again, the source) to Lazarus and only late re-attributed to John, and indeed by someone who didn’t write the references to their imagined source in the text itself (those were written by whoever originally attributed it to Lazarus, “the beloved disciple,” a fictional person).
It also explains why all the legends about these authors are false: Mark is a Pauline Gospel, so he cannot even in principle have been Peter’s secretary; Matthew was always written in Greek, copying Greek sources, Mark and the Septuagint, verbatim, and thus had never been in Hebrew and thus wasn’t by a Palestinian; Luke cannot have been Paul’s companion, as Luke-Acts was written decades after any such person would have died; and we know John wasn’t even the originally attributed source for that Gospel, and its authors write in the first person plural, thus claiming community authorship, not individual, and claim to have used a source, an imaginary text written by Lazarus, that we know didn’t exist. So all these names (along with their legends) appear to have been invented later.
Dr. Carrier I’m glad that you wrote about this because I’m included in the many that have questions surrounding this topic.
Firstly I want to make sure that I understand what you (or other historians perhaps) mean by “source”.
Because I want to make sure I understand what you are saying.
From my standpoing a source is simply whoever or whatever someone directly obtained their facts or information. So for example if I was watching a news story on TV last night then that would be my source for the story. But if I then descibed to you what I had heard or learned about what happened, you would consider me as your source for whatever you had heard or learned about the news story. It is important to keep that chain of custody (for lack of better words), because it might be that I had left some details out or got some details wrong.
Now having said that I don’t think that the author and source are always mutually exclusive (necessarily).
For example I would consider you to be my source for this entire blog article.
Obviously you have cited some your specific (outside) sources within your article.
But there are some statements (facts/opinions/observations) that you’ve made in this article that come straight from you. So you are both the source and the author of this article (to that extent at least).
So I would consider you both the author and source of information that I learned from this article.
Likewise when it comes to the Gospels, I could see how the phrase “According to” could mean the author, the source, or both. It has been pointed out that obviously an author would not descibe himself in the third person that way “According to me”. But we know that isn’t what happened. As you stated the names weren’t added until sometime much later. So isn’t it just as likely that whoever added the names were referring to the author as they were the source?
Especially given that the authors (as you’ve pointed out) don’t actually list any actual sources with their work.
And even if they did it might’ve and likely been multiple sources (assuming there actually were any), so why would they name just one of the presumably multiple sources and give them credit for it?
Note, I am the author of this article. But I am your source for what is in the article.
So, if you wrote something (making you the author) and put a byline at the top that said “According to Richard Carrier…” you and everyone would understand that Richard Carrier did not write your article; you did. You are only crediting the information in it to Richard Carrier (you are attempting, or claiming, to describe something you heard or read from Richard Carrier). And if you never put your name on the article (and it was just posted on some random website, author unknown), then no one would know who the author was. They would only know that this anonymous author is claiming to have gotten their information from Carrier.
Which leaves unanswered questions like: Does only some of it come from Carrier? Or all of it? Or none of it? (Since the claim need not even be true) Without quote marks anywhere, is any of it his wording, or is it all yours? Is the data claimed to have been gotten from Carrier accurately summarized by you, or not? Has it been taken out of context? And so on.
These questions would be unanswerable without access to more information—like the original source, if it even existed; i.e. Richard Carrier exists, but literally everything you attribute to me could be false, things I never said or argued. Which happens a lot, you may have noticed; so an “according to Carrier” source attribution cannot even be trusted at face value. Is that made up? Is that accurate? How accurate? Etc.
And that’s where an audience knows who Richard Carrier is and that you wrote that byline. Now suppose the evidence suggests you didn’t; that someone else edited your anonymous article by adding “According to Carrier” at the top; and suppose no one even knows who that is and has no reliable way to find out.
Now we are in the situation of the Gospels.
Dr. Carrier I’m trying to imagine or anticapte what some apologists might say in response to this article.
For example you stated the following:
An apologist might assert that the names of the authors were already common knowledge, and that adding them at the time that they were assembled into a single edition was just a formality.
You also stated:
But since (as you’ve pointed out) Luke wasn’t even in the habit of naming his sources, should we be so certain that he would’ve named Mark of Matthew in his preface even he knew them?
As with most apologetics, that would be an undefended hypothesis, for which no evidence has been presented. It is therefore a speculation, not a fact.
Also as with most apologetics, when we look at the evidence, it does not support this but the opposite:
All the early material we have suggests no one knew any of this. Luke does not. Marcion didn’t. The Gospels themselves give no indication of it. And even the editor who added these names was not even committed to it—hence they did not write “by Mark” like all other ancient literature, they wrote “according to Mark,” which does not designate the author but the author’s source; so this editor was not even claiming these were the authors—that appears to be a propaganda move taken after the edition’s publication.
By contrast, there is zero evidence for the alternative—that somehow people just “knew” how to identify which Gospel was by which author, as if by magic; and this knowledge was somehow reliable, despite itself being entirely oral and unsourced, and not supported by anything in the text itself. That is not credible. It is, rather, quite dubious. Particularly for a group almost all of whose literature is forged (almost all Gospels, Acts, and Epistles credited to Christians in the first four centuries are fakes: see OHJ, Element 44, and my even longer list of examples of forged Acts in How We Know Acts Is a Fake History).
Which is why mainstream scholars (as opposed to the most disingenuous Christian apologists) are agreed on this point.
That is actually what I have pointed out: there is no good explanation for why Luke would not name the sources he actually describes; unless they had no names for him to plug. Indeed, if even the legends existed (of who these supposed authors were), the utility of that to Luke’s enterprise would be too valuable to not make use of. Which means he had no such knowledge to exploit. Which means it was all invented after him.
Remember, this is not a question of “not mentioning sources at all” but of Luke actually spending a whole paragraph on his sources and still not identifying them. That’s weird (in fact, unprecedented; see my discussion of this oddity in Do the ‘We’ Passages in Acts Indicate an Eyewitness Wrote It?). It therefore begs explanation. And since the names would have been useful to him, the explanation can’t be “he wanted to leave that information out” or “he didn’t care about that information” and so on.
The only information Luke provides is that he believes these prior unattributed Gospels relayed information passed down from eyewitnesses—which is likely the origin of the belief that they were written by apostles or their secretaries; even though Luke presents no explanation why he believes this or how he knew it, and so it is likely him inventing it, particularly as he claims to be “more accurate” than them and yet, we can document, he lies repeatedly, distorting and altering his every source and fabricating entirely new stories to append to them, making Luke the least reliable source one could ever have in the field of history (see my discussion of this point in How We Know Acts Is a Fake History and Ch. 10.6 of OHJ).
I see Papias’ quotes as the best argument that the Gospels (at least Mark and Matthew) were not anonymous as early as the turn of the second century.
Did you write something or have any suggested texts (articles or books) on why Papias quotes can’t be used to argue this? They seem to predate the composition of the standard text by at least a few decades.
I have seen your response to Jason above but I can’t see why Papias mentioning the other gospels would affect the argument that these two were not anonymous, it looks that it will give evidence that even the other two were named. I am of course a layman but from what I have read so far it looks to me that Papias is thought by mainstream scholarship to have lived in the late first century and early second century so his work has to be written in that range.
Could you please guide me on this?
I’m asking for curiosity and also to know Christianity’s best arguments, something which I did with Islam as well in the past.
We do not know that Papias was written “at the turn of the second century.” That is an invention of modern Christian apologetics, based largely on implausible unsourced legends and hope-based reasoning.
We actually have no reliable information by which to date Papias. Indeed, the sources we have to go on for this are profoundly unreliable. All we know is that he wrote before Irenaeus, the first to mention him (c. 180 A.D.). Mainstream dating places Papias’s work c. 130 A.D. But it could be decades later (Vinzent puts it in the 140s and after the anti-Marcionite edition).
But, hypothetically, if Papias is earlier than Marcion, then he probably invented (at least two of) the author attributions (but without the kata designation), fabricating implausible legends therefrom, and the editors who published the anti-Marcionite volume took his cue and used kata to indicate they were assigning these names (not the original authors). Whereas if Papias is later, then the editors invented these names, and he was part of the propaganda campaign to justify and defend them.
Neither condition gets us to evidence the Gospels were named by their original authors, or even in any manuscript by the time Papias wrote (which we have no claim of even from Papias). This is the problem with not actually having Papias, but only very dishonest and unreliable intermediaries like Eusebius.
Thanks a lot for your reply.
May I ask why Papias’ treatise is dated to the 130s AD and not earlier given that we know so little about him?
As a sidenote, the Wikipedia article about Papias makes very strong claims on his life such as that he lived between 60 AD to 130 AD and that his writings are safely dated to the beginning of the second century according to mainstream scholarship. I know that Wikipedia in itself is not a source especially in these polarizing topics but is it usually that bad regarding the history of early Christianity?
“But, hypothetically, if Papias is earlier than Marcion, then he probably invented (at least two of) the author attributions (but without the kata designation), fabricating implausible legends therefrom”
I got the point that even if Papias mentioned these names before Marcion, it doesn’t get us nowhere close to the evidence required of the authors naming themselves or their names being on early manuscripts.
I still have one question:
Why is it more probable in this hypothetical scenario that Papias invented the author attributions rather than them being already in circulation at the time, even as an unsourced legend?
On the mainstream position see, for example, the discussion in Sim vis Gundry; and Shanks’ book on Papias (whose arguments are flawed but typical, e.g. he only argues against post-140 on the dating of a “Gnosticism” that we now know didn’t exist, and on a bad argument from silence).
You can also see what the apologetical trend to argue for the earlier date looks like in this summary by Michael Kok which is complete (it’s the whole case they have) yet fatally weak (it relies on dubious assumptions of a non-existent reliability of later texts, it confuses when Papias lived with when he wrote, and so on).
The main reason mainstream (non-apologetoc) dating says “circa 130” is that that is in the middle of the range usually considered allowed by the evidence (100-160). Bell curve logic makes that the peak likely date. But in any event, since it can’t be dated any more precisely than the range, we can’t assume earlier or later dates than the peak (because “could be” does not get you to “probably was”).
And some scholars note that that range may be too early, now that we know Luke-Acts likely post-dates 100 (and may even date as late as 115 or 120) and John post-dates Luke, and thus the Epistles of John (which riff on that Gospel) post-date even John, yet Papias may have known all of these texts (we don’t know that for sure, but it is implied by Eusebius and some other sources).
Likewise, Irenaeus says Papias was an old man and a contemporary of Polycarp, which puts him (roughly) mid-2nd century, also supporting a mid-to-later date.
Note that Papias may have written in his retirement, so how old Papias was does not tell us when he wrote, only when he couldn’t have. But since the death of Polcarp is traditionally dated to the 150s, Papias cannot have died much before, and may even have died after (our sources are vague on the point; and also, as usual, themselves unsourced, and so not that reliable).
Although we don’t have a very reliable source for dating Polycarp either—we have extremely poor sources for the entirety of Christianity before the end of the second century: on this being a pervasive problem see my Ignatian Vexation for an example, and note that (1) since I published that the field has trended toward accepting Ignatius probably dates decades after he is traditionally dated and (2) every single thing we want to date about Christianity before c. 200 suffers comparable problems to the ones I give as examples (which is one of the main points in Vinzent’s new book, as he surveys it all).
As you note, Wikipedia in religious subjects typically reflects the views of Christian apologists, not objective scholarship.
As to the evidence why, in the unproven hypothetical case that the writing of Papias predates Marcion, he most likely is inventing names than finding them in the text, the answer is all the evidence that has been cited here, which all converges on only that conclusion (in this thread and this thread).
I could add more reasons than those, though they depend on other positions one takes.
For example, it seems evident that Matthew intended his Gospel to be mistaken as the original and Mark’s the knock-off (to win the propaganda war Mark started with his Pauline Gospel; Matthew is written by the anti-Pauline sect). But Matthew never makes an authority argument (e.g. the Gospel does not explain that Matthew wrote it and is a Disciple and therefore more reliable than Mark) and clearly did not want to (Matthew copies Mark verbatim, which would deeply undermine that argument from the word go). The only logical way for a text like Matthew to “win” the propaganda war is to pretend to be prior to Mark and thus sell Mark as the redactor and plagiarist.
Combine both facts and you get the conclusion that neither author was appending names to their texts but leaving them anonymous like all the other works of scripture they were emulating (like Kings and Chronicles, Deuteronomy and Exodus, Jubilees, even the book of Daniel). If they were competing over names (over who wrote the text), they would have to do this in the text (like explain why the name Matthew confers any more authority than the name Mark; also, Matthew could not then copy Mark but would have to rewrite his material in his own words, as the authors of John did, in order to match the illusion).
That they don’t means they weren’t.
And that entails the conclusion: the Gospel was at that time circulating and being redacted as an unnamed text (just like other mythic biographies, like the Lives of Aesop).
This is only confirmed by all the other facts (Luke had no knowledge of names; Marcion had no knowledge of names; John cannot have had the name John originally; the attribution formula is bizarre; yet appears all at once for all four Gospels in the anti-Marcionite edition; and that formula only makes sense coming from a third party, not the actual author themselves; and so on).
Wow, that Ignatian Vexation was insightful but a pain to read as I was imagining the frustration in doing research using this mess.
I was previously under the impression that the early sources we have about Christianity are at least somewhat better than these regarding Islam but looks like I was mistaken.
Dr. Carrier
Concerning the evidence that the Gospels are all anonymous and that “According to” is in reference to the alleged source (not author), it just occurred to me that there could be an unintended consequence of that proposition that could actually work in favor in some respect from an apologetic standpoint.
Apologists like to claim that authors such as Matthew were actually disciples or eye witnesses of Jesus.
But with the entire Gospels being written in the third person that poses a real problem for them.
For example consider Matthew 9:9 (NIV)
“As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.”
However, if the Apologist were to accept the proposition that Matthew was simply the source (not actually the author) of the Gospel of Matthew, then that problem could seemingly go away.
I would like your thoughts on that.
On a related note but separate point, consider the following common apologetic narrative on Matthew:
Who was Matthew in the Bible?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Matthew-in-the-Bible.html
“Before Matthew became a disciple of Christ, he was a tax collector or “publican” in the town of Capernaum (Matthew 9:9; 10:3). Matthew is also called Levi, the son of Alphaeus, by Luke and Mark (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). Although Luke and Mark do not come out and say, “Levi and Matthew are the same person,” we can deduce the names refer to the same individual because of context. Matthew’s account of his call matches exactly the accounts of Levi’s call in Luke and Mark, both in terms of language and chronological placement. Also, it is not uncommon for a person to be given a different name after an encounter with God. Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, Simon became Peter, and Saul became Paul. It is likely that Matthew (meaning “gift of God”) was the name Jesus gave to Levi after his conversion.”
Q: What do you make of this suggestion that Matthew and Levi are the same person?
If not then what explanation would you give for the book of Matthew calling the Tax Collector
(seemingly same person?) by that name, whereas Mark and Luke call him Levi?
Finally, I would like your thoughts on this apologetic narrative on the book of Matthew and Matthew 9:9 specifically:
What does Matthew 9:9 mean?
https://www.bibleref.com/Matthew/9/Matthew-9-9.html
“Matthew, the man referenced in this verse, is writing this book. He was a tax collector. He does not mention himself until well after several of the other disciples have been introduced. His writing is often arranged by topic, not time, so it’s likely he was called by Christ before some of the other stories he’s told so far in this gospel. Some scholars believe he was present at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1–2), and possibly recording it word-for-word.
When Matthew does introduce himself, it is in the most low-key way possible. He describes Jesus walking by his tax booth and saying, simply, “Follow me.” Matthew reports that he rose and followed Jesus. This may have taken place near Capernaum. Scholars suggest a tax booth may have been set up on the border there between two territories for the purpose of handling customs and excise taxes.”
Q: Given the way that the author of the Gospel of Mattew actually describe their encouter (obviously in the 3rd person), how do you think that apologists (who believe that Matthew “is writing this book”), can make the assertion here that Matthew was “introducing himself”? How do they even attempt to justify such logic?
Q: I’ve heard other apologists make the same assertion that Matthew was likely “present at the Sermon on the mound and recording it word for word”. Is there any evidence whatsoever to support that, or is that nothing more than apologetic wishful thinking?
Finally, in the Jesus Chosen TV Series they portrayed Matthew and John at the hip of Jesus taking cupious notes on (documenting) everything Jesus said and did. Assuming that there actually was an historical Jesus that walked the earth, and setting aside for a moment the nature of the supernatural things he was believed to have done, what if any evidence do apologetics actually have that Matthew and John were even on the scene at that time? It seems to me that this was an attempt to re-write these ficticious stories in such a way as to show that they were well documented historical events.
It wouldn’t necessarily. Gathercole is correct on this point: it was a known form then for an author to write in the third person, even about themselves. It’s just that usually they make clear they are (either with a proper byline or actually saying so in the text; Gathercole admits the point on the latter, but is trying to bootstrap himself from the former into accepting an improper byline as equivalent in function and sense to a proper one).
So the problem isn’t the third person format. The problem is simply the complete and utter lack of evidence for the proposition (that, e.g., Matthew wrote “According to Matthew” and thus was talking about himself in the third person in the first place; particularly in that one isolated and strangely unique place in the text, which wouldn’t even follow with a proper byline since Matthew was a common name, so an author intending to make clear that’s themselves would be more specific, e.g. identify the Matthew in the author line by home town or patronymic, and repeat that in this passage, to specify it’s the same Matthew).
No. There was no such tradition. It’s mythical. Paul was never called Saul (that’s nowhere in the letters of Paul). That was invented to emulate the Scriptural instances, which are also fake (Abraham was not renamed; he didn’t exist: the change of names is a purely mythical device, not a historical one).
Saul is an obvious allusion to David’s nemesis: Saul persecuted David, so Paul persecuted Jesus (the son of David); so when Paul stops doing that, he stops “being Saul.” And then he inexplicably acquires a Latin Roman name, Paul; though when exactly or even how he does is never explained. If Paul was born a citizen, that would already be his name; whereas if he acquired citizenship coincidentally at exactly the same time he became a Christian, that would be extremely unbelievable, and at any rate is never narrated in Acts. The converted name tracks the converted attitude, not any political reality of acquiring a Roman name.
So, no, Levi was not renamed Matthew by any such convention; the convention didn’t exist.
Moreover, were that the author’s point, he’d say so (indeed, it would be one of the most important details he could add to his account: that he was this Levi, renamed Matthew upon conversion or whatever). Yet Mark gives the patronymic for Levi; Matthew drops it! So Matthew becomes even less specific than Mark.
The most likely reason Matthew swaps the names is because Matthew wants this person to be a disciple (and thus the “follow me” line to be more profound than trivially descriptive as Mark originally intended), and thus Matthew switched in an available disciple (Matthew, whose name means “Gift of God,” a more mythically apt name for the story than Levi, “Connected,” if you are changing the story’s meaning from “making connections” with the publican crowd to calling a Disciple).
By contrast, Mark and Luke don’t make him a disciple (no Levi on their lists). He is just someone who went to hear Jesus out once. He is just an audience network connection (hence “Levi”).
They don’t. Apologetics is always built on specious handwaving and bullshit. It’s a con. Not a real argument.
No.
None.
Thanks for all of the replies. The comment nesting is a bit limited so I am writing a new upper level comment. Your sources on this is always appreciated. I have some reading to do.
I noticed in this comment thread that you are relying on the specific intentions of Mark and Mathew (let’s ignore the others for now) for understanding how their works came to be. You argue that Mark is writing in the archetype of “scripture” and that he intends for his work to be read this way. Matthew is doing the same and intends to replace Mark with his own “scripture”. If the mythicist model is followed then Mark’s audience are mythicists at the time he is writing. He can not pass off these stories as real because his audience knows that they are not (having been told that Jesus was executed by Satan in the sky). His audience has to see them as allegory for his work to gain any acceptance in the Mythical Christian community and therefore gain any popularity. Matthew would then not be rewriting history, but rewriting allegory. He chooses to write a new version of Mark because he wants to improve upon it and he makes the allegories reflect his version of Christianity. In this case Matthew doesn’t need to have any grand plans to replace Mark due to it being more “authoritative”. He just relies on the fact that its a better story and it’s more inline with his version of Christianity. Neither Mark or Matthew are attempting to trick anyone with what they are doing. I don’t think they would have been in a position to do so. It is only later that other Christian groups outside of Mark and Matthew’s original audience that gospels start to be taken as authoritative and authorship becomes a concern.
We actually do not know that Mark’s audience “does not know” the story is fiction. He is writing after almost everyone you could ask to check by will have been dead, and writing in a foreign land, in a foreign language. And when you are inventing someone, the probability anyone could even know you are by then is quite low. I discuss this in OHJ, Ch. 6.7 and 8.12. And I explain the difference between then and earlier (during the life of Paul), when what you are saying would be correct, in Ch. 3.3 (where I rule out “a historical Jesus was invented then” hypotheses as too improbable to credit).
Mark appears intent on deception, as he covertly explains to his readers in Mark 4. He wants outsiders to mistake his narrative as literal; and insiders to understand the narrative as symbolical. I discuss this method (and its defense by Origen, for example) in OHJ, Ch. 4, Elements 13 and 14. So Mark appears to be assuming no one but insiders would know he was making anything up.
Matthew appears to push that deception angle further by historicizing the narrative with references to the events satisfying scripture. Luke pushes it even further with the skeletal apparatus of a historian (but still hedging by not being explicit as to what he means by preserving the narratives “accurately,” since that can mean historically or in their allegorical function).
John (or our final redaction of John, importantly) is the first Gospel to repudiate that model by insisting, explicitly, that what “he” is writing is historically true and anyone who gainsays that is to be challenged (which suggests awareness of Christians who took the opposite view; which Christians are also attacked in 1 John and 2 Peter, as I discuss in OHJ, Ch. 8.12).
But Mark starts right out of the gate aware that people are likely to take his story literally (and only covertly warns insiders not to). Matthew seems to be increasingly keen on that, and Luke even more so. Though neither go to the step John does, of actually repudiating the Markan model. They seem then to be hedging, doing Mark one better by making their point even harder for outsiders to suss.
We gain insight into what they might be thinking from Origen, who articulates an explicit doctrine of outsiders and insiders actually within the church itself (not likely what Mark meant; but quite possibly what Matthew and Luke are now meaning), whereby the masses of believers have to be convinced in their literal truth because that is the only way they will understand, be persuaded, and thus saved; whereas educated believers don’t need to take them literally because they have the requisite wisdom to understand and be persuaded by ahistorical allegory. Origen says the masses can be caught up to speed in heaven, when time is unlimited; whereas on Earth they might die before getting the requisite training and thus not be saved.
See Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians and my entries on Origen in my Spiritual Body FAQ.
I used to agree with your analysis of Mark 4 and the Messianic Secret, but I now wonder if it isn’t supposed to be satirical. Mark may be taking shots at the mystery religion practice of secret doctrine. He expects his readers to balk at the idea that Jesus would want people to not be saved. As Jesus says in Mark 4:12 “lest they should turn again, and be forgiven”. Its therefore a critique of the practice itself and not a wink at the reader who “knows better”. If read in this way Mark’s ending is a powerful message to end the practice of secrecy “They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid”. It’s a challenge to the status quo.
Matthew does what you are claiming. He keeps the part in about Christians being given “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven”. And adds a DEFENSE of the practice Matt. 13:12 “For to him who has will be given more, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” He adds that this is inline with prophecy. He then removes the “lest they should turn again, and be forgiven” line, and thus removes the critique.
Luke keeps to Mark and does not add Mathew’s defense, but removes the “lest..be forgiven” line.
Matthew also removes Jesus charge to tell no one from Mark 5:43; Matt 9:26. Luke keeps it.
Both Matthew and Luke have the women at the tomb immediately go and tell the disciples, thus neutralizing Mark’s challenge. Though it could be argued that they had to do this to continue the plot. I do think the removal of the “lest they turn and be saved” line is an acknowledgement that this is a critique. I’m not sure that Mark includes the elements of secrecy to infer to the reader that his gospel allegory is itself a secret Christian teaching. I would assume that the fact that Christians had secrets for different levels of positions in the church wasn’t itself a secret. The fact that Mark would have been available to the public would be evidence that Mark’s gospel is in fact not a secret. I agree that people eventually took this to be a work of history and not allegory, I’m just not so sure that this was Mark’s intention from the outset, just because he makes references to secrecy. John for sure wants to pass itself as history. I’m just not sold that Mark is doing that. Thanks for your time in the replies.
Jason Rollins wrote:
Dr. Carrier I have some specific questions about this as well. Firstly, the Mark “lest they should turn again, and be forgiven” statement that Jason quoted is seen in the NKJV version.
But the NIV version has Jesus saying something different. He says “otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”. Also the NKJV it refers to the “mystery” of the Kindom og God, whereas the NIV version refers to it as a “secret”.
So my first question is which one of these is in the original text?
On the one hand I could see where somewhere along the line a Christian might’ve changed it be better suit their narrative. Or in their minds to make it more accurately reflect the meaning (context) of Mark 4 in its entirety. That narrative being a Jesus who was simply pointing out that despite his best efforts there are those that might not understand, or easily be swayed away from his teaching (when push comes to shove). And it wasn’t so much as a “secret”, meaning keep it hidden and don’t tell anyone. But perhaps meaning instead to describe it as a mystery or something not known to most (like a secret pathway).
And if that in the case, then I will say that in their defense the versus that follow would seem to support such a narrative. At least my honest reading of it. So I would like your thoughts on that.
So while I’m not convinced that Jason’s assessment is true (I would like to hear your thoughts on that as well), I’m don’t quite understand how you reached your conclusion either.
For the reason explained above and for the fact that in other parts of Mark, like Mark 1:17 he has the Jesus character Jesus saying “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”. And of course he has Jesus traveling around giving sermons to the people in the general public. Mark seems to be portraying a Jesus who is sincerely interested in seeking out and enlightening everyone with his knowledge and teachings.
So what am I missing or getting wrong? Why should we see your assessment of Mark 4 as being the more probable (not just possible)?
On the translation:
Useful tool: you can check the interlinear at Bible Hub and click through to the Strong’s concordance. Not the best (Strong’s is old and theologically slanted), but from there you can then check the word (by copy and paste) in a more objective Lexicon (the Liddell & Scott) at Perseus.
A literal translation:
Notes:
(1) Mark is specifically saying that only when he is alone with his insiders does he reveal this information. So he has already framed this as a secret for insiders, to be kept from outsiders (until they become insiders). He then has Jesus set up the “you” vs. “them” binary mode to confirm this.
(2) The word the NIV translates as “secret” is literally mystērion, “mystery,” but in ancient Greek that meant secret (not what “mystery” means today, which is something unknowable or merely unknown). So both translations are “correct,” though the NIV is more correct in choosing a modern valence more fitting to the ancient valence.
(3) Note Mark is reifying Paul here (it’s the same word in Romans 16:25–26 for example; search “mystery” in the KJV at Bible Gateway). Paul often spoke of levels of secrets in the church (with common mystery religion vocab like milk vs. meat, children vs. adults, and who can be told what: I survey the evidence and its context in OHJ, Element 13).
(3) The word “perceive” is a pun in the Greek: he uses here a word meaning “to see” in Greek that had a very ubiquitous parallel use as “to know,” and thus perceive or understand something; Jesus thus engages a play on words between “seeing and not seeing” (“seeing” literally and “seeing” figuratively).
(4) The hearing part is also a pun: he uses a word for literal hearing, and then a word that also means “hear” but figuratively. The word literally means “put together,” which can be literally (bringing two people together) or figuratively (“putting it together” as in “figuring it out; finally seeing the connections”).
(5) This is a riff on Isaiah 6:9–10. The puns are from there (in the Greek LXX). Our text has a different ending (turn and be healed), but the word there (in the Greek version) can mean “saved” or “restored” (hence figuratively, from sins). Whether Mark was looking at a variant Greek text of Isaiah (which is possible: OHJ, element 9), or having Jesus “pun” on the text of Isaiah (also possible), the gist is that Jesus means what Isaiah meant: outsiders shall see things one way, which is wrong, and thence to their doom; only insiders, clued in by God, will see things the right way and thus “get it,” and thus be rescued from their doom.
(6) Because Mark has a different verb at the end (but a similar grammatical structure), we can’t use our text of Isaiah to convey his intended sense. But as Mark wrote it, he is using a Greek legal phrase: “remit him a charge,” as in, excuse or pardon someone from a sentence or a crime. This is a more technical sense of “forgive” but essentially is forgiving. The word “sins” is not in the text but is obviously what is meant (since Jesus isn’t talking about receiving a secular pardon for human crimes or charges).
So, as you can see, both translations are “correct” in a sense. It just depends on which details you want to spin an argument from.
Since no English exactly matches the Greek, any translation has to take some liberties, creating valences of meaning or implication in English that don’t exist in the Greek, and likewise there are valences of meaning or implication in the Greek that don’t survive in the English.
This is one of those cases where there cannot even in principle be a fully accurate translation; you simply just have to know how to read ancient Greek to get that particular (I wrote about this recently: From Homer to Frontinus: Biased Translation Is Not Unique to Biblical Studies).
On your question:
That is most definitely not what Mark is having Jesus say. Jesus here is being very specific and deliberate: it is his plan to confuse the public with parabolic and obscure teachings; which only insiders (his most devoted “followers”) will be told the truth of.
This reifies the sentiment all across Paul: only insiders know the real truth to be saved by it; and even higher ranking Christians will learn yet more secrets than the mere initiates. (This is an identical apparatus to all savior cults in antiquity at that time, called “mystery cults,” where those who get formally initiated will know the mysteries, the secrets, and get saved, while outsiders are doomed. While higher ranks knew yet more mysteries, and thus tended to get even better statuses or rank in the afterlife.)
The mission to preach the gospel is to preach it literally; but only those who truly embrace the holy spirit will come to understand (or be taught) what its real underlying meaning is. Thus to outsiders, the gospel appears (just as Paul said) “foolish” and a “stumbling block” (You want us to worship an executed felon? You want us to listen to people hearing voices?). To insiders, its true power and meaning becomes clear (We want you to worship a self-sacrificing hero who saved us from our sins, because the voice of Jesus in our heads told us so).
Mark is full of this: Jesus never plainly explains the gospel or anything about it; he always spreads knowledge of it within obscure parables and unexplained oddities, and that is why no one understands him. Those who choose to follow him do not do so because he explained the gospel to them (read all through Mark: that never happens). They do so because they are inspired by his charisma and promises to simply trust him.
Trust first. Ask questions later. That is Mark’s entire theme. And this explication of it in Mark 4 is even explicit on the point.
Dr. Carrier wrote:
But if that is the case then why would he be reavealing his plan (scheme) to insiders in the exact same Gospel that contains the very parables that are intended to be seen by and confuse (trick) all of the outsiders?
It would be like if you and I were in a group setting and I was telling a supposedly true story to everyone (which was actually a fib), but then I turn to you and wink to let you know that I was just fibbing.
But I did it in plain sight where everyone else in the group could see what I just did.
Wouldn’t Mark knowingly be letting the cat out the bag for everyone to see what he is up to (his plan/scheme)?
Or is he not all concerned about that because just knowing of the fact that I’m keeping secrets from you still does not reveal the exact secrets? Or was it never intended for the outsiders to read the contents of Mark 4?
Mark is signaling to his readers how to read his entire Gospel. Mark imagines outsiders won’t understand this for the same reason outsiders depicted in the story didn’t understand the Lord’s parables. Only insiders will “clue in” (or even be told) that this story refers to the Gospel (and not just the parables the fictional character spoke).
Indeed, reciprocally, Mark’s point is that anyone who on their own figures this out, by that act becomes an insider. I don’t think Mark had the sophisticated imagination to anticipate someone getting his hidden point and at the same time not buying it. Or at best, he did but is ignoring that complex edge case to keep his story easy to write.
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You can see this all over Mark. The men and demons told not to tell, who tell anyway. The fig tree that Jesus curses for not bearing figs even when Mark goes out of his way to tell us that he knew they were naturally not supposed to be bearing figs. Mark flagging the claim in his trial that Jesus said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days (which in the story is taken as literal and thus a reason to put him on trial, but Mark obviously intends the reader to not take it that way: it refers to the temple of the body and the temple atonement cult as an institution). And so on.
Mark is not even trying to create a coherent, believable story. Literally no scene anywhere in it in any chapter of it is realistic or believable; many are literally incoherent (like the fig story, and the messianic secret theme). Mark isn’t even trying. All of this only makes sense when you drop the pretense that Mark meant any of it literally; you are meant to figure out the real meaning of everything; and doing that will make you “one of his peeps” and thus ready for the kingdom. But that then is meant to convince you that you had better get baptized and join the club (since Mark’s Gospel will not have been meant to be read alone, but in the context of Christian evangelization, or indeed even read aloud to illiterate audiences by the missionary using it as a conversion tool).
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Which ties back into the anthropology of religion:
That discovering the deeper meaning leads to a eureka feeling is part of the mission tool (this has been used by cults all over the world ever since and long before). The evangelist will aim to talk you into thinking that your elation at seeing or discovering something others missed, something cleverly hidden yet cleverly conveyed, is itself the holy spirit telling you this is from God.
We see this logic already in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where it’s implied feelings of “inspiration” convinced a pesherist that the hidden patterns they found across disparate Scriptural passages are signals from God that they are right, and those patterns are real and meant by God to have been found, and finding them makes the finder special, an elect of God and therefore an authority to propound the hidden meanings of Scripture. When all the while it was just a generic aesthetic emotion as anyone feels who catches patterns in things, whether they are intentional patterns or not.
Imagine how many a conspiracy theorist today relies on this same emotion as evidence they are right and the pattern they found therefore “real.” It’s the same thing. Yet it’s actually no more supernatural or special a feeling than winning at Solitaire.
I love how often your work is to deconstruct the premises for an implied argument that doesn’t even hold if true. (That’s not a backhanded compliment: It’s authentically good reading to watch people sputtering to get out of first gear).
Say it were true that anonymous sources were actually more common in the past than today.
So what?
The Gospels would still be a specific kind of anonymous text: texts with overt myths (including clear etiological myths) that are not just anonymous, but prominently so, with a BS way of trying to disguise the anonymity (“according to”). The Gospels are stories and literary constructions in ways that Suetonius and Caesar aren’t.
If you’re a journalist today and you get an anonymous tip from someone whose message seems cogent with specific actionable knowledge, you take it seriously. If you get an anonymous tip whose message seems like crank nonsense, you don’t.
I suspect this argument is used as so many arguments are in Christian apologetics, as an incomplete part of a cumulative case that is then just implicitly filled in. People in receptive audiences will hear “Anonymous sources aren’t necessarily unreliable” and not realize that the word “necessarily” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
The fact remains that whatever authority the Gospels might have if they were actually eyewitness accounts evaporates because they’re anonymous. We, at least, cannot know if the authors were eyewitnesses to anything or even had access to eyewitnesses. That’d be fine in history (though obviously more of a problem than in reality): If all of our ancient histories were unsigned, we’d just assign them lower epistemic value and move on. Christians hinge their faith on these books. Flaws that would be fine in a text used to establish tentative certainty for a measured historical argument are fatal for a supernatural bellef.
That’s a good point.
And to expand on the journalism analogy: quality journalistic standards regulate the use of anonymous sources. For example, the two-source rule: you still must have two confirmed independent sources before relying on any; and this rule is not to be abrogated in the case of anonymous sources (but can be in the case of named sources, where the fact that they are the only source is usually still required to be indicated).
Also, the journalist must know who the anonymous source is (so really, they are a single-blinded source, not strictly anonymous) and explain their position and biases when cited (e.g., you have to say you are using an anonymous source, why you are keeping them anonymous, and why, nevertheless, they are worth citing at all, e.g. some way of identifying their relationship to the information they are providing must be stated, so their possible biases or even access to that information can be weighed by the reader).
And all that still has to come from an independent journalist. No one trusts a fanatic to maintain objectivity or even honesty in this process, so even if such a person did provide all that information for us, we still would have no reason to believe them, because such persons lying or distorting information even unconsciously is too common (and cannot be ruled out).
And even in the best case, where we have some independent observer (like Lucian with respect to Glycon cult) doing this sort of thing (e.g. reporting on what unnamed persons they met said about someone they are objectively writing up), we know ancient standards and capabilities were woefully inadequate (e.g. we cannot trust Lucian even could have confirmed his source wasn’t lying about being a witness and to thus seeing or hearing what they told him, vs. today when someone’s identity and relationship to the information can be verified by a journalist in several reliable ways).
Exactly. And this ties in with the ambiguity intolerance inherent to a lot of faith belief.
Is it possible that the writers of the Gospels actually did have access to good documentary and eyewitness sources, or intellectual traditions from the start of the faith? Sure, though that too isn’t all that useful. One of the big problems with all of these reliability arguments for anything besides the Epistles is that cults are the worst at honestly keeping their own records due to a combination of incompetence, fanaticism, and institutional incentives. Having firsthand experiences of cults, their own internal mythology about their own history trumps reality even when everyone knows it’s bullshit and there’s even publicly available evidence to the contrary . Hell, the Epistles themselves are good examples of this: Paul’s writings in an at-least semi-official capacity preserve a ton of catty internal politics bullshit, irrelevant whining, and weird digressions, and Paul is actually pretty competent by the standard of cultic early adopters. The kind of people who join cults don’t tend to be the most organized or settled in their lives and cults often evolve a lot in the early stages as the leader starts to transition from being a grifter (as even the most sincere cult leaders have to be in part because they don’t believe all of their own bullshit) to being a megalomaniac (or whatever other final form they’ll have) and the traditions of the cult are being made up on the spot based on bizarre rapid cultural diffusion. So even if the Gospels reconstruct faith traditions that evolved, those faith traditions would actually have no necessary relationship to what happened in the early cult, and even if we could teleport a believer from the 40s or 50s to now and overcome language and cultural barriers they would still not be wholly reliable as eyewitnesses .
But all of that aside, it doesn’t matter, because whether or not that’s true, we can never know that . Anonymity is fatal precisely here because we actually would need to be able to assess who the writers of the Gospels were because we would need to assess privileged access. That’s why traditions like Luke being Paul’s scribe make a ton of sense: it actually matters for how we assess Luke-Acts that the writer has privileged access to Paul, rather than just being an ordinary follower.
Even in modern professional journalism, if a truly anonymous source never has their information independently corroborated (with only that corroboration used for reporting) or if a source off the record is never disclosed, in two centuries we won’t know who that was or how reliable it was. Journalists do everything they can to maximize the reliability of their reporting despite the needs to protect sources and other practical realities, and good journalists make calls that end up being verifiably true, but if we never had access to that later information, we wouldn’t be at all sure about the quality of the information.
And that’s all especially true if, say, we have a modern Lucien doing reporting on a cult. Because cults are so dishonest and so motivated that they evolve in real time even to reporting on them.
I wouldn’t trust to any high degree of certainty anything reported about a cult in its early stages, even from a qualified outside observer, without really good documentation or at least a really clear throughline of information and data. The subject matter is just too murky.
Christians clearly know all this: They would never trust even quite banal claims about a cult that they weren’t motivated to believe for other weird ideological alliance reasons. So they’re cherry-picking, as always.
And obviously this isn’t just a problem for Christians, it’s a problem for historians. I find the arrogance of so many New Testament scholars about the epistemic quality of what we know about Jesus and the early Christians so shocking. Like you identified on GE”s show about Davis and McGrath,, the field seems willing to say “Oh yeah, this evidence sucks super hard” and then make really confident assertions of high probability from really bad incomplete evidence subject to known ideological retention filters. That scholarly failing is actually a lot less forgivable: Scholars are supposed to get over the fact that it sucks and is frustrating to admit “Yeah, the evidence for this sucks, we don’t know” and just do that.
“De vita et moribus Agricolae” doesn’t stand for “on Agricola’s life and death” – that would be “de vita et morte”. The phrase may be rendered as something like “on Agricola’s life and conduct”.
Oh good catch. I really am starting to need new glasses (and that isn’t a joke; I’ve been putting it off too long and am falling into more typos because of it).
I should render it “ways” (mores, customs).