Did Matthew, Mark, Luke and John REALLY Write the Gospels? Short Conversations

6 min readDec 10, 2023

St. Luke, Wikimedia Commons. All images are from Wikimedia Commons

Did deceivers give anonymous ancient books fake names decades later?

The Gospels weren’t based on eyewitness accounts. The four Gospels were given fake names. The alleged Gospel authors couldn’t even write.

Is this true?

This is a short-form version of the below:

Were the 4 Gospels given FAKE names?

Subscribe to our Substack: https://streettheologian.substack.com/

The disciples were uneducated so they could not write?

Matthew was a tax collector so he would have been literate. Mark and Luke were not disciples (Luke was a physician). Epictetus even referred to a man writing in an illiterate way (Discourses 2.9.10)!

John could have improved his skills during his roles in the church over decades or easily instructed a scribe. John’s family had hired servants (Mark 1:19–20) so could likely have hired a scribe. Peter (1 Peter 5:12) and Paul (Rom. 16:22) used scribes.

The Anti-Marcionite Prologue to the Gospel of John refers to John dictating his Gospel to one of his disciples

Even sceptic, Bart Ehrman, himself concedes, “Every person who wrote epistles in the ancient world dictated them to scribes.”

There is nothing to indicate the authors of the Gospels thought they were eyewitnesses or using eyewitness testimony?

In John, the beloved disciple claims to be writing and testifying about the life of Jesus (John 21:24). Luke purports that his written account is based on eyewitness testimony he received (Luke 1:1–2).

Xenophon

The authors do not identify as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Hence, it is more likely these books were written by anonymous fabricators and not eyewitnesses?

Greek historian, Xenophon (Anabasis 3.1), and Jewish historian, Josephus (Jewish Wars 2.20.6), wrote in the third person concerning themselves.

The four Gospels circulated anonymously for decades and were given names decades later to add authority.

Do you think early Christians in Rome, France, Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia all randomly came to the same conclusions about who wrote the four Gospels?

Matthew

Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus of Lyon and Clement of Alexandria all agree Matthew wrote a Gospel with a focus on preaching to the Hebrews.

Mark

Regarding Mark, Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus of Lyon and Clement of Alexandria all agree that Mark wrote according to what he had heard from Peter. Gathercole goes one step further and contends that Eusebius’ reference to John the Elder’s comment on the Gospel of Mark, implies first-century attestation for the Gospel being written by Mark.

Luke

As Luke likely had a patron (Theophilus Luke 1:1–4), it is highly unlikely no one original readers knew he was the author. The early evidence for Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel spans from France (Irenaeus) to Rome (Muratorian Fragment) to Tunisia (Carthage- Tertullian) to Egypt (Origen).

Tertullian

John

John’s authorship is the best attested of the lot- implied by Justin Martyr, explicitly mentioned by Irenaeus, the Muratorian Canon, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Polycrates of Ephesus, Theophilus of Antioch, Hegessipus, the Acts of John and even heretical Ptolemy.

Simon Gathercole, 2018

As Pitre notes in The Case for Jesus, “Even if one anonymous Gospel could have been written and circulated and then somehow miraculously attributed to the same person by Christians living in Rome, Africa, Italy and Syria, am I really supposed to believe that the same thing happened not once, not twice, but with four different books, over and over again, throughout the world (p.22).”

Case for Jesus, p.40

Besides, Mark and Luke weren’t even disciples of Jesus so surely better fake names could be chosen? Perhaps the type of names we see the apocryphal gospels named after- Judas, Peter, Phillip or Thomas.

This might be the case but does the manuscript evidence match the early church fathers?

It absolutely does!

As Pitre explains, “When it comes to the titles of the Gospels, not only the earliest and best manuscripts, but all of the ancient manuscripts- without exception, in every language- attribute the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (p.21).”

Brant Pitre Case for Jesus p.20

As you can see in every instance the copies of the manuscripts (which contain a section for a heading- eg. not a fragment from the middle of a book) show an author consistent with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Papyrus 4 for Matthew, Codex Sinaiticus for Mark, P75 for Luke, P66 for John.

P66 John

P4 Matthew

P75 Luke

Codex Sinaiticus Mark heading

Hebrews- truly anonymous test case

Contrast this to how the truly anonymous book of Hebrews was treated. The church fathers were unclear who wrote it with Origen declaring only “God knows” (Eusebius, Church History, 6.25.14).

As for the manuscript evidence note the below:

Case for Jesus, page 24

Did the enemies of Christianity agree?

Even enemy of Christianity, Celsus conceded the disciples of Jesus wrote accounts concerning him in Against the Christians. Pitre adds that during the “first three centuries after Christ, even those identified as heretics and enemies of the Church seem to have accepted that the four Gospels were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (p.49).”

Celsus

The Ebionites used only Matthew, the Marcionites a shortened version of Luke, various Gnostics only used Mark while the Valentinians only used the Gospel of John. Much later, Faustus the Manichean in 400 AD contended the Gospels were given fake names to which Augustine replied that he was applying double standards in his Contra Faustum.