Are the Gospels Anonymous?

When it comes to the authorship of the Gospels, a very common argument used against their reliability is that they are anonymous.[1] It is said that because the author is not directly mentioned in the text and that the titles of the books (for example, “the Gospel according to Matthew,” etc.) were not originally present then we do not know who wrote them. Well-known Christian skeptic Bart Ehrman summarizes the position well when he says:

“A further reality is that all the Gospels were written anonymously, and none of the writers claims to be an eyewitness. Names are attached to the titles of the Gospels (‘the Gospel according to Matthew’), but these titles are later additions to the Gospels, provided by editors and scribes to inform readers who the editors thought were the authorities behind the different versions. That the titles are not original to the Gospels themselves should be clear upon some simple reflection. Whoever wrote Matthew did not call it ‘The Gospel according to Matthew.’ The persons who gave it that title are telling you who, in their opinion, wrote it. Authors never title their books ‘according to.’”[2]

These arguments can be found in both conservative[3] and liberal circles.[4] Referring to the Gospel of Matthew scholar Donald Guthrie notes that “there is no positive evidence that the book [Matthew] ever circulated without this title. Indeed, it may reasonably be claimed that the title [“Gospel according to Matthew] was affixed at least as early as AD 125.” This sounds good, but He also adds, “Nevertheless, the title cannot without hesitation be regarded as part of the original text.”[5]

This is an important statement as Christian tradition teaches that Matthew was likely written about 60 years before this. However, there is little evidence to support a late date of 125 AD. As Scholars D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo say, “it is little more than an educated guess, based only on the presupposition that the Gospels were originally entirely anonymous and on the fact that about 140 [AD], and perhaps earlier, the traditional attributions [that Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark, etc.] were widely known, without significant variation.”[6]

This is important to know. The dating of the titles is based only on the idea that the gospels were originally anonymous. You have to assume that the gospels are not reliable to conclude that the titles were made up out of thin air decades after the books were written.

What about the evidence? Didn’t Ehrman make a good case about the anonymity of the gospels? It is interesting to know that skeptics do not treat the New Testament as they treat secular documents. They hold a blatant double standard.[7]

It is argued that because the Gospels do not contain the name of their authors, then we can never know who the real authors were. This is simply inaccurate. New Testament scholar Michael Licona says it well:

“It was not unusual for ancient authors to leave their names out of their works. Plutarch was a Greek author who penned more than fifty biographies during the late first to early second centuries. Plutarch’s name is absent from all of them. It is the tradition that has been passed down through the centuries that gives us information pertaining to who wrote these biographies. And no one questions that Plutarch is the author.”[8]

Another example is Tacitus (56-120 AD), a Roman historian of the late 1st-early 2^nd centuries AD. He was the author of the Annals, in which he recorded the history of Rome from the death of Augustus down to the reign of Nero (a roughly 50-year period). Interestingly, his name does not appear at all in the text, just like the Gospels and Plutarch. The only place where his name appears is at the very beginning, “in what we may regard as the title.” Interestingly, skeptics do not doubt that Tacitus wrote the Annals. This is a blatant double standard on how skeptics treat other ancient documents and the New Testament.[9] Christian Apologist J.P. Holding says the obvious:

“It is a simple matter for critics to make such claims as, ‘the name on works like Matthew and 2 Thessalonians was added later.’ This is routinely argued for many of the NT documents. Why then is it not to be supposed that the titles were added later to the secular works as well?”[10]

It is important to understand that most, if not all, of the New Testament, was more than likely originally written down on scrolls. The “normal practice to designate authorship for scrolls was to attach a tag on the outside identifying the work in question – not in the text of the work itself. When Christians made greater use of the codex – the early form of the book, if you will – it was then that indicating authorship at the beginning of a work would likely come into practice. Thus again, my point above with reference to secular works…It is actually indeed likely that attributions were added to the text – based on information that was previously external to the text in the form of a scroll tag.”[11]

In an interesting note, “Anonymous works were relatively rare and must have been given a title in libraries. They were often given the name of a pseudepigraphical [false] author…Works without titles easily got double or multiple titles when names were given to them in different libraries.”[12] Interestingly, the Gospels were never given more than one title as the early church tradition always attributed the Gospels to Matthew,[13] Mark,[14] Luke,[15] and John.[16] One book in the New Testament, Hebrews, is truly an anonymous work as there are multiple traditions for the author of this epistle.[17]

To sum up this issue, the fact that many ancient works did not include the author’s name within the text combined with the unanimous testimony of the early Church as to the authorship of the Gospels “cannot be explained by anything other than the assumption that the titles were part of the works from the beginning. It is inconceivable…that the gospels could circulate anonymously for up to sixty years, and then in the second century suddenly display unanimous attribution to certain authors. If they had originally been anonymous, then surely there would have been some variation in second-century attributions (as was the case with some of the second-century apocryphal gospels).” It is unlikely “that the four canonical gospels were never even formally anonymous.”[18]

[1] This essay was updated on March 4, 2022.

[2] Bart Ehrman. Jesus, Interrupted (New York: HarperOne, 2009). 103-104.

[3] Donald Guthrie. New Testament Introduction (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1990). 44, 113, 253; D.A. Carson and Douglas Moo. An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005). 172, 229; Daniel Wallace. “Matthew: Introduction, Argument, and Outline.” https://bible.org/seriespage/1-matthew-introduction-argument-and-outline. Ibid. “Mark: Introduction, Argument, and Outline.” https://bible.org/seriespage/2-mark-introduction-argument-and-outline. Ibid. “Luke: Introduction, Outline, and Argument.” https://bible.org/seriespage/3-luke-introduction-outline-and-argument. Ibid. “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Argument, Outline.” https://bible.org/seriespage/4-gospel-john-introduction-argument-outline.

[4] W. Marxsen. Introduction to the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970). 142, 152 (where he says that the author of Matthew “remains completely unknown to us”), 161, 259; Reginald H. Fuller. A Critical Introduction to the New Testament (Duckworth, 1974). 113 (where he says of Matthew that “The traditional title is a second-century conjecture”), 176 (he says of John, “The traditional authorship is once more a second-century attempt to secure apostolic authorship for a work it wanted to include in the Canon.”); Werner Kummel. Introduction to the New Testament. Translation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975). 95, 120, 234.

[5] Guthrie, 43-44. Carson and Moo (140) also note how we have no evidence that the gospels ever circulated without a title. Also see the articles by Wallace in footnote 3.

[6] Carson and Moo, 140.

[7] James Patrick Holding. Trusting the New Testament (Xulon Press, 2009). 139.

[8] Michael Licona, “Fish Tales: Bart Ehrman’s Red Herrings and the Resurrection of Jesus” in Come Let Us Reason. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig Eds (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2012). 140.

[9] Holding, 139.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 140.

[12] Martin Hengel. The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus (Trinity Press International, 2000). 8. Quoted in Holding, 140.

[13] Concerning Matthew – Papias (Eusebius, H.E. 3.39.16), Pantaenus (Eusebius H.E. 5.10.3), Irenaeus (Adversus. Haereses. 3.1.1, quoted in Eusebius H.E. 5.8.2), Tertullian (Adversus Marcion 4:2), Origen (quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 6.25.3-6), Eusebius (H.E. 3.24.5-6), and Jerome (De vir. Ill. 3) all attribute the Gospel to Matthew. See Carson & Moo, 140 ff.; Guthrie, 44-47; Holding, 145-147.

[14] Concerning Mark – Christian authors beginning in the 2^nd century onwards contribute the Gospel of Mark to John Mark, and that he depended on Peter for his information. This includes Papias (Eusebius, H.E. 3.39.16), Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 106), Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 3.1.2), Tertullian (Adversus Marcion 4:5), Clement of Alexandria (Hypotyposeis, according to Eusebius, H.E. 6.14.5-7), Origen (Commentary om Matthew, according to Eusebius, H.E. 6.25.5), probably the Muratorian Canon, Eusebius (H.E. 3.24.6) and Jerome (Carson & Moo, 172-173; Guthrie, 81; Holding 155-157). It should also be added that ascribing the second gospel to a non-apostle is surprising “since the tendency in the early church was to associate apostle with the writing of the New Testament books” (Carson & Moo, 174).

[15] Concerning Luke – The heretic Marcion, the Muratorian Canon, Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 3.1.1, 3.14.1), Tertullian (Adversus Marcion 4.2.2, 4.5.3), Clement of Alexandria (Eusebius, H.E. 6.14.6-7), Origen (Eusebius, H.E. 3.24.6), Eusebius (H.E. 3.24.6), and Jerome (Lives of Illustrious Men 7) believe that Luke was the author. The “Anti-Marcionite” Prologue to Luke assumes that Luke is the author of the Gospel and the oldest manuscript of Luke, the Bodmer Papyrus XIV (P75 – dated to 175-225 AD), ascribes the Gospel to Luke (Carson & Moo, 205; Guthrie, 114; Holding, 163-164). It is hard to understand why Luke was chosen as the author if his name was not attached to the Gospel from the beginning. Carson and Moo note that “The manifest tendency in the early church was to associate apostles with the books of the New Testament. The universal identification of a non-apostle as the author of almost one-quarter of the New Testament speaks strongly for the authenticity of the tradition” (Carson & Moo, 206).

[16] Concerning John – Theophilus of Antioch (c. 180 AD, To Autolycus 2.22), Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses, 3.1.1), the Muratorian Canon, Clement of Alexandria (quoted in Eusebius, H.E. 6.14.7), Tertullian, and Origen teach that John was the author. Irenaeus’s witness is important because he was the student of Polycarp, who himself knew John (Carson & Moo, 229-232, Guthrie, 269-272; Holding, 169-171). “’It is significant that Eusebius, who had access to many works that are now lost, speaks without reserve of the fourth gospel as the unquestioned work of St. John.’ The silence is most significant precisely because it was Eusebius’s concern to discuss the doubtful cases” (Carson & Moo, 232).

[17] Clement of Alexandria and Origen believed that Paul wrote Hebrews, but they admit there are problems with this (Eusebius, H.E. 6.14.2, 6.25.12, 6.25.14). The Muratorian Canon, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus of Rome agree that Paul was not the author. Tertullian believes that the author may have been Barnabas (On Modesty 20). Augustine and Jerome believed that the epistle was written by Paul, but the Synod of Hippo (393 AD) and the Third Synod of Carthage (397) did not ascribe it to Paul. The Synod of Carthage (419) ascribes the epistle to Paul. Clement of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas (his preface to the Epistle) believe that Paul wrote the letter in Hebrew and that Luke translated it into Greek. Origen even speculates that a disciple of Paul took notes of Paul’s teaching and wrote Hebrews. Origen knew of different opinions on who the author was (Luke and Clement of Rome, for example). John Calvin believed it was Clement of Rome or Luke, Martin Luther believed it was Apollos, and the (Roman Catholic) Council of Trent held to Paul as author. Some modern scholars have even suggested Priscilla and Aquila, Silas, Timothy, Epaphras, the deacon Philip, an anonymous Christian monk, a pseudo-Paul or even Mary the mother of Jesus (Carson & Moo, 600-604; Guthrie, 668-682; Holding, 217-220).  

[18] Carson and Moo, 141).

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