Who Really Wrote The Gospels?

"The original texts of the gospels had existed for about a hundred years with no names. The Church Fathers in the 2nd century CE assigned the names; none of the writers signed their work." ~ Denova, Rebecca

Introduction

You may be asking, what kind of question is that? Of course we know the authors of the New Testament Gospels. It says so in the New Testament of the Bible. And yet a close look at how and when they were named by attribution will show that they are indeed anonymous and how they were named is a window into the motivations behind assembling the New Testament canon.

Discussion

The current authors are ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In order to answer the question before us we need to examine the accurate history and evidence for their names. For this discussion they will continue to be called by their attributed names for ease of discussion. Our word “gospel” comes from the Old English word godspel, meaning good news or good story. This is a translation from Greek which basically means the same.

The following points for discussion are taken directly from Dr. Ehrman, both his Book Forged published in 2011, Chapter 7, and a debate he participated in on October 18, 2025. I find Ehrman’s writing style and organization easy to understand but my experience from reading other religious scholars at Yale, Princeton, Harvard, the UK, etc. is that he represents the religious consensus on this question outside of fundamentalist schools and thus his views are not just applied to him. The answer to the question by top religious scholars at some of the most prestigious universities with religious departments is basically outlined below. We don’t know who wrote them and the attributed names do not withstand critical evaluation and logic.

Evidence and Timeline:

1. They are all anonymous. This is not debatable. Nowhere in them, unlike with many other Bible books, does anyone claim authorship.

2. There are no hints in them about authorship. For example, does Matthew 9:9 sound like Matthew wrote this passage and is talking about himself? 

“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.”

3. There are some early Gospel quotations from church fathers, about 10 or so persons, but not until over 100 years or more after the death of Jesus. They are not contemporary. They do NOT use the titles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

There are early quotations from gospel writings especially Matthew and Luke mentioned by Polycarp and Ignatius but they don’t mention who wrote them. The first time the Gospels are named is by Papias, (writing around 120-130 CE). He wrote 5 volumes but we don’t have his originals. We only have people quoting him, usually centuries later.

4. In one of the works by Papias he writes that the apostle Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in Hebrew. He also writes that Mark was the companion of Peter, heard him preaching, and wrote down what Peter said about Jesus. Papias claimed Mark wrote down everything Peter said. Yet Jesus preached for three years and Mark can be read in about 2 hours? Although Papias claimed the Jesus sayings were collected in Hebrew, the Gospels are all written in Greek. What was the writings of Jesus according to Papias? We don’t know because Papias does not quote from any of the Gospels. 

5. The anonymity of the Gospels were respected for decades beyond Papias. For example, in the early second century when the NT Gospels were quoted or referenced by authors they are never titled. Justin (writing 150 - 160 CE) quotes Gospel verses but does not indicate authorship. He just called them “Memoirs of the Apostles”.  He does name one specifically and quote from it  - The Gospel of Peter, which is considered a non-canonical work, being rejected from the NT canon in 397 CE. 

6. Around 185 CE Irenaeus for the first time writes the names of the four authors we have now. Religious scholars date the original gospels being written about 70- 95 CE, so Irenaeus is writing about 100 years later. Irenaeus argued that there should only by four Gospels, no more or less because the message of Jesus as Christ had been spread by the four winds of heaven over the four corners of the earth. The Bible indicates a flat earth, immobile and the center of a geocentric universe (no sun in the middle of the solar system). This was the basis of finding Galileo guilty in 1633. See Bible cosmology is wrong for overwhelming evidence and scholarly consensus. "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin”. ~ Cardinal Bellarmine, 1633.

7.  Muratorian fragment. This fragment is dated to about the same time as Irenaeus. The unknown author lists books thought to be scriptural. In the middle it says “and the third of the gospels was Luke and the fourth John”. So, by the end of the second century people are calling these four books by the names we know them today. The titles as written today started to appear in the early 3rd century after the time of Irenaeus. 

8. The titles in the manuscripts are “The Gospel According to…”. This phrasing tell us that the named authors were not the actual authors. This is someone telling us who is responsible for the gospel. An actual author might write “according to me or my witness” for example. If you are "Greg" for example you would not write a book you wrote “according to Greg”. The gospels are attributions only. They are written in the third person. If you were writing a story, it would be “you and I went to the store”, not “they went to the store”. The authors never claim to be personally connected with any of the narrated events. For example, “one day Jesus and I went to the…” is not a theme presented. The fact that Bible believers think the gospels were always called that does not mean the attributions are automatically true. Are these false attributions? Best guesses? Attributions that were driven by motivated reasoning?

9.

A. Who were the disciples of Jesus and what were they like?

> Aramaic speaking

> Uneducated, day laborers from rural Galilee.  Even the Bible says so in Acts 4:13 [Peter and John were described as illiterate in the Bible]. Could they speak Greek, let alone write it? Peasants who did not have the resources to attend school, let alone the ability to write in Greek wrote the gospels?

B. Who were the authors of the Gospels and what were they like?

> Greek speaking

> highly educated

> trained authors

> from Greek speaking areas outside of Israel

Is this really a match? Do the attributions line up with reality? Are the attributions actually defensible? Greek is not the easiest language to learn as a second language. Speaking it is easier compared to writing it and writing at the level of the gospels. John especially is a high level of writing.

10. In the ancient world about 80-90% people were rural. Wealth was concentrated in the few larger cities. Much of urban population (55 - 60%) was at or below the subsistence level around Galilee in the urban areas. Up to 20% of the urban population was below this level and destitute. The rural areas were even worse. Greek education was reserved for the wealthy, urban and children of the elites. Some rare slaves who needed to interact with those elites could have had formal Greek educations. About three years were spent just learning how to read and copy letters. Just to write your name. Then four more years about grammar and reading Greek classics. Those few who were good then were taught about rhetoric and composition. This took many years and started as children. Is there any evidence of this level of education in rural Galilee? Of any systems to train in a second language? None. Is there any evidence of widespread formal adult education in the ancient world? No. 

Widespread literacy is a fairly recent development that occurred with the industrial revolution. Factory workers needed to be educated to work in those jobs. Studies show during Greek and Roman times at best only 10 - 15% were literate and those were the elites in the large cities only. The scholar Hezser showed that only about 3% of the population around Galilee on average could read and that was mainly in Hebrew so they could read the Torah. Far fewer could write. And far fewer of those could compose. From the entire first century in the area of Jesus the only known literary authors are Josephus and Justin of Tiberius. Only two. Matthew, Mark and John are said to be from what we call Israel at the time. 11. The scholarly consensus from more objective religious scholars is that the gospels are anonymous. “All four of the canonical gospels were originally anonymous. It was only in the second century CE, when the four gospels were published a collection that the superscriptions were added to the gospels, attributing authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John respectively. This is also the time that traditions begin to appear about the authors, claiming that they were either original apostles of Jesus or close acquaintances of other well-known apostles. In spite of these attributions, most scholars do not think any of these men were the original gospel writers. None of the gospels is written in a style that suggests the authors was present at the events being narrated. Nor is it likely that the disciples of Jesus were able to write in Greek, the language in which the gospels were written. So we are left with the reality that the gospels were written by anonymous Christians decades after the events that they relate.”

Dr. David M. Carr (Union Theological Seminary) & Dr Colleen M. Conway (Seton Hall University)

“The four Gospels were published anonymously… they seem to have been written with no authors names attached. We don’t know how or when these names were attached to these Gospels’ that is lost to history.”

Dr. Dale Martin (Yale University)

“The four Gospels were written anonymously between A.D. 70 and 100, and assembled into a collection about A.D. 125. The authors did not provide them with titles, others added them later.”

Dr. David E. Aune (University of Notre Dame)

“Formally speaking, all four canonical Gospels are anonymous since their authors names are not mentioned anywhere within the context of the verses themselves… The superscript of each of the four Gospels is not an original part of the document.. it was likely later appended to the scroll for identification.”

Dr. Ben Witherington (Asbury Theological Seminary)

From: Most Biblical Scholars say the Gospels are anonymous documents by unknown authors.

Dr. McClelland concurs. Most scholars agree that the gospels are anonymous.

Conclusions

The attributions are not supported. It is beyond the breaking point of believability to think that the gospel attributions could be true and logically defensible given the evidence of how they came to be named. The gospel writers as named could not have written them. They would not have had the education, training needed. They could not have the composition skills.

Why did these names occur and when? There were many, many other gospels circulating at this time claiming to be authoritative*.  All competing for attention among Christians. Those who wanted these four gospels to be accepted would have a tremendous advantage by giving them authoritative names. They needed authority and they had two natural choices: two of Jesus’s disciples - Matthew and John. And then they chose two companions of his two most important apostles, Peter (Mark) and Paul (Luke). One important lesson to take away from this controversy is that there should be no controversy, and how and why the gospels attained their names is a window into the motivated actions and religious agendas of the Bible theologians and scribes. The gospels are also not immune from contradictions and mistranslating Old Testament verses to try and make the death of Jesus fulfill prophecies. That the Gospels are anonymous technically does not take away from their content and claims. Perhaps the most important observation is how fervent are the assaults against their anonymity. It unleashes a torrent of attacks by Christian apologists against the most likely conclusion. This is similar to what happens when examining our chromosomes. Human chromosome 2 is obviously a fusion between what chimps are carrying in an ancestor - their chromosomes 12 and 13. This does not preclude the Bible story where God creates species and He could have, after creating the other great apes with 48 chromosomes, created humans with 46 by just fusing 12 and 13 of the other great apes. And yet, the amount of push back by creationists is astounding given the overwhelming evidence for HC2 fusion. Probably for the same reason with the anonymous attributions of the Gospels. They can not afford even a crack of light to shine onto their views that the Bible could be in error. Not a single domino must fall. "The original texts of the gospels had existed for about a hundred years with no names. The Church Fathers in the 2nd century CE assigned the names; none of the writers signed their work. The gospels are not eyewitness accounts; none of the gospel writers ever directly claimed to be an eyewitness. One exception is Luke, who says he interviewed witnesses but gives no further details. In their attempt to provide backgrounds for the writers the Church Fathers tried to align them as close to the original circle of Jesus as possible. They were also aware of a fundamental problem; the first disciples of Jesus were fishermen from Galilee who could not read and write the level of Greek in these documents." From: The Gospels. Good encyclopedia summary of issues surrounding the writing and compilation of the gospels. They are not independent; The Synoptic Problem.  

* Pseudepigraphical Books circulating at the same time.

The Epistle of the Apostles:

The Gospel According to the Hebrews

The Gospel of the Ebionites

The Gospel of the Egyptians

The Gospel of Mary

The Gospel of the Nazarenes

The Gospel of Nicodemus

The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Philip

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Marcion

The Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Barnabas The Infancy Gospels