Anonymous Gospels
The first and perhaps biggest problem for the theory of the anonymous Gospels is this: no anonymous copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John have ever been found. They do not exist. As far as we know, they never have.
Instead, as New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole has demonstrated, the ancient manuscripts are unanimous in attributing these books to the apostles and their companions. Consider, for example, the following chart of the titles in the earliest Greek manuscripts of each of the Gospels.1
| Gospel Title | Earliest Greek Manuscript | Date2 |
|---|---|---|
| Gospel according to Matthew | Papyrus 4 | 2nd century |
| Gospel according to Matthew | Papyrus 62 | 2nd century |
| According to Matthew | Codex Sinaiticus | 4th century |
| According to Matthew | Codex Vaticanus | 4th century |
| [Go]spel according to Mat[th]e[w] | Codex Washingtonianus | 4th-5th century |
| Gospel according to Matthew | Codex Alexandrinus | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Matthew [End] | Codex Bezae | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Matthew | Codex Ephraemi | 5th century |
| According to Mark | Codex Sinaiticus | 4th century |
| According to Mark | Codex Vaticanus | 4th century |
| [Gosp]el according to Mark | Codex Washingtonianus | 4th-5th century |
| Gospel according to Mark | Codex Alexandrinus | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Mar[k] [End] | Codex Ephraemi | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Mark | Codex Bezae | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Luke | Papyrus 75 | 2nd-3rd century |
| According to Luke | Codex Sinaiticus | 4th century |
| According to Luke | Codex Vaticanus | 4th century |
| Gospel according to Luke | Codex Washingtonianus | 4th-5th century |
| Gospel according to Luke | Codex Alexandrinus | 5th century |
| Gospel according to Luke | Codex Bezae | 5th century |
| Gospel according to [J]ohn | Papyrus 66 | late 2nd century |
| Gospel according to John | Papyrus 75 | 2nd-3rd century |
| According to John | Manuscript GA 01 - CSNTM | 4th century |
| According to John | Codex Vaticanus | 4th century |
| According to John [End] | Codex Washingtonianus | 4th-5th century |
| Gospel according to John [End] | Codex Alexandrinus | 5th century |
| Gospel according to John | Codex Bezae | 5th century |
As far as we know, for almost four hundred years after the lifetime of Jesus, no one—orthodox or heretic, pagan or Christian—seems to have raised any serious doubts about who wrote the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The Early Church Fathers on the Gospels
Footnotes
See Simon J. Gathercole, “The Titles of the Gospels in the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 104 (2013): 33–76. ↩︎
For a discussion of the dates of the manuscripts, see Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 52–94. See also D. C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). ↩︎