Toto

Please stop repeating this falsehood.

Scholars have no oblication to accept the early church fathers' words as true. And it is clear that the church fathers had a motivation to lie - they were trying to establish their legitimacy in the church hierarchy, so they needed to create a link to the alleged founder of their religion.

Orthodox_Freethinker

That still would not explain why they would favor one Gospel over another. Furthermore, if you are implying that Jesus never existed, that would place you in the lunatic fringe of modern scholarship.
When one church father said something untruthful, another would correct it.
Do we have evidence of such a dispute over the authorship of the Gospels?

Peace.

robto

In fact, scholars DO consider the testimony of the early church fathers on the authorship of the Gospels, and they DID generally accept their words as true - until the evidence became overwhelming that that testimony was incorrect.

1.) None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts. None of them say "then Jesus said to me..." or "we went to Jerusalem..."

2.) Mark was not an eyewitness. Tradition and modern scholarship agree on that.

3.) Luke was not an eye witness. Tradition and modern scholarship agree on that.

4.) Matthew was written based on Mark, not the other way around. It is true that some scholars still argue for Mt's priority, but the large majority accept Markan priority. This is not a presupposition, it is a deduction from the textual evidence. If you haven't studied the evidence and the argument for Markan priority, Orthodox_Freethinker, you should do so so that you know what you are arguing about. If you have studied the evidence, then please explain where you find the argument weak.

5.) John was not written by an eyewitness.
Here the author refers to the beloved disciple as "him", so it is clearly someone other than the author. Also, "we know that his testimony is true" clearly indicates that the author didn't see these things for himself, but is relying on the testimony of the beloved disciple.

Furthermore, the internal textual evidence suggests that the author used at least one written source in composing his gospel. See Robert Fortna's book, The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor.

So we have good reason to doubt that Papias is correct when he says that Matthew wrote his gospel first. Unless, that is, Papias had a different version of Mt, which seems not unlikely, since he adds that "everyone translated it [Mt] as best he could" - it seems Papias already knew of several (contradictory) versions.

It's interesting that Papias doesn't mention John at all. Or Luke.

Toto

Peace or war? I can't tell if you are serious.

We have no evidence of a dispute over the authorship of the gospels - probably because they were completely anonymous until Ireneaos came up with some guesses that tied the gospels to the apostles who knew Jesus. Then everyone else fell in line. But Irenaeos did not know - he had to speculate.

Does this make the authorship certain? uncertain? Do you have a better explanation?

There are scholars who have concluded that Jesus never existed who are not on the lunatic fringe. But that is off topic here.

Amaleq13

I asked before but you did not reply. Can you tell me the age of the oldest manuscript, please?

Could you provide specific examples of this, please?

CJD

I'm not really following this thread, but the title caught my eye: we ought to know that Crossan goes by "Dom" not "John."

Orthodox_Freethinker

Look, that is the appendage of John's Gospel, which does nothing to negate that the Apostle John authored it.

"The appendage's appendage

The chapter is closed by two verses that appear to be an even later addition, and seem to be an attempt to resolve the ambiguity over the prior comment about John and whether he would or wouldn't die, in a manner suitable to the church. The last two verses sit incongruously with the remainder of the chapter and seem to be written from a different point of view - referring to the author of the gospel (whoever it might be) in the 3rd person ("... for we know that what he [referring to the author of the gospel] says is true"). For this reason, the last two verses are known as "The Appendix to the Appendix".

The statement within these two verses that "we know what he says is true" implies either that the writer of the verses is not the writer of the remainder, or that the writer perceives that there will be significant doubt about the authorship of the work (or the chapter), which is in itself an indicator that the work is not written by the claimed author. Those who doubt the authenticity of the Gospel might think that these last verses are an attempt to imply that authorship of the Gospel was by an apostle and eyewitness. This aims to make John's Gospel more important than the synoptic Gospels, of which only the Gospel of Matthew was considered an eyewitness report by the ancients. It also aims to support the Gospel's superiority where it conflicts with the others, thus serving any polemical or apologetic purpose that might have existed for writing the gospel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_21

Peace.

Vorkosigan

I wasn't aware that our choices were restricted to the dichotomy between truth and lie. I thought, as we are looking at humans, that there was a vast range of behaviors that lies between strict adherence to truth and malicious mendacious invention. You know, that the early writers erred, that they didn't know the truth, so they committed pious fraud, that they transmitted hearsay and rumor, etc. Most scholars locate themselves somewhere in there.

Scholars DO consider the testimony of the Church fathers when assessing history. They do not, however, take it at face value, just as they do when assessing other history from antiquity. You appear to be advocating that scholars take such testimony at its face value. That is unscholarly.

Orthodox_Freethinker

When it comes to full manuscripts, and not just fragments, I'd place it in the range of the mid to late second century. But there is no reason to hold a double standard when analyzing historical documents of antiquity. For example, the surviving manuscripts we have of the works of Plato and Aristotle were written hundreds of years after the originals and yet historians generally regard them as reliable. By the same standards applied to any other ancient document, the manuscript evidence for the Gospels is overwhelming.

The example I've given before is whether or not Genesis is literal or allegorical, which has been an ongoing debate from the beginning of the Christian faith.

Peace.

Vorkosigan

That is totally untrue. Scholars well know that interpolations and redactions are common in antiquity, especially in popular items. The Alexander Romance, one of the most famous Greek novels in antiquity, has something two dozen different versions. Aristotle's works of course are known to have interpolations, mistranslations, reconstructed passages, etc.

Here's a discussion of the text of Plato and some of the manuscript issues:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/1997/97.01.07.html

Hope this helps clarify this misconception of yours.

Vorkosigan