conkermaniac

Many regulars on this forum believe that the four gospels were not written by men who bear those names. Why then were the titled as such? Understandably, Matthew and John were disciples, and perhaps the authors were trying to cash in by name recognition, a technique employed by marketers today. But what about Mark and Luke? Who exactly were they?

Ice

Luke is believed to be the physician friend of the apostle Paul (Saul). He is also believed to be the author of the book of Acts. Thus Luke is like "Gospel of Paul".

Mark is believed to be a disciple of Peter.

JoyJuice

I'm sure this has been addressed before, but this seems to be the relevant thread that comes up through a search.

This is a question I often thought about, why Mark and Luke and not any of the more prominent disciples? Any others have any thoughts?

Casper

I'd like to back up a half step, and ask "what or who made Paul an Apostle?"

And where does Paul fit on the timeline of Apostolic mention? ie: "The evolution of the 12?"

Magdlyn

His own word. He was made an apostle through direct revelation of Christ in him.

They fit him in, in Acts of the Apostles. They co-ordinate his viewpoints with Peter's in that fictional gloss.

Boro Nut

It's stating the obvious as far as I can see. As with the disciples, if they really were contemporary Jewish men they would have Jewish names like Aaron, Mossher, Uri, Yittshack etc, certainly not Luke, Fred, Pete, Jimmy and so forth. The English didn't arrive until decades later and they didn't stop long, someone else had already trashed the place. They would hardly take centre stage in the most famous novel set in the area.

Boro Nut

Chris Weimer

both acts and luke contain the introduction to theophilus - thus that is why luke is attributed to it.

mark was the founder of the coptic church in Egypt, so he does have prominence.

CX

All we really have is speculation. I would hypothesize that the gospel of mark was already well established in its community and that long before the tradition regarding who its author was, a name was already attributed. Then it becomes a matter of finding a prominent personage with whom to associate that name.

Toto

I don't think that the introduction was what did it. No one knows who Theophilus was, or what connection he might have had to Luke, even if he was a real person and not part of the novelization.

AFAIK the first person to attribute the 3rd gospel to Luke was Irenaeus, based on the "we" passages in Acts. It appeared there that Acts might have been written by a companion of Paul's on the voyages described there; the physician Luke was chosen from Paul's letters as having probably been around during those voyages; and the 3rd gospel appeared to have been written by the same person as Acts.

As for Matthew and Mark, I think that those names were gleaned from Papias, who mentions writings from Mark and Matthew. But the descriptions that Papias gives do not match what we have in the first and second gospels, so the attribution does not make a lot of sense.

Diogenes the Cynic

Papias claims via Eusebius that Mark was a follower of Peter who wrote down sayings and anecdotes, however was probably just citing a popular tradition which attributed the authorship of Mark to a "John Mark" mentioned in Acts.

Papias also says that the apostle Matthew wrote down a logia (a sayings gospel) in Hebrew and that it had subsequently been translated into Greek.

However, if such a gospel existed (and no gospel has ever been found in either Hebrew or Aramiac) it was not canonical Matthew, which is not a sayings gospel, is an original Koine composition not a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic, and which is dependent on at least two other prior Greek sources (Mark and Q).