New Testament

Authorship

The New Testament was written by many different people. The traditional view is that all the books were written by apostles or their followers (e.g. Mark and Luke). Modern scholars now largely discount this assumption aside from seven of Paul's letters. Except for Hebrews, no serious question about the authorship of any of the books was raised in the church before the 18th century, when critical inquiry into the New Testament began. However, it should be noted that scholars such as A. N. Sherwin-White, FF Bruce, John Wenham, Gary Habermas and others argue for a high degree of historical reliability of the key New Testament events or the New Testament as a whole (see: Resurrection of Jesus for details).http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/josh2.html http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocont.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wenhamhttp://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=/articles/historical_apologetics/habermas-nt.html Prominent liberal scholar John A.T. Robinson argued for early dates of the entire New Testament and ascribed many of the key New Testament texts to their traditional authors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robinson_%281919-1983%29

Related Topics:
Apostle - Mark - Luke - 18th century - A. N. Sherwin-White - FF Bruce - John Wenham - Gary Habermas - Resurrection of Jesus - John A.T. Robinson

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Seven of the epistles of Paul are now generally accepted by most modern scholars as authentic; these "undisputed" letters include Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Scholars are divided over the Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians (listed in decreasing order of support). It is mainly evangelical scholars who hold Pauline authorship of the Pastorals (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus). Almost no current mainstream scholar, however, holds that Paul wrote Hebrews. In fact, controversy about the authorship of Hebrews, the only anonymous epistle, goes back to the early Church fathers.

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The exact authorship of most other books has not been agreed upon. The issue is somewhat different for the gospels, because they are all technically anonymous; so the question is whether the traditional attributions (to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are correct. The Johannine writings, particularly the Gospel and the first epistle, have been accepted by many as coming from circles around John the Evangelist; the question there is whether Revelation is ascribed to the circles.

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Of key concern is the role of presuppositions in Biblical scholarship, especially gospel and historical Jesus studies. It is now widely recognized that every individual comes to historical study with their own experiences, religious beliefs, and philosophical assumptions, and that these factors can play a defining role in the final product that any particular scholar produces. In the case of the gospels, modern research has been approached from a number of perspectives: Jewish, feminist, Protestant, Roman Catholic, agnostic, materialist, historical, and social-scientific, to name just a few. A prime example of this diversity of opinion is represented in the numerous, often contradictory, "historical Jesus" books published in the past 25 years (compare, for example, the work of the Jesus Seminar, B. Mack, J. Dominic Crossan with that of John P. Meier, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright). This has often had the effect of creating reconstructions of Jesus in the images of the particular authors, as opposed to narrating who Jesus really was, what he did, and what he taught. Nevertheless, most scholars are of the opinion that this process of often heated debate has produced viable results.

Related Topics:
Jesus Seminar - James Dunn

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The problems with correctly assigning authorship to ancient works like those in the New Testament can be demonstrated by looking at its four gospels.

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Because of the many similarities between Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they are often referred to as the "Synoptic Gospels" ("seeing-together"). The Gospel of John, in contrast, contains much unique narrative and dialogue and is considered to be different in its emphasis from the other three gospels. The question of how the similarities between the synoptic gospels arose is known as the synoptic problem. How material from each gospel was introduced to other gospels brings up significant problems in assigning authorship. Was each written by one individual, the four simply relaying in their own words the events of Jesus' life they themselves witnessed? Was there a first author and gospel whose work substantially contributed to the later gospels? Was each gospel written over a relatively short or long period of time? Was each gospel written by only one person?

Related Topics:
Synoptic Gospels - Synoptic problem

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The dominant view among critical scholars, the Two-Source Hypothesis, is that both Matthew and Luke drew significantly upon the Gospel of Mark and another common source, known as the "Q Source". from Quelle, the German word for "source". The nature and even existence of Q is speculative. Most Q scholars believe that it was a single written document, while a few contest that "Q" was actually a number of documents or oral traditions. No information about its author, if it existed, can be obtained from the resources currently available, and, indeed, little or any direct biographical information about their authors is assumed to be traceable.

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Modern scholars are also skeptical about authorship claims for non-canonical books, such as the Nag Hammadi corpus discovered in Egypt in 1945. This corpus of fifty-two Coptic books, dated to about 350-400, includes gospels in the names of Thomas, Philip, James, John, and many others. Like almost all ancient works, they represent copies rather than original texts. None of the original texts has been discovered and scholars argue about the dating of the originals. Suggested dates run from as early as 50 or as late as the late second century. See Gospel of Thomas and New Testament Apocrypha.

Related Topics:
Nag Hammadi corpus - 1945 - Gospel of Thomas - New Testament Apocrypha

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