Conservative Christian blogger: I’m not that concerned about the traditional names / labels put on the Gospels – but I am concerned if a Gospel writer says that he relied on eye-witness accounts – that I take as sacrosanct. It’s not what label tradition attributes to a Gospel that matters, but what the Gospel itself says. Luke, for example, seems to be saying that he relied on accounts that were handed down to him, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eye-witnesses and servants of the word.” (1:1-2) If the Gospel of Luke says that he relied on first-hand witnesses I believe that against any and every scholar.

And John says more directly that “we beheld his glory” (John 1:14)The writer of John’s Gospel saw the glory of Jesus Christ with his own eyes.

And once again, Gary, I reject the background assumption, the authority of anyone who sets themselves up as a “scholar”, because there is no such office in the New Testament. So while one could quote one scholar after another, their witness would matter nothing to me. They could even be evangelical scholars and I would not count their opinion as any more worthy than that of a Christian weaver, cobbler, miner or road-sweeper. The idea that there are “experts” in the church to whom we should defer in spiritual or biblical matters is unknown to NT Christianity. We are so used to the idea of “experts” and “scholars” in every field of secular endeavour that we naturally transport the idea into Christianity, without a second thought, but there is no NT warrant for it.

I would rather travel a thousand miles to listen to an unlettered Christian cobbler.

Gary: It is true that the author of Luke claims that the information he received was handed down from eyewitnesses, but notice that he does not say that he obtained his information from eyewitnesses themselves. That is crucial. If Luke had said, “the Apostle John, son of Zebedee, told me that such and such an event happened” that would be good evidence. But nowhere in the Gospel of Luke (or in Acts) does the author say that. So the question is: how many times was the information “handed down” before it got to the author of Luke?? Isn’t it possible that Luke may have sincerely believed that a particular story about Jesus came from eyewitnesses, when in reality, it was highly embellished or even pure fiction??

Even Richard Bauckham, probably the preeminent evangelical Christian NT scholar of our day, does not believe that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel of John, but some other man named John who was a relative of the chief priest. If evangelical scholars can’t even agree on the identity of the eyewitness authors of the Gospels, how good is the evidence for this claim?

Once again, I would point out, Roy, that the authorship of the Gospels is not a theological question. It is no more theological than the authorship of any other ancient text. Besides, no where in the Gospels do any of the authors explicitly identify themselves. So to say that one does not believe in the traditional authorship of the Gospels is no more “heresy” than to say that one does not believe the Church tradition that the body of the mother of Jesus was assumed into heaven (the Assumption of Mary). These are simply traditions of the Church. Why do Protestants reject some (catholic) Church traditions as human inventions but hold up others as if they are inspired doctrine?

The non-eyewitness authorship of the Gospels is not evidence against the bodily resurrection of Jesus. This event still could have happened. Supernatural events, by definition, defy material evidence. No evidence is needed for belief in the resurrection, just faith (hoping in that which is unseen, as the author of Hebrews clearly states). It would be more honest, in my opinion, if Christian apologists would admit that the material evidence for this event is poor, and emphasize more the faith aspect of this belief.

End of post.