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::::Seventh, this is the true evangelical response to Ehrman, not from biased hacks who can't tell the truth: {{youtube|TsT9QElrijI|Responding to Bible Critic Bart Ehrman by Steve Gregg}}. Gregg says that most of the points from Ehrman's early bestsellers were known and broadly accepted by scholars since before Ehrman was born. And were known to all evangelicals who did not cover their ears singing {{tq|La, la, la, can't hear you.}} Conclusion: for educated evangelicals therein is nothing particularly new or disturbing.
::::Seventh, this is the true evangelical response to Ehrman, not from biased hacks who can't tell the truth: {{youtube|TsT9QElrijI|Responding to Bible Critic Bart Ehrman by Steve Gregg}}. Gregg says that most of the points from Ehrman's early bestsellers were known and broadly accepted by scholars since before Ehrman was born. And were known to all evangelicals who did not cover their ears singing {{tq|La, la, la, can't hear you.}} Conclusion: for educated evangelicals therein is nothing particularly new or disturbing.
::::Gregg says that Ehrman's acerbic fight against fundamentalist biblical inerrantism does not concern evangelicals, since for many decades evangelicals no longer believe in fundamentalist biblical inerrantism. According to Gregg, Ehrman's house is built on sand, i.e. upon the superstition of biblical inerrantism. [[User:tgeorgescu|tgeorgescu]] ([[User talk:tgeorgescu|talk]]) 01:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
::::Gregg says that Ehrman's acerbic fight against fundamentalist biblical inerrantism does not concern evangelicals, since for many decades evangelicals no longer believe in fundamentalist biblical inerrantism. According to Gregg, Ehrman's house is built on sand, i.e. upon the superstition of biblical inerrantism. [[User:tgeorgescu|tgeorgescu]] ([[User talk:tgeorgescu|talk]]) 01:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
:::::[[user: tgeorgescu| tgeorgescu]] {{tqq|First, as Ehrman himself admits, there are no unbiased people, those who pretend to be unbiased are self-deluded.}} Let's not just skim over that. It's an important point, an absolutely true one, and if we can all agree on that single truth, then we can move to the next question: what is the best approach to neutralizing those biases? Acknowledging them is an important first step, but it won't move us very far toward neutrality. What will?
:::::Wikipedia's policy is helpful. It is about sources, quality sources ''that include those who disagree with us'', and avoiding sources that are fringe, are dominated by their ideological view to the exclusion of other views, or are polarizing. This is the wiki-way. Let's do that.
:::::{{tqq|Second, the quotations above include conservative scholars, like the Holman bibles.}} I don't think so Tim. First, the Holman Bible is not a good example of conservative "scholarship". It's not a good example of scholarship of any kind. It has all kinds of problems. The Holman Bible translates Micah 5:2 as saying that Christ’s origin is "from antiquity” - that Jesus had a beginning - which is Arianism for Pete's sake. John 1:14, and 3:16 simply leave out all recent discussion over "the only begotten" without even footnoting it. In I Samuel 6:19, the King James says 50,070 people died. Holman says that seventy of the city of 50,000 died. No other translation of the Bible agrees with this! Holman Bibles are not representative of quality conservative scholarship.
:::::As for your only other example of conservative scholarship, who the Hell is Blomberg, and is he actually included in this article? Why? I am guessing he isn't a conservative scholar any more than Holman, but they are out there, (though they are not in this article).
:::::One excellent conservative, an Oxford scholar as well known as Ehrman, is N. T. Wright. Wright would certainly question this claim of scholarly consensus as an overreach, and interestingly enough, as Wright understands Ehrman's view, he says Ehrman would as well. The truth is, most modern scholars have never asked the question of Gospel reliability, haven't studied it, and would never make such broad claims about it in such a wholesale manner. Contemporary scholars tend to study individual texts, or even individual words, and more focused, narrower concepts. How can there be a consensus on something they don't study?
:::::All the rest of this response is on Ehrman. I am not attacking or defending Bart Ehrman's scholarship. My comment on him being the standard used to determine who should be included was about how polarizing he is. Your extensive response here proves that point. Look at all the time and space spent defending him.
:::::It seems odd to me how quickly this defense of Ehrman moved into a condemnation of inerrancy. Inerrancy is a strawman. I don't believe in inerrancy, it's a twentieth century invention; the majority of scholars don't believe in inerrancy - conservative or evangelical or otherwise - and as far as I know, it is not broadly supported by anyone but a few fringe fundamentalists. So why bring it into this discussion and attempt to drown me in it? Because it's polarizing - like Ehrman. Instead of allowing ourselves to be pushed further apart by this non-issue, let's remember there are more choices available to us than the all-or-nothingism of unreliability or inerrancy. Those are not the only two options. The middle is statistically where "most scholars" actually land. The sentence in question should be removed. [[User:Jenhawk777|Jenhawk777]] ([[User talk:Jenhawk777|talk]]) 05:27, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Revision as of 05:27, 3 September 2023

rewrite of authorship section

The authorship section was devoted almost entirely to the traditional view with hardly anything on scholarly views. I added a section for scholarly views, I revised the Christian-views section, and I added a very brief section on Muslim views (since we clearly value religious views as relevant). Here it is.

Christian views
By the second century there was a firm tradition associating each gospel to one of Jesus' apostles. Apostolic connection between the gospels and apostles was noted by numerous early church writers, such as Papias as well as Justin Martyr (c 100-165) who frequently referred to them as the “Memoirs of the Apostles." Justin also reports that these "memoirs" were read out at Sunday services interchangeably with the writings of the Old Testament prophets.[1][2][3]

The Christian authors of antiquity generally associated the gospels as shown on the table.[4]

Gospel Author and apostolic connection
Gospel of Matthew Saint Matthew, a former tax-collector, one of the Twelve Apostles.
Gospel of Mark Saint Mark, a disciple of Simon Peter, one of the Twelve
Gospel of Luke Saint Luke, a disciple of Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles
Gospel of John Saint John, one of the Twelve, referred to in the text as the beloved disciple

Muslim view
Muslims acknowledge Jesus as a prophet who brought a written message to the faithful, but they consider the gospels to be corrupt.

Modern scholarly views
The four canonical gospels are anonymous, with no author identified in the text.[5] Scholars regard the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John[6] not to have been written by their reputed authors. Scholars are divided over whether Luke, a colleague of Paul, authored the Gospel of Luke.

For decades after Jesus' death, his followers spread his message by word of mouth. Eventually they began writing down the words and deeds of Jesus. Most scholars agree the Gospel of Mark was the first canonical gospel written (see Markan priority). It was composed about the time of the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans in the year AD 70. This gospel is well-suited to a Roman audience, and the author may have been from Rome, where there was a large Christian community. The next canonical gospel was Matthew, written for a Jewish audience. The author used Mark for his narrative structure and added substantial teaching material from a now-lost source, known as Q. Matthew was followed closely by Luke, the most literary of the gospels. Like Matthew, Luke basically follows Mark's order of events and incorporates material from Q. Like Acts, the Gospel of Luke emphasizes the universal nature of Jesus' message. Finally, around the year AD 100, the "beloved disciple" or his students composed Gospel of John, possibly in Ephesus. The fourth gospel tells a much different story from that found in the synoptic gospels. The Gospel of John is the only canonical gospel that identifies an author, described only as the "disciple whom Jesus loved." Scholars speculate that he might have been a disciple from Jerusalem. (See also Authorship of the Johannine works.)

References

  1. ^ ”The Canon of the New Testament: its origin, development, and significance”, by Bruce Manning Metzger, pg. 145 etc
  2. ^ Justin Martyr – Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter CIII and Chapter CVI, among others
  3. ^ http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.viii.iv.ciii.html
  4. ^ See the commentary by St. Augustine on hypotyposeis.org; also see the fragments in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.1, 3.39.15, 6.14.1, 6.25.
  5. ^ Mack, Burton L. (1996), "Who wrote the New Testament" the making of the Christian myth" (HarperOne)
  6. ^ "Although ancient traditions attributed to the Apostle John the Fourth Gospel, the Book of Revelation, and the three Epistles of John, modern scholars believe that he wrote none of them." Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible (Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1985) p. 355

ShiningShrine edits

These edits by User:ShiningShrine added info which was redundant with info already there in the lead, primarily based on a questionable source, namely an apologetic website. This is not how we write the WP:LEAD. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 03:54, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redundance is your argument now? Moved into the first section. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:00, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are many more sources if you need them. Just because they are more conservative does not mean they are questionable. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:03, 8 June 2021 (UTC)`[reply]
Then please find them. That is how Wikipedia works. See WP:RS. -Jordgette [talk] 23:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources

@Bobn2:

Some parts of the Christian New Testament are primary sources, but not all. WP:NOR is clear about this: "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. Primary sources may or may not be independent sources. An account of a traffic incident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the event; similarly, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source for the outcome of that experiment. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources"
— User:Doug Weller

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 08:10, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reference problem

This article uses Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels By David Oliver Smith as a source for the statement that The scholarly consensus is that they are the work of unknown Christians and were composed c.68-110 AD. The second reference on that sentence is without value as it says nothing of the kind, but Smith does in fact claim this on the page given. I was surprised to read this statement as I know of no such agreement amongst NT scholars. So I wondered where he got his information from. I want to know. He offers no explanation, no supporting data, nothing at all on how or when such a conclusion on such a controversial topic was reached. His only reference for this statement is to Randel Helms, a well known mythicist with an ideological axe to grind, and his book "Who wrote the Gospels?" which was published by the self-publishing Millennium Press in 1997. Helms has no data either.

I found one review of Smith's book, on page 167 of the journal "Religious Studies Review" at [1] which says Smith is unlikely to convince the jury of NT scholarship that his conclusions are established by even a preponderance of the evidence — to say nothing of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Smith is a retired lawyer, and while this implies there is no actual consensus, it doesn't actually discuss any data either. Smith makes any number of sweeping claims and generalizations which should set off anyone's alarm bells that the author is heavily biased. I am concerned this is not a reliable source, and its claims are not verifiable. Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:00, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I don't hear anything I will remove it. Jenhawk777 (talk) 17:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What exactly do you disagree with? While the references may not be perfect, I think the consensus is pretty much that. The Gospels and Christian Life in History and Practice does clearly reference this chronology, but I can definitely quote Bart Ehrman's A Brief Introduction to the New Testament pp. 51 ff., for example, claiming that "most historians" consider those dates and pp. 62 ff. that "Scholars today, however, find it difficult to accept" the tradition that the current titles confirm authorship and the fact that the texts themselves are anonymous. Qoan (talk) 18:15, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Qoan Hi, thanx so much for responding. I do know there are plenty of quotable scholars like Ehrman who take this position on authorship. My problem is the idea that some agreement by a majority has been reached. I'd like more info on that, because I have seen nothing like that. Here is an article from Oxford Academic that says the topic has not even been studied much. [2] How is it that anyone can claim consensus? Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly, if one is a mainstream Bible scholar, they will likely say that the NT gospels are fundamentally anonymous. If one is an evangelical scholar, they will likely deny the claim of mainstream Bible scholars. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:25, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

E.g. for the Gospel of Mark:

Modern Bible scholars (i.e. most critical scholars) have concluded that the Gospel of Mark was written by an anonymous author rather than by Mark.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] E.g. the author of the Gospel of Mark knew very little about the geography of Palestine (he apparently never visited it),[17][18][19][20][21] "was very far from being a peasant or a fisherman",[17] was unacquainted with Jewish customs (i.e. from Palestine),[20][21] and was probably "a Hellenized Jew who lived outside of Palestine".[22] Mitchell Reddish does concede that the name of the author might have been Mark (making the gospel possibly homonymous), but the identity of this Mark is unknown.[21] Similarly, "Francis Moloney suggests the author was someone named Mark, though maybe not any of the Marks mentioned in the New Testament".[23] The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus takes the same approach: he was named Mark, but scholars are undecided who this Mark was.[20]

The four canonical gospels are anonymous and most researchers agree that none of them was written by eyewitnesses.[24][25][26][27] Some conservative researchers defend their traditional authorship, but for a variety of reasons most scholars have abandoned this theory or support it only tenuously.[28]

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2004). The New Testament. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 58–59. ISBN 0-19-515462-2. Proto-orthodox Christians of the second century, some decades after most of the New Testament books had been written, claimed that their favorite Gospels had been penned by two of Jesus' disciples—Matthew, the tax collector, and John, the beloved disciple—and by two friends of the apostles—Mark, the secretary of Peter, and Luke, the travelling companion of Paul. Scholars today, however, find it difficult to accept this tradition for several reasons.
  2. ^ Holman Reference Staff (2012). Holman Illustrated Bible Handbook. B&H Publishing Group. p. PT344. ISBN 978-1-4336-7833-2. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Most critical scholars deny that Mark was the author or that he wrote on the basis of Peter's recollections
  3. ^ Holman Illustrated Study Bible-HCSB. B&H Publishing Group. 2006. p. 1454. ISBN 978-1-58640-277-8. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Most critical scholars deny that Mark was the author or that he wrote on the basis of Peter's recollections
  4. ^ Easley, Kendell H. (2002). Holman Quicksource Guide to Understanding the Bible: A Book-By-Book Overview. Holman QuickSource. B&H Publishing Group. p. PT233. ISBN 978-1-4336-7134-0. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Most critical scholars deny that Mark was the author or that he wrote on the basis of Peter's recollections
  5. ^ Craig, William Lane; Lüdemann, Gerd; Copan, Paul; Tacelli, Ronald K. (2000). Jesus' Resurrection: Fact Or Figment?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig & Gerd Ludemann (in Dutch). InterVarsity Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-8308-1569-2. Retrieved 13 August 2023. I wanted to use that quotation in order to show that the results of historical scholarship can be made known to the public—especially to believers—only with difficulty. Many Christians feel threatened if they hear that most of what was written in the Bible is (in historical terms) untrue and that none of the four New Testament Gospels was written by the author listed at the top of the text.
  6. ^ Jeon, Jeong Koo; Baugh, Steve (2017). Biblical Theology: Covenants and the Kingdom of God in Redemptive History. Wipf & Stock. p. 181 fn. 10. ISBN 978-1-5326-0580-2. Retrieved 13 August 2023. 10. Just as historical critical scholars deny the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, so they also deny the authorship of the four Gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. [...] But today, these persons are not thought to have been the actual authors.
  7. ^ E. P. Sanders (30 November 1995). The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin Books Limited. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-14-192822-7. We do not know who wrote the gospels. They presently have headings: 'according to Matthew', 'according to Mark', 'according to Luke' and 'according to John'. The Matthew and John who are meant were two of the original disciples of Jesus. Mark was a follower of Paul, and possibly also of Peter; Luke was one of Paul's converts.5 These men – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – really lived, but we do not know that they wrote gospels. Present evidence indicates that the gospels remained untitled until the second half of the second century.
  8. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-19-518249-1. Why then do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the secretary of Peter; and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications,11 and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.
  9. ^ Nickle, Keith Fullerton (January 1, 2001). The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-664-22349-6. We must candidly acknowledge that all three of the Synoptic Gospels are anonymous documents. None of the three gains any importance by association with those traditional figures out of the life of the early church. Neither do they lose anything in importance by being recognized to be anonymous. Throughout this book the traditional names are used to refer to the authors of the first three Gospels, but we shall do so simply as a device of convenience.
  10. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (November 1, 2004). Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine. Oxford University Press, USA. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-0-19-534616-9. We call these books, of course, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And for centuries Christians have believed they were actually written by these people: two of the disciples of Jesus, Matthew the tax collector (see Matt. 9:9) and John, the "beloved disciple" (John 21:24), and two companions of the apostles, Mark, the secretary of Peter, and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul. These are, after all, the names found in the titles of these books. But what most people don't realize is that these titles were added later, by second-century Christians, decades after the books themselves had been written, in order to be able to claim that they were apostolic in origin. Why would later Christians do this? Recall our earlier discussion of the formation of the New Testament canon: only those books that were apostolic could be included. What was one to do with Gospels that were widely read and accepted as authoritative but that in fact were written anonymously, as all four of the New Testament Gospels were? They had to be associated with apostles in order to be included in the canon, and so apostolic names were attached to them.
  11. ^ Bart D. Ehrman (2000:43) The New Testament: a historical introduction to early Christian writings. Oxford University Press.
  12. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2006). The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed. Oxford University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-19-971104-8. Retrieved 13 August 2023. The Gospels of the New Testament are therefore our earliest accounts. These do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, and historians have long recognized that they were produced by second- or third-generation Christians living in different countries than Jesus (and Judas) did, speaking a different language (Greek instead of Aramaic), experiencing different situations, and addressing different audiences.
  13. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (2000). The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-19-512639-6. Retrieved 13 August 2023. We have already learned significant bits of information about these books. They were written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus' death by authors who did not know him, authors living in different countries who were writing at different times to different communities with different problems and concerns. The authors all wrote in Greek and they all used sources for the stories they narrate. Luke explicitly indicates that his sources were both written and oral. These sources appear to have recounted the words and deeds of Jesus that had been circulating among Christian congregations throughout the Mediterranean world. At a later stage we will consider the question of the historical reliability of these stories. Here we are interested in the Gospels as pieces of early Christian literature.
  14. ^ Boring, M. Eugene (2012). An Introduction to the New Testament: History, Literature, Theology. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. p. 522. ISBN 978-0-664-25592-3. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Beginning with Papias in the second century, a tradition developed in various forms that attributed the authorship of the Gospel of Mark to this John Mark, who had been the companion of both Paul and Peter (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15). In all its variations, the ancient tradition makes clear that Mark's Gospel was accepted and valued in the church, not because of its historical accuracy, but because it represented Peter's apostolic authority. The Gospel of Mark itself makes no claim to have been written by an eyewitness and gives no evidence of such authorship. While most critical scholars consider the actual author's name to be unknown, the traditional view that Mark was written in Rome by a companion of Peter is still defended by some scholars who begin with the church tradition cited above and do not find convincing historical evidence to disprove it.6 For convenience, in this book we continue to refer to the Gospels by the names of their traditional authors.
  15. ^ Ray, Ronald R. (2018). Systematics Critical and Constructive 1: Biblical-Interpretive-Theological-Interdisciplinary. Pickwick Publications. p. 123. ISBN 978-1-5326-0016-6. Retrieved 15 August 2023. Authorship by an apostle was so unimportant to early recognition of a writing's authority that names of apostles (Matthew and John) or names of people thought to be associated with apostles (Mark and Luke respectively with Peter and Paul) were only attached to the four Gospels at the beginning of the second century, after those had gained recognition primarily because of churchly appreciation of their content. Having studied the content of John and Matthew, historical-critical scholarship massively doubts that the Hellenistic Fourth Gospel was authored by the apostle John, and widely doubts that the First Gospel was written by the apostle Matthew. That the author of Mark was Peter's associate also seems unlikely, since that Gospel is very Hellenistic and Peter—according to both Acts and Paul—was highly Jewish. Similarly, that the author of Luke was Paul's companion is most improbable, since Acts's accounts concerning Paul conflict much with what Paul's epistles report. Again, had any of the Gospels been written by apostles, why were their names attached so late?125 Nor would apostle associates have been apostles!
  16. ^ Which is not a new claim, see Foster, Douglas A. (2012). The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-4674-2736-4. Retrieved 15 August 2023. During this period Disciples scholars such as Willett began to study at interdenominational theological schools and secular universities, and for the first time the Stone-Campbell Movement engaged historical criticism as the primary perspective on biblical interpretation. While Campbell's "Seven Rules" had advocated a kind of historical criticism, traditional conclusions about authorship, date, and the nature of biblical documents had been assumed, so that no one in the first generation had supposed that the consistent application of Campbell's own principles would lead to results that challenged and overturned these conclusions. By the end of the nineteenth century, those who followed the critical method arrived at a new set of conclusions that made the Bible look entirely different. Among these new conclusions: the Pentateuch was not written by Moses but represented a long development within history, the prophets were not making long-range predictions about Jesus and the church, but spoke to the issues of their own time; the Gospels were not independent 'testimonies" that provided "evidence" for the historical facts about Jesus' life and teaching, but were interdependent (Matthew and Luke used Mark and "Q"); also, the Gospels were not written by apostles and contained several layers of reinterpreted traditions.
  17. ^ a b Leach, Edmund (1990). "Fishing for men on the edge of the wilderness". In Alter, Robert; Kermode, Frank (eds.). The Literary Guide to the Bible. Harvard University Press. p. 590. ISBN 978-0-674-26141-9. 5. The geography of Gospel Palestine, like the geography of Old Testament Palestine, is symbolic rather than actual. It is not clear whether any of the evangelists had ever been there.
  18. ^ Wells, George Albert (2013). Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity. Open Court. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-8126-9867-1. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Mark's knowledge even of Palestine's geography is likewise defective. [...] Kümmel (1975, p. 97) writes of Mark's "numerous geographical errors"
  19. ^ Hengel, Martin (2003). Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-7252-0077-7. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Furthermore, it is more than doubtful whether evangelists like Mark or Luke ever caught sight of a map of Palestine.
  20. ^ a b c Hatina, Thomas R. (2014). "Gospel of Mark". In Evans, Craig A. (ed.). The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. Taylor & Francis. p. 252. ISBN 978-1-317-72224-3. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Like the other synoptics, Mark's Gospel is anonymous. Whether it was originally so is, however, difficult to know. Nevertheless, we can be fairly certain that it was written by someone named Mark. [...] The difficulty is ascertaining the identity of Mark. Scholars debate [...] or another person simply named Mark who was not native to Palestine. Many scholars have opted for the latter option due to the Gospel's lack of understanding of Jewish laws (1:40-45; 2:23-28; 7:1-23), incorrect Palestinian geography (5:1-2, 12-13; 7:31), and concern for Gentiles (7:24-28:10) (e.g. Marcus 1999: 17-21).
  21. ^ a b c Reddish 2011, p. 36: "Evidence in the Gospel itself has led many readers of the Gospel to question the traditional view of authorship. The author of the Gospel does not seem to be too familiar with Palestinian geography. [...] Is it likely that a native of Palestine, as John Mark was, would have made such errors?" [...] Also, certain passages in the Gospel contain erroneous statements about Palestinian or Jewish practices."
  22. ^ Watts Henderson, Suzanne (2018). "The Gospel according to Mark". In Coogan, Michael; Brettler, Marc; Newsom, Carol; Perkins, Pheme (eds.). The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Oxford University Press. p. 1431. ISBN 978-0-19-027605-8. Retrieved 13 August 2023. suggest that the evangelist was a Hellenized Jew who lived outside of Palestine.
  23. ^ Tucker, J. Brian; Kuecker, Aaron (2020). T&T Clark Social Identity Commentary on the New Testament. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-567-66785-4. Retrieved 13 August 2023. Francis Moloney suggests the author was someone named Mark, though maybe not any of the Marks mentioned in the New Testament (Moloney, 11-12).
  24. ^ Millard, Alan (2006). "Authors, Books, and Readers in the Ancient World". In Rogerson, J.W.; Lieu, Judith M. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 558. ISBN 978-0199254255. The historical narratives, the Gospels and Acts, are anonymous, the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being first reported in the mid-second century by Irenaeus
  25. ^ Reddish 2011, pp. 13, 42.
  26. ^ Cousland 2010, p. 1744.
  27. ^ Cousland 2018, p. 1380.
  28. ^ Lindars, Edwards & Court 2000, p. 41.
Hello tgeorgescu, I thought you might show up for this. All of your references reflect your opinion that if one is a mainstream Bible scholar, they will likely say that the NT gospels are fundamentally anonymous. If one is an evangelical scholar, they will likely deny the claim of mainstream Bible scholars. I note that your list of references reflects that paradigm, in that, it excludes all of those you define as "evangelical". Beginning with the difficulty of determining who actually qualifies as "a mainstream Bible scholar", there is the fact that about 40% of material in the field of New Testament studies is published through universities and secular publishing houses, and another 40% comes through seminaries. Since many of those at universities are practicing Christians, and many seminaries are quite liberal, it is not simple or easy to know who might fit in your categories.
I am left with the sense that this is ideological and not factual, and that anyone who does not support Ehrman's view - who is self-identified as biased toward the anti-Christian view - is identified as "evangelical" and therefore seen as justifiably excluded. Except it isn't justifiable. Biased writers should be excluded - I can go with that - but there's the rub, isn't it? Bias exists in both directions, and that doesn't seem to be recognized either by your statement or your list.
What I can deduce of your definition of "mainstream" and "evangelical" - which I am guessing at - assumes "evangelicals" and other conservatives are incapable of overcoming their biases to form unbiased conclusions and doing good scholarship, while also assuming all the other ideologies at work here are fully capable of overcoming theirs. That is a view that is both unfounded in reality and naive - and heavily biased itself.
I think we can all agree it's good to exclude bias and biased writers whenever possible. When that isn't directly possible, it's also good, though a lesser good, to neutralize bias by including both views. It's the wiki-way. I will give, quite willingly, on the exclusion of the fundamentalist fringe as too biased to be included as anything but a minority view - which isn't here btw. (If it were, that would exhibit a genuine commitment to neutrality.) And if your list of references included conservatives as well as liberals, and made an effort to avoid all those pushing an agenda, on either "side", I would also say neutrality has at least been attempted.
But this is the Russian judge at the Olympics consistently giving Russian contestants higher scores by accusing the other participants as just not being as good. It's a circular and biased argument that isn't really an argument. It's a position. And that is not Wikipedia's definition of neutrality anywhere you look. Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:05, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First, as Ehrman himself admits, there are no unbiased people, those who pretend to be unbiased are self-deluded.
Second, the quotations above include conservative scholars, like the Holman bibles. You see, Holman is at odds with "critical scholars", but nevertheless knows what they say.
Third,

Bart, if anything, is academically conservative. Most of his (non-text crit) positions are academic orthodoxy from the 1980s. [...] Virtually all of his positions were mainstream in the 1980s and have a substantial following today.

— BombadilEatsTheRing, Reddit
Fourth,

I get attacked by both sides, rather vigorously, and my personal view of it is that I'm not actually against Christianity at all, I'm against certain forms of fundamentalism and, and, so virtually everything I say in my book are things that Christian scholars of the New Testament readily agree with, it's just that they are not hard-core evangelicals who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. If you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible then I suppose I'd be the enemy, but there are lot of Christian forms of belief that have nothing to do with inerrancy.

— Bart Ehrman, Bart Ehrman vs Tim McGrew - Round 1 at YouTube
Fifth, see also Video on YouTube.
Sixth,

r/Academic8iblical @ Search Reddit

psstein • 16 days ago

Moderator MA I History of Science

I don't know if I'd call Blomberg an outright apologist, though he frequently writes with an apologetic slant or purpose. He strikes me as part of the conservative evangelical scholarly ecosystem that really only talks to itself. Scholars like Blomberg are not publishing in the leading journals or with major presses.

Very broadly speaking, if you're routinely publishing with academic or respected religious publishers (e.g. Eerdmans, Fortress, Eisenbrauns) and have articles appear in mainstream journals (CBQ, JSNT), you're much less likely to be an apologist.

Seventh, this is the true evangelical response to Ehrman, not from biased hacks who can't tell the truth: Responding to Bible Critic Bart Ehrman by Steve Gregg on YouTube. Gregg says that most of the points from Ehrman's early bestsellers were known and broadly accepted by scholars since before Ehrman was born. And were known to all evangelicals who did not cover their ears singing La, la, la, can't hear you. Conclusion: for educated evangelicals therein is nothing particularly new or disturbing.
Gregg says that Ehrman's acerbic fight against fundamentalist biblical inerrantism does not concern evangelicals, since for many decades evangelicals no longer believe in fundamentalist biblical inerrantism. According to Gregg, Ehrman's house is built on sand, i.e. upon the superstition of biblical inerrantism. tgeorgescu (talk) 01:22, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
tgeorgescu First, as Ehrman himself admits, there are no unbiased people, those who pretend to be unbiased are self-deluded. Let's not just skim over that. It's an important point, an absolutely true one, and if we can all agree on that single truth, then we can move to the next question: what is the best approach to neutralizing those biases? Acknowledging them is an important first step, but it won't move us very far toward neutrality. What will?
Wikipedia's policy is helpful. It is about sources, quality sources that include those who disagree with us, and avoiding sources that are fringe, are dominated by their ideological view to the exclusion of other views, or are polarizing. This is the wiki-way. Let's do that.
Second, the quotations above include conservative scholars, like the Holman bibles. I don't think so Tim. First, the Holman Bible is not a good example of conservative "scholarship". It's not a good example of scholarship of any kind. It has all kinds of problems. The Holman Bible translates Micah 5:2 as saying that Christ’s origin is "from antiquity” - that Jesus had a beginning - which is Arianism for Pete's sake. John 1:14, and 3:16 simply leave out all recent discussion over "the only begotten" without even footnoting it. In I Samuel 6:19, the King James says 50,070 people died. Holman says that seventy of the city of 50,000 died. No other translation of the Bible agrees with this! Holman Bibles are not representative of quality conservative scholarship.
As for your only other example of conservative scholarship, who the Hell is Blomberg, and is he actually included in this article? Why? I am guessing he isn't a conservative scholar any more than Holman, but they are out there, (though they are not in this article).
One excellent conservative, an Oxford scholar as well known as Ehrman, is N. T. Wright. Wright would certainly question this claim of scholarly consensus as an overreach, and interestingly enough, as Wright understands Ehrman's view, he says Ehrman would as well. The truth is, most modern scholars have never asked the question of Gospel reliability, haven't studied it, and would never make such broad claims about it in such a wholesale manner. Contemporary scholars tend to study individual texts, or even individual words, and more focused, narrower concepts. How can there be a consensus on something they don't study?
All the rest of this response is on Ehrman. I am not attacking or defending Bart Ehrman's scholarship. My comment on him being the standard used to determine who should be included was about how polarizing he is. Your extensive response here proves that point. Look at all the time and space spent defending him.
It seems odd to me how quickly this defense of Ehrman moved into a condemnation of inerrancy. Inerrancy is a strawman. I don't believe in inerrancy, it's a twentieth century invention; the majority of scholars don't believe in inerrancy - conservative or evangelical or otherwise - and as far as I know, it is not broadly supported by anyone but a few fringe fundamentalists. So why bring it into this discussion and attempt to drown me in it? Because it's polarizing - like Ehrman. Instead of allowing ourselves to be pushed further apart by this non-issue, let's remember there are more choices available to us than the all-or-nothingism of unreliability or inerrancy. Those are not the only two options. The middle is statistically where "most scholars" actually land. The sentence in question should be removed. Jenhawk777 (talk) 05:27, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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