Anonymous Gospels?

[Crusader]

Just wondering if anyone else feels that listing the 4 Gospels as Anonymous shows a bias against properly identifying them as great non-fiction literature?

[MonicaGabriella]

I open Anonymous in author index just a few moments before, and I found that Gospels are written under the author of anonymous, and I wanted to say to you that I couldn't agree more...
Why not list the four Gospel Writers in the author index?
It is an outrage to see the Gospels being listed in Anonymous along with Arabian Nights as though It is a common fiction... And it is an insult to the work of Holy Spirit, without whose guidance those Gospel Writers could not write those Gospels...

[ranzy]

I don't think it is an insult. But since the 4 gospels are not anonymous maybe they could have put them under their author's name.

[B-Mental]

I think its hilarious that people are outraged by it.

[khalakh_the_3rd]

Well there is less uncertainty about the authorship of the gospels than there is about Aesop's fables, and they're listed here under 'Aesop'.
But I don't really see why they have the gospels here as a seperate thing anyway, as the whole bible is on another part of this site.

[Logos]

Right now "Anonymous" is the catch-all category for works that are either collections by various authors, or by authors of unknown origin.

Changes are soon going to be made in the Author Index area.

[MichaelThompson]

Just wondering if anyone else feels that listing the 4 Gospels as Anonymous shows a bias against properly identifying them as great non-fiction literature?

The Gospels actually should be labeled as fiction. But to your comment on authorship, there is very good reason why they are labeled as they are.

Firstly, the gospels do not claim to be written by eyewitnesses.

Our titles for these books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were added by second century Christians decades after the books themselves were written, in order to be able to claim that they were apostolic in origin. Why? Because the gospels were originally anonymous and needed to be associated with the apostles in order to be included in the emerging New Testament cannon.

Secondly, nowhere in the gospels are there any first-person narratives, where the authors say something like

“Then Jesus and I went up to Jerusalem, and there we…”

The gospels always talk in the third person, about what other people were doing – even the Gospels of Matthew and John, which allegedly were written by participants in Jesus’ ministry. I only became aware of this obvious fact recently, and it is a powerful argument against the gospels being eyewitness testimony. This observation requires no knowledge of NT scholarship just common sense!

Thirdly, as Professor Bart D.Ehrman recently observed:

‘The titles are obviously not original parts of the books. Whoever called the first Gospel “the Gospel of Matthew” was someone other than the author, someone who is telling us who, in his opinion, wrote the book. If the author was giving his book a title, he would not have said who the book was “according to”; he would have called it something like “the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” ‘

Other observations include the fact that the gospels are written in Greek. Why is this significant? The authors were clearly highly literate writers in contrast to unschooled Galilean peasants . Moreover, unlike the Greek gospels, the language of Jesus and his disciples was Aramaic.

In closing I would simply like to say, that in keeping with New Testament tradition, I too have chosen to flagrantly copy other peoples work. But unlike the Bible I will say where I stole my writings from: http://paulawilliams.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/the-new-testament-gospels-are-they-eyewitness-testimony/ :)