Imagine it is 1942 and the Second World War is raging. You are living in South Africa, thousands of kilometres away from the front and you hear news of the events taking place there.
There is no television, no social media or YouTube with which to see what is happening. All you have, are the reports of ordinary people about those events.
Years later you walk into a bar and at different times in the night you speak to three different people. The first person you speak to was actually in Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp. He saw firsthand the terrible suffering people went through. The second person was a reporter who had interviewed several escapees from various concentration camps. He had carefully and meticulously written down eyewitness accounts and all the facts regarding the events.
The third person was a sailor who had heard several stories from third and even fourth hand sources. None of the people he spoke to had actually been in one of the concentration camps.
Which of these three people do you think will supply you with the most reliable version of the events surrounding the Holocaust? Most of us would agree that the eyewitness and the reporter make pretty good sources, but the same cannot be said about the sailor.
What about the New Testament?
The same holds true for the New Testament. The Christians who were involved in the canonisation (the forming) of the New Testament saw the same value in rather having eyewitness accounts, or carefully researched reports based on eyewitness, included in the New Testament. Second and third hand information might not have been as reliable. That is why when we look at the New Testament and specifically the first four books (often referred to as the canonical gospels), it is important to know who the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are.
If you do a search on Wikipedia on any of these four gospels of the New Testament, you might be shocked to find that the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are claimed to be unknown. For some this might cast doubt on the authenticity of these gospels but on closer investigation we find that there is no need for concern. Traditionally the church has ascribed authorship of the four canonical gospels to Matthew the disciple, John Mark the companion and scribe of Peter, Luke the friend of the apostle Paul and finally John the disciple and best friend of Jesus. The various books have been dated as follows: *Matthew AD 80-90, Mark AD 70, Luke AD 80-90 and John AD 90-100. There are some scholars who have cited earlier dates, but by and large most are comfortable with the dates listed above.
Although these four gospels are strictly speaking anonymous (none of the authors refer to themselves by name), there are a number of reasons why we can be confident that their authors were indeed Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Reasons to believe the accuracy of the tradition
1) The Gospels were written relatively close to the actual events
As opposed to the vast majority of ancient literature, the gospels were written relatively early after the events. Most historians date Jesus death between AD 30 and AD 36. With the Gospel of Mark (the earliest of the gospels) dated at around AD 70, it leaves about 34 years between the events happening and the information being written down. In todays terms this seems like an enormous amount of time. But the earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after his death in 323 BC. Historians believe both these biographies to be credible, so by comparison, the gospels were written far closer to the events. These facts have a direct influence on the authenticity of the authors. If the gospel accounts were dated 400 years after the events, it would be impossible for Matthew, Mark, Luke or John to have written the books since they were all supposed to have been contemporaries of Jesus.
2) No known competitors for these gospels
The early dates for these gospels mean that there were still people alive to dispute the authorship had it been found to have been false. When people argue that we cannot trust that the authors were the ones we know, just remember that there are no known competitors for these gospels. Absence of evidence contradicting the Gospels does not prove that the authors were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but it does bolster the argument for the authors.
3) Early sources that confirm authorship
Furthermore we have relatively early sources that affirm the authenticity of these books. In AD 125 Papias, an early church father who knew the apostle John, affirmed that Mark carefully wrote down Peters eyewitness observations and that he made no mistake and did not include any false statements. He also affirmed that Matthew preserved the teachings of Jesus.
In AD 180 Irenaeus, another church father and the bishop of Lyon, wrote the following: Matthew published his own gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed down to us in writing the substance of Peters preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his gospel while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.
Conclusion
As we can see from the information above, there is a significant amount of evidence that supports the traditional view that the Canonical Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This article is by no means an exhaustive treatment of the subject and is really only the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of books that deal with these and other issues regarding the authenticity of the Bible in more detail. Books such as Taking a stand for the Bible by John Ankerburg and Dillon Burroughs, The Case for Christmas by Lee Strobel or The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Bloomberg will shed more light on the subject. What is comforting though, is that we can take solace in the fact that we do not have to employ what some call blind faith when it comes to the Bible and Christianity. Christianity has abundant sources of historical evidence that supports (not replaces) the faith that we have in Christ.
References:
*Strobel, Lee (2009-07-27). The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger (p. 18-31). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.