The Gospels - Alleged Anonymity

The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.
69, Pt 2, October 2018
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THE ALLEGED ANONYMITY OF THE
CANONICAL GOSPELS
SIMON GATHERCOLE
University of Cambridge
[email protected]
Abstract
The apparent anonymity of the Gospels is a neglected topic in New
Testament studies. The present article offers an investigation of the
theme. Initially, there is a survey of the work that has been done specific-
ally on the subject, as well as how it is treated in Gospels scholarship
more broadly. The main body of the argument is in two parts. First, ano-
nymity cannot be inferred from an absence of authorial self-reference in
the body of the work, and therefore the argument that the Gospels are
anonymous because they do not contain the authors’ names is invalid.
Secondly, and more positively, while the titles contained in the earliest
Gospel manuscripts may well in their present form be secondary, this does
not exclude earlier attributions of authorship made in some other way.
Practical considerations make the presence of author’s names very likely.
Second-century Christian literature is replete with references to Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John as authors of Gospels, and there is never any sense
that the Gospels were anonymous or written by others. The most likely
conclusion to be drawn is that the attributions of authorship are original.
IT has been said by Terry Eagleton that ‘all literary works are an-
onymous, but some are more anonymous than others’.1 The ca-
nonical Gospels are usually classed very much on the ‘more
anonymous’ side, but surprisingly this apparent anonymity of the
Gospels has received relatively little scholarly attention. What lit-
tle discussion there has been has taken place mainly in Germany,
and in those discussions anonymity has often been lumped to-
gether with her bigger sister, pseudonymity. As David Aune has
noted, the topic of the anonymity of biblical books ‘has been al-
most completely neglected’.2
1
T. Eagleton, ‘Unhoused’, London Review of Books 30.10 (22 May 2008),
p. 19.
2
D. E. Aune, ‘Anonymity’, in Aune (ed.), The Westminster Dictionary of
New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Louisville, KY:
Westminster John Knox, 2003), p. 35. I owe this reference to the article of
Baum discussed further below.
# The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please email: [email protected]
doi:10.1093/jts/fly113 Advance Access publication 18 September 2018
448 S I M O N G AT H E R C O L E
This article will begin (§1) with a brief review of scholarship on

the subject over the past half-century, both in specialized studies
and more broadly. From this it can be clearly seen that the great
majority of scholars, including leading figures in current Gospels
research such as Michael Wolter and Francis Watson, hold to a
view of the Gospels as anonymous. It is the intention of the pre-
sent article to take issue with this position. The case against the
majority proceeds with negative and positive arguments. The
negative argument (§2) consists in an assessment of the signifi-
cance of there being no author mentioned within the body of the
work, concluding that it is of no significance at all as evidence for
anonymity. The more constructive argument (§3) explains how
even though the full εὐαγγέλιον κατά . . . titles may be later, this
does not permit the conclusion of anonymity because there is con-
siderable positive evidence for the antiquity, even the originality,
of the names. The aim of the article is hence to show that the
standard reasons for considering the Gospels to be anonymous
cannot support the claim that they are, and to contend instead
that the most likely conclusion from the evidence is that the attri-
butions are original. The aim here is not to say that Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels, still less to argue for a
fourfold Gospel canon. Nor is the argument concerned with the
form or antiquity of the εὐαγγέλιον κατά titles in toto. The point is
to argue, in part drawing on evidence already adduced by others,
but with new arguments and new testimonia, that as far back as
we can go, and probably from the beginning, these were the
names attached to the Gospels.
I. THE ANONYMITY OF THE GOSPELS IN CURRENT GOSPELS

SCHOLARSHIP
1. Specialized Studies
One of the most important articles to spark off interest in the
subject is that of Kurt Aland, in an essay covering both anonym-
ity and pseudonymity.3 Aland takes it as read that these two topics
3
K. Aland, ‘The Problem of Anonymity and Pseudonymity in Christian
Literature of the First Two Centuries’, JTS 12 (1961), pp. 39–49, reprinted in
Aland, The Authority and Integrity of the New Testament (London: SPCK,
1965), pp. 1–13. German version: ‘Das Problem der Anonymit€at und
Pseudonymit€at in der christlichen Literatur der ersten beiden Jahrhunderte’, in
€
Aland, Studien zur Uberlieferung des Neuen Testaments und seines Textes (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1967), pp. 24–34. Page references in the text henceforth are from
the JTS publication.
ANONYMITY OF THE CANONICAL GOSPELS 449
need to be considered together (p. 40). He includes in the cat-

egory of the ‘anonymous writings’ of the New Testament
Hebrews, 1 John and the Gospels (p. 41): ‘In my opinion it is be-
yond doubt that all the gospels were published anonymously. Our
present opinion about their authors dates from information which
derives from the time of Papias or later’ (p. 42).4 As one might ex-
pect from Aland, he makes reference here to some of the manu-
script evidence. The reason he offers for the anonymity of the
Gospel writers lies in the fact that the authors regard themselves
as mere quills of the Holy Spirit. When Luke wrote, for example,
his Gospel ‘just passed through him as a person . . . He was but
the pen moved by the Spirit’. We would need an explanation if
the author had provided his name (p. 45). The written Gospels,
Aland avers, are simply the transposition of spirit-inspired oral
discourse into writing. The shift towards named authors (like
Justin) of Christian works takes place in the second century, when
prophetic inspiration (along with expectation of the parousia)
wanes (p. 47).
A second article by Aland repeats many of the concerns of the
former piece.5 These include the needs to treat the two topics to-
gether, to take a broader view encompassing Christian literature
of the first two centuries, and to treat Christian literature as dis-
tinctive—not out of a Christian exceptionalism per se, but because
of the special factors of the prophetic spirit and the delay of the
parousia, which Aland sees as having a particular impact on
authorship. Aland begins by noting that anonymity has attracted
much less attention than pseudonymity (p. 122). Overall, not a
great deal is added for our purposes: only one paragraph deals
with the anonymous literature of the New Testament, and that is
taken up with the epistle to the Hebrews.
Partly in response to Aland’s former piece, an article by Horst
Balz also provides a treatment of the two topics.6 Balz also consid-
ers that they ought to be treated together because
‘Pseudepigraphie ist . . . als Extremfall der Anonymit€at zu werten’
4
Aland considers it unclear, however, whether John’s Gospel is really an-
onymous or pseudonymous (p. 41).
5
K. Aland, ‘Noch einmal: Das Problem der Anonymit€at und
Pseudonymit€at in der christlichen Literatur der ersten beiden Jahrhunderte’, in
E. Dassmann and K. S. Frank (eds.), Pietas: Festschrift f€ ur Bernhard K€otting
(M€unster: Aschendorff, 1980), pp. 121–39.
6
H. Balz, ‘Anonymit€at und Pseudepigraphie im Urchristentum:
€
Uberlegungen zum literarischen und theologischen Problem der urchristlichen
und gemeinantiken Pseudepigraphie’, ZThK 66 (1969), pp. 403–36.
(p. 434; cf. 406). The article is more wide-ranging than Aland’s

focus on Christian literature of the first two centuries, but on the
other hand, it is taken up with pseudonymity to a much greater
extent than with anonymity. In the eight-page treatment of the
pagan context only the last sentence really discusses anonymity, al-
though Balz does cover instances where originally anonymous
material becomes pseudepigraphic, such as the works attributed
to Homer and Aesop (pp. 408–16). These examples, in his view,
provide an analogy or a background to what happened with the
Gospels (p. 417). When it comes to explaining anonymity in early
Christian literature, Balz, in contrast to Aland, focuses not so
much on the inspired process of composition, but on the fact the
author is only passing on traditional material, and so can—indeed
must—remain anonymous (pp. 433–4). The discussion of the
Gospels runs to just over one page, and stresses that the authors
are focused simply on reworking tradition, with their products
entirely marked in Balz’s view by their function of presenting in a
stable form the gospel as it was preached in their particular com-
munities (pp. 428–9). These two factors—the author’s modest
role as a redactor, and the work’s close connection to its commu-
nity—rule out for Balz the possibility of the author including his
name (p. 429).
The most important treatment of the subject, and the first to
treat anonymity as a separate topic in its own right, was an article
by Michael Wolter in 1988.7 Wolter agrees with the previous
authors on the fact of the Gospels’ anonymity. The Gospels, along
with Acts (which forms, with Luke, a single Doppelwerk),
Hebrews, and 1 John, are works ‘die urspr€ € berhaupt kei-
unglich u
nen Verfassernamen genannt haben und darum als anonym zu
bezeichnen sind’ (p. 1). The idea that the titles are secondary
‘steht heute ausser Frage’ (p. 4). According to Wolter, anonymity
differs from pseudonymity in that the latter seeks to establish
continuity with apostolic tradition, while the anonymous litera-
ture of the New Testament seeks to ground Christ as the sole au-
thority (p. 6). Wolter offers a sociological context for this
contrast: the pseudepigraphical writings of the New Testament
assume a settled Christian identity in need of preservation, while
the anonymous works feel the need to provide a legitimation of
Christian identity, especially in relation to Judaism. John’s
7
M. Wolter, ‘Die anonymen Schriften des Neuen Testaments:
Ann€aherungsversuch an ein literarisches Ph€anomen’, ZNW 79 (1988), pp. 1–
16. Wolter criticizes Aland’s lumping of the two topics together (p. 3).
Gospel, for example, is an instance of an (originally) anonymous

work in which Jesus rather than the author of the Gospel is the
exclusive guarantor of Christian identity. (John 21, however, is a
later pseudonymizing addition.) In Mark, too, only Jesus author-
izes the Gospel and legitimates a Christian identity which extends
beyond Judaism (pp. 11–12). Luke–Acts is a slightly different
case in that Luke 1:1–4 does tie the authority of the work to apos-
tolic tradition, and Acts presents Jesus as the proclaimed rather
than proclaimer; on the other hand, the aim of legitimizing a
Law-free Gospel over against Judaism remains a constant (p. 13).
Notably, Wolter remarks in his Fazit that the anonymity of the
Gospels is not an anonymity in the sense that the particular au-
thor wants to remain unknown: ‘das w€are viel zu modern gedacht’
(p. 15).
A further significant contribution to the discussion stems from
Armin Baum (2008), who brings anonymity further out of the
shadow cast by pseudonymity.8 He talks of ‘the striking fact that
the NT Gospels and Acts do not mention their authors’ names . . .
only the NT letters and the Apocalypse were published under
their authors’ names while the narrative literature of the NT
remained anonymous’, citing at the beginning of his article an as-
sertion about Luke by François Bovon: ‘The absence of the
author’s name in Luke’s prologue remains mysterious to me’ (p.
120). He further notes it as a ‘fact which has not sparked much
interest among New Testament scholars’ that the Gospels ‘were
written and published anonymously’, especially given that they
have prologues (pp. 121, 122). Baum, considering the Gospels
and Acts to be ‘history books’ (so Baum’s title), pays special at-
tention to the fact that in Greco-Roman history writing, ‘the
Greek historian would mention his name and his provenance’ (p.
125). Like the scholars already considered above, then, for Baum
the absence of names is conspicuous. He therefore looks outside
of the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition, and identifies
the absence of titles as a common feature of ancient Near Eastern,
and especially Old Testament, history writing. In the Old
Testament, as in its literary environment, it was the subject mat-
ter which was important, not who wrote it. The same is true of
8
A. D. Baum, ‘The Anonymity of the New Testament History Books: A
Stylistic Device in the Context of Greco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern
Literature’, NovT 50 (2008), pp. 120–42. He deals with pseudonymity in his
monograph Pseudepigraphie und literarische F€
alschung im fr€
uhen Christentum:
Mit ausgew€ €
ahlten Quellentexten samt deutscher Ubersetzung (T€
ubingen:
Mohr, 2001).
the Gospels, where the evangelists ‘regarded themselves as com-

paratively insignificant mediators of a subject matter that
deserved the full attention of the readers’ (p. 142).
There have been a few minor treatments which have not added
significantly to what has been said by the protagonists expounded
above.9 Despite the differences among these studies, some general
points emerge: (i) These scholars highlight the topic as a
neglected one. (ii) Aland and Balz treat anonymity in relation to
pseudonymity, or even within it: certainly the latter dominates. In
Wolter and especially in Baum, however, anonymity comes of age
as a free-standing topic. (iii) All these scholars see the anonymity
of the Gospels not merely as a publishing convention but as a
function of the self-effacing posture of the evangelists. (iv) The
principal reasons adduced for the Gospels’ anonymity are the ob-
vious absences of names within the text, as well as the lateness of
the current titles: this is what they mean when they say that the
Gospels were published anonymously.
2. The Dissenting Few

There have been a few who have expressed scepticism about
this line of scholarship. Kirsopp and Silva Lake, for example, said
of the titles: ‘Why should this testimony not be accepted? No rea-
son has ever been shown, for the view that antiquity tended to an-
onymous books is contrary to evidence, and it is most unlikely
that the second Gospel, for instance, ever circulated without the
name of Mark attached to it.’10 Dibelius and Moles comment that
the dedication to Theophilus in Luke’s Gospel means that ‘the
name of the author could hardly be omitted from the title’, and
Luke’s prologue demands a title with Luke’s name, or else the
first-person references in Luke 1:1–4 ‘would be left hanging’.11
Bauckham’s surgical distinctions between the two Johns attested
in the literature of the second century conclude of John’s Gospel
‘that there is no evidence that the Gospel was ever regarded as
9
See e.g. the interesting discussion of the nature of authorship (especially
as it relates to Acts) in A. J. Droge, ‘Did “Luke” Write Anonymously?
Lingering at the Threshold’, in J. Frey, J. Schr€ oter, and C. K. Rothschild
(eds.), Die Apostelgeschichte im Kontext antiker und fr€ uhchristlicher
Historiographie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 495–518.
10
K. Lake and S. Lake, An Introduction to the New Testament (London:
Christophers, 1948), p. 4.
11
Respectively, M. Dibelius, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (London:
SCM, 1956), p. 148, and J. Moles, ‘Luke’s Preface: The Greek Decree,
Classical Historiography and Christian Redefinitions’, NTS 57 (2011), pp. 461–
82, at 467.
anonymous’;12 indeed, more positively, ‘The fourth gospel was

never anonymous’.13 The most extensive protest against the ano-
nymity theory is found in various studies by Martin Hengel, who
argued that all the Gospels were initially circulated with titles in
the form εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον etc.14 Hengel’s arguments, some
of which we shall revisit in due course, focus mainly on the prac-
tical necessity of the titles, especially in the institutions of the li-
brary, the book-trade, and early Christian worship.
3. Gospels Scholarship at Large

Nevertheless, Gospels scholarship more broadly very much
endorses the picture painted by Aland and the other studies
devoted to anonymity. One scholar states with sovereign
confidence: ‘we know that the original manuscripts of the
Gospels did not have their authors’ names attached to them’.15
More modestly, Mary Ann Tolbert says that the view that the
Gospels were ‘originally anonymous’ is ‘the most probable’,16
and Bock and Wallace say the Gospels ‘almost surely were an-
onymous when penned’.17 After their composition, the four
Gospels were ‘anonym herausgegeben’18 and then ‘anonym
€ berliefert’.19 The reasons for these judgements are the same
u
12
R. J. Bauckham, ‘Papias and Polycrates on the Origin of the Fourth
Gospel’, JTS 44 (1993), pp. 24–69, at 25. This essay is also reprinted, largely
unchanged, in Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative,
History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007),
pp. 33–72. References to the essay henceforth will follow the pagination of the
JTS article.
13
Bauckham, ‘Papias and Polycrates’, p. 65.
14
See M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ
(London: SCM, 2000), p. 50: they were ‘not secondary additions but part of the
Gospels as originally circulated’. That this refers to the individual Gospels (not the
collection) is clear in his statements about Matthew (p. 77; cf. p. 97) and Luke (pp.
102–3). See also the questioning of anonymity in ‘Die Evangelien€ uberschriften’
(orig. 1984), in Hengel, Jesus und die Evangelien: Kleine Schriften V (T€ ubingen:
Mohr, 2007), pp. 526–67, at 542–3, and p. 565 on the origins of the titles at the
point of the final editing and earliest circulation of the Gospels.
15
B. D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 42.
16
M. A. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical
Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), p. 27.
17
D. Bock and D. Wallace, Dethroning Jesus (Nashville, TN: Thomas
Nelson, 2007), p. 127.
18
A. F. J. Klijn, ‘Die Entstehungsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments’,
ANRW II 26.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), pp. 64–97, at 79.
19
W. Reinbold, Der Prozess Jesu (G€ ottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2006), p. 41.
two principal reasons that emerged in our survey of the special-

ist studies. (1) The first is the lack of inclusion of authors’ names
in the Gospels: ‘they themselves do not tell us who their authors
were’.20 Or as some more crudely put it, the Gospels are not
‘signed’.21 (2) Added to this lack of self-reference is a claim
about the εὐαγγέλιον κατά X titles: initially there was what
Watson refers to as ‘the anonymizing tendency of the earliest
tradition’;22 after that, ‘the present titles probably were not
added until sometime in the second century’,23 or even ‘late in
the second century’.24 They were added when the Gospels began
to circulate together and ‘express the traditions that were cur-
rent at that time’.25 Freed rightly assesses the majority view, in-
deed near-consensus, among scholars: ‘Most NT scholars agree
that the gospels are anonymous and that the present titles prob-
ably were not added until sometime in the second century.’26
4. The Approach in this Article

We are therefore left with two seemingly indisputable facts
about the Gospels: (1) ‘they themselves do not tell us who their
authors were’, and (2) ‘the present titles probably were not added
until sometime in the second century’. The first is indisputable,
and although Hengel has made a fascinating case against (2), he
has not really persuaded many others. Rather than disputing these
two facts, then, what I wish to dispute in the rest of this article is
their significance, and to argue that they are actually entirely ir-
relevant to the question of the Gospels’ anonymity.
20
D. Senior, P. J. Achtemeier, and R. J. Karris, Invitation to the Gospels
(New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2002), p. 328. Cf. F. B. Watson, The Fourfold
Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2016), p. 61, on Luke: ‘The third of the ca-
nonical gospels did not begin life as the work of “Luke,” nor does it identify
itself as a “gospel.”. . . he does not give his own name.’
21
G. E. Ladd, New Testament and Criticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1967), p. 128; P. Achtemeier, J. B. Green, and M. M. Thompson, Introducing
the New Testament: Its Literature and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2001), p. 143.
22
F. B. Watson, Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 350.
23
E. D. Freed, The New Testament: A Critical Introduction (Belmont, MA:
Wadsworth, 2000), p. 123.
24
M. E. Boring and F. B. Craddock, The People’s New Testament
Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), p. 284.
25
Boring and Craddock, People’s New Testament Commentary, p. 284.
26
Freed, The New Testament, p. 123.
II. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ABSENCE OF THE AUTHOR’S NAME

The first issue to address, then, is the significance of there
being no named author in the prologue or epilogue to the text
(‘fact 1’ noted just above). Rather than looking at the entirety of
antecedent and contemporaneous literature from the Greco-
Roman world and the Near East, we can narrow the scope by
sketching how names were employed in three of the main candi-
dates in New Testament scholarship for the genre of the Gospels.
Some have claimed that the Gospels are sui generis, but if this is
the case then one cannot have any assumptions one way or the
other. We will explore here the conventions about the presence or
absence of the author’s name in works which can be classified as
technical treatise, history, or biography.
1. Technical Treatise
We can treat this case briefly as it has only been applied to
Luke. Alexander, in her arguments for the prologue of Luke’s
Gospel as a ‘scientific’ (in the sense of wissenschaftlich) preface,
mentions the absence of the name as a standard (non-) feature of
technical handbooks.27 In the appendix to an article on the sub-
ject, she gives in full four examples of scientific prologues: those
to Diocles, Letter to Antigonus (4th c. BCE), Demetrius’s Formae
Epistolicae (1st c. BCE), Hero of Alexandria’s Pneumatica I (1st–
2nd c. CE), and Galen’s De Typis (2nd c. CE).28 Of these authors,
none mentions his own name except Diocles, who begins his trea-
tise with an epistolary address. Absence of the name from such
treatises, then, is unremarkable, and if Luke’s preface belongs in
this tradition, the absence of a name from it should not
arouse comment.
2. History
As we saw in our survey of the specialist studies above, Baum
particularly maintained that histories written in Greek included
their authors’ names, in which case the absence of such names
from the Gospels would be a startling datum. The fountainheads
of Greek history-writing, Hecataeus of Miletus (6th–5th c. BCE),
Herodotus (5th c. BCE), and Thucydides (5th c. BCE) announce
27
L. Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and
Social Context in Luke 1.1–4 & Acts 1.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), pp. 98–9.
28
L. Alexander, ‘Luke’s Preface in the Context of Greek Preface-Writing’,
NovT 28 (1986), pp. 48–74, at 72–3.
themselves as authors in the prefaces to their works.29 Thereafter,

there is a stronger preference among Greek historians for includ-
ing names, than in, say, technical treatises. Baum’s statement that
Greek historians generally did this, however, stands in need of cor-
rection. There are three weaknesses in Baum’s treatment of
Greek and Roman literature that need to be noted.
First, there is a conflation in Baum’s discussion of (a) the inclu-
sion of the name within the work and (b) publication under one’s
own name. Baum’s statement that Jason of Cyrene and Justus of
Tiberias (about whose works we know almost nothing) along with
Eupolemus, Artapanus, and other Jewish historians did not write
their works anonymously is probably true, but confusing follow-
ing a statement about Josephus’ inclusion of his actual name in a
preface which is part of his Jewish War. We do not know if those
other Jewish historians included their names within their works.
The second, more substantive difficulty concerns his assertion:
‘At the beginning or end of his prologue, the Greek historian
would mention his name and his provenance.’30 Leaving aside the
exaggeration about the frequency of provenance, the statement is
also an over-generalization about the presence of the name.31
There are plenty of counter-examples, instances of which are by
no means obscure figures. There is a certain degree of unevenness
in Baum’s account: he remarks that Xenophon (4th c. BCE) used a
pseudonym for the Anabasis, but Xenophon (if indeed he did
publish the Anabasis under another name) did not include this
name as the author within the text, and it should be added that
his other works are unnamed.32 As Pelling remarks: ‘Unlike
Herodotus and Thucydides, Xenophon does not name himself at
the beginning of his text in Hellenica or in Anabasis: might this
suggest a shift in paratextual conventions, with the author’s name
29
Hecataeus, FGrHist 1 F 1; Herodotus, Hist. 1, Preface; Thucydides, Hist.
1.1.1. For later examples with the name included, see D. Fehling, ‘Zur
Funktion und Formgeschichte des Pro€ omiums in der €alteren griechischen
Prosa’, in K. Vourveris and A. Skiadas (eds.), ΔΩΡΗΜΑ: Hans Diller zum 70.
€
Geburtstag. Dauer und Uberleben des antiken Geistes (Athens: Griechische
Humanistische Gesellschaft, 1975), pp. 61–75, at 65; J. Marincola, Authority
and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), pp. 271–5.
30
Baum, ‘The Anonymity of the New Testament History Books’, p. 125.
31
Also regarded too much as the norm in E. Herkommer, Die Topoi in den
Pro€omien der romischen Geschichtswerke (Diss. Tubingen, 1968), pp. 46–52.
32
That Xenophon did publish the Anabasis pseudonymously (a point first
made by Plutarch) is questioned by e.g. M. Flower, Xenophon’s Anabasis, or
The Expedition of Cyrus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 53–4.
now stated along with the title before the text?’33 Later, Baum

notes Josephus’ self-reference in the preface to his Jewish War,
but not the absence of his name from Antiquities of the Jews. Nor
are there prefatory self-references in such notable Greek histori-
ans, roughly contemporaneous with Luke, as Polybius (2nd c.
34
BCE) and Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BCE). To these we can add
Arrian (late 1st–2nd c. CE), though admittedly in his case the ab-
sence is ostentatiously self-effacing.35 Therefore although one
could talk of a possible tendency to include the name as an elem-
ent of ‘the prologue-form in ancient historiography’, the title of
Earl’s article on the subject, he is undoubtedly correct that ‘minor
variations such as the position or even the inclusion of the
author’s name were allowable’.36
Thirdly, although Baum’s treatment of the name appears in a
section on Greco-Roman historiography, he mentions no histories
in Latin, at least of a non-biographical character. Among Roman
historians, one can find major figures failing to include their
names, including Sallust (1st c. BCE),37 Livy (1st c. BCE–1st c. CE),
Tacitus (1st–2nd c. CE), and Florus (1st–2nd c. CE).38 Indeed,
Herkommer notes that this is the norm.39
3. Biography
In some respects biography is a subgenre of historiography, but
it is treated separately here because of the different ways in which
the sphragis may or may not be employed.40 Moreover, it is
33
C. Pelling, ‘Xenophon’s and Caesar’s Third-Person Narratives—or Are
They?’, in A. Marmodoro and J. Hill, eds. The Author’s Voice in Classical and
Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 39–73, at 41 n. 8.
34
D. Earl, ‘Prologue-Form in Ancient Historiography’, ANRW I 2 (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1972), pp. 842–56, at 843, notes Diodorus and Polybius. S. A.
Adams, ‘Luke’s Preface and its Relationship to Greek Historiography: A
Response to Loveday Alexander’, JGRChJ 3 (2006), pp. 177–191, at 181, also
notes Dionysius, but see Ant. Rom. 1.8.4.
35
Moles, ‘Luke’s Preface’, p. 467. See further S. Swain, ‘The Hiding
Author: Context and Implication’, in A. Kahane and A. Laird (eds.), A
Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), pp. 55–63, at 56–8.
36
Earl, ‘Prologue-Form in Ancient Historiography’, p. 843.
37
Moles, ‘Luke’s Preface’, p. 467, noting Livy and Sallust.
38
Earl, ‘Prologue Form in Ancient Historiography’, p. 843.
39
Herkommer, Topoi in den Pro€omien, 48–9 notes that unlike some Greek
historians, Roman historians did not usually include their names in their
works. Similarly, Alexander, Preface to Luke’s Gospel, p. 27.
40
In Classical scholarship, the author’s reference to his name in the text is
often called, following Hesiod, the σφράγις, or ‘seal’. The classic study is W.
probably true that the most popular view of the Gospels’ genre

(though not a consensus position) is that they most closely ap-
proximate to bioi. In this connection it is important to note that
Philo omits his name from his biographically oriented works on
Abraham, Joseph, and Moses. Josephus’ autobiography does not
contain a preface mentioning the subject’s name, so if absence of
such a self-reference were a criterion for anonymity we would be
left with the absurd result that Josephus’ Vita was anonymous.
Among well-known biographers Plutarch (1st–2nd c. CE) makes
no mention of his name in his Parallel Lives. Of the biographical
writings of Lucian (2nd c. CE), his Passing of Peregrinus has his
name, but as part of an epistolary prescript (‘Lucian to Cronus,
with best wishes’); otherwise, Alexander the False Prophet, the
Toxaris, and the biography of Demonax have no mentions of
Lucian’s name in a preface. In the Alexander, Lucian’s name
appears towards the end merely because he is a participant in the
drama (Alex. 55), and similarly Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus (3rd c.
CE) only features its author when Porphyry’s relationship with his
subject intrudes into the narrative. Accordingly, his Life of
Pythagoras does not mention Porphyry by name. The Life of
Apollonius by Philostratus (2nd–3rd c. CE) and two works entitled
Lives of the Sophists, one by him and another by Eunapius (4th–
5th c. CE), do not. Similarly, on the Roman side, Nepos (1st c.
BCE) makes no mention of his name in his preface. The Agricola
(late 1st c. CE) does not name Tacitus, although the mention that
the author is the subject’s son-in-law means that the writer’s
identity is not in doubt (Agr. 3). The opening pages of Suetonius’
Lives of the Caesars (2nd c. CE) are lost, and with them any possi-
bility of our knowing whether he mentioned his name.41 Lucian’s
Passing of Peregrinus is one of only two examples of a biographical
work which I have found with a prefatory mention of the author,
and this in a very different form from the self-descriptions of
Herodotus and Thucydides. The other instance is a fictional one,
Kranz, ‘SPHRAGIS: Ichform und Namensiegel als Eingangs- und

Schlußmotiv antiker Dichtung’, Rheinisches Museum f€ ur Philologie NF 104.1
(1961), pp. 3–46. See now I. Peirano, ‘“Sealing” the Book: the Sphragis as
Paratext’, in L. Jansen (ed.), The Roman Paratext (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), pp. 224–42.
41
According to M. Meckler, ‘The Beginning of the “Historia Augusta”’,
Historia 45.3 (1996), pp. 364–75, at 365 n. 5, Suetonius’ work is reported by
John Lydus as having been dedicated to the praetorian prefect Septicius, but
this of course does not necessitate a reference to Suetonius’ own name. The
works of Marius Maximus (2nd–3rd c. CE) are lost in their entirety, although
quotations appear in the Historia Augusta.
in the biography of Aelius in the Historia Augusta. This second

biography in the sequence uniquely (if spuriously) begins: ‘To
Diocletian Augustus, his Aelius Spartianus, greetings’.
4. Assessing the Significance of the Absence of the Name

This article is not the place for arguing a particular case for the
genre of the Gospels, hence the spread of treatments here. What
emerges is that the absence of the name from a technical prologue
(if that is what Luke’s is) would be entirely unremarkable. If
belonging to the historiographical genre, the Gospels might be
regarded as rather coy examples, but are certainly within the ac-
ceptable spectrum of possibilities. Finally, if—as most maintain—
they are closest to being bioi, the absence of the evangelists’ names
should excite no comment at all. Such an absence is not remotely
a ‘curious feature’.42
The absence of a name within the body of an ancient work is
entirely understandable because of all the other ways in which the
author might be identified. There were of course numerous ways
of indicating an author’s name in or on a roll or codex, outside of
the work itself. To give a few examples,43 the name might appear
(i) in a superscription or initial title above the main body of the
work proper,44 (ii) in a list of the contents of the work (the capit-
ula list) preceding the main body of the text, (iii) in a running
header, (iv) as an end title, in a subscriptio or longer colophon
appended after the end of the work.45 Other methods included (v)
title pages,46 or (vi) the inscription of the author’s name on the
back of the roll, or (vii) a ‘name tag’ inserted into the roll, in a
42
Pace Droge, ‘Did “Luke” Write Anonymously?’, p. 495. Furthermore,
Mark and Luke do not give any explicit indication of being participants in the
events narrated in their Gospels (cf. Lucian and Porphyry noted above). If the
reader of Matthew’s Gospel knows an attribution to Matthew, then Matt. 10:3
would of course stand out as an authorial self-reference. The identity of the
beloved disciple as the author of the fourth Gospel is only unveiled in the pen-
ultimate verse (John 21:24), although John 19:35 is highly suggestive.
43
For a study of (i) to (iv) with reference to Gospel manuscripts, see S. J.
Gathercole, ‘The Titles of the Gospels in the Earliest New Testament
Manuscripts’, ZNW 104 (2013), pp. 33–76.
44
See e.g., with respect to rolls, M. Caroli, Il titolo iniziale nel rotolo librario
greco-egizio: Con un catalogo delle testimonianze iconografiche greche e di area
vesuviana (Bari: Casanova, 2007).
45
See e.g. F. Schironi, ΤΟ ΜΕΓΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ: Book-ends, End-titles, and
Coronides in Papyri with Hexametric Poetry (Durham, NC: American Society of
Papyrologists, 2010).
46
See S.J. Gathercole, ‘The Earliest Manuscript Title of Matthew’s Gospel
(BnF Suppl. gr. 1120 ii 3 / ?P4)’, NovT 54 (2012), pp. 209–35.
form rather like the modern bookmark (called variously silluboi or

sittuboi).47 Some of these seem intuitively improbable, only com-
ing in later in the transmission of the Gospels (such as ii) along
with (iii) and (v), which are more allied to the codex form. Moles
seems to suggest the last option (vii), i.e. a sittubos: ‘his [sc.
Luke’s] name must have been inscribed on the titulus attached to
the physical book’.48 We do not of course know if or how any of
these devices were used in the first copies of the Gospels, but the
point here is merely to emphasize the irrelevance of the fact that
the author’s names are absent from the prefaces in the Gospels.
As Herkommer noted years ago, the introduction of titles and
authors’ names separate from the work itself rendered superfluous
(even if it did not eliminate) the personal self-introduction.49
In overall conclusion to this second part, one can at least say
that it is a category mistake to say that a work is anonymous be-
cause it does not contain within it the name of the author. As
Simon Swain has commented about Greek and Latin literature in
general: ‘It is perfectly normal for literary works to begin without
a reference to their author. The author’s name should already be
known to the reader or hearer from the usual devices.’50
III. WERE THE TITLES OR NAMES LATER ADDITIONS?

If the first item of evidence for the Gospels’ anonymity is insig-
nificant, what then of the second challenging datum: ‘the present
titles probably were not added until sometime in the second cen-
tury’ (the formulation of Freed quoted above, in his representa-
tion of the majority view). This again may well be true. It is not
clear that Mark added ευαγγελιον κατα Μαρκον as a prefix or a suf-
fix to his autographon.51 This observation, however, is also irrele-
vant to the question of whether there was some other indication
of authorship (not in the εὐαγγέλιον κατά X form) in the paratexts
to the Gospel compositions. Irrespective of whether the full title
was absent, the author’s name might in any case have been
appended somehow.
47
T. Dorandi, ‘Silluboi’, Scrittura e civilt
a 8 (1984), pp. 185–99.
48
Moles, ‘Luke’s Preface’, p. 467.
49
Herkommer, Topoi in den Pro€omien, p. 48. See also the statement by
Pelling in n. 33 above.
50
Swain, ‘The Hiding Author’, p. 55.
51
In addition to the attributions of authorial names to the Gospels, the title
εὐαγγέλιον may well also have been original to the Gospels. The precise syntac-
tic relation of title and name early on is impossible to know, however, as is the
process by which the εὐαγγέλιον κατά formula emerged.
There are three ways to address this question of whether it was

probable that there were indications of authorship from the be-
ginning, namely (§3.1) by arguments from practical considera-
tions, and (§3.2) by the evidence from the earliest period for
names being assigned to Gospels. A final section (§3.3) will offer
some further corroborating evidence.
1. Practical Considerations
We can return to Martin Hengel’s three suggested settings
requiring titles mentioned earlier. In two cases, namely the im-
portance of titles for (i) the book trade and (ii) libraries, it is hard
to see the significance for the period at the beginning (when the
Gospels were first distributed) with which we are concerned here.
It is not until the second century that appeal is made to the public
availability of Christian books (although it is quite early in the se-
cond century).52 Similarly, Christian libraries proper probably
began around the same time, although it is likely that some teach-
ers (such as the evangelists) and churches possessed a number of
Christian books, and it is easy to imagine that there they had
means of identifying the different volumes.53 Potentially more
significant is (iii) the setting of Christian worship: Hengel addu-
ces, for example, the comment at the beginning of Melito’s Peri
Pascha that ‘Exodus has been read’ and Luke 4, in which a scroll
identifiable as that of Isaiah is handed to Jesus. Even here, how-
ever, a nameless title ‘Gospel’ would be sufficient as long as only
one Gospel was in use—just as ‘Exodus’ was sufficient.
Perhaps more important is the common-sense speculation that
when Gospels left their original contexts and were read elsewhere,
it is hard to imagine at least some hearers not thinking ‘Says
who?’ Hengel’s point about anonymous writings potentially invit-
ing suspicion is relevant here. Even before the presence of mul-
tiple Gospels in one congregation, Christians might well have
wanted to know where a εὐαγγέλιον came from. Hence it is not ne-
cessarily the case that names must only have become a concern at
the earliest when two or more Gospels were gathered together, as
Wolter avers.54
52
Aristides, Apol. 15–16, presupposes the availability of Christian writings
to the emperor Hadrian around 125 CE.
53
See further M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM,
1985), pp. 77–8.
54
Wolter, ‘Die anonymen Schriften’, p. 4.
What has not, to my knowledge, been considered in the litera-

ture on this topic is the relevance of this point for the use of Mark
by the authors of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.55 One could
argue that both these later evangelists were struck by the ‘ring of
truth’ in Mark’s Gospel, and so for that reason followed it closely.
More probably (or at least, additionally), Matthew and Luke, for
all their sense that Mark needed adaptation and expansion, fol-
lowed Mark so closely in order and content because they had
received reports about it which inspired some confidence.56
Minimally, this is likely to have been a name. It is one thing to as-
sume that Christians in a first-century congregation would simply
have taken on trust what they heard read out, without asking the
‘Says who?’ question. It is a considerable step beyond that—and
beyond what I at least can believe—to suppose that a professedly
conscientious investigator like Luke would, without any accompa-
nying testimony, follow (by ancient standards, extraordinarily
closely) a naked anonymous account. It seems far more likely that
Luke and Matthew would have received, alongside Mark’s
Gospel, some statement—oral or paratextual—about what and
whose it was. The first readers and audience of Mark’s Gospel
would have known who wrote it, and the distance in time between
Mark and his Synoptic successors was not very great (Mark is
rarely considered to be much more than about 15 years earlier
than Matthew and Luke). As we saw Wolter noting earlier, it is
not the case that the author wished to remain unknown—there is
no evidence for a desire for secrecy.57
We can look at this another way, not from the perspective of
Matthew’s or Luke’s use of Mark, but from the angle of the trans-
portation of Mark’s Gospel. How did Mark reach Matthew and
Luke? Books in the ancient world did not simply float around.
They were copied by trained scribes, and would have been carried
transprovincially by trusted people. For Matthew in (let us say)
Antioch to have got hold of Mark written in (let us say) Rome,
the text must come either directly or indirectly from Rome to
Antioch. It is likely that not only the initial audience and the first
readers of Mark would have known the author’s identity, but also
55
I leave aside here views according to which Luke also used Matthew (or
vice versa).
56
For an illustration of Matthew’s and Luke’s close adherence to Mark’s
order, see Mark 8:27—9:48//Matt. 16:13—18:9//Luke 9:18–50: a helpful table is
presented in M. S. Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze
(London: Continuum, 2001), p. 18.
57
Wolter, ‘Die anonymen Schriften’, p. 15.
the earliest copyists and then carriers. Again, the distance in time

between Mark on the one hand, and Matthew and Luke on the
other was not very great.
2. Early Evidence for Named Evangelists

As far as I am aware, there is not a clear account collecting to-
gether the testimonia to the four evangelists as Gospel-writers in
the first and second centuries. This is a different kind of exercise
from that of offering arguments for a fourfold Gospel canon, be-
cause attestation of content is not sufficient here. Hannah’s dis-
cussion of the fourfold Gospel canon in the Epistula Apostolorum,
for example, is based on the Epistula’s knowledge of some of the
contents of the four canonical Gospels.58 The same applies to
Stanton’s arguments for Justin.59 For the purposes of the argu-
ments here, by contrast, named testimonia are what are needed, al-
though in some cases the arguments rely also on indirect evidence
for a work’s attestation of a named Gospel author. Working back-
wards from the rather arbitrary date of the end of the second cen-
tury, it is potentially misleading to present Irenaeus as a novum,
because he is merely one of several second-century writers who
refer to evangelists by name.60 We will also introduce here two
testimonia not regularly noted in these discussions.
58
D. D. Hannah, ‘The Four-Gospel “Canon” in the Epistula Apostolorum’,
JTS 59 (2008), pp. 598–633.
59
G. N. Stanton, Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), pp. 92–105.
60
Others have proposed some additional works as containing potential testi-
monia. See e.g. M. Hengel, The Johannine Question (London: SCM, 1989), p.
74 and R. J. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids. MI:
Eerdmans, 2006), p. 464, on Ep. Ap. 2.1. I am not quite convinced that this is
sufficient evidence, though it is quite plausible that the author would assume
an identification. Some, e.g. Hengel, Four Gospels, p. 21, have argued that
Gaius and the ‘Alogoi’ in the second century claimed that the fourth Gospel
was not written by John but by Cerinthus. However, both the dating of
Gaius’s floruit to the second century and the authenticity of his attribution of
the Gospel (and not just the Apocalypse) to Cerinthus are questionable: see S.
Manor, Epiphanius’ Alogi and the Johannine Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 2016),
pp. 60–74, on both the date of Gaius’s work (early 3rd c.) and the authenticity
of the Cerinthus attribution to the Gospel. See also as a possibility
Epiphanius’ Asian source, probably from the late second or third century: C.
E. Hill, The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), p. 138. Since these are all potential testimonia to John, which are
plentiful elsewhere, they would not greatly affect the picture in this article.
Tertullian could also have been included, but his works mentioning the evan-
gelists lie just outside the time-frame: John is first mentioned in Praescr. 22.5
(c.203 CE), and they all appear in Marc. 4.2.2 and thereafter. The Adversus
The first two testimonia we can note which might well derive

from the second century are two manuscripts:
i. P66 (c.200/early 3rd c.) attests the title of John’s Gospel,

ευαγγελιον κατα [ι]ωαννην.61
ii. Secondly, a flyleaf amongst the P4 fragments may also date
to the late second century, though it may be from the
third.62 It reads ευαγγελιον κ*ατ*α μαθ’θαιον.
The rest of the evidence comes from second-century literature,

broadly understood to include letters and other documen-
tary sources.
iii. Fairly securely dated right at the end of the second century
(and in one case, into the third) are Clement of Alexandria’s
statements of the evangelists as Gospel writers. The earliest
references to authors of the Gospels are Matthew in
Stromata I (c.198), Mark in Quis dives salvetur (c.203), Luke
in Paedagogus (c.197), and John in Protrepticus (c.195).63
iv. There are several other references specifically to John from
around this time, which identify John as the beloved disciple
who reclined at Jesus’ side (John 13:23–5; 21:20), and there-
fore as the author of the Gospel (21:24; cf. 19:35). One of
these has, to my knowledge, hitherto been missed. In a scene
in the Nag Hammadi Acts of Peter and the Twelve (second
half/end of the 2nd c.64), Jesus gives the apostles a pouch of
medicine, and tells them: ‘Heal all the sick of the city who
Marcionem as we have it in its third edition dates to c.207–8 CE, although its
first edition appeared ‘perhaps as early as 198’, according to Tertullian:
Adversus Marcionem, ed. and trans. E. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972),
p. xviii.
61
Gathercole, ‘The Titles of the Gospels’, pp. 37–8.
62
Ibid., p. 38; see further, Gathercole, ‘Earliest Manuscript Title of
Matthew’s Gospel’, pp. 209–35.
63
Strom. 1.21.147.5; Quis 5.1; Paed. 2.1.15.2; Protr. 4.59.3. Dates in J.
Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974), pp.
16–17. See Hill, Johannine Corpus, pp. 121–2 for possible earlier dates.
64
See P. Nagel, Codex apocryphus gnosticus Novi Testamenti (WUNT 326;
T€ ubingen: Mohr, 2014), p. 348 (mid–late 2nd c.); M. Scopello, ‘Introduction’,
in M. Meyer (ed.), Nag Hammadi Scriptures (New York: HarperOne, 2007), p.
359 (end 2nd/beginning 3rd c.); A. L. Molinari, The Acts of Peter and the
Twelve Apostles (NHC 6.1) (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000),
pp. 201–33 provides a helpful overview of the various scholarly attempts to
date the work, and an argument (which is by no means decisive) for a post-
Decian date.
believe in my name.’ Not being medically trained, the disci-

ples are baffled by this. Peter does not want to ask Jesus how
this could be possible, so he signals to John, who is next to
Jesus, and tells him to ask Jesus about it. John then does so:
ⲁϥⲣ ϩⲟⲧⲉ ⲛϭⲓ ⲡⲉⲧⲣⲟⲥ [ⲉ]ⲟⲩⲁϩⲙⲉϥ ⲉⲣⲟϥ ⲙⲡⲙⲉϩⲥⲉⲡ [ⲥ]ⲛⲁⲩ ⲁϥⲕⲓⲙ ⲉⲡⲏ
ⲉⲧϩⲓⲧⲟⲩⲱϥ ⲉⲧⲉ €ⲓⲱϩⲁⲛⲛⲏⲥ ⲡⲉ ϫⲉ ϣⲁϫⲉ ϩⲱⲱⲕ ⲙ ⲡⲓⲥⲟⲡ ⲁϥⲟⲩⲱϣⲃ
ⲛϭⲓ €ⲓⲱϩⲁⲛⲛⲏⲥ ⲡⲉϫⲁϥ ϫⲉ ⲡϫⲟⲉⲓⲥ ⲧⲛ ⲣ ϩⲟⲧⲉ ϩⲁ ⲧⲉⲕⲉϩⲏ ⲉϫⲉ ⲟⲩⲙⲏⲏϣⲉ
ⲛϣⲁϫⲉ . . . (AcPetTwelve 11.1–8)
Peter was afraid to reply to him again. He motioned to the one
who was beside Jesus, which was John: ‘You speak this time.’
In response, John said: ‘Lord, we are afraid to say many words
in your presence . . .’.
The scene seems to recall John 13:22–5, where the disciples are
also baffled by what Jesus has said. There too Peter does not ask
Jesus himself for an explanation, but motions to the beloved dis-
ciple—who is next to Jesus—to ask him, which the beloved dis-
ciple then does. Seeing John as the one ‘beside Jesus’, the Acts of
Peter and the Twelve Apostles thereby probably sees John as the
beloved disciple and therefore the author of the Gospel.
v. In the Quartodeciman controversy, Polycrates of Ephesus

wrote a letter (190s65) to Victor of Rome stating that the pas-
chal feast should always be celebrated on the 14th day. He
writes of various local luminaries, buried in Asia, who
observed this practice. One was John, again identified as the
beloved disciple who reclined at the Lord’s side, and there-
fore also as the author of the fourth Gospel:66
ἔτι δὲ καὶ Ἰωάννης ὁ ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ κυρίου ἀναπεσών ὃς ἐγενήθη
ἱερεὺς τὸ πέταλον πεφορεκὼς, καὶ μάρτυς καὶ διδάσκαλος οὗτος ἐν
Ἐφέσῳ κεκοίμηται. (Eusebius, EH 3.31.3; 5.24.3–4)
In addition there was also John, who reclined on the Lord’s
chest, and who became a priest wearing the mitre, and a wit-
ness and a teacher. He sleeps at Ephesus.
vi. The Muratorian Fragment (end 2nd c.67) refers to Luke and
John by name, but since it names them as the third and
fourth evangelists, it is all but certain that Matthew and
Mark are mentioned in the lost section preceding.
65
66
Ibid., p. 31.
67
B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin,
Development, and Significance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. 191,
194. Arguments for the later date have not proven convincing.
vii. Irenaeus (writing c.174–89 CE68) refers several times to

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (e.g. AH 3.1.1). In
Irenaeus we also have clear connections between these
authors and the Gospels which we know under these
names because he refers to the beginning of each Gospel
in connection with each name (3.11.8; cf. Dem. 34; 94).
viii. An indisputable testimonium to John’s authorship of the
fourth Gospel appears in Theophilus of Antioch’s Ad
Autolycum (c.180 CE):69
ὅθεν διδάσκουσιν ἡμᾶς αἱ ἅγιαι γραφαὶ καὶ πάντες οἱ πνευματοφόροι,
ἐξ ὧν Ἰωάννης λέγει Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν
θεόν. (Autolyc. 2.22)
Therefore the Holy Scriptures teach us, as do all those
inspired by the Spirit, one of whom, John, says: ‘In the begin-
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God.’
ix. Hill, following Lawlor, notes an interesting passage from a
historical epitome citing Hegesippus (c.175–80)70 which is
relevant for our purposes because it names John as an evan-
gelist in the sense of Gospel-writer:71
Δομετιανὸς υἱὸς Οὐεσπασιανοῦ πολλὰ κακὰ εἰς τοὺς ἐν τέλει
‘Pωμαίους ἐνδειξάμενος τὴν Νέρωνος νικήσας ὠμότητα δεύτερος
κατὰ Χριστιανῶν διωγμὸν ἐποίησεν. καθ᾽ ὃν καὶ τὸν ἀπόστολον καὶ
εὐαγγελιστὴν ᾽Ιωάννην ἐν Πάτμῳ περιώρισεν.72
Domitian son of Vespasian displayed many evils against those
in office in Rome, and overtaking Nero in cruelty he was the
second to institute a persecution against Christians. At that
time he imprisoned John, apostle and evangelist, on Patmos . . .
Lawlor argues persuasively that a direct literary relationship be-
tween Eusebius and the epitome is unlikely, and that both are de-
pendent upon Hegesippus.73 This is perhaps not quite as secure
68
Irenaeus (AH 3.3.3) mentions bishop Eleutherius (174–89 CE) as current,
but not his successor Victor.
69
Theophilus’ chronicle in Autolyc. 3.28 implies composition in 180 CE.
70
Hill, Johannine Corpus, p. 88.
71
The reference to an evangelist in the New Testament sense of the term
(Acts 21:8; Eph. 4:11; 2 Tim. 4:5) would be redundant after ‘apostle’.
72
For the text, see Anecdota Graeca, ed. J. A. Cramer, vol. 2 (Oxford: The
University Press, 1835), p. 88 and C. de Boor, Neue Fragmente des Papias,
Hegesippus und Pierius in bisher unbekannten Excerpten aus der Kirchengeschichte
des Philippus Sidetes (TU V/ 2; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1888), p. 169.
73
See H. J. Lawlor, Eusebiana: Essays on the Ecclesiastical History of
Eusebius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), pp. 40–56. This whole section is a
series of brilliant pieces of detection. For a different view, see R. J. Bauckham,
as other cases, however: hence it appears in the table below as a

questionable instance.
x. In the Preface to the Chronicon Paschale, the Peri Pascha by

Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis (c.175)74 is cited:
Εἰσὶ τοίνυν οἳ δι’ ἄγνοιαν φιλονεικοῦσι περὶ τούτων, συγγνωστὸν
πρᾶγμα πεπονθότες ἄγνοια γὰρ οὐ κατηγορίαν ἀναδέχεται, ἀλλὰ
διδαχῆς προσδεῖται καὶ λέγουσιν ὅτι τῇ ιδʹ τὸ πρόβατον μετὰ τῶν
μαθητῶν ἔφαγεν ὁ κύριος, τῇ δὲ μεγάλῃ ἡμέρᾳ τῶν ἀζύμων αὐτὸς
ἔπαθεν, καὶ διηγοῦνται Ματθαῖον οὕτω λέγειν ὡς νενοήκασιν ὅθεν
ἀσύμφωνός τε νόμῳ ἡ νόησις αὐτῶν, καὶ στασιάζειν δοκεῖ κατ’
αὐτοὺς τὰ εὐαγγέλια. (Chronicon Paschale 13–14)
There are, then, those who out of ignorance stir up disputes
about these things, even if what they do is pardonable. For ig-
norance does not deserve condemnation but needs instruction.
And they say that on the fourteenth day the Lord ate the lamb
with the disciples, and he himself suffered on the great day of
the feast of unleavened bread. They explain that Matthew says
this, or so they think. Therefore it is the case both that their
opinion disagrees with the Law, and that the Gospels seem to
contradict them.75
Apollinaris here opposes the view, apparently based on the
Synoptic chronology specifically in Matthew (26:17–19), that
Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples on 14th Nisan. Elsewhere
he maintains that Jesus died on this date.
xi. The Acts of John (c.150–20076), like Polycrates and the Acts
of Peter and the Twelve, shows knowledge of the tradition
that the beloved disciple—and therefore the implied author
of the Fourth Gospel—was John (Ac. Jn. 89), the son of
Zebedee (Ac. Jn 88).
Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,
1990), p. 97.
74
R. M. Grant, Second Century Christianity: A Collection of Fragments
(Louisville. KY: WJK, 2003), p. 175, has c.175. Eusebius (EH 4.19.1–21.1)
puts Apollinaris’ floruit in the time of Soter (c.168–74), and his composition of
an apology to Marcus Aurelius (161–80 CE) is also indicative of his dates (EH
4.27.1). See further on Apollinaris, R. M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the
Second Century (London: SCM, 1988), pp. 83–91.
75
Trans. mine. On the passage, see further See U. Huttner, ‘Kalender und
religi€ose Identit€at: Ostern in Hierapolis’, ZAC 15.2 (2011), pp. 272–90.
76
Acta Iohannis: Textus Alii—Commentarius—Indices, ed. E. Junod and J.-
D. Kaestli (CCSA 2; Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), p. 700, gives a date of 150–
200 CE.
xii. Heracleon (c.150–7577) comments that John 1:18 is spo-

ken ‘not by the Baptist but by the disciple’ (Comm. John,
fr. 3).78 It is not quite as certain as Gunther claims that
Heracleon ‘attributed the Gospel to John, “the disciple
of the Lord”’,79 but it seems probable that he avoids
calling either the Baptist or the evangelist ‘John’ to avoid
confusion, especially given that ‘John’ is what Heracleon
usually calls the Baptist. Like the testimonium in
Hegesippus discussed above, this instance is not as clear-
cut as others.
xiii. According to Irenaeus, the exegesis of John 1 by the
Valentinian theologian Ptolemy (c.150–75) consisted in an
exposition of how the Father emanated all things
spermatically:
Ἔτι τε Ἰωάννην τὸν μαθητὴν τοῦ Κυρίου διδάσκουσι τὴν πρώτην
ὀγδοάδα μεμηνυκέναι. αὐταῖς λέξεσι, λέγοντες οὕτως Ἰωάννης ὁ
μαθητὴς τοῦ Κυρίου βουλόμενος εἰπεῖν τὴν τῶν ὅλων γένεσιν, καθ’ ἣν
τὰ πάντα προέβαλεν ὁ Πατὴρ, ἀρχήν τινα ὑποτίθεται τὸ πρῶτον
γεννηθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὃν δὴ καὶ Υἱὸν Μονογενῆ καὶ Θεὸν κέκληκεν,
ἐν ᾧ τὰ πάντα ὁ Πατὴρ προέβαλε σπερματικῶς. (Ptolemy, apud
Irenaeus, AH 1.8.5)
Further, they teach that John, the disciple of the Lord, pointed
to the first Ogdoad, saying as follows, in these words: ‘John,
the disciple of the Lord, wanted to describe the origin of all
things, that is, how the Father emanated everything. Therefore
he posits a certain Principle, God’s first-begotten, whom he
has called both the only-begotten Son and God. In him, the
Father emanated all things spermatically . . .’
In this passage, Irenaeus is not paraphrasing, but quoting, ‘in
these words’ (αὐταῖς λέξεσι). The content of the teaching about the
only-begotten Son and God is sufficient to establish that John’s
Gospel is in view. This is confirmed by named citations of John
1:1–4 and 14: ‘Thus John’, Ptolemy concludes, ‘spoke about the
first Ogdoad, the mother of the aeons.’80
77
Grant, Second Century Christianity, p. 70, talks of Heracleon being active
in the third quarter of the century.
78
The Fragments of Heracleon, ed. A. E. Brooke (Texts and Studies, 1.4;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891), p. 55.
79
J. J. Gunther, ‘Early Identifications of Authorship of the Johannine
Writings’, JEH 31 (1980), pp. 401–27, at 425.
80
In his Epistle to Flora (apud Epiphanius, Pan. 33.3.6), Ptolemy also calls
the author of the Gospel an apostle.
xiv. Another neglected testimonium is the probable allusion to

Matthew the evangelist in the Gospel of Thomas
(c.140–80):81
ⲡⲉϫⲉ ⲓⲥ ⲛⲛⲉϥⲙⲁⲑⲏⲧⲏⲥ ϫⲉ ⲧⲛⲧⲱⲛⲧ⳿ ⲛⲧⲉⲧⲛϫⲟⲟⲥ ⲛⲁⲉⲓ ϫⲉ ⲉⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲛⲓⲙ
ⲡⲉϫⲁϥ ⲛⲁϥ⳿ ⲛϭⲓ ⲥⲓⲙⲱⲛ ⲡⲉⲧⲣⲟⲥ ϫⲉ ⲉⲕⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲟⲩⲁⲅ⳿ⲅ* ⲉⲗⲟⲥ ⲛ ⲇⲓⲕⲁⲓⲟⲥ
ⲡⲉϫⲁϥ ⲛⲁϥ ⲛϭⲓ ⲙⲁⲑ⳿ⲑⲁⲓⲟⲥ ϫⲉ ⲉⲕⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲟⲩ* ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲙⲫⲓⲗⲟⲥⲟⲫⲟⲥ
ⲛⲣⲙⲛϩⲏⲧ⳿ ⲡⲉϫⲁϥ ⲛⲁϥ ⲛϭⲓ ⲑⲱⲙⲁⲥ ϫⲉ ⲡⲥⲁϩ ϩⲟⲗⲱⲥ ⲧⲁⲧⲁⲡⲣⲟ
ⲛⲁhϣiϣⲁⲡϥ⳿ ⲁⲛ ⲉⲧⲣⲁϫⲟⲟⲥ ϫⲉ ⲉⲕⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲛⲓⲙ⳿ (Gos. Thom. 13: 1–4)
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Compare me and tell me whom I
resemble.’ Simon Peter said to him: ‘You are like a righteous
angel.’ Matthew said to him: ‘You are like a wise philosopher.’
Thomas said to him: ‘Master, my mouth is completely unable
to say whom you are like.’
The view that this is a reference to Matthew the evangelist now
has considerable scholarly support.82 A lengthy case has been
made elsewhere,83 but the key point is that here Matthew seems
to be an authoritative spokesman, alongside Peter, who needs to
be rebutted by the Gospel of Thomas. The reference to Matthew
here also appears in a logion heavily influenced by Matthew’s
Gospel.84 Some have also suspected that the reference on
Matthew’s part to Jesus as a ‘wise philosopher’ might reflect a
perspective on the christology of Matthew.85 Matthew is known
for little else in early Christianity besides being an evangelist,
and so there is a high degree of probability that this dialogue in
81
It is not mentioned as a testimonium in Hengel, Four Gospels,
for instance.
82
A. F. Walls, ‘References to the Apostles in the Gospel of Thomas’, NTS
7 (1960–1), pp. 266–70; E. Haenchen, ‘Literatur zum Thomasevangelium
(Fortsetzung)’, ThR 27 (1961), pp. 306–38, at 315; T. V. Smith, Petrine
Controversies in Early Christianity (T€ ubingen: Mohr, 1985), pp. 115–16; R.
Trevijano Etcheverrıa, ‘Santiago el Justo y Tomas el Mellizo (Evangelio de
Tomas, Log 12 y 13)’, Salmanticensis 39 (1992), pp. 97–119, at 112; E. H.
Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random
House, 2003), p. 47 (tentatively); R. J. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:
The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), pp.
236–7; G. W. Most, Doubting Thomas (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard
University Press, 2005), p. 93; S. J. Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel
of Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 169–74;
Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction, Translation and Commentary
(Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 259–66; Watson, Gospel Writing, p. 230.
83
See e.g. Gathercole, Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, pp. 169–74.
84
Gathercole, Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, pp. 174–7.
85
Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pp. 236–7.
Thomas presupposes not just a Gospel attributed to Matthew,

but one which has attained a certain level of authority.
xv. Papias clearly attests to both Mark and Matthew as com-

posers of Gospel material. Fragments of his comments are
preserved by Eusebius, who only includes a fraction of what
Papias says about these evangelists, as is evident from the
Matthean extract, which begins with οὖν.86
Μάρκος μὲν ἑρμηνευτὴς Πέτρου γενόμενος, ὅσα ἐμνημόνευσεν,
ἀκριβῶς ἔγραψεν, οὐ μέντοι τάξει, τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου ἢ λεχθέντα ἢ
πραχθέντα . . . περὶ δὲ τοῦ Ματθαίου ταῦτ’ εἴρηται Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν
‘Eβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ’ αὐτά, ὡς ἦν
δυνατὸς ἕκαστος. (Papias apud Eusebius, EH 3.39.15–16)
‘Mark was Peter’s interpreter, and whatever he remembered,
he accurately wrote down the things said and done by the
Lord, but not in order . . .’. About Matthew this is what is said:
‘Matthew therefore arranged the oracles in the Hebrew lan-
guage, but each person interpreted them according to
his lights.’
Some have argued further for Papias’s knowledge of John as an
author.87 There is a good probability of this, since Papias’s frag-
ments seem to display dependence upon John: the order in
Papias’s list of disciples is striking in this regard, following the
orders in John 1 and 21. Furthermore, the implication of disorder
in Mark’s Gospel presupposes knowledge of a Gospel with a dif-
ferent ordering of events, and the list of disciples suggests
Papias’s preference for Johannine sequence. This may be con-
firmed by the Muratorian Fragment’s remark that John wrote
down Jesus’ deeds ‘in their order’ (Mur. Fr. 33), a point probably
dependent upon Papias.88 The similarity of the accounts of John’s
Gospel-writing in the Muratorian Fragment and Clement’s ac-
count of the ancient elders (which may also be dependent on
Papias) suggests the existence of an explanation by the bishop of
Hierapolis of the circumstances of the composition of John.89
86
87
See C. E. Hill, ‘“The Orthodox Gospel”: The Reception of John in the
Great Church Prior to Irenaeus’, in T. Rasimus (ed.), The Legacy of John:
Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 233–
300, at 286, for a list of other scholars.
88
Bauckham, ‘Papias and Polycrates’, pp. 53–6.
89
Clement, citing the ancient elders in the Hypotyposes, apud Eusebius, EH
6.14.7. It is possible, however, that Clement is writing independently of Papias,
in which case his testimonium would be independent.
There are two more clear pieces of evidence for John as a named

evangelist. One garbled testimony to Papias, despite its howlers,
evidently makes reference to John: ‘The Gospel of John was
made known and given to the churches by John while still in the
body . . . as one called Papias of Hierapolis, a disciple dear to
John, reports in his five <exegetical> books.’90 Another fragment
quite independently states that one of the five books discussed
John’s Gospel, with John’s Gospel containing the pericope adul-
terae.91 Some also argue for Papias having discussed Luke, though
this is more uncertain.92
The question arises of Papias’s date.93 According to Eusebius,
he is a contemporary of Polycarp and Ignatius—he appears sand-
wiched between them (EH 3.36.1),94 and in another list he
appears after Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp (3.39.1): the list
Papias—Polycarp—Ignatius also appears in Jerome’s version of
Eusebius’ Chronicon, placed at the end of the 219th Olympiad, i.e.
around 100 CE.95 Irenaeus is quoted as calling Papias and
Polycarp ἑταῖροι (3.39.1). Eusebius also records Irenaeus’ state-
ment that Papias was an ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ (3.39.2), and notes that he
overlapped with Philip’s prophetic daughters (3.39.9).96 Eusebius
disputes Irenaeus’ claim that Papias was a hearer of John (3.39.1–
2), and the passage he cites seems to support Eusebius’ point.
Even so, Aristion and John the elder managed to be both disciples
of Jesus and contemporaries of Papias (3.39.4): in contrast to find-
ing out from the elders what each of the other disciples had said
(εἶπεν), Papias discovered from the elders what Aristion and John
90
Holmes, fr. 19: The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. M. W. Holmes, 3rd
edn. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), p. 756.
91
Holmes, fr. 23: see The Apostolic Fathers, pp. 760–1.
92
See C. E. Hill, ‘What Papias said about John (and Luke): A “New”
Papian Fragment’, JTS 49 (1998), pp. 582–629, at 625–9, and the criticisms in
Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pp. 433–7.
93
The best account here, with fairly devastating criticisms of a late date for
Papias and compelling reasons for an early date, is that in R. Yarbrough, ‘The
Date of Papias: A Reassessment’, JETS 26 (1983), pp. 181–91.
94
Appended to this list later is Quadratus, who, as we know from Eusebius’
comment on his Apology, flourished in the time of Hadrian (EH 4.3.1–2).
95
See Eusebius Werke VII/1. Hieronymi chronicon, ed. R. Helm (GCS;
Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913), pp. 193–4; see further on this Yarbrough, ‘The Date
of Papias’, p. 186.
96
Yarbrough notes further: ‘The force of this appellation for Papias is
strengthened when it is remembered that Irenaeus referred to John as seeing
the Apocalypse “no very long time ago but almost in our own day, towards the
end of Domitian’s reign”’ (‘The Date of Papias’, p. 187, referring to
AH 5.30.3).
were saying (λέγουσιν) in his own time. Papias appears in a section

of Eusebius (EH 3.32.1 to the end of book 3) devoted to the first
dozen years of Trajan’s principate (98–109 CE); book 4 begins in
‘around the twelfth year’ (109 CE). The natural conclusion from
this is to place Papias’s activity around 100, or very early in the
second century, and his investigations may have taken place a dec-
ade or two earlier.
xvi. Eusebius prefaces the quotation about Mark’s authorship

in EH 3.39.15 with the words: καὶ τοῦθ’ ὁ πρεσβύτερος ἔλεγεν
(‘And this is what the elder said . . .’). This is evidently a
reference to John the elder, noted in one of Eusebius’ ear-
lier fragments of Papias. It is clear that this John is noted
as the source of the comments about Mark. What is less
obvious is from where the remarks about Matthew come,
because Papias begins in medias res with an οὖν, and the
same goes for Papias’s statements about John’s Gospel. It
remains a possibility that both the Markan and the
Matthean testimonia go all the way back to the elder. It
may even be the most likely conclusion, given that Papias
would presumably have wanted to get such information
from someone in touch with the elder’s ‘living voice’. In
any case, John the elder pushes testimony to Mark back
well into the first century.
Taken all in all, then, the first two centuries CE are populated by a
good deal more references to Gospel authors than is commonly
appreciated. The most common attestation is to John and
Matthew in the top two, with Mark and Luke in the lower tier,
facts which roughly dovetail with the evidence from the papyri as
well as with the relative frequency of biblical references from the
period.97 The evidence may be summarized in the follow-
ing table:
97
Hurtado lists the number of second to third-century manuscripts for each
Gospel as ‘Matthew (12), Mark (1), Luke (7), John (16)’. See L. W. Hurtado,
The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 20. The listing of patristic references to the
Gospels in the first volume of Biblia Patristica, which essentially covers the
second century, has for each of the evangelists: Matthew—c.70 pages (pp.
223–93); Mark—c. 27 pages (pp. 293–319); Luke—c.59 pages (pp. 319–78);
John—c.37 pages (pp. 379–415). See J. Allenbach et al. (eds.), Biblia
Patristica: Index des citations et allusions bibliques dans la litterature patristique,
vol. 1: Des origins a
Clement d’Alexandrie (Paris: Editions CNRS, 1975).

Date Source Matthew Mark Luke John
c.200/early iii P66

late ii–early iii P4 flyleaf
c.195–203 Clement of Alexandria
c.200 Act of Peter and the Twelve
190s Polycrates
late ii Muratorian Fragment [] []
174–89 Irenaeus
c.180 Theophilus of Antioch
c.175–80 Hegesippus ?
c.175 Apollinaris
c.150–200 Acts of John
c.150–75 Heracleon ?
c.150–75 Ptolemy
c.140–80 Gos. Thom. 13
c.100/early ii Papias
late i (John) the Elder ?
3. Two Significant Silences

Two silences constitute important confirmation of a negative
kind. First, there is never any sense among second-century
authors that the Gospels are anonymous. Mention by second-
century authors of ‘the Gospel’ tout simple does not imply ano-
nymity or lack of knowledge of author.98 (I suspect that the
frequent references to ‘the Gospel’ in the Apostolic Fathers have
exercised undue influence here.) Talk of ‘the Gospel’ goes side by
side with references to evangelists widely in second-century
Christianity. Justin uses both the singular and the plural (as well
as implying that he knows some attributions to the evangelists).99
Irenaeus can also use the singular alongside the plural.100
98
Pace Watson, Gospel Writing, p. 254, who assumes that at the time of 2
Clement ‘the term “Gospel” remains essentially anonymous and is not yet associated
exclusively with the direct or indirect testimony of named apostles’. On the other
side, see M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM, 1985), p. 71.
99
Justin, Dial. 103.8 refers to composition by apostles and their followers:
this distinction suggests that he knows particular apostles and followers. Justin
also does not name Paul, whose writings he certainly knows.
100
C. E. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 179–80.
Polycrates knows John as an evangelist, but also talks of ‘keeping

the passover on the fourteenth day, in accordance with the gospel,
never deviating from it, but following the rule of faith’ (Eusebius,
EH 5.24.6), the ‘gospel’ here not referring to a specific written
Gospel. Theophilus talks about a particular evangelist writing,
but elsewhere can refer simply, without reference to evangelists’
names, to ‘the Gospels’ or (referring to the contents of Matthew)
‘the Gospel voice’ or ‘the Gospel’ (Autolyc. 3.12–14). The absence
of any sense in the second century that the Gospels are anonym-
ous means that Bauckham’s contrast between Hebrews and John
applies to all the Gospels.101 No one ever says, to mutilate
Origen’s famous remark about Hebrews, ‘Who wrote the
Gospels, only God knows!’102
The second silence is the absence of any other attributions of
authorship assigned to the Gospels. (Even the idea that Gaius
attributed the fourth Gospel to Cerinthus has been questioned; in
any case, if it were true, such an attribution would be a clear par-
ody of the conventional view.103) If the titles simply emerged very
late, say in the mid- to late-second century, we would expect to
find diversity among the names, but we do not.104
That a substantial time of anonymous transmission would
probably lead to diversity of attributions can be illustrated by the
case of Hebrews again. In Hebrews, which is clearly in part epis-
tolary in form (Heb. 13:24–5), the absence of the author’s name
really is striking. As a result, it seems that already in the second
century, several suggestions of authorship had been made:
Pantaenus had proposed Paul (Eusebius, EH 6.14.4), and a claim
to Pauline authorship is also strongly suggested in P46 (where
Hebrews is sandwiched between Romans and 1 Corinthians);
Tertullian states that Barnabas was the author, without any sense
of an alternative view, citing the epistle as ‘more widely accepted’
than Hermas (Pud. 2.1–5) in c.210 CE;105 Origen, according to
Eusebius, said that in addition to Paul, some attributed Hebrews
to Clement of Rome and some to Luke the evangelist (EH
6.25.14).106 By around the beginning of the third century, then,
101
102
Cf. Origen apud Eusebius, EH 6.25.14.
103
See n. 60 above.
104
See e.g. Hengel, Four Gospels, p. 54.
105
T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 47.
106
The homilies on Hebrews date to c.239–42, according to P. Nautin,
Origene: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), p. 411.
no fewer than four different suggestions for the authorship of

Hebrews had been made. This sort of diversity is exactly what we
do not find in references to the authorship of the Gospels.
These two points are of course arguments from silence, but the
silences are significant. They fit with the hypothesis that the
names are attached to the Gospels very early, but sit uncomfort-
ably with the line that the names are late. The later that one views
the attributions to be, the harder these silences are to explain.
IV. CONCLUSION
A good deal of the foregoing argumentation has been negative.
This is because the first plank in the positive case for anonymity
made by so many, viz. the absence of the author’s name in the
work, is completely insignificant (§2). Even in the case of histories
written in Greek, where the name is perhaps most frequently
found in a preface in the work, there is by no means anything
approaching a rule to this effect. In consequence, it is a pointless
exercise to try to give a theological rationale for why there is no
self-reference.
The second plank in the case for anonymity is, as we have seen,
the view that the present titles were only added later, with the
often unstated implication that not only were the titles absent in
their present form but that there were also no accompanying indi-
cations of authorship of any kind at all. The anonymity view not
only has the (insufficiently acknowledged) difficulty of arguing
for a negative here, it also has to contend with all the positive evi-
dence against it. In addition to all the early references to the evan-
gelists’ names (§3.2), there is the difficulty of imagining Matthew
and (perhaps especially) Luke accepting the second Gospel on
trust without accompanying testimony (§3.1), and also finally the
important silences (§3.3).
To follow up on the individual Gospels, we have noted that at-
tribution of the second Gospel to Mark goes back to John the
elder in the first century. This cannot be more than about 20 years
after the composition of the Gospel. In the light of this, it seems
extremely unlikely that there was a time when Mark was not asso-
ciated with the Gospel. The testimonia to Matthew are both early
and scattered: Papias and the Gospel of Thomas are notable early
witnesses. Again, there are only thirty-odd years between
Matthew and Papias. Luke on the other hand is not attested as an
author so early, in fact is not so before Irenaeus and the
Muratorian fragment, whichever came first. However, of all the
Gospels Luke is perhaps the least likely to be anonymous, given
the first-person references (ἐν ἡμῖν, καθὼς παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν, ἔδοξεν

κἀμοὶ παρηκολουθηκότι) and dedication (κράτιστε Θεόφιλε) in the
preface to the Gospel (Luke 1:1–4) as well as in Acts 1:1
(ἐποιησάμην . . . ὦ Θεόφιλε) and the ‘we-passages’. John the evan-
gelist has the greatest attestation of all the Gospels in the second
century, across the theological spectrum from Valentinians to the
Acts of John to the Acts of Peter and the Twelve, to Irenaeus,
Theophilus, and Polycrates, and reaching as far back in time as
Papias. It is the purpose of this article to argue not that these fig-
ures actually wrote the Gospels, but that these names are prob-
ably original. In the light of these arguments, other hypotheses
will have to be ventured besides anonymous publication.107
107
I am extremely grateful to Prof. Richard Bauckham, Dr James Carleton
Paget, Dr Jane Heath, Prof. Charles Hill, Dr Jonathan Linebaugh, and Prof.
Stephen Oakley for reading and commenting on this article, and for making
very helpful suggestions on both points of detail and on the larger question.

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The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.

69, Pt 2, October 2018

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This article will begin (§1) with a brief review of scholarship on

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I. THE ANONYMITY OF THE GOSPELS IN CURRENT GOSPELS

need to be considered together (p. 40). He includes in the cat-

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Gospel, for example, is an instance of an (originally) anonymous

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the Gospels, where the evangelists ‘regarded themselves as com-

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2. The Dissenting Few

anonymous’;12 indeed, more positively, ‘The fourth gospel was

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3. Gospels Scholarship at Large

two principal reasons that emerged in our survey of the special-

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4. The Approach in this Article

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themselves as authors in the prefaces to their works.29 Thereafter,

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Kranz, ‘SPHRAGIS: Ichform und Namensiegel als Eingangs- und

in the biography of Aelius in the Historia Augusta. This second

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4. Assessing the Significance of the Absence of the Name

form rather like the modern bookmark (called variously silluboi or

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III. WERE THE TITLES OR NAMES LATER ADDITIONS?

There are three ways to address this question of whether it was

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What has not, to my knowledge, been considered in the litera-

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2. Early Evidence for Named Evangelists

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i. P66 (c.200/early 3rd c.) attests the title of John’s Gospel,

The rest of the evidence comes from second-century literature,

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v. In the Quartodeciman controversy, Polycrates of Ephesus

vii. Irenaeus (writing c.174–89 CE68) refers several times to

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as other cases, however: hence it appears in the table below as a

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x. In the Preface to the Chronicon Paschale, the Peri Pascha by

xii. Heracleon (c.150–7577) comments that John 1:18 is spo-

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Thomas presupposes not just a Gospel attributed to Matthew,

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xv. Papias clearly attests to both Mark and Matthew as com-

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were saying (λέγουσιν) in his own time. Papias appears in a section

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xvi. Eusebius prefaces the quotation about Mark’s authorship

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c.200/early iii P66 

c.200/early iii P66