Luke indicates that “many others” had written accounts of Jesus’ life, and that he, unlike them, was going to give an “orderly account.” So Gospels were known to him. But there are also solid reasons for thinking that at that point, at least, the Gospels had not been given their now current names. There are solid reasons for thinking that Gospels were in circulation by the end of the first century. So when was that? The Name of the Gospels By the End of the First Century That must mean that the Gospels were not given their titles until it was widely known that there were several versions floating around and that it was important to differentiate among them. If someone indicates, in a title, whom the Gospel is “according to,” it is someone else telling you whose version of the Gospel it is. No one (in either antiquity or today) would give a title to indicate whom it is “according to.” (When I wrote my book Misquoting Jesus I called it just that I didn’t entitle it “Misquoting Jesus According to Bart Ehrman) If one wanted to entitle a Gospel, they would do what Mark did, and call it something like “The Life of Jesus” or “The Account of Jesus’ Words and Deeds” or “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” or the like. But it is clear that they were not originally called such things as “The Gospel according to Luke” or the “Gospel according to John,” as is found in our later manuscripts.
The other three Gospels do not have titles: they just begin. Gospels of Christ – The other three Gospels… Notice that his own name (whatever it was) is left out of it. It is widely thought among critical scholars that Mark did give a kind of descriptive title to his work, in what is now the first verse: “The Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” This is probably not simply an introduction to what is to follow. First, the titles almost certainly cannot be what the authors themselves called their works. But there are reasons to think that they were not called Matthew and John. What were manuscripts of, say, Matthew or John entitled in the year 120 CE? We have no way of knowing. But these manuscripts with titles do not start appearing until around 200 CE. It is absolutely true to say that in the manuscripts of the Gospels, they have the titles we are accustomed to ( The Gospel according to Matthew, etc.). So naturally one might wonder, when were they given these ascriptions? When Did the Gospels Get Their Names: EvidenceĬontrary to what you may sometimes have heard, there is no concrete evidence that the Gospels received their familiar names early on. The authors of two of these works (Luke and John) do speak in the first person in a couple of instances, but they do not say who they are.īy the end of the second century, roughly a century after the books were written, they were being called by the names that are familiar to us today.
WHICH OF THESE MANUSCRIPTS DOES NOT DEPICT MATTHEW SERIES
When Did the Gospels Get Their Names? In this series of posts on the authors’ names associated with the New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – we have so far seen that the texts themselves are completely anonymous.
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