The Four Gospels Are Written

None of the four Gospels names its author in its text. Two of them say something about how they came to be written. Luke’s preface says that many had already undertaken to draw up an account, that the matter had been handed down by those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning, and that the writer, having traced everything carefully, is setting it out in order for a certain Theophilus (Luke 1:1–4). John says that it was written “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”, and a closing note ascribes it to the disciple whom Jesus loved: “We know that his witness is true” (John 20:30–31) (John 21:20, 24).

The oldest surviving statements about the writers come from Papias of Hierapolis, early in the second century, in words preserved by Eusebius. On the authority of an elder he says that Mark had been Peter’s interpreter and wrote down accurately, though not in order, what he remembered of Peter’s teaching, having never heard the Lord himself. Of Matthew he says that he put together “the oracles” in the Hebrew language and that each interpreted them as he could (Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15–16).

Irenaeus, about AD 180, gives all four. Matthew issued a Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome. After their departure Mark, Peter’s disciple and interpreter, handed down Peter’s preaching in writing. Luke, Paul’s companion, recorded the gospel that Paul preached. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord who had leaned on his breast, published a Gospel while living at Ephesus (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1). Clement of Alexandria, about AD 200, reports a different sequence as the tradition of the elders: the Gospels with genealogies came first, Mark wrote at Rome while Peter was still alive, and John wrote last, a “spiritual Gospel” (Eusebius, Church History 6.14.5–7). The ancient witnesses thus disagree about the order and, if the “departure” of which Irenaeus speaks is the death of the apostles, about whether Mark wrote before or after Peter died.

The oldest manuscript evidence is widely held to be a papyrus fragment of John 18 in the John Rylands Library, dated by its handwriting to the second century; the library adds that recent research points to a date nearer AD 200 (Papyrus 52).

For Irenaeus the four were a fixed set: he argues that there can be neither more nor fewer than four Gospels (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8). Their dates, their order and their relation to one another have been studied ever since, and none of these questions is closed.