P4 with the title Gospel of Matthew on it
Many liberal scholars like to claim that the four Gospels of the New Testament are anonymous; that the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written much later and by different people. Bart Ehrman likes to beat this drum and Muslims seem to uncritically accept these conclusions.
Ehrman likes to point out that the apostles didn’t know how to read and he points to Acts 4:13 which says that Peter and John were unschooled. I find it funny because Bart Ehrman dates the Gospels to 70-90 AD and the statement about Peter and John was made about them in 33 AD. A lot can happen in several decades; not too sharp on the part of Ehrman.
Also, who made the decision to call them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? We don’t have a letter from the Pope or another bishop in the mid-second century saying that the Gospel that begins with the incarnation is to be called John going forward. By the mid second century, these documents were widespread. They didn’t have instantaneous communication. Someone would have to have the location of all the Gospel copies and send out letters ordering them to slap those four names on their respective Gospels.
Do you think Christians in Rome, Alexandria, Damascus, Carthage, Gaul, Asia Minor, Spain somehow all simultaneously decided to call the Gospel with the incarnation the Gospel according to John? What are the odds? Not to mention the odds increase geometrically when you throw the other three into the mix. Also, if this was done with communication, how was it successful in those days? Not to mention, we don’t have a trace of this communication. It also isn’t present in the early Church histories such as Eusebius.
Last but not least it’s not present in the manuscript tradition. There is one possible manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew(from 200 AD) that may be anonymous but that manuscript is very fragmented and tattered with very sparse portions so even that is suspect and the title portion could simply be missing. This manuscript is called P1. There is also P4 which is dated to about the same time period which has the title. Also from the time period are P66 and P75 of the Gospel of John with their titles.
Also, if you wanted to invent names, why would you include two names that aren’t apostles, namely Luke and Mark. These are very secondary characters in the book of Acts. They’re big now because the names are on two gospels. To be fair, if you wanted to invent a name for Luke it would be hard to put an apostle because Luke 1:2 seems to imply that it wasn’t an eye witness. Still, with Mark there is no excuse. Why not call it Peter instead of Mark? According to church tradition, Peter is the source for much of the material in Mark so why not go with the prime apostle? There is no reasonable answer to this.
The gospels aren’t anonymous. They were named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the start because that is who wrote them. There is no other explanation. Bart Ehrman and his liberal friends are simply incorrect on this. It’s very bad scholarship.
What are the odds that 10 million people would believe in a short 100 years that Joseph Smith used seer stones to read gold tablets?
Paul wrote defending himself about taking support and that other church leaders were being supported by followers. Cults like this always involved extracting money from adherents.