[Ninjinka]

For that assertion to hold water, "scholarly consensus" would have to define "scholarly" so narrowly as to exclude the vast majority of scholars (it seems like it should go without saying that most scholars in this area are Christian who maintain apostolic authorship).

Perhaps they are dismissing scholars who identify as Christian? That would be quite the catch-22.

[jarpadat]

In case you are interested, here is some data on how scholars view apostolic authorship: https://thesacredpage.com/2024/12/13/the-2024-survey-of-paul...

To me, it is apparent that the data cannot support any clean division between two "sides", it tells a more complicated story about sometimes there was apostolic authorship, sometimes not, and sometimes we don't really know.

I would suggest that the real academic consensus is that we can confidently rule out the us-vs-them preoccupation that is common in lay discussion.

[chambers]

"No sides in science" is a silly idea. Of course, scholars have biases. They're human. Humans like to group up and gang up against other.

Specific to Bible Scholarship, I wager the two big sides are scholars who have faith (i.e., Nicene Creed) and scholars who have little. Bruce Metzger who had some faith, and Bart Ehrman who has none. RSV/ESV which says Jesus is the "Son of God" in Mark 1, and NRSVue which deletes "Son of God" from Mark 1.

It's quite a fault line.

[vinceguidry]

There are plenty of YouTube videos that go into the subject thoroughly. I couldn't find the one I watched recently stating the notion that the gospels ever could have been totally anonymous is absurd. Nobody would take you seriously, reputation was everything in the ancient world. The people of the time knew exactly who wrote what, even if there weren't any direct titles on the actual manuscripts.

[goatlover]

So then who wrote Hebrews? It wasn't Paul's writing style, and it doesn't name it's author. Matthew and Luke don't name the Q source material they have in common. Let's take gMark, someone composes it around 70AD somewhere. It gets copied and sent to other communities elsewhere. Decades later it's attributed to Mark.

[vinceguidry]

That one probably was pseudonymous.

[judahmeek]

Reputation has never been everything & as crazy conspiracy theories like Qanon & antivax prove, some sizable fraction of the population will find a way to believe whatever they want to.

[vinceguidry]

Sure. They had crazy conspiracy theories back then too. Anyone can believe what they want. But reputation means something today just as it did back then. It's just today we outsource that function to the academic system.

[goatlover]

Where do the attributions come from, Papias? He claimed Mark wrote down Peter's teachings in the wrong order, and that Matthew's gospel was written in Hebrew. But the Matthew we have is in Greek, copies from Mark and shares other Greek material with Luke (Q source).