摘要

The names we associate with the Gospel writers are all second century guesses. If this comes as a surprise, welcome to the cutting edge of modern biblical scholarship. Nearly a century after the four Gospels were finished, Christians in the late second century, eager to give names to the anonymous manuscripts they possessed, selected traditional figures that they supposed should have written them, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. According to Dr Randel Helms the gospels were written to convert or confirm their readers to Christianity, they are the highly coloured arguments of powerful authors, not just transparent windows upon the historical Jesus.