[spacebanana7]

I feel we should be hesitant about claims like this. It might well be true that Paul was the earliest writer.

But it also seems strange that Matthew, a presumably literate tax collector, wrote nothing at all before Paul despite being a disciple during the time Jesus was around.

[Salgat]

Mind you I am only saying the earliest known writer, it's likely that most Christian writings are lost to history. And technically we don't even know who wrote the Gospels with any certainty. Only Paul's 7 undisputed letters are universally accepted by secular scholarship as being genuinely authored by Paul, the authorship of the rest of the New Testament is disputed.

[spacebanana7]

There has never been a manuscript of a Gospel with anyone other than the traditional author attributed. And they’ve always been cited by the traditional names - even in Islamic, Jewish or heretical writings.

The arguments made in favour of Paul’s authenticity largely come from internal textual cues - but is that really more persuasive?

I don’t mean to suggest too strongly one side of the Gospel authorship debate over the other, only that these issues mix objective facts with subjective interpretation in a way that makes it very difficult to outsource to scholarly consensus.

[AnimalMuppet]

Which ones do you think are undisputed? And why do you think the others are disputed?

[hackingonempty]

I would expect Jesus to be the earliest writer.

[Salgat]

While Jesus is portrayed as extremely fluent in Jewish scripture, he's only ever shown to have written once and in the ground. Nothing exists indicating he ever wrote any works to be passed down. Some theologians theorize that Jesus purposely avoided writing due to parallels with the Old Testament's written laws that condemned man, while Jesus came to do the opposite.

[pyuser583]

Why?