What Maniac does (and doesn't) get right about the Bible and the Gnostics

This article complains that Maniac has a mix of truth and fiction, and misconstrues the Biblical canon, and how and why it was formed - and then goes on to do the same.

The gospel of Luke, and the other major work of Acts, according to the article, were not written by Luke, and most scholars agree with that.

That's not correct.

There are three main views of the authorship of those documents.

1. Written by the physician Luke, companion of Paul.
2. Another companion of Paul.
3. Written by an unknown author, and then adapted for more widespread use, by someone who was probably an eyewitness.

So the implication that Luke or Acts are any less authentic, is ridiculous. The idea that most scholars agree, is far from correct. They're divided.

Similarly, he says the New Testament letters written in Peter's name probably weren't written by him.

You couldn't pick a more controversial authorship. The church has been divided on it since about 120AD. There's no way to say whether or not Peter is the true author, and it is far from a closed conversation. Declaring that so factually, isn't held up by the evidence.

Dr Myles says the majority of scholars do not think Matthew or John, or indeed Mark or Luke, wrote these texts.

The Gospel of Mark was anonymous - the title was attached later. The author is anonymous, but again, probably an eyewitness. The fact that a document was assigned a name referencing John Mark at a later date has no impact on the authenticity of the document.

Similarly, the Gospel of Matthew, was anonymous. The title was attached later. He was a well-trained Jew, and adapted and expanded upon the work we now find collected in the Gospel of Mark (amongst several other documents, especially one that scholars have nicknamed Q), focusing on Judaism, the Messianic message, and the implications for Law. The title came from the same guy who named Mark, about 50-100 years after the document was written.

Common misconceptions don't amount to these documents being less authentic, and thus on-par with the ridiculousness found in the Gnostics - which cannot even qualify as being in the same category when it comes to authenticity of the documents.

'They didn't all make it into the Bible. The church only wanted the ones that told the story they were trying to tell'

Dr Myles says earliest Christianity was incredibly diverse and there wasn't just one way of understanding the events surrounding Jesus.

Eventually, though, the group that represented orthodox Christianity became dominant.

That is... Crap. Objective crap.

The documents that were rejected, were rejected on strong grounds:

1. If they were written beyond the lifespan of the eyewitnesses of the events, they were disqualified.
2. The four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were accepted widely in the lifetime of eyewitnesses, and the entire early church accepted them. There was no question of their authenticity at the time.
3. Thus, when a gnostic disagreed with the widely accepted document, they were rejected. Not because they disagreed with the story the church was trying to present, but because they disagreed with the explanation given by eyewitnesses, within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, when the eyewitnesses were highly regarded.

The reasoning of the early church for accepting and rejecting documents is also widely available for examination:

Irenaeus c.180

The Ebionites, who use only Matthew’s Gospel, are refuted out of this very same work, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating the Gospel according to Luke, is still proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those passages which he still retains.

In fact, documents the church wanted to accept, were rejected if authenticity could not be strongly supported.

Origen c.254

“I know a certain gospel which is called “The Gospel according to Thomas” and a “Gospel according to Matthias” and many others have we read - lest we should in any way be considered ignorant of those who imagine they possess some knowledge if they are acquainted with these. Nevertheless, among all these we have approved solely what the church has recognized, which is that only four gospels should be accepted.”

The expert chosen for this article is... Eh... Fringe.

This is how he presents himself on his website:

In this provocative new reading of the Gospel of Matthew, Robert J. Myles explores the disjuncture between Jesus and homelessness by exposing the political biases of modern Western readers. Drawing on the ideological politics of homelessness in contemporary society, Myles develops an interpretative lens informed by the Marxist critique of neoliberalism and, in particular, by the critical theory of Slavoj Žižek.... What emerges is a refreshed appreciation for the deviancy of Matthew’s Jesus, in which his status as a displaced and expendable outsider is identified as contributing to the conflict and violence of the narrative, leading ultimately to his execution on the cross.