The traditional gospel authorship is as solid as it is for any other ancient document.

The idea of apostolic sucession -- that Jesus and his disciples formed a chain which perpetuated his teachings -- is just contextual common sense. It would reflect the normal chain of tradition that the Jews themselves maintained. It would fit the process of ancient education (think Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) as well as family traditional processes. Scholarship has been coming to grips with that cultural aspect of Christianity in recent times; some of course resist the implications. That's who Pikachu calls on as sources here.

Go ahead and check out the Shorto sound bite to the lower right. I'll wait.

Finished? Good. Now if you've read this site for a while, you already know the fatal flaw in Shorto's alleged argument, because we've already tanned Earl Doherty's hide for making the same error. As Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on John [16ff], the NT was written in what anthropologists call a "high-context" society. In such societies people "presume a broadly shared, well-understood, or 'high' knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing." Readers were required and expected to "fill in the gap" because their background knowledge was a given. Extended explanations were unnecessary. In contrast, we in the modern US are a "low-context" society. We assume little or no knowledge of he context of a communication. This is in part because we have so many specialized fields requiring specialized knowledge. Thus we expect background to be given when communication is given between fields. This is in contrast to the ancient world where there was little specialized knowledge.

“In Paul’s copious writings, so fervently focused on the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, there is no mention of the [passion] saga we all know so well: the triumphal entry on an ass, the crown of thorns, the confrontation with Pilate. If Paul, writing only a decade or two after the crucifixion, knew about such theologically potent details as Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane or his dying words on the cross – “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” – how could he not have expounded on them? The answer that comes to mind is the same one that comes to mind for the virgin birth story: he didn’t know the features of the passion story because they hadn’t been invented yet.”[Russell Shorto, Gospel Truth, 1997, 170]

Malina and Rohrbaugh set forth in summary a stinging indictment of Shorto's "argument": "The obvious problem this creates for reading the biblical writings today is that low-context readers in the United States frequently mistake the biblical writings for low-context documents. They erroneously assume that the author has provided all of the contextual information needed to understand it." Shorto's "they must not have known" explanation is a hackneyed analysis that shows a dismal awareness of the different world Paul lived in.

Of course, there are also other relevant points, such as that there's no reason for Paul to bring up Jesus' triumphal entry on an ass when he's trying to discuss the Corinthians' problems with a guy who fornicated with his mother in law. It's also questionable to claim that Paul does not mention elements of Jesus' life; of course we have seen how the likes of Doherty just explain all of that away as happening in some nether-nether region, which makes the whole theory conveniently unfalsifiable.

There'll be more on the next page; for now, Pikachu closes out with a rant that All the early Christians, orthodox or heretic, justified their teachings with apostolic succession. Well, duh -- I'd hardly expect the heretics to do otherwise; but what is Pikachu trying to prove? That since the heretics did it and it was fake, so it must have been fake when the orthodox did it? Nothing like a fallacious guilt by assoication; by that reckoning the works of Philo and Josephus we accept as genuine just got flushed down the commode because of Pseudo-Philo and Slavonic Josephus. It's hard to say whet exactly Pikachu is trying to prove, but to educated people, these documents are not news; here's some comments courtesy of ourselves and Jenkins' Hidden Gospels:

Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas -- a grossly late document, obviously influenced by the canonical Gospels The Book of Thomas -- actually called the Book of Thomas the Contender, it is also part of the late-dated Nag Hammadit collection The Acts of Thomas -- ditto.

Peter

The Gospel of Peter -- probably dates around 200 AD The Kerygma of Peter -- ditto. The Acts of Peter -- ditto. The Letter of Peter to Phillip -- another part of the late-dated Nag Hammadi collection

John

The Gospel of John -- sorry, but this one is for real The Acts of John -- but not this one, which dates to 150-200.

All Twelve Apostles

The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles -- this one may actually date to 70 AD or so

More disciples

The Dialogue of the Savior -- another of the very late Nag Hammadi documents

James

The Apocryphon of James -- and yet another late one from there

Phillip

Gospel of Phillip -- this one is dated to between 250-300.

Jesus

The Unknown Gospel of Papyrus Egerton 2 -- dates to around 300

Again, it's hard to say what Pikachu thinks he is proving with this list. But as he turns back to the NT, he appeals to the idea that: ...the people who knew Jesus didn't need a written record, they knew Him. They did pass on a record of Jesus' sayings, first as an oral tradition, eventually written down in a book modern scholars call The Synoptic Saying Source, aka Q. The general idea of Q is not without serious problems (see here), and it would be well to remember that oral tradition was quite capable of accurate preservation (see here. Pikachu is accurate in saying that different theologies developed resulting in lots of of mutually incompatible gospels [which] were written in the second century, the various new Christianities each looked for ways to validate their own version of the faith. And of course such persons would have to invent a chain of succession...or else (better yet) abuse one they actually did have before they came up with their heretical teachings.

So what does Pikachu prove with all this? It's hard to say, since he doesn't even say what he thinks he has proven. Hmph.

If you want to date the Gospels based on things like the oldest surviving manuscript, when they are first mentioned by another Christian writer, and evidence about who wrote them, and you don't like the traditional answers, I have bad news -- using the same criteria you do for secular documents, you end up either having to accept the traditional dates or else saying Tacitus' Annals were written anonymously in 200 AD or so. But meanwhile what about all those other gospels Pikachu lists? Using the same criteria, they get dated late. Real late. Which means they have no chance of representing historic, authentic Christianity.

Jenkins' book offers a much needed corrective to the peculiar theories of fringe scholars like Koester (Pikachu's man), Mack, Crossan, and the others who want to give these documents "equal time" and equal credence with the canonical ones. Even though he dates the canonical works to 70-90 himself, Jenkins makes it quite clear that the orthodox view has the evidence to claim it was there first.

Available at Amazon .com.