Starting in the Age of Rationalism, picking up speed in the 19^th Century, and hitting its peak in the 20^th, it became common for “scholars” of the Bible to claim that the traditions passed on in the church were all wrong. They concluded not only that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not write the Gospels ascribed to them, but that those books weren’t written until a century or more after they had all died. These “experts” maintained that later Christians attached those names to the Gospels in order to give them an extra air of authenticity.

Even though these were mostly arguments from silence — “The traditional view doesn’t have documents that clearly prove an early date or apostolic authorship, so our assertions must be true” — they were so accepted among the progressive elite in theology and biblical scholarship that they became very common both inside and outside the church. You will still find many people today relying on this “scholarship”.

The problem for them, though, is that subsequent research has provided the documentary evidence that proves the Gospels were written close to the time of Christ. And that the most reasonable conclusion is that they were written by the men whose names are attached to them. Indeed, the best scholarship today supports what tradition and the text of Scripture itself have always said about who wrote all the books of the New Testament, and when.

There are still skeptics who want to argue these points, of course. And while by itself it doesn’t count as complete and final proof of the traditional dating and authorship of the Gospels, the way that a particular incident is recorded in them — the relatively minor detail that is or isn’t included — constitutes convincing evidence. 

We start to examine it with a question:

Who was it who cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant when Judas brought the mob to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane?

If you’re familiar with the Passion History, you were probably quick to answer that question: It was Peter.

But here’s what’s interesting about this:  Matthew tells us about this (26:51) and so do Mark (14:47) and Luke (22:49-51), but none of them actually identify the disciple who does the ear-slicing (Luke is the only one who tells us that Jesus immediately healed the ear).

There are relatively few incidents from Jesus’ life and ministry that all four Gospels tell us about. There’s lots of overlap between Matthew, Mark, and Luke — together they are called “The Synoptic Gospels” because they all contain roughly the same synopsis — but John is much more thematic, going deeper into fewer events, and “supplementing” the accounts in the other three. So it’s always worth our notice when John also records something that the Synoptics covered, and this incident with the servant’s ear is one of them.

Only John tells us that it was Simon Peter. Why would the other three Gospels not include this simple detail, which certainly would have fit well with what they already report about Peter’s impetuousness and poor judgment?

We’re not specifically told this, but there’s a simple explanation that matches both the Gospel accounts and other things we know: Attacking and injuring someone, especially if he’s acting in an official capacity, is going to be a crime in just about any place with laws. Even if that victim is eventually healed. Having written testimony saying, “Simon Peter did this!” would have given the enemies of the church evidence they could use to arrest and charge him with this assault — and probably get a conviction. So as long as he was still alive, leaving his name out of the account would be important for the mission Christ had given him and all the apostles.

But once Peter was dead, it wouldn’t make a difference anymore. And this fits the timeline that the church and its traditions have always maintained: Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote the Gospels that bear their names and did so within the first few decades after Pentecost, while Peter was still preaching and teaching the good news of salvation in Christ. John, though, wrote his Gospel much later, toward the end of the first century AD, well after Peter had been put to death by Emperor Nero in Rome, so naming him then would do no one any harm.

Of course, we don’t have the Holy Spirit anywhere in Scripture telling us that this is the explanation for the difference in detail between John and the Synoptics. But what we see from this example clearly fits what the text of the Bible does tell us — that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors of their respective Gospels — as well as what history and scholarship (not just tradition) tell us about Peter and John. This relatively minor detail — the omission or inclusion of Peter’s name — gives surprisingly strong support to the position that Bible-trusting scholars and teachers have always held to but also, and even more, to our Christian confidence that what has been passed down to us as the inspired and inerrant Word of God is, indeed, absolutely reliable.