Hello Cristian,
I have written responses to your points but this is where the discussion will have to end. It is simply not feasible to discuss so many issues and discuss in this way, especially when it seems there is limited value in doing so. I've tried to cover as many points as I could - there is a lot of repetition of topics so some points may have a response elsewhere. There may also be a few points I haven't responded to as it didn't seem like a response was needed.
The main question of this thread was, where did Jesus say - unequivocally - that he was God or to worship him. In all the Biblical verses we've discussed, the main point has been to show that they are all ambiguous. Christian scholars themselves interpret them differently.
Regarding your point about the testimony of Papias (and others), you are completely ignoring that in ancient historiography, the testimony of someone that close to the period was considered a massive valuable evidence. Papias explicitly states that Matthew wrote the words in Hebrew, and Irenaeus clearly connects the Gospels to the four evangelists. So even if this is not an "absolute proof" in the modern sense, the unanimity of the ancient sources is already a very strong historical indicator. Otherwise, historically saying it would be extremely likely to have competing authors (if they existed), which is not the case.
When you say 'testimony of Papias', remember we are talking about a second century bishop who wasn't an eyewitness, who was writing many decades (as much as a century) after Jesus, whose work was largely lost and his statements were not transmitted intact and in context but only as preserved by Eusebius, who extracted, edited, and embedded this statement into a context of his own making. As a result, the most famous statement about the origins of Mark and Matthew is a joint production of three different people, living at three different times, with three different purposes: the elder whom Papias quotes from, Papias and Eusebius. Calling this a 'massive valuable evidence' is somewhat an overstatement.
It's also worth considering that although Papias states Matthew wrote the words in Hebrew, there is a strong view that Matthew was written in Greek, especially as there are no surviving manuscripts of Matthew in Hebrew. He also uses the word 'Logia' which likely means sayings, not a full gospel. This has raised doubt as to whether he was referring to the same gospel as the one in the New Testament today.
Furthermore, there are no explicit attestations attributing the authorship of the gospel to John the apostle before Ireneaus' assertion. Even some of Ireneaus' contemporaries do not share his opinion. The Roman presbyter, Cauis, writing a few years after Ireneaus, attributed the book to the Gnostic Cerinthus. There is evidence that this gospel was not universally accepted in Rome during the end of the second or beginning of the third century because the presbyter Hippolytus (c170-c236) had to defend the Johannine authorship. (Davidson & Leaney, Biblical Criticism, p. 268). The existence of these debates shows that the acceptance of Johannine authorship was not yet universally recognised.
Furthermore, there are clear internal indications within the Gospels that strongly point to their authorship. For example, in Gospel of Matthew, he is referred to as Levi in the other Gospels, but in his own account, he never uses the name Levi; instead, he identifies himself as Matthew, which affirms his identity, and shows a personal connection to the events he describes, thing that could be only done by Matthew.
In John, he does not explicitly name himself, but refers to himself as the beloved disciple, and this disciple is present at key events, including sitting at the feet of Jesus, witnessing the crucifixion, being present at the empty tomb, and having a close relationship with Jesus, which aligns uniquely with John. Mark is identified by Papias in 110 d.C. as Peter’s interpreter, writing Peter’s accounts and closely reflecting Peter’s teachings and perspective. Historically saying, 110 d.C. (not even a century after Christ died), is absurd.
None of the four Gospels explicitly says “I, Matthew…” or “I, John…” within the text itself. The author of Matthew refers to the tax collector as "Matthew" in the third person. And rather than showing a personal connection to the events, he heavily relies on Mark's Gospel, which is rather strange if the author were claiming to be Matthew himself, especially since ancient authors who were eyewitnesses often highlighted that status (explicitly or implicitly).
Likewise, the name of the 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' is not explicitly mentioned; John 21:24 speaks of this disciple in the third person and uses a collective editorial voice (“we know that his testimony is true”), suggesting that the final form of the Gospel was shaped or authenticated by a community rather than written directly by a single eyewitness. In addition, the content of John reflects a later stage of Christianity consistent with a later author or community than with a first-generation Galilean disciple (for example it shows conflict with synagogue authorities and uses language that presupposes expulsion from the synagogue (cf. John 9:22; 16:2)).
Regarding the writings you mentioned (Clement, etc.), you are confusing two different things. Those writings were not meant to catalog authors; they were letters and pastoral treatises. Ironically, Ignatius, for example, explicitly cites passages from the Gospels without naming the authors, which actually indicates that the works were already well-known and recognized at the time.
This is precisely the point; due to the fact that the authors' names were not usually mentioned and citations not referenced, the present titles of the Gospels are not traceable to the evangelists themselves. Even when Ignatius cites Gospel material, the wording is often not verbatim, which makes it hard to prove he is directly quoting a fixed written text.
Finally, your idea about the Catholic Church confuses “titles added later,” which did indeed happen (and in a historically reasonable, not arbitrary way), with “false authorship” or “invented authors.” And let’s suppose, hypothetically, that a title was wrongly attributed (which would be historically unlikely): would all the texts agree with one another and recount exactly the same central story, even though they were independent? That would be impossible. The only explanation is that something actually did happened and people that were direct followers of Jesus wrote about it.
A significant portion of the Gospel according to Mark is found verbatim in both Matthew and Luke, leading to the well-known position that these two authors copied much of the material from Mark, then edited and added their own. So saying they 'agree with one another' on the basis of being 'independent' is a misleading claim. In fact, they don't agree with one another in many things. But the point that's being made here is simply that the authors of the gospels are anonymous. This is a fact reported by numerous New Testament scholars and theologians.
According to the conservative scholar Michael Green: 'We do not know who wrote the Gospel [of Matthew]. Like all the others, it is anonymous... [Second-century writers] do tell us who wrote them, and they may or may not have been right. In the case of Matthew, it is not at all easy to know whether they were right, because there is a major contradiction in the evidence. The external evidence points uniformly in one direction, the internal in another.' (The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven, 2001, Inter-Varsity Press, p. 19)
According to the prominent conservative scholar Tom Wright, a favorite of many Christian apologists: 'What do we know about how the Gospels got written? Frustratingly little. We don't have Matthew's diaries of how he went about collecting and arranging his material. We don't know where Mark was written. We don't know whether Luke really was, as is often thought, the companion of Paul. We don't know whether the 'Beloved Disciple', to whom the Fourth Gospel is ascribed (John 21:24), was really 'John' (in which case, which 'John'?) or someone else. None of the books name their authors; all the traditions about who wrote which ones are just that, traditions, from later on in the life of the church (beginning in the first half of the second century, about fifty years after the Gospels were written).' (Tom Wright, The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary, 1997, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, pp. 126-127)
An important parallel: Plato’s dialogues did not originally include his name, and tradition attributed these works to Plato around 3 centuries later. Some of Homer’s poems, for example, were attributed to him about 400–500 years later through oral tradition. Thucydides, likewise, did not write his name on every copy; the attribution came through tradition. Do you see where I’m going with this? Okay, it wasn’t the apostles themselves holding the pen, but the direct followers who were part of their community who wrote on their behalf. There is also a very high historical probability that they could have recited the material while someone else wrote it down, given the strong oral culture of the time, the careful transmission of eyewitness testimony, and the consistent preservation of the stories within their communities.
I'm not sure what this proves. There is no certainty that Homer wrote the poems attributed to him or that he even existed, so it's really the same predicament as with the Bible. How can you leave the matter of Scripture to mere probabilities and assumptions?
