Who actually wrote the New Testament?

[polonius]

We are told that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels.

But did any of them actually do that? Aside from Catholic "tradition" is there any evidence that they did, or was it some other writers?

Lets begin with Matthew:

From the Introduction to Matthew we are told that:

[PeterPan]

Not very much is known about the authorship of the books of the New Testament. Here is some of the speculation going around.

-Of the Gospels, the Gospel of Mark was probably the first to be written, and the other two synoptic gospels (Matthew and Luke) seem to be based on Mark, and possibly on some mystery 'Q document'. It is very unlikely that any of the Gospels were written by direct eyewitnesses.
-A study of word frequencies suggests that the last 16 chapters of the book of Acts were written by a different author to the Gospel of Luke.
https://academic.oup.com/dsh/article-ab ... 183/933695
-7 of the 14 letters of Paul look like they might have been written by the same author, who may or may not have been Paul himself.

You asked specifically about Matthew.
-Matthew was probably written in 70-110AD (certainly after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD).
-The intended audience may have been in Syria, since the city of Antioch is mentioned frequently in the Gospel.
-The author of Matthew probably came from a Jewish background, since the book of Matthew invokes many Old Testament prophecies.

[Difflugia]

We are told that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the Gospels.

But did any of them actually do that? Aside from Catholic "tradition" is there any evidence that they did, or was it some other writers?

The earliest writer that attributed four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John was reportedly Papias, though all we have remaining of his writings are fragments quoted by later authors. Papias also wasn't clear enough about which writings he meant to determine if his four Gospels matched the four in our New Testament. There are several reasons to think that his Gospel of Matthew wasn't our Gospel of Matthew.

Irenaeus repeats the attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He also provides enough quotations to be pretty sure his four Gospels were the same as ours. He provides no reason for thinking so, though.

Other Church Fathers through the next few centuries make the same claim, but none of them offer any reason for thinking so. The general assumption by scholars is that they're all simply repeating Irenaeus, but there's really no way to be sure.

Addressing Matthew specifically, it looks to me like Papias meant a different document than our Gospel of Matthew. First, Papias said that Matthew compiled the sayings of Jesus in Hebrew (which could mean either Hebrew proper or Aramaic). Our Matthew is neither a sayings gospel nor was it (in the opinion of scholars for the last two hundred years) composed in anything other than Greek. Second, Papias offered a story of Judas' death that is perhaps compatible with the one in Acts 1:18 if you squint just right, but is completely at odds with the one in Matthew. Either Papias didn't know the story that we attribute to Matthew or he didn't think very highly of it.

Judas walked about in this world a sad example of impiety; for his body having swollen to such an extent that he could not pass where a chariot could pass easily, he was crushed by the chariot, so that his bowels gushed out.