# Gospel Name Frequencies Argument ## Intro Every place and time has its popular names. If you write a true story about real people, the names in it will follow the local pattern without any effort on your part. If you invent a story about a place far away or long ago, you will very likely get the pattern wrong. The names in the Gospels and Acts match the pattern of Jewish names in the land of Israel in the time of Jesus. Simon and Joseph were the two most common men's names there, and they are the two most common men's names in the Gospels. Mary was the most common woman's name there, and it is the most common woman's name in the Gospels. The Gospels also add a tag to the common names, like "Simon Peter" or "Mary Magdalene," and leave the rare names bare, which is exactly what people do when several friends share one name. Recent studies that compare the Gospels with ancient histories and ancient fiction find that the Gospels follow the histories. ## In full The argument is abductive. It begins with a measured fact, the frequency of personal names in the Gospels and Acts compared with the frequency of names among Palestinian Jews of the period, and asks which account of the Gospels' origin best explains it. The data come from Tal Ilan's *Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I: Palestine 330 BCE-200 CE* (Mohr Siebeck, 2002), which gathers every recorded Jewish name from that region and period: ossuaries and other inscriptions, documentary papyri, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, rabbinic literature and the New Testament. [Richard Bauckham](/codex/richard-bauckham/) set the Gospel and Acts names against Ilan's figures in chapter 4 of *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses* (2006) and found close agreement. [Peter J. Williams](/codex/peter-j-williams/) carried the argument to a general audience in *Can We Trust the Gospels?* (2018) and added the evidence of disambiguating tags. Luuk van de Weghe (*New Testament Studies*, 2023) supplied the control group the argument needed, testing ancient histories, apocryphal gospels and ancient novels by the same measure. The conclusion the evidence supports is specific. The names fit the Gospels to first-century Jewish Palestine, which counts against the view that the stories were freely invented by Gentile communities far from the events, and they fit the pattern of ancient history writing rather than ancient fiction. On its own the argument does not prove that any particular episode happened or name the authors. It is one strand of the wider case on [NT Authorship and Eyewitness Apologetics](/codex/nt-authorship-and-eyewitness-apologetics/). ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second reply:** > Ask anyone to write a story set in a place they have never lived and they will get the names wrong. The Gospels get them right. Simon and Joseph were the top two men's names in Jewish Palestine, and they are the top two in the Gospels. Mary was the top woman's name, and it is the top one in the Gospels. And the writers tag the common names, Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot, Mary Magdalene, while rare names like Andrew and Philip go untagged. That is how people talk about real people. When scholars ran the same test on ancient novels and the apocryphal gospels, those failed it. The Gospels pass it the way Josephus and Plutarch pass it. **The 5 fast facts:** 1. **The top two match.** About 15.6% of Palestinian Jewish men in Ilan's data are named Simon or Joseph. In the Gospels and Acts the figure is about 18.2% (Bauckham, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*, ch. 4). 2. **The top nine match.** Bauckham gives 41.5% of men in Ilan's data bearing one of the nine most popular names, against 40.3% in the Gospels and Acts. Van de Weghe recalculated the first figure from Bauckham's own table as 46.7%, and found the agreement still holds by other measures. 3. **Common names get tags; rare names do not.** Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot, Simon of Cyrene, Simon the leper; Judas Iscariot and "Judas, not Iscariot"; James son of Zebedee and James son of Alphaeus. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew and Thomas need no tag (Williams). 4. **Diaspora names are missing.** Jewish naming in Egypt and Rome followed different patterns, with more Greek and Latin names. Those patterns do not show up in the Gospel stories set in Judea and Galilee. 5. **The control group fails.** Van de Weghe (2023) found the match in Josephus's *Life*, Suetonius and Plutarch, and found it absent from the apocryphal gospels, the apocryphal Acts and most ancient novels. **The 3 strongest counter-moves:** - *"Name a later Gentile writer who could have produced this pattern by accident."* Getting the top two names right is easy for a local and hard for an outsider. Getting the tags right on the common names and not on the rare ones is harder still. - *"If the pattern does not matter, why do the apocryphal gospels fail it?"* The comparison group is the point. A test that sorts Josephus from the novels and puts the Gospels with Josephus is measuring something. - *"Which of the names do you think was invented?"* Ask the objector to pick one. Most named figures are either confirmed elsewhere or are exactly the kind of minor person nobody would bother to invent. **Concessions:** - Yes, the statistics are disputed. Gregor and Blais (2023) argue the match is no better than an anonymous-tradition model would produce. Van de Weghe and Wilson reply that their tests were the wrong ones. The debate is live. - Yes, the argument shows a Palestinian Jewish origin for the names, not eyewitness authorship by itself. It removes the "distant Gentile invention" picture; other evidence carries the rest. - Yes, Bauckham's arithmetic had errors, and later work corrected them. The corrected figures still show the match. **The closing line:** > *You can fake a lot in a story. Names are hard to fake, because nobody notices them. The Gospels have the names a first-century Galilean would have known, used the way a first-century Galilean would have used them. That is not what invented stories look like when we test them. It is what history looks like.* ## Argument structure | # | Premise | |---|---| | **P1** | Personal-name frequencies vary by region and period, and writers reproduce the pattern of the world they actually know far better than one they are imagining. | | **P2** | The names in the Gospels and Acts closely match the recorded frequency of names among Palestinian Jews of the period, including the distinctive top names. | | **P3** | The Gospels tag common names to tell people apart and leave rare names untagged, the usage of people speaking about real individuals. | | **P4** | Ancient histories show the same name match, while apocryphal gospels, apocryphal Acts and most ancient novels do not. | | **C** | **The Gospel narratives draw on tradition rooted in first-century Jewish Palestine and behave like ancient history writing, not like later invention.** | ## Form The argument is an inference to the best explanation. P1 sets the expectation, P2 and P3 give the observed data, and P4 supplies the control group that tells us what invented narratives actually do. The rival hypothesis is that the stories were composed or heavily invented by communities distant in place or time from the events. That hypothesis predicts diaspora name patterns, misplaced popularity, or the bare and odd names of the apocryphal literature. The observed pattern is what the historical-tradition hypothesis predicts. The statistical strength of P2 is the contested premise, so the conclusion is held as probable, not certain. --- ## P1, Names follow local patterns that outsiders get wrong ### Affirmative case (second-order arguments) 1. **Naming is regional.** Ilan's later volumes on the Western and Eastern diaspora show Jewish naming in Egypt, Asia Minor and Rome running on different lines from Palestine, with heavier Greek and Latin elements. A Jewish name list from Alexandria does not look like one from Jerusalem. 2. **Naming is period-bound.** Palestinian Jewish naming in this era is dominated by the names of the Hasmonean family: Simon, John, Judas, Eleazar, Jonathan, Mattathias. That is a feature of the period after the Maccabean revolt, not of the Old Testament era or of later centuries. 3. **Names are background, so writers do not think to check them.** A writer inventing a setting attends to the plot and the main characters. The minor names are the part of a story least likely to be researched and most likely to reflect the writer's own world. That is why they make a good test. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Any educated ancient writer could have known which names were common in Judea."* 2. *"Modern historical novelists get names right all the time."* ### Rebuttals 1. Knowing that Simon was common is one thing; reproducing the whole spread across dozens of minor characters is another. Writers who invent names tend to reach for the striking and the symbolic. Van de Weghe's survey shows ancient fiction generally failing the full test, which is direct evidence on how ancient writers behaved. 2. Van de Weghe and Wilson (2024) tested this claim and report that the Gospels and Acts fit their setting better than modern, well-researched historical novels. The comparison has been run, and the novels do worse. ### Tactical notes - Lead with the illustration: ask the listener what names they would give characters in a story set in a country they have never visited. - Do not overclaim P1. It sets an expectation; P4 is what tests it. --- ## P2, The Gospel names match Palestinian Jewish names ### Affirmative case (second-order arguments) 1. **The database.** Ilan's *Lexicon* records 2,625 male name occurrences and far fewer female ones for Palestinian Jews from 330 BCE to 200 CE. In it the most popular men's names are, in order, Simon, Joseph, Eleazar (Lazarus), Judas, John, Jesus, Hananiah (Ananias), Jonathan and Matthew. 2. **The top two.** Simon and Joseph together account for about 15.6% of men in Ilan's data and about 18.2% of men in the Gospels and Acts (Bauckham, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*, ch. 4). Simon is the most common man's name in both. 3. **The top nine.** Bauckham reports 41.5% of men in Ilan's data, and 40.3% in the Gospels and Acts, bearing one of the nine most common names. Van de Weghe (2023) showed that Bauckham's own table gives 46.7% for the first figure (1,227 of 2,625), and then rebuilt the comparison on a narrower, datable sample from 30 BCE to 90 CE, excluding names found only in the New Testament. The match held, including for a top-six comparison. 4. **The women.** Mary (Mariam) is the most common woman's name in Ilan's data and the most common in the Gospels, where several different women bear it: the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Mary the wife of Clopas. Salome, second in Ilan's list, appears among the women at the cross in [Mark 15:40](/codex/mark-15-40/). 5. **One more example from outside the Gospels.** The high priest was named Joseph, a name so common that he went by his family name. Josephus calls him "Joseph who was called Caiaphas" (*Antiquities* 18.35), and the ossuary found in Jerusalem in 1990 reads "Joseph son of Caiaphas." The Gospels simply call him Caiaphas, the name by which he was actually distinguished. ![A limestone ossuary with a vaulted lid, its front carved with rosettes and its end scratched with an Aramaic inscription](/codex/assets/caiaphas-ossuary.jpg) _The ossuary inscribed "Joseph son of Caiaphas," 1st century AD, found in Jerusalem in 1990, now in the Israel Museum. Ossuary inscriptions like this one are a main source for Ilan's name counts, and this Joseph shows why a common name needed a second name. Image: CC0, via Wikimedia Commons._ ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Ilan's database includes the New Testament names, so the comparison is circular."* 2. *"A 530-year window is too broad to give a real snapshot of naming in Jesus's day."* 3. *"Gregor and Blais (2023) ran a formal statistical test and found the match no better than a model of anonymous community transmission, with weak evidence against Bauckham."* ### Rebuttals 1. The concern is fair, and it was answered by removing the overlap. Van de Weghe's sample excludes names attested only in New Testament narratives, and the match survives. 2. Also fair, and also met. Ilan herself says her lexicon is not a snapshot. Van de Weghe narrowed the window to datable names from 30 BCE to 90 CE, the generation of Jesus and the apostles, and the agreement holds. 3. Van de Weghe and Wilson (2024) reply that Gregor and Blais's result comes from an improper test and questionable data selection, and that a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test shows the Gospels and Acts fitting their context at least as well as Josephus. Wilson and van de Weghe (*JSNT*, 2026) add that Gregor and Blais's comparison texts carry their own data problems and propose 87 new name finds from ossuaries, ostraca and papyri. This is an open scholarly exchange. The fair summary is that the match is real and its statistical weight is disputed. ### Live-cite kit - **Scripture:** [Mark 3:16-19](/codex/mark-3-16-19/) (the Twelve, with tags on the common names); [Mark 15:40](/codex/mark-15-40/) (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Salome); [Acts 1:23](/codex/acts-1-23/) ("Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus") - **Scholarly:** Bauckham, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*, ch. 4; Ilan, *Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I* (2002); van de Weghe, *NTS* 69 (2023) - **Aphorism:** "You can research a plot. Nobody researches the names of the extras." ### Tactical notes - Give the Simon and Joseph figures first; they are the easiest to remember and the hardest to explain away. - Concede the arithmetic corrections at once. They make the case look honest, and the corrected data still support it. --- ## P3, Common names carry tags, rare names do not ### Affirmative case (second-order arguments) 1. **The Simons.** The New Testament keeps its many Simons apart: Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot ([Luke 6:15](/codex/luke-6-15/)), Simon the leper ([Mark 14:3](/codex/mark-14-3/)), Simon of Cyrene ([Mark 15:21](/codex/mark-15-21/)), Simon the Pharisee ([Luke 7:40](/codex/luke-7-40/)), Simon the tanner ([Acts 9:43](/codex/acts-9-43/)), and Simon the father of Judas Iscariot ([John 6:71](/codex/john-6-71/)). 2. **The Judases, Jameses and Marys.** "Judas, not Iscariot" ([John 14:22](/codex/john-14-22/)) exists only because a second Judas needed separating from the first. James is "son of Zebedee" or "son of Alphaeus" ([Mark 3:17-18](/codex/mark-3-17-18/)). The Marys are Magdalene, the mother of James and Joses ([Mark 15:40](/codex/mark-15-40/)), the sister of Martha, and the mother of John Mark ([Acts 12:12](/codex/acts-12-12/)). 3. **The lists show the pattern in one place.** In the list of the Twelve, the men with popular names carry tags and the men with rare names do not: Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew and Thomas stand bare. Williams draws attention to this in [Matthew 10:2-4](/codex/matthew-10-2-4/), where James and Matthew are tagged and the rarer names are not. 4. **Some tags are in Aramaic.** "Simon the Cananaean" ([Mark 3:18](/codex/mark-3-18/)) renders the Aramaic word for "zealous," which Luke translates as "the Zealot" ([Luke 6:15](/codex/luke-6-15/)). A tag carried over from the original language points back to the community where the name was first used. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Tags are a natural storytelling device. Any writer would add them."* ### Rebuttals 1. A writer free to choose names would avoid the problem by giving each character a different name. Tags exist because real people share names. The tags also fall where Ilan's popularity data say they should: on the commonest names and not on the rare ones. ### Tactical notes - The tags are the part of the argument anyone can check in their own Bible in two minutes. Use them with a lay audience. --- ## P4, Histories pass the test; invented stories fail it ### Affirmative case (second-order arguments) 1. **The control study.** Van de Weghe ("Name Recall in the Synoptic Gospels," *New Testament Studies* 69, 2023) defines "onomastic congruence" as a writer's names matching the real distribution in the records of the time. He finds it in history writing of the early Empire, including Josephus's *Life*, Suetonius's *Divus Julius* and Plutarch's *Caesar* and *Pompey*. He finds it absent from the apocryphal gospels, the apocryphal Acts and most ancient novels. 2. **The Gospels sit with the histories.** The Synoptic Gospels show the match and something more: they rarely add names, and they keep the names that appear in their earliest, Semitic-coloured material. Van de Weghe proposes that names were kept because they pointed to people who could be asked, which fits Bauckham's view of named characters as sources. 3. **Luke-Acts passes on its own.** Bauckham found the match when the Gospels and Acts are read together. Van de Weghe finds it in Luke-Acts taken alone, and in Mark to a lesser degree. 4. **The apocrypha show what invention looks like.** Williams notes that the Coptic *Gospel of Thomas* opens with the speaker "Didymus Judas Thomas," which he calls an implausible name, and that names typical of Egyptian Jews do not appear in the New Testament. The later gospels drift away from the Palestinian pattern; the canonical ones stay inside it. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Some fiction has good local colour. The* Protevangelium of James *shows a writer can imitate realism."* 2. *"Gregor and Blais argue that some apocryphal texts and the Babylonian Talmud fit the name data about as well as the Gospels."* 3. *"John has very few names. Does the test fail for John?"* ### Rebuttals 1. Van de Weghe grants this and treats congruence as a mark of historical interest, not a proof of authenticity. Imitation of realism can happen. What fiction generally does not manage is the full pattern across all its minor characters. 2. Wilson and van de Weghe (*JSNT*, 2026) reply that the first of Gregor and Blais's methods is statistically invalid and the second unsuitable to the question, and they identify problems in the comparison datasets. The exchange is unresolved in print, and the codex presents both sides. 3. No. Too few names means too small a sample to test, which is neither a pass nor a fail. Van de Weghe says plainly that a lack of congruence does not disprove a text's authenticity. ### Tactical notes - P4 is the strongest premise for a skeptical audience, because it answers "so what?" A test that separates Josephus from the novels is a test worth taking seriously. --- ## Conclusion **The Gospel narratives draw on tradition rooted in first-century Jewish Palestine and behave like ancient history writing, not like later invention.** The names match the land and period, the tags fall where shared names require them, and the control group shows that invented narratives of the same era usually miss the pattern. The argument does not settle authorship or prove each event. It closes off the picture of the Gospels as free inventions of distant communities, and it adds measured weight to the case that the Gospel writers were reporting on real people. ## Master objections to the argument as a whole - *"This is a minority position pushed by apologists."* It is published in peer-reviewed journals by both sides: van de Weghe in *New Testament Studies*, Gregor and Blais in the *Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus*. Bauckham's book is one of the most discussed works in Gospel studies of its generation. - *"Even if the names are right, the miracles could still be invented."* True as far as it goes. The argument concerns the setting and the people, not every event. It removes one popular reason for dismissing the Gospels, and the miracle question is argued on other pages. - *"Real names could have been attached to invented stories."* Possible in principle, but the rival hypothesis then needs writers or communities close enough to Palestinian Jewish life to reproduce its naming, which is most of what the argument claims. ## Tactical opening / closing **Opening line:** "Before we talk about miracles, can we agree on a simple test of whether a story comes from where it says it comes from?" **Closing landing strip:** "The names do not prove the resurrection. They prove the Gospel writers knew the people and the place. Now the question is what those people said they saw." ## Connection to Scripture - [Mark 3:16-19](/codex/mark-3-16-19/), [Matthew 10:2-4](/codex/matthew-10-2-4/), [Luke 6:14-16](/codex/luke-6-14-16/) and [Acts 1:13](/codex/acts-1-13/), the four lists of the Twelve with their tags - [Mark 15:40](/codex/mark-15-40/), the Marys and Salome at the cross - [Mark 15:21](/codex/mark-15-21/), Simon of Cyrene, "the father of Alexander and Rufus," named as people the readers knew - [John 14:22](/codex/john-14-22/), "Judas (not Iscariot)" - [Acts 1:23](/codex/acts-1-23/), "Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus," three names to identify one Joseph - [Luke 1:1-4](/codex/luke-1-1-4/), Luke's statement that he drew on "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" ## Patristic / scholarly note **Classical:** - Josephus (*Antiquities* 18.35) gives the high priest as "Joseph who was called Caiaphas," the same kind of second name the Gospels use. - Papias of Hierapolis, quoted by Eusebius (*Church History* 3.39), says he preferred "a living and abiding voice," naming the disciples he asked about, which fits named figures as sources. **Modern:** - [Richard Bauckham](/codex/richard-bauckham/) (*Jesus and the Eyewitnesses*, 2006, 2nd ed. 2017, ch. 4), the first full comparison with Ilan's data - Tal Ilan (*Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity*, Parts I, III and IV, 2002-2011), the database - [Peter J. Williams](/codex/peter-j-williams/) (*Can We Trust the Gospels?*, 2018, ch. 3), the disambiguation evidence and the case for a general reader - Luuk van de Weghe (*New Testament Studies* 69, 2023), the control group of histories, apocrypha and novels - Kamil Gregor and Brian S. Blais (*Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus*, 2023), the main statistical critique ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Richard Bauckham, *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony* (2006). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL852568W) - Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais, "Is Name Popularity a Good Test of Historicity?: A Statistical Evaluation of Richard Bauckham’s Onomastic Argument," *Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus* 21 (2023). [doi:10.1163/17455197-bja10023](https://doi.org/10.1163/17455197-bja10023) [open access](https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/bbs_jou/3) - Tal Ilan, *Lexicon of Jewish names in late antiquity* (2002). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16449229W) - Luuk van de Weghe, "Name Recall in the Synoptic Gospels," *New Testament Studies* 69 (2023). [doi:10.1017/s0028688522000170](https://doi.org/10.1017/s0028688522000170) [open access](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9507AEED21DACD1E1AC096B5321699C5/S0028688522000170a.pdf/div-class-title-name-recall-in-the-synoptic-gospels-div.pdf) - Luuk van de Weghe and Jason Wilson, "Why Name Popularity is a Good Test of Historicity: A Goodness-of-Fit Test Analysis on Names in the Gospels and Acts," *Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus* 22 (2024). [doi:10.1163/17455197-bja10035](https://doi.org/10.1163/17455197-bja10035) [open access](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.14883) - Peter J. Williams, *Can We Trust the Gospels?* (Crossway, 2018). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21862708W) - Jason Wilson and Luuk van de Weghe, "Re-Examining the Statistical Methodology and Onomastic Claims of Gregor and Blais’ Argument from Name Popularity," *Journal for the Study of the New Testament* 48 (2026). [doi:10.1177/0142064x251377023](https://doi.org/10.1177/0142064x251377023) [open access](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.21150) ## See also - [Anonymous Gospels Objection Defeater](/codex/anonymous-gospels-objection-defeater/), where the name argument answers the claim that the Gospels were written by distant communities - [The Bible Is Just Second-Hand Sources Objection Defeater](/codex/the-bible-is-just-second-hand-sources-objection-defeater/), the eyewitness case it supports - [Gospels Are Constructed Encomium Objection Defeater](/codex/gospels-are-constructed-encomium-objection-defeater/), the name match as one mark of history over legend - [NT Authorship and Eyewitness Apologetics](/codex/nt-authorship-and-eyewitness-apologetics/), the wider case on who wrote the Gospels - [Historicity of Jesus](/codex/historicity-of-jesus/), the minimal historical case - [Caiaphas Ossuary](/codex/caiaphas-ossuary/), the Joseph with a second name - [Richard Bauckham](/codex/richard-bauckham/) and [Peter J. Williams](/codex/peter-j-williams/), the scholars who built and popularised the argument - [Arguments](/codex/arguments/), master index ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What is the argument from names in the Gospels?** The names of people in the Gospels and Acts match how often those names were actually used by Jews in the land of Israel in the first century. Simon and Joseph were the most popular men's names there, and they are the most popular in the Gospels. That fit points to stories rooted in that time and place, not invented far away. **Q: Who did the study on name frequencies in the Gospels?** Richard Bauckham made the first full comparison in *Jesus and the Eyewitnesses* (2006), using Tal Ilan's *Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity* (2002). Peter J. Williams popularised it in *Can We Trust the Gospels?* (2018). Luuk van de Weghe tested it against ancient histories and ancient fiction in *New Testament Studies* (2023). **Q: Do the names show the Gospels are history and not fiction?** They show the Gospels behave like ancient history writing. Van de Weghe found the same name match in Josephus, Suetonius and Plutarch, and found it missing from the apocryphal gospels, apocryphal Acts and most ancient novels. The match does not prove every event, but it is what we would expect from reports about real people. **Q: Why do the Gospels say "Simon Peter" and "Mary Magdalene"?** Because those names were so common that people needed a second name to tell them apart. The Gospels tag the popular names, Simon, Judas, James, Mary, and leave rare names like Andrew, Philip and Thomas untagged, which is how people talk about real acquaintances. **Q: Has the name argument been criticised?** Yes. Kamil Gregor and Brian Blais (2023) ran a statistical test and argued the match is no better than an anonymous-tradition model predicts. Luuk van de Weghe and Jason Wilson replied (2024, 2026) that the test was the wrong one and that the Gospels and Acts fit their setting at least as well as Josephus. The debate is ongoing. **Q: Could a later writer have just picked common Jewish names?** A later writer would have to know the popularity order in Palestine, which differed from Jewish communities elsewhere, and would have to tag only the common names and not the rare ones. The control study found that ancient writers inventing stories generally did not manage this.