Most early medieval manuscripts are anonymous, and attributing one is an exercise in inference from handwriting. The Lindisfarne Gospels is the exception, because someone wrote the answer in it. Around the year 950 Aldred, provost of the community then at Chester-le-Street, added a colophon naming four men: Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, who wrote the book; Ethelwald, who bound it; Billfrith the anchorite, who made the metalwork and gems for the cover; and Aldred himself, who added the gloss. Eadfrith died in 721, which places the writing around the year 700.
Aldred was working two and a half centuries after the fact, and a note that late is evidence about a tradition as much as about an event. Scholars have nonetheless generally accepted it, partly because the book's single hand is consistent with one man's sustained work and partly because there was no obvious motive to invent this particular set of names.
The decoration is more controlled than that of the Book of Kells: five carpet pages of pure ornament, evangelist portraits derived from Mediterranean models, and initial pages of great intricacy that never quite let the letter dissolve. The text is a clean Italian Vulgate, well copied. This was a book made to be read as well as displayed.