Papias and Polycarp and Irenaeus...oh, my....

The comments to my post on Ehrman have turned into a good discussion on whether, and why, we can accept the tradition that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark.  Along the way there are discussions about the trustworthiness of tradition and testimony and the role of testimony in history.  Things I learned include the fact that Justin Martyr writing circa 150 AD identified one of the "gospels" - at that time called a "memoir" of the apostles - as being the memoir of Peter.  Also, I am even more confirmed in my opinion that the Gospel of Peter was a late invention given its use in one church in Syria and its first recorded discovery after 190 AD.

The nut of the argument is that "Mark" is quoted used in First Clement (circa 90 AD) and Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (circa 150 AD), so we know the content of "Mark."  Papias, writing circa 100 to 140 AD, relates that he was told by the "presbyter," a disciple of Jesus, that the author of "Mark" was Mark who wrote down the stories of Peter.  Justin Martyr in the Dialogue with Trypho links the content we know is found in "Mark" to "his (i.e., Peter's) memoirs."  By circa 190 AD, or earlier, Irenaeus confirms that there is a "Gospel of Mark."

In order to avoid this textual support of the traditional position, the critic has to make all kinds of assumptions such as Papias had a different text than that which is referred to by Irenaeus which was lost in some way and never referred to and which has never been found outside of the need to assert the existence of this ad hoc text.  A problem with this argument - apart from the linking of "Mark" to Mark by Clement to Justin to Papias to Irenaeus - is that Papias was the "companion of Polycarp" and Irenaeus was the student of Polycarp.  It begs the imagination that in a culture which read things aloud and swapped texts back and forth that Polycarp would never have learned that there were two different texts of something ascribed to Mark.

It ends with an ad hominem against lawyers, naturally.