Michael Kok’s book The Gospel on the Margins (Fortress Press, 2015) is the publication of the author’s PhD dissertation from the University of Sheffield. Opening with a consideration of the relative obscurity of the gospel of Mark in the first centuries of Christianity, Kok develops an intriguing thesis of the origin of the patristic tradition: the gospel is not in fact Mark’s collection of the memoirs of Peter but rather an anonymous first-century text whose apostolicity was asserted by the early church fathers in an attempt to claim the text for “centrist Christianity” and nullify its use by more radical Christian groups. The Markan-Petrine connection was fabricated in order to reclaim the text for what would become orthodoxy (though Kok prefers to avoid the term). Exemplifying thorough scholarship and judicious conclusions, Kok’s book is well worth the read for students of the second gospel. However, it does not provide compelling reason to rethink the patristic tradition of the gospel’s authorship by Mark and connection with Peter. I will proceed chapter by chapter through The Gospel on the Margins and highlight the points at which Kok’s argument may be fairly challenged.
Chapter 1 contains an examination of arguments against the patristic tradition. Kok covers objections from form criticism, redaction and narrative criticism, and historical criticism, finding most of them overstated if not unsuccessful. While Kok’s treatment of the gospel’s alleged geographical and historical blunders is remarkably sympathetic, he emphasizes the negative portrayal of the Twelve as a key reason to doubt the gospel’s alleged connection with Peter. He fleshes this out in the next chapter.
Chapter 2 is the counterpart of the first, examining the arguments in favor of Markan authorship that have been proposed by recent conservative scholars like Hengel, Gundry, and Bauckham. While Kok’s engagement with their work is thorough and supplies plenty of welcome correctives to overly optimistic conservative arguments—especially Bauckham’s “inclusio of eyewitness testimony”—not every rebuttal is of the same quality. But rather than gripe about Kok’s less compelling takes, I will focus on the negative portrayal of the Twelve. That the gospel goes out of its way to record the disciples’ “extraordinary powers of incomprehension” and “lapses in judgment” is the primary reason Kok gives for doubting the traditional authorship of Mark’s gospel. This is quite important to his thesis, as strong grounds for accepting traditional authorship would render the latter half of the book irrelevant. As Kok himself admits (16), “if there is historical substance behind the Papian tradition, there is no reason whatsoever to pursue a different solution for why the patristic writers consistently attribute the text to Peter.” As such, it is worth examining this objection in more detail.
A standard reply is suggested by Kok: the negative portrayal of the Twelve is “a testament to apostolic humility” (83). However, the shortcomings of the Twelve in Mark’s gospel go beyond this: “the problem is that Mark does not just document the Twelve’s occasional foibles.” Rather, per Kok, the evangelist’s portrayal is closer to a parody than to what we might reasonably expect from a Petrine gospel. However, Kok has not shown that there is anything historically improbable in Mark’s portrayal of the Twelve, and so it is not clear that Petrine humility is an insufficient explanation for the phenomenon at hand. In fact, one might invoke the criterion of embarrassment and use these observations in support of the historical reliability of Mark’s gospel and the accuracy of Peter’s testimony. By Kok’s own admission, the portrayal of the Twelve is complex and a one-sided reading cannot be sustained. Despite their many misunderstandings, the Twelve left everything to follow Jesus, and the gospel ends with a promise of their opportunity (and Peter’s specifically) to rejoin the Jesus movement.
One could certainly pursue the arguments and counter-arguments further, but Kok’s primary objection to the traditional view of Mark’s gospel is by no means a slam dunk. Indeed, to me it seems to go beyond what we can justifiably conclude. The portrayal of the Twelve is complex: how are we warranted in saying that Peter would have offered a much different testimony, much less building an entire thesis on such a wobbly foundation? A priori historical judgments are not always fruitless, but we must be very cautious when saying what a particular individual (in this case, Peter) “would have” done. Valuing the direct evidence over counterfactual conjectures should be our favored course of action.
Having made a positive argument against Markan authorship, Kok briefly criticizes the testimony of Papias, but I will save discussion of this for the next part of my review. He is to be commended for stating his conclusions cautiously and engaging with a wide breadth of scholarship.
Chapter 3 examines the discussion of Mark in the New Testament and early patristic sources. Beginning with the latter, Kok examines the testimony of Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria. His main takeaway is that the latter three are dependent on Papias. The notion that this more or less nullifies their evidential value in establishing Markan authorship is implicit in his argumentation. He argues further that the testimony of Papias is suspect, given the shadowy nature of Papias’ source (John the elder) and errors in Papias’ treatment of other material (namely a Hebrew text of Matthew and the account of Justin Barsabbas drinking poison and surviving). While Kok argues for the disputed interpretation that Justin Martyr referred to the canonical text of Mark as the “memoirs of Peter”, thus linking the gospel with Petrine authority, he qualifies his optimism with the claim that Justin Martyr was dependent on the “Papian tradition” about Mark. His argument for this is brief and involves pointing to some shared stock vocabulary (e.g. “remembered” and “handed down”). However, there is little positive reason to suppose that Justin’s attestation is entirely dependent on the bishop of Hierapolis. Papias was not a prominent figure in early Christianity, which explains why his books have been lost. Justin nowhere mentions Papias and does not mention Mark, which one might have expected if he was just lifting from Papias. Justin was also writing not long after Papias and in locations geographically removed from Hierapolis, lowering the probability that he was dependent on Papias. It’s not impossible that he was, but Kok’s argument to that effect is lacking. We can establish neither the independence or dependence of Justin Martyr’s attestation of the gospel’s Petrine connection, but in the absence of reasons for the latter and in fact some reasons against it, we ought to incline toward the former.
One may also question the relevance of showing that the later patristic sources knew of Papias’ work. I would argue that the testimony of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria provides some additional corroborative evidence for Papias’ claim. It indicates either that the second-century authors were unaware of competing traditions, or that if they were, they had reason to favor the Petrine tradition. This is more to be expected on the supposition that the testimony is correct than on the supposition that it isn’t. Now while we don’t know what sources were available to these ancients, is it possible that other written and oral sources provided additional, corroborating evidence undergirding their confidence in Markan authorship? It certainly seems plausible. It is also worth noting that neither Irenaeus nor Clement explicitly quotes Papias as the source of their tradition, leaving little direct reason to think that they simply lifted their authorial claims from Papias’ work and did no corroborative work of their own. It is true that the testimony of Irenaeus and Clement would supply more evidence if it was completely independent from Papias, but Kok’s dismissal of these later authors’ evidential value is premature.
Kok dedicates the rest of the third chapter to demonstrating a rather dubious chronology of the gradual association of Mark and Peter. Acknowledging the significance of texts such as 1 Peter 5:13 and Acts 12 in establishing a historical connection between Mark and Peter, Kok dates 1 Peter to the last quarter of the first century and Acts to the beginning of the second, arguing that the latter is dependent on Josephus, the Pauline corpus, and possibly Papias. He is not without arguments for these positions, and indeed devotes considerable ink to establishing them. Rather than embark on a lengthy examination of the matter, I will simply indicate that I found his arguments interesting but uncompelling, often taking the unnecessarily complex conjectures of previous scholars and laying even more speculative strata on top of them. The result is a historical scenario which warrants a credence no higher than “possible”. His response to conservative arguments for an early dating of Acts amounted to just one paragraph. I do not expect every reader to share my personal dissatisfaction, but in my estimation this chapter was the weakest of the book.
In chapter 4, Kok lays the groundwork for his alternative thesis of the patristic tradition’s origin. He argues that apostolic succession was a doctrinally legitimizing tool, leading to early Christian interest in historical lists of bishops and clashes between various sects over the origins of a particular text. “Centrist Christianity,” as Kok prefers to call that sect of Christianity which would become orthodoxy, vouched for the apostolicity of certain texts to safeguard against their use by more radical groups. This is allegedly what happened with the gospel of John. The ghost of Walter Bauer peeks out quite frequently from between the pages of this chapter, but I will bypass a full discussion in the hope of keeping this review to a reasonable length.
Chapter 5 attempts to demonstrate that Mark was viewed as the “odd one out” of the gospel narratives. This is seen in patristic comments that simultaneously vouch for the text’s apostolicity but in some way denigrate its literary qualities. Papias affirms a Petrine connection but criticizes the gospel’s arrangement; Irenaeus confirms Mark’s primary source but notes that he wrote after the “demise” (interpreted by Kok as death) of Peter and Paul, and Clement of Alexandria suggests that Peter was not particularly enthusiastic about the gospel’s publication. There is also later evidence for the denigration of Mark, particularly in the designation of its author as κολοβοδάκτυλος—stump-fingered. Kok’s hypothesis is that the apostolic fathers wanted to associate the text with Peter but at the same time supply an intermediary scapegoat, Mark, upon whom to lay the text’s many pitfalls. But why should we prefer this to the much simpler hypothesis that the testimony of the fathers is largely correct? Perhaps Mark did in fact record Peter’s testimony and Papias was not pleased with its order. Further, the conflict between Irenaeus and Clement regarding the timing of Peter’s death in relation to the publication of Mark may indicate their access to independent streams of tradition. Kok is multiplying unnecessary hypotheses to explain some rather unremarkable data.
Finally, chapter 6 looks at the treatment of Mark’s gospel in the second century, attempting to determine whether non-centrist Christian groups had more favorable views of the gospel than those presented in the last chapter. There is little surviving evidence to work with, but Kok does an admirable job examining what we have. The first patristic source to explicitly mention the co-option of Markan prooftexts by heretics is Irenaeus, who names the Valentinians, Carpocratians, and Basilideans. Clement of Alexandria likewise has to deal with misinterpretations of the Markan pericope of the rich man by ascetics. These are the only direct lines of evidence Kok offers for the prominence of Mark among heterodox interpreters, and one may question whether they are sufficient to bear the weight of the argument. This hesitation is confirmed by the realization that different heretics appropriated other gospels—Marcion with Luke, for example, and the Ebionites with Matthew—and so Mark does not appear any different in this regard. Are two sources naming four groups sufficient to convince that Mark was, in relation to the other gospels, disproportionately appropriated by non-centrist Christianity? The evidence from later redaction of Mark by evangelists and scribes is more promising, but a combination of coincidence and counterexample may be sufficient to explain the examples Kok adduces. It is also worth noting that Mark is the only gospel which was incorporated into another, and thus the only one with an extensive non-scribal redaction history, rendering asymmetrical the comparison of the reception of Markan Christology with the reception of the Matthean and Lukan Christology.
An appendix examines the authenticity of the controversial secret gospel of Mark. After a thorough review of the evidence, Kok tentatively concludes that Morton Smith was no liar: the secret gospel of Mark may well be genuine. He argues that this offers some supplementary evidence for his thesis, but it is by no means necessary to the argument and may be inconsequentially bypassed by readers who are convinced that Smith was a fraud.
If I were to distill the thrust of my criticism into a short paragraph, it is that Kok consistently prefers complexity over simplicity (and he is by no means the only scholar working in the field who does this) and has constructed a thesis which relies too much on conjecture to be a compelling rival to the traditional authorship of the Second Gospel. His reasons for doubting Mark’s collaboration with Peter in the production of a gospel are unconvincing.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
A Review of The Gospel on the Margins by Michael Kok
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Acts 4:13 and the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel
Acts 4:13 and the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel
Introduction
Critics
of the Gospel of John insinuate that John, son of Zebedee would not be able to
produce such a work since he was a poor fisherman in lower Palestine.[1] In addition to that, Bart
Ehrman cites biblical evidence (Acts 4:13) that John (and Peter) was (were)
“unlettered” or “illiterate.”[2] In this blog post I will
demonstrate why this is a questionable argument and give several reasons as to why
John producing the Fourth Gospel is no problem in light of this issue.
The meaning of ἀγράμματοί
fishermen were hardly peasants, ranking instead with tax-gatherers, carpenters, and artisans as a sort of middle-income group that comprised much of the upper 10 percent of wage earning in antiquity (of which merchants and land-owning aristocracy were but a small fraction.[6]
Therefore, it is plausible that John would have the financial means to receive some kind of basic education in reading and writing during his childhood or early teenage years.
It should be pointed out that John would most likely have scribes and editors to help him with his writings.[7] Josephus, even though he was literate, still had difficulties with writing his books and speaking the Greek language.[8] Josephus used scribes to help him with him learn the Greek language and to compose his books in Greek.[9] Additionally, the Greek style of John is not that advanced, especially compared to other New Testament books such as Luke-Acts and James.[10]
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that John was in fact illiterate in Acts 4. By the time he would be allegedly writing the Fourth Gospel, four to six decades would have passes given him time to learn how to read and write. Rabbi Akiva, one of the most famous rabbis and compilers of the Talmud was completely illiterate until he was 40 years old.[11] Keener deals with objections that John would be too old to produce a literary work like the Fourth Gospel.[12]
Whiles
this of course does not show John, son of Zebedee is the author of the Fourth
Gospel, I think the argument from Acts 4:13 is a very poor argument against
traditional authorship for this Gospel. For anyone looking for a positive case
for traditional authorship of the Fourth Gospel, see here.
[1] Ehrman, Bart D. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible. HarperOne, 2010., 105.
[2] Ibid., 105. Ehrman on his blog elaborates more: “It should come as no surprise that Peter could not write Greek (or Aramaic, for that matter). As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level. According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means “unlettered,” that is, “illiterate.” https://ehrmanblog.org/could-peter-have-written-1-and-2-peter-some-other-way/
[3]
The “a” serves as an alpha privative/negative particle, thus negating the “γράμμα”
and rendering the word literally “un-lettered.”
[4] Eddy, Paul Rhodes, and Gregory A. Boyd. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic, 2008., 249-50.
[5] Keener, Craig. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Baker Academic, 2010., 712.
[7] Keener cites Susan Treggiari (Treggiari, Susan. “Jobs in the Household of Livia.” Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. 43, 1975, pp. 48–77 at 50) on the complete secretarial staff of the Roman empress Livia’s household which includes those who took dictation and the copyists and clerks. Keener, John, 101 n. 168.
[8]
Josephus, Ant. 1.7; 20.263–264
[9]
Josephus, Against Apion 1.50
[10]
Keener, John, 102.
[11] “What was the beginning of Rabbi Akiva? It is said: He was forty years old and he had not studied anything...He went...and... appeared before a teacher...Said Rabbi Akiva to him: “Master, teach me Torah.” ...The teacher wrote down “aleph bet” and he learned it; “aleph tav,” and he learned it...” (Avot de Rabbi Natan, Version A, chapter 6). Holtz, Barry W. Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud. Yale University Press, 2017., 39. D.A. Carson also makes this point in his John commentary (Carson, D.A. The Gospel According to John. William B. Eerdmans, 1991., 74)
[12] Keener, John, 102-3 cites several primary sources that provide anecdotal evidence that people could still be intellectually rigorous in their older years.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
Why I Think Papias Attributed the Fourth Gospel to John
Papias was a church elder in Hierapolis, a city in Asia Minor. His five-volume work, An Exposition of the Logia [1] of the Lord, is no longer extant, but parts of the work have been preserved in later writings, most notably Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (HE).
He is an important witness to the authorship of Matthew and Mark, his comments on which can be found in HE 3.39. But for whatever reason, we have no mention of the Gospel of John in Papias’s extant fragments. I am convinced, however, that we can reconstruct Papias’s view on the authorship of the Fourth Gospel through later sources dependent on him. If this is correct, it adds yet one more piece of external attestation to the Fourth Gospel’s authorship by John the apostle.
Prior evidence for Papias’s reliability
And, I should add, a this would be a piece of attestation we have good reason to trust a priori. Some later writers thought that Papias was a disciple of John himself. Irenaeus calls Papias a “hearer of John” [2], Philip of Side says that Papias was a “disciple of John the theologian” [3], and the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to John calls him “John’s dear disciple”. However, the fragment attributed to Papias in HE 3.39.4 seems to suggest that he got his information from the disciples at one remove — Papias asks the “followers of the elders”, not the elders themselves, about the elders’ words. Even if Papias was not a disciple of John himself, he was at least only one remove from him.
Papias was writing at an early time as well, much earlier than Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus, with whom discussions of external evidence for Johannine authorship often start. Robert Yarbrough has argued persuasively that Papias was writing between 95-110 AD, right at the close of the apostolic age. [4] Eusebius discusses Papias in book 3 of HE, where he discusses events no later than the reign of Trajan (97/98-117 AD), and in book 4 Eusebius opens up with the 12th year of Trajan’s reign (AD 109). Eusebius here places Papias as contemporaries of Polycarp and Ignatius, immediate successors of the apostles. [5] Yarbrough also writes:
Eusebius’ Chronicon also furnishes a second and related clue for dating Papias. Eusebius places the aged apostle John, Papias, Polycarp, and Ignatius—in that order—in the same entry. Next to this entry Eusebius has, as part of his running table of dates, the year “100”. With this entry he concludes his treatment of the first century. Unquestionably Eusebius here links Papias with the apostle John as a Church leader at the close of the first century and as a contemporary of Ignatius and the young Polycarp. [6]
More importantly, Papias was gathering and compiling his material even earlier. In the fragment quoted in HE 3.39.4, he distinguishes between what the elders “had said” (εἶπεν, aorist tense) and what Aristion and John the Presbyter “were still saying” (λέγουσιν, present tense). When Papias was gathering information from the followers of the elders, John the presbyter was still alive.
That this presbyter John is to be identified with John the son of Zebedee can be shown from a HE 3.39.4:
And whenever anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I asked about their words: what Andrew or Peter had said, or Phillip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the presbyter John, disciples of the Lord, were still saying. [7]
It seems that Papias uses “disciples of the Lord” as a broader category which includes the Twelve as well as Aristion and the presbyter John. The phrase “or any other of the Lord’s disciples” follows Papias’s lists of the Twelve, and the synonymous phrase “disciples of the Lord” follows his listing of Aristion and the presbyter John. The category of “elder” seems to be confined to the Twelve, however. Immediately after speaking of “the elders” (τῶν πρεσβυτέρων), he proceeds to list members of the Twelve. The reason why Papias attaches the title of “presbyter/elder” (πρεσβύτερος) seems to be distinguish him as one of the Twelve from Aristion, who is not one of the Twelve. In short, the distinction Papias is making between those listed before καὶ (“and”) and those listed after is one of time, not apostolic status. Moreover, the article in the phrase ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἰωάννης is best taken as anaphoric, so as to render the phrase something like “the aforementioned John”. If Eusebius were trying to introduce a new “elder John”, other than the John listed with other members of the Twelve, he would have written Ἰωάννης ὁ πρεσβύτερος. As it stands, the Greek syntax supports the interpretation that ὁ πρεσβύτερος Ἰωάννης is John son of Zebedee. [8]
Thus John the son of Zebedee was still alive while Papias was inquiring of the followers of the elders, which means that he was compiling his material no later than 98 AD (AH 3.3.4), and probably earlier. What Papias reports concerning matters of first century Christiany, then, we have good reason to trust. (See [9] for the objection against Papias’s trustworthiness concerning his treatment of Judas’s death.)
Papias and the Fourth Gospel
What exactly does Papias say concerning the authorship of the Fourth Gospel?
To start, it is certain that Papias was at least familiar with John’s gospel, which the following fragment preserved by Eusebius shows:
Along with the interpretations, I shall not hesitate to add all that I ever learned and carefully remembered from the elders, for I am sure of its truth. Unlike most, I did not delight in those who say much but in those who teach the truth; not in those who recite the commandments of others but in those who repeated the commandments given by the Lord. And whenever anyone came out who had been a follower of the elders, I asked about their words: what Andrew or Peter had said, or Phillip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the presbyter John, disciples of the Lord, were still saying. For I did not think that information from books would help me as much as the word of a living, surviving voice. [10]
The order in which Papias list the disciples — Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and John — is the exact order in which they appear in John’s Gospel. [11]
But what did Papias say about Fourth Gospel? In the late second century, sometime after 180, the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to John reports that Papias had written that John dictated the Fourth Gospel:
The gospel of John was published and given to the churches by John while he was still in the body, as Papias of Hierapolis, John’s dear disciple, has related in his five exoteric, [12] that is his last, books. He wrote down the gospel accurately at John’s dictation. But the heretic Marcion was rejected by John, having been condemned by him for his contrary views. Marcion had carried writings or letters to him from the brother in Pontus. [13]
The only extant version of the Prologue is in Latin, and it is clearly a translation from a Greek text that is no longer extant. The statement that it was Papias who “wrote down the gospel accurately at John’s dictation” is certainly odd. F. F. Bruce, following Lightfoot, attempts to salvage the Prologue here and suggests that the word “He” in “He wrote down the gospel” was a mistranslation from an original “they”, either referring to “the churches”. He writes:
If Papias wrote apegraphon (imperfect tense), this could be either first person singular or third person plural. If he wrote apegrapsan (third person plural, aorist tense), this, in certain positions, could have been written apegrapsā, which then, by the obscuring of the stroke above the final letter, was misread apegrapsa (first person singular). [14]
As ingenious as this reconstruction is, it is unlikely that an original third person plural pronoun referring to “the churches” stood behind the text’s current “He”, because the author identifies “the churches” as those who receive the gospel, not those who publish it. It is more likely that the Prologue is simply mistaken that Papias wrote the Fourth Gospel. Nevertheless, we may justifiably cite the Prologue’s claim that Papias related the Fourth Gospel to John because it coheres with other evidence from sources that used Papias, which we now explore.
One of these sources is the Muratorian Fragment (MF). From numerous points of contact occur between the MF and Papias, we can infer a dependance of the former on the latter. [15]
1) In HE 3.39.15, Papias excuses Mark’s gospel for its lack of “order” (τάξει), citing the fact that Mark “neither heard the Lord nor followed him”. The author of the MF says that John wrote the “marvelous deeds of the Lord” in the Fourth Gospel “in their order” (per ordinem). In both accounts, the writer is explaining a Gospel in terms of order and eyewitness authority; for each Gospel, however, opposite answers are given: Mark is out of “order” because Mark isn’t an eyewitness, and John is in “order” because John is an eyewitness. Could the Fragment be preserving what Papias said about the Gospel of John in comparison to Mark’s gospel? Consider as well the first line of the Muratorian Fragment. It is cut off at what appears to be the end of a discussion of the Gospel of Mark. It reads: “…at which nevertheless he was present, and so he placed [them in his narrative].” This line, however fragmented, makes sense if we again compare it to what Papias says about Mark in HE 3.39.15 — specifically, that Mark was present at the preaching of Peter. In this case the Fragment would plausibly be preserving both Papias’s discussion of Mark and his discussion of John, and his comparison of both Gospels concerning “order” and eyewitness authority.
2) Both accounts are concerned with “different beginnings”. The MF says that “though different beginnings may be taught in the individual books of the Gospels, nevertheless this makes no difference to the faith of believers”. [16] The Fragment also says of Luke: “Yet he himself had not seen the Lord in the flesh; [17] and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John.” The MF’s concern to excuse the Gospels’ different beginnings parallels Papias’s use of the word τάξις. The word is τάξις best understood as referring not to chronology [18] but literary arrangement, in the sense used by the rhetorical schools. [19] For example, Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his critique of Thucydides writes: “Some blame his τάξις on the grounds that he did not adopt the proper beginning for his history, or give it its proper conclusion.” A proper beginning, writes Dionysus, is “a point which nothing could possibly precede”, and a proper conclusion is “an ending which is felt to have nothing lacking.” [20] Understanding τάξις to refer to literary arrangement rather than chronology also explains why Papias says that Matthew “arranged together [συνετάξατο]” the logia of Jesus in the Hebrew language. Here he affirms that Matthew has τάξις but not Mark, even though the two gospels are similar chronologically. [21] Papias may have in mind Mark’s abrupt beginning with John the Baptist as opposed to Matthew’s beginning with the genealogy and Virgin Birth. [22] (See my blog post here for more detail on Papias’s τάξις).
3) Not only is there conceptual interlocking between these two sources, but also similar vocabulary is used. Papias says that Mark wrote “some things [ἔνια] just as he recalled them” even though he wasn’t an eyewitness; The MF says that John wrote “particular points” (singula) because he was an eyewitness.
4) Eusebius tells us in HE 3.39.16 that “Papias also used evidence from 1 John and 1 Peter”. The author of the MF, interestingly enough, cites 1 John in order to prove that John was an eyewitness of Jesus who wrote down Jesus’ deeds “in their order”.
5) The Fragment states that John’s fellow disciples and bishops “had been urging” (cohortantibus) him to write a Gospel. While this statement finds no parallel in any extant writing of Papias, it does parallel a statement which Eusebius attributes to Clement of Alexandria and says is also supported by Papias (HE 2.15, cf. 6.14.7). Eusebius says of Clement’s account:
Peter’s hearers, not satisfied with a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine message, pleaded with Mark, whose Gospel we have, to leave them a written summary of the teaching given them verbally, since he was a follower of Peter. Nor did they cease until they persuaded him and so caused the writing of what is called the Gospel of Mark… Clement quotes the story in Outlines, Book 6, and Bishop Papias of Hierapolis confirms it. [23]
In both cases, the writer describes a Gospel as having been written by the initiation of others. John was “urged” to write because of his “disciples”; Mark was “persuaded” to write because of Peter’s “hearers”.
Conclusion
A fairly strong case can be mounted for the hypothesis that Papias affirmed the Fourth Gospel’s authorship by John. The Anti-Marcionite Prologue to John says so explicitly, and its testimony is confirmed by the MF’s probable dependence on Papias’s information about John. These points therefore add to the weight of the external evidence for the Fourth Gospel’s authorship by one of the Twelve.
Notes
[1] This is a hard word to translate; some translators prefer “oracles” or “sayings”.
[2] AH 5.33.4.
[3] Codex Baroccianus 142, cited by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2019), 654 n. 25.
[4] Robert Yarbrough, “The Date of Papias: A Reassessment.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 26, no. 2 (1983): 181-191.
[5] HE 3.36.1-2. “Celebrated at that time in Asia was a companion of the apostles, Polycarp, who had been appointed Bishop of Smyrna by the eyewitnesses and ministers of the Lord. Distinguished contemporaries of his were Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, and Ignatius, still a famed name as second after Peter to succeed to the bishopric of Antioch.” Trans. Paul L. Meier, Eusebius: The Church History. (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2007).
[6] Yarbrough, “Date of Papias”, 186.
[7] Trans. Meier, Eusebius, 112.
[8] See C. S. Petrie, “The Authorship of the ‘Gospel According to Matthew’: A Reconsideration of the External Evidence,” NTS 14 (1967-68): 21.
[9] One might counter this claim with evidence that Papias reports a clearly exaggerated tale of Judas’s death. For an analysis of this evidence, see Stephen C. Carlson, Papias of Hierapolis, Exposition of the Dominical Oracles: The Fragments, Testimonia, and Reception of a Second-Century Commentator. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 40-56. According to the fourth-century commentator Apollinarius of Laodicea, Papias wrote that “Judas was a terrible, walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh so bloated that he was not able to pass through a place where a wagon passes easily, not even his bloated head by itself. For his eyelids, they say (φασί)... [here he goes on to swollen and sunken eyes, bloated genitals with pus and worms coming out, and a death that stunk]” (40-41). But this quotation is suspect because it derives from a lost fourth-century commentary, and “[a]ll that remains of it are scattered quotations and plagiarisms by later commentators and cantina compilers”. Stephen Carlson is convinced that Papias only wrote, “Judas walked around as a great example of ungodliness in this world, as his flesh got so bloated that he could not pass through a place where a wagon passes through easily” (125). He writes, “The following sensational description — signaled by a change in information with φασί (“they say”) — cannot be independently traced back to Papias and probably belongs to the fourth-century sources of Apollinaris. In fact, it has more to do with the gruesome death of Galerius, which Eusebius and Lactantius declaimed in lurid detail. Both Galerius and... Apollinaris’s Judas enjoyed the well-deserved ‘deaths of the persecutors’ of popular imagination in the soil of the fourth century after the end of the Great Persecution” (56). What remains of Papias’s quotation can plausibly be explained “as a pedagogical example for other Christians about the dangers of greed”, according to Candida Moss, “A Note on the Death of Judas in Papias” NTS 65, no. 3 (2019): 388-397. For an explanation of Papias’s rhetoric as “ekphrasis”, see Christopher B. Zeichmann, “Papias as Rhetorician: Ekphrasis in the Bishop’s Account of Judas’ Death.” NTS 56 (2010): 427-229.
[10] Trans. Meier, Eusebius, 112.
[11] O’Connell concludes that “the odds that this correspondence is not by chance are greater than 99 percent.” Jake H. O’Connell, “A Note of Papias’s Knowledge of the Fourth Gospel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 129, no. 4 (2010): 794. In reply to O’Connell, see Nevin Climenhaga, “Papias’s Prologue and the Probability of Parallels.” Journal of Biblical Literature 139, no. 3 (2020): 591-596.
[12] Bruce notes: “The Greek adjective exēgētikois was evidently corrupted to exōterikos (‘external’), which was taken over into the Latin version (exotersis) and explained by the Latin adjective externis; externis was then corrupted in the Latin transmission to extremis (‘last’).” F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 156.
[13] Trans. as found in Bruce, Canon, 156.
[14] Bruce, Canon, 156 n. 21.
[15] Many of the following points are noted by Charles E. Hill, “What Papias Said About John (and Luke): a ‘New’ Papian Fragment.” The Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 2, (1998): 586-587; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Second Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017) 427-428.
[16] I have chosen to use Charles Hill’s translation of varia… principia as “different beginnings” because the Fragment is clearly concerned with Luke’s “beginning”: “Yet he himself [Luke] had not seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John.” See Hill, “What Papias Said”, 586 n. 13. Eckhard J. Schnabel, “The Muratorian Fragment: the State of Research.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 57.2 (2014): 236-238, translates varia... principia as “various elements”.
[17] Note how the MF here parallels Papias in the way that a Gospel writer who isn’t a direct eyewitness is excused.
[18] Alistair Stewart-Sykes, “Τάξει in Papias: Again.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, no. 4, (1995), 489. Citing Philostratus’s appraisal of Apollonius’s accuracy τοῖς δὲ χρόνοις, he notes that ancient historians used different words when referring to chronology.
[19] See F. H Colson, “Τάξει in Papias. (The Gospels and the Rhetorical Schools.)” The Journal of Theological Studies 14.53 (1912): 62-69.
[20] On Thucydides 10. Trans. as found in Colson, “Τάξει in Papias”, 65.
[21] Trans. Dean Furlong, “Theodore of Mopsuestia: New Evidence for the Proposed Papian Fragment in Hist. eccl. 3.24.5-13.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 39.2 (2016): 217. I am assuming here that Papias is referring to the Gospel of Matthew of as we have it today, or at least a version of Matthew whose τάξις doesn’t vary substantially from our Greek text.
[22] Colson, “Τάξει in Papias”, gives five reasons Papias might have affirmed Matthew’s τάξις but not Mark’s: “...(1) his abrupt beginning, (2) his incomplete ending, (3) his habit of emphasizing trivial points and occasionally dealing inadequately with important ones, (4) the comparative absence of set speeches, (5) his inferior grouping, presents a complete contrast to the other” (67).
[23] Trans. Meier, Eusebius, 64.