Roger Pearse

Irenaeus, who knew Polycarp well, tells us that Polycarp was John's disciple. Other writers tell us the same.

I don't think that we should refer to our information about the early church as 'tradition'. To most people this word just means 'oral hearsay'. Our sources of information are actually literary texts from antiquity, and surely we should reference them as such?

I chuckled when I saw the demand above. That was the 'argument' for dating John late used in 1936 by some poor unfortunate, in print, just as P52 was going to print.

The demand, of course, is rubbish. We cannot infer things of this nature from short personal letters.

I have no idea what claim is being supported by this vague assertion of authority. Whatever it is, it must be rejected unless argued for by evidence and reason.

I hate to say this, but there an awful lot of people out there who claim "all NT scholars agree with me" who are spouting anti-scholarly nonsense anyway.

No idea if that's the case here -- I can't even see who posted this in the first place -- but arguments from authority on matters of religion or politics are not acceptable to anyone, in my experience.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

sschlichter

I agree, tradition is a bad choice of terms. I think the original poster is full aware of Irenaeus and I did not want to engage in the Polycarp / Papias distraction. but better to be clear, even still.

Speaking of potential oral history. Do you know if there is anything besides oral history (if even that) that places Mark as the young man nearly arrested with Jesus? I have read claims as such but do not know where they come from.

Yes, you can reject a good number of ideals on the grounds that they were once a minority opinion.

You know, I just noticed the little identifier in the quote tag. This was originally from Iasion. I think I can manage to keep the orginal post's identifier in future quotes.