I recently posted a reply to Jon Curry here that addresses some subjects that some of you may be interested in. For example:
Was Papias a disciple of John?
Was Polycarp a disciple of the apostles?
Did Papias make reference to John's gospel in his writings?
Does anybody before Irenaeus attribute the fourth gospel to John?
Were the gospels possessed by the early Christians the same as the gospels we have today?
Good grief, Jason. I write a 1 page comment, you respond with 6 pages. I write a 5 page response, you respond with 25 pages. I see you are again talking about how I will "leave the discussion" and I "don't respond to your argument." It can only be because I don't know how to reply I suppose.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteMy mistake. I didn't realize I pasted your comments along with Gene's to get to 25 pages. Yours Jason is a "mere" 20 pages. I won't be responding because there is very little of substance there. I'd be back to simply clarifying what my arguments are, trying to get you to respond to what I'm actually saying, trying to get you to back up your assertions, noting all the special pleading, noting your frequent use of the "how it could have been" scenario. I will derive little benefit from the exercise. For the record it is not obvious that Papias knew John, Irenaeus is not to be trusted when he reports supposed apostolic traditions (as you will argue against Roman Catholics, but argue the opposite when arguing with me), and Irenaues is the first to mention that John is the author of the gospel that we know of. You will say that I've been "answered" and the I "left the conversation" if it comes up in the future, but I do not believe I've been answered if by "answered" you mean "refuted". The response to your arguments is straightforward, but I am not going to take the time.
ReplyDeleteYou seem perpelexed as to why would I leave the conversation. Gosh, if I'm willing to take 15 minutes to post a couple of paragraphs here or a couple of paragraphs at Dave Armstrong's board, why am I not also willing to take 2 or 3 hours and respond to 20 pages from you every time you offer it? If you can't figure that one out for yourself I won't try to explain it.
*ROFL*
ReplyDelete'Tis always sad to see someone's arguments buried in an avalanche of facts scrambling around claiming, "That's not fair! If I'm only going to be using one sentence quips, you can't respond with contextually supported arguments! You need to respond just as shallowly, otherwise I can't keep up!"
Jon, that's a cop-out if I ever heard one. Why wouldn't you respond? It seems like you have a lot of time on your hands, if one is to judge that based on how often you post comments. You're also quite adept at rambling on and on, so what gives?
ReplyDeleteJon Curry said:
ReplyDelete"For the record it is not obvious that Papias knew John"
I gave you evidence from the text of Papias and more than ten external sources, including Eusebius. Your argument was to cite a speculative and unlikely interpretation of Papias that Eusebius advocated at one point, but that he didn't advocate consistently. I don't know what would qualify as "obvious" for you, but the weight of the evidence is on my side, regardless of whether you want to call the conclusion "obvious".
You write:
"Irenaeus is not to be trusted when he reports supposed apostolic traditions (as you will argue against Roman Catholics, but argue the opposite when arguing with me)"
No, I've argued that some of Irenaeus' traditions contradict what Roman Catholics believe, but I've also cited other traditions of Irenaeus that I agree with. I've never argued that all of his claims about tradition are untrustworthy. That would be a ridiculous position to take. As I explained to you in the other thread, Irenaeus' error on the age of Jesus isn't sufficient grounds for dismissing his comments on Polycarp, and you didn't give us any other sufficient grounds for dismissing his comments on Polycarp, so why are we supposed to doubt what he said? Why are we supposed to also doubt the other sources who corroborated what Irenaeus said about Polycarp?
You write:
"Irenaues is the first to mention that John is the author of the gospel that we know of."
Irenaeus had access to the writings of people earlier in the century who named John as the author of the gospel, and he referred to their comments on that gospel as comments about our gospel of John. I cited one of the passages for you. And he was in contact with Christians of the previous generation, so when he refers to the gospels as having been written by apostles and their associates, he's making a claim that he considered consistent with the beliefs of the earlier Christians he was in contact with. At one point, Irenaeus refers to how later manuscripts of the book of Revelation were compared to earlier manuscripts (Against Heresies, 5:30:1). The same sort of process would have occurred with the gospels. Justin Martyr wrote of how Christians regularly read the gospels in their church services, along with the Old Testament (First Apology, 67). If the gospels were significantly changed, not only would the changes show up in comparing manuscripts, but they would also be noticed by the congregations listening to what was being read. It's easy for you to speculate that the gospels might have been changed, but let's see you address the many problems with such a theory, like the ones I've just mentioned.
Again, why are we supposed to think that Irenaeus was wrong? And why are we supposed to think that Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, and other men who lived in the second century and affirmed Irenaeus' comments about gospel authorship were wrong as well? How did these allegedly wrong authorship attributions become accepted across such a wide geographic region if people living just before that time either disagreed about the authorship or possessed different gospels? Where are those different gospels? How was somebody able to universally eliminate the old gospels and replace them with ours? How did they get a hold of the gospels that non-Christians possessed? If the old gospels were significantly different, then why do the sources before Irenaeus refer to the foundational doctrines of Christianity and even many of the lesser details (the virgin birth, the Bethlehem birthplace, the visit of the magi, Jesus' baptism, Jesus' healings, the resurrection, the ascension, etc.)?
We know that you're willing to take an absurd position on whether Jesus existed, a position that's rejected as ridiculous even among liberal scholars. It seems that you're also willing to take similarly implausible positions on textual transmission, the dating of the gospels, and other issues.
Yes, my posts tend to be longer than yours. Making ridiculous claims without documentation and asking questions in order to cast doubt, without doing the research yourself that you could have done to find the answers, doesn't take much space. It takes more space to answer that sort of dishonesty.
To chew off just one piece of this lengthy discussion, I'd like to further explore your claims about Papias. In response to my claim that we first learn that John is the author from Irenaeus in 180 you've claimed that other writers confirm that Papias claimed John wrote John. You provided this website:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.textexcavation.com/papias.html
What I think you are guilty of is special pleading. When Irenaeus relays an apostolic tradition you like, you accept it on that basis. When he relays one you don't like, you reject it. I on the other hand am consistent. I regard all of his claims to apostolic tradition as suspicious.
So now you have other sources that verify that Papias claims John wrote John. Let's list them here:
Here is the quote from the Prologue to John.
This gospel, then, after the apocalypse was written was made manifest and given to the churches in Asia by John, as yet still in the body, as the Heiropolitan, Papias by name, dear disciple of John, transmitted in his Exoteric, that is, the outside five books. He wrote down this gospel while John dictated. Truly Marcion the heretic, when he had been disapproved by him because he supposed contrary things, was thrown out by John. He in truth carried writings or epistles sent to him from the brothers who were in Pontus, faithful in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So this quote has not only that Papias would say John wrote John, but further that he is the very transcriber of the gosepl. Further Marcion was "thrown out" by John himself. Do you accept these claims? You have asserted that Papias most likely lived on the other side of the world from John. In light of this, do you believe that Papias is the transcriber of the gospel. Or are you again regarding this as reliable as far as it agrees with your positions, but unreliable otherwise?
Next you mention Apollinarius of Laodicea. Let's look at what he has to say:
Judas did not die by hanging, but lived on, having been cut down before choking. And this the Acts of the Apostles makes clear, that falling headlong his middle burst and his bowels poured forth. And Papias the disciple of John records this most clearly, saying thus in the fourth of the Exegeses of the Words of the Lord:
Judas walked about as an example of godlessness in this world, having been bloated so much in the flesh that he could not go through where a chariot goes easily, indeed not even his swollen head by itself. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so puffed up that he could not see the light, and his own eyes could not be seen, not even by a physician with optics, such depth had they from the outer apparent surface. And his genitalia appeared more disgusting and greater than all formlessness, and he bore through them from his whole body flowing pus and worms, and to his shame these things alone were forced [out]. And after many tortures and torments, they say, when he had come to his end in his own place, from the place became deserted and uninhabited until now from the stench, but not even to this day can anyone go by that place unless they pinch their nostrils with their hands, so great did the outflow from his body spread out upon the earth.
There is nothing here about the claim of John writing John as coming from Papias. But what's the story here? Are we to believe this fabulous story on the basis of the claim that Papias is a disciple of John? Or are we to only believe what you want to believe on the basis of the claim that Papias is a disciple of John?
Next of course we have Eusebius who expressly asserts that Papias did not know John. Then we have Jerome decades later (somewhere near the start of the 5th century) who says the opposite. Next is Philip of Side. After asserting that Papias knew John he says:
Papias in the second volume says that John the theologian and James his brother were done away with by Jews. The aforesaid Papias reported as having received it from the daughters of Philip that Barsabas who is Justus, tested by the unbelievers, drank the venom of a viper in the name of the Christ and was protected unharmed. He also reports other wonders and especially that about the mother of Manaemus, her resurrection from the dead. Concerning those resurrected by Christ from the dead, that they lived until Hadrian.
Do you also believe that John was martyred along with James? Most likely being killed by the Jews means being killed before the destruction of the temple. Also various resurrections, and the claim that those that Christ raised lived until Hadrian? Do you accept these claims as well?
Next you turn to Maximus the Confessor in the 7th century. He gives no indication what he's basing his claim on that Papias knew John. Then we're out to the 9th century. Then you're appealing to the 17th century. Why not just appeal to Josh McDowell?
Here's my position. Did Papias know John? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't know. We have limited information. Eusebius tells us that Papias wrote of many other fabulous tails. If we had these stories we might have a better understanding of Papias credibility. What we do have bodes poorly for him. This story of Judas is absurd.
The problem with your responses to me is that they miss the point and misrepresent me. You'll respond to this and say, "Just because Papias is wrong about one thing, this doesn't make him wrong about everything." Of course. But that's not the point. We're talking about credibility. We're talking about establishing patterns. Even if we were to assume he knew John, we can't assume he's credible.
You make the same point with regards to Irenaeus. "Just because he absurdly claimed that he knew Jesus lived to the age of 50 because the disciples of the disciples told him, this doesn't mean he was always wrong when he claimed the disciples of the disciples had told him something." Of course. Logically that's true. But this is your positive argument, not mine. It is not my burden to show that someone is in every instance wrong. If I can show that he is often wrong in clear cases this casts doubt on those cases where we have less information.
It's kind of like Clinton and Paula Jones. Liberals of course complain that Clinton was ever asked if he had had sex with Monica. "Of course he would lie about that. What do you expect?" The problem is the prosecution was attempting to establish a pattern. Paula Jones accused Clinton of sexual harassment. As part of that investigation Clinton was asked if he had had sex with Monica. This is relevant. It serves to establish a pattern. Is Clinton the type of person that sexually pursues those that directly report to him?
You would rush in and defend Clinton. "Just because he had sex with Monica, this doesn't prove he harassed Jones." Well, no it doesn't. But it establishes a pattern. He is prone to this type of thing. Irenaeus is prone to give false claims on the basis of supposed apostolic tradition. "But he was refuting the Gnostics" you say. So what? I know that. But what are you trying to show? That he'll lie when he has a motive? Doesn't that prove my point? Why should we trust him when he talks about John if we know he'll lie to further his ends?
I note in passing that James White continues to beat the drum about how supposed traditions as coming from the apostles are unreliable. Here is what he says:
ReplyDelete"I happened upon a new thread at the Catholic Answers Forums about Irenaeus. Since this had come up a few days ago, I clicked on it. Once again it had to do with Irenaeus' mistakenly trying to argue against the gnostics that Jesus had in essence recapitulated all the ages of man's life in Himself so that he died an older man, far older than the commonly accepted 33 years of age. The relevance of the issue is that Irenaeus is the first to lay claim to "apostolic tradition" as substantiation of his viewpoints. Since Rome would agree Irenaeus is in error, this raises a vital question: how could the very first claim of "apostolic tradition" give us a corrupt tradition? And if such "tradition" cannot survive to the end of the second century, how can anyone take seriously the claim that such dogmas as the Bodily Assumption of Mary, unknown for centuries longer, are actually "apostolic" in origin?"
http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=1548
According to James White our very oldest traditions supposedly handed down from the apostles are unreliable. Apostolic tradition can't even survive to the end of the 2nd century. I would have to say that I agree.
Jon Curry said:
ReplyDelete"What I think you are guilty of is special pleading. When Irenaeus relays an apostolic tradition you like, you accept it on that basis. When he relays one you don't like, you reject it."
I never said that "I like it" is my standard, and there isn't any way for you to know that I hold such a standard. What you're doing, then, is asserting without evidence something that you have no way of knowing.
We would judge Irenaeus as we would any other historical source. We would assume that he has common human characteristics (eyesight, memory, etc.), unless we have evidence to the contrary. We would consider his background, the context in which he was writing, and other relevant information. When Irenaeus writes about Polycarp, for example, we take into account such facts as how close in time they lived to each other, Irenaeus' experience in hearing Polycarp speak, Irenaeus' contact with churches that had a relationship with Polycarp, etc. The information he reports about Polycarp is credible and would have been available to anybody in Irenaeus' position. Nothing we know contradicts what Irenaeus reported about Polycarp, and other sources corroborate what Irenaeus said. Given such factors, I conclude that Irenaeus probably was correct about facts such as Polycarp's status as a disciple of the apostles.
You write:
"I on the other hand am consistent. I regard all of his claims to apostolic tradition as suspicious."
Irenaeus claims to have heard Polycarp speak. He was in contact with churches that had a relationship with Polycarp. He possessed documents Polycarp had written. How does the fact that Irenaeus was wrong about the age of Jesus lead us to the conclusion that he probably was wrong about thinking that he heard Polycarp speak or that he probably was wrong in what he thought the churches in contact with Polycarp told him about the man?
Irenaeus' false view of Jesus' age can be attributed to his misreading of John 8:57. If some elders of the church affirmed the historicity of John 8:57, or agreed with Irenaeus that Jesus lived the life of an ideal teacher (without intending the implication of old age that Irenaeus assumed), then Irenaeus could have wrongly concluded that the elders agreed with what he believed about Jesus' old age. Since other early sources disagree with Irenaeus on this point, it seems unlikely that the elders of the church were teaching what Irenaeus believed.
In contrast, there is no comparably credible way to explain how Irenaeus would have erred about the authorship of John's gospel, and Irenaeus is widely corroborated on that issue rather than widely contradicted. A large number of other early sources from a wide variety of locations and backgrounds agree with Irenaeus about the authorship of the fourth gospel (Ptolemy, Theophilus of Antioch, The Muratorian Canon, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, early manuscripts of John, etc.).
I don't know of any historian who would argue that Josephus and Tacitus, to cite two examples, never made a mistake in their historical claims. If Tacitus was wrong on subject A, but his claims on subjects B, C, and D are consistent with what we know, are pieces of information he would be likely to have close access to, and are partially corroborated by other sources, can we dismiss his claims on B, C, and D on the basis of A? The error on A would lessen his general credibility. But we would need more than that error on A in order to justify a dismissal of B, C, and D.
In order to maintain that Irenaeus was mistaken in thinking that Polycarp was a disciple of the apostles, for example, you would have to maintain that he was wrong on multiple issues for which he had close access to the truth. You'd have to assume that the letters of Polycarp he possessed didn't give him any reliable information leading to his conclusions. You'd have to assume that he was wrong in what he thought the churches in contact with Polycarp had reported about the man or that the churches had been wrong. You'd have to maintain that he was wrong in what he thought church leaders in contact with Polycarp had said or that those church leaders were wrong. You'd have to maintain that his memories of hearing Polycarp speak were mistaken or that Polycarp was mistaken in what he said. You'd have to maintain that the people he spoke with about Polycarp, such as Florinus and Victor, didn't correct him on such issues in any way that's extant in the historical record or was noticed by others, like Eusebius. You have to assume that Irenaeus and/or other people involved were repeatedly wrong, in multiple contexts over a long period of time, about information they had such close access to. Then you have to propose other dismissals for the other sources who corroborate Irenaeus. And we're supposed to do all of this because Irenaeus was wrong about the age of Jesus?
Much of what I've said above about the issues surrounding Polycarp could be said about Irenaeus' sources on John's gospel in general. Irenaeus had access to other churches and men of the previous generation. His predecessor in the bishopric of Lyons, a man named Pothinus, died beyond age 90 in the late 170s (Eusebius, Church History, 5:1:29). He was a contemporary of the apostles at a young age and a contemporary of the apostles' disciples as a grown man. Irenaeus would have had access to Polycarp, Pothinus, and probably many other men who could have given him significant information about the authorship of the gospels. It's highly unlikely that he would have misunderstood what all of these people said or would have lied about it, for example.
You write:
"Further Marcion was 'thrown out' by John himself. Do you accept these claims?"
How do you know that there was such a person as Marcion and that his name was Marcion? If the historical sources who tell us about Marcion sometimes were mistaken in what they reported, why do you believe what they say about Marcion?
But, to answer your question, the timing of Marcion's life was well known in the early church. The Anti-Marcionite Prologue To John may have viewed John as condemning Marcion through his writings, not in person. Or somebody else may have been doing the excommunicating. See the alternate rendering of the passage in the last fragment at http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/ext/papias.htm. If the Prologue is making a false historical claim on this point, then such an error would diminish the credibility of the Prologue, but a distinction would still have to be made between the claim about Papias, which had Papias' own writings as a source, and the claim about Marcion, for which no source is cited. I don't give much weight to the Anti-Marcionite Prologue To John, but I do give it some. In this case, it cites Papias' own writings, and it's corroborated by other sources.
You write:
"You have asserted that Papias most likely lived on the other side of the world from John."
No, I didn't say that. What I said was that if Papias met John on one or more occasions, but didn't live near him, then he would have reason to attain information about John from other sources. In other words, the fact that they were contemporaries who had met at some point doesn't mean that all of Papias' information about John would have been attained in face-to-face encounters with him.
You write:
"In light of this, do you believe that Papias is the transcriber of the gospel. Or are you again regarding this as reliable as far as it agrees with your positions, but unreliable otherwise?"
The Anti-Marcionite Prologue To John doesn't attribute that claim to Papias' writings, but the claim is corroborated by another source. I consider it credible.
Concerning your claim that I agree with sources "as far as they agree with my positions", the same charge can be brought against you. Why do you believe Eusebius, Epiphanius, and other sources on some issues, yet disagree with them on others? Should we assume that you agree with them only when you "like it", as you claim I do?
You write:
"Next you mention Apollinarius of Laodicea....There is nothing here about the claim of John writing John as coming from Papias."
I didn't cite Apollinarius of Laodicea on that subject. I cited him on the subject of whether Papias was a disciple of John.
Since this is another example of a mistake you've made in your posts here, should we distrust every claim you make from now on? You've made a lot of false claims in your posts. If Irenaeus' error on the age of Jesus makes his claims on other subjects doubtful, even if he had close access to a variety of reliable sources on those other subjects, then do your mistakes similarly make your claims doubtful on other subjects? Why should we believe that your name is Jon Curry? Why should we believe your claim that you used to be a professing Christian? Why should we believe anything you say? Do we have to either accept everything you say or reject everything? If we accept your claim to have been a professing Christian, but reject other claims you make, such as the one quoted above, then are we guilty of only accepting what we "like"?
You write:
"Are we to believe this fabulous story on the basis of the claim that Papias is a disciple of John? Or are we to only believe what you want to believe on the basis of the claim that Papias is a disciple of John?"
I addressed Papias' comments about Judas in our discussion on Greg Krehbiel's board. We have other sources by which to judge what Papias reported about Judas' body. We don't have evidence against Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel that's comparable to the evidence we have against Papias' view of what happened to the body of Judas. As I explained to you in our discussion on this subject last year, an issue like what happened to Judas' body wouldn't have been of nearly as much concern to the early Christians as an issue like who wrote the gospels. Similarly, if men like Josephus and Tacitus sometimes report something we don't consider credible on a relatively minor issue, we don't conclude that they and ten other sources who agree with them probably were wrong about a much more significant issue, such as who was the Roman emperor during a particular time period. When Papias and Irenaeus tell us who wrote one of the foundational documents of the Christian church, and the internal evidence of the document supports that claim and a wide variety of other early sources corroborate their claim, it doesn't make sense to reject that claim on the basis that Papias was wrong about what happened to Judas' body and that Irenaeus was wrong about the age of Jesus. You aren't giving us any reason to think that all of these sources were wrong about the authorship of the fourth gospel. The fact that somebody like Papias or Irenaeus is wrong about some other subject doesn't logically lead us to the conclusion that it's probable that all of these sources were wrong about the authorship of the fourth gospel.
You write:
"Do you also believe that John was martyred along with James? Most likely being killed by the Jews means being killed before the destruction of the temple."
How do you know that a timeframe before the destruction of the temple is probably in view? You don't. James was martyred by Herod through the influence of the Jews (Acts 12:1-3). The same sort of involvement in John's death wouldn't require that the temple still be standing.
You write:
"Also various resurrections, and the claim that those that Christ raised lived until Hadrian? Do you accept these claims as well?"
I do think it's probable that some who were resurrected lived until the time of Hadrian. Quadratus reports the same, and the gospels refer to some of those who were resurrected by Christ as children at the time.
But if I did reject this claim of Papias on some basis (or rejected Philip of Side's belief that Papias reported such a thing), how would that be different from your partial agreement and partial disagreement with historical sources, like Eusebius and Epiphanius?
All of this is beside the original point anyway. You denied that Papias refers to the gospel of John. I cited sources who say otherwise. But now you've changed the subject to whether Papias should be believed when he refers to the gospel of John or comments on other subjects. Are you now conceding that you were wrong in stating that Papias doesn't mention John's gospel?
You write:
"Next you turn to Maximus the Confessor in the 7th century. He gives no indication what he's basing his claim on that Papias knew John. Then we're out to the 9th century. Then you're appealing to the 17th century. Why not just appeal to Josh McDowell?"
You're missing the point. (Does your mistake on this issue mean that we should dismiss your claims on every other issue as well?) I cited these sources because they had access to Papias' writings, which are no longer extant. If a source in the Middle Ages had access to Papias' writings, whereas Josh McDowell doesn't, how are the two comparable?
In addition to having access to Papias' writings, these sources are relevant in that they reflect what was believed at the time about Papias. It seems that the view that Papias was a disciple of John was the dominant view in earlier centuries. My belief that Papias was a disciple of John better explains that dominant view. If I can cite a less speculative reading of Papias' own words and a long line of sources from the second century onward supporting my view, whereas you appeal to a more speculative reading of Papias' words and only one source in the fourth century who was inconsistent on the issue (Eusebius), I have a stronger case.
You write:
"Here's my position. Did Papias know John? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't know. We have limited information. Eusebius tells us that Papias wrote of many other fabulous tails. If we had these stories we might have a better understanding of Papias credibility. What we do have bodes poorly for him. This story of Judas is absurd."
You keep shifting back and forth between subjects. Papias' status as a disciple of John isn't the same issue as whether he sometimes believed "fabulous tales". In light of the evidence I've cited from the text of Papias and the external sources (and you haven't done much to interact with either), it's probable that Papias was a disciple of John. It also seems probable that he attributed the fourth gospel to the apostle John, for reasons I've explained earlier in this post and in my previous post in the other thread. There is some information we have that lessens his credibility, like his Judas account (at least from what we can tell from later sources who quoted him on the issue). However, as I explained above, a person can err on one point, yet be credible on another. Issues of gospel authorship were far more important to the early Christians than issues such as what happened to Judas' body. And while Papias might have gotten his information about Judas from a non-eyewitness, he's more likely to have gotten his information about John's authorship of the fourth gospel from a reliable source. He was, after all, a disciple of John, not a disciple of Judas. And we have no reason to dismiss Papias' claim about Johannine authorship that's comparable to our reasons for rejecting his claims about Judas.
If this was all the information we had to go by, then I would conclude that Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel is a small probability. But when you add the further testimony of Ptolemy, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, The Muratorian Canon, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Julius Africanus, various early manuscripts, the internal evidence, etc., it's more than a small probability. Whatever you think the probability is that Papias would have been mistaken about Johannine authorship, it's highly unlikely that all of these sources were mistaken. Disciples of John were alive and able to influence the early Christians' judgments about the fourth gospel well into the second century. The fact that Papias was wrong about what happened to Judas or the fact that Irenaeus was wrong about Jesus' age doesn't lead us to the conclusion that a widespread second century consensus about authorship of the fourth gospel (involving far more people than Papias and Irenaeus) was wrong.
You write:
"If I can show that he is often wrong in clear cases this casts doubt on those cases where we have less information."
How have you shown that all of these early sources who mention Johannine authorship were "often wrong in clear cases"? You haven't. As I said before, Irenaeus was correct in the large majority of what he reported. He was wrong in speculating about Jesus' age, probably largely on the basis of John 8:57, but that's just one issue of hundreds he addressed, and there is no early source that explicitly states that Jesus was such-and-such an age. He had to piece some information together, and he erred in the process. But hearing from churches and individuals about who wrote the fourth gospel wouldn't have been as difficult. If Irenaeus was wrong on the issue, then so was the Christian world of the second century in general. It's one thing to suggest that one individual erred on an issue where we can demonstrate that he erred (the age of Jesus). It's something else to suggest that Christians across the world, Christians who had been in contact with disciples of John for decades, collectively erred in the same way on a subject as simple as who wrote the fourth gospel, and you're making this suggestion without any evidence against their claim that's comparable to the evidence we have against Irenaeus' view of Jesus' age.
If we took your reasoning and applied it to Josephus, Suetonius, Galen, and other historical sources, the results would be absurd. I don't know of any historian who argues along the lines of what you're proposing. If five sources agree that event X occurred, we don't argue that the first source was wrong about event A, the second source was wrong about event W, the third source was wrong about event L, etc., then conclude that event X is therefore unlikely to have occurred. Searching for errors on other subjects in order to dismiss an account they all agree about is a dubious procedure.
You write:
"As part of that investigation Clinton was asked if he had had sex with Monica. This is relevant. It serves to establish a pattern."
What relevant pattern have you established? The large majority of what Irenaeus reports is credible. The fact that he was wrong about the age of Jesus doesn't establish a pattern that leads us to the conclusion that we can reject what Irenaeus reported about what he heard from Polycarp, what other churches were telling him about gospel authorship, etc.
You write:
"Why should we trust him when he talks about John if we know he'll lie to further his ends?"
I never said or suggested that Irenaeus lied, and you haven't given us any reason to think that he was lying about Jesus' age or about the authorship of the fourth gospel. He probably erred on Jesus' age as a result of two factors. He hadn't studied the subject much, and he wanted to answer a popular Gnostic argument about Jesus' age. He speculated about possible implications of John 8:57 (and perhaps some other data) and reached a wrong conclusion. He wasn't lying. He was honestly mistaken. His belief about the authorship of the fourth gospel, on the other hand, can't be demonstrated to be wrong, so it's not in the same category. It's also different in that it's corroborated by a wide variety of other sources. And it's different in that the internal evidence within the gospel supports Irenaeus' conclusion. And it's different in that an identification of who wrote such a foundational document of the Christian church is the sort of information that we would expect to be widely disseminated and clearly communicated. You couldn't be a Christian for long without hearing of the fourth gospel, and the issue of who wrote it would have been prominent on any Christian's mind. Whether Jesus died in His 30s or in His 40s or 50s, on the other hand, isn't nearly as prominent an issue and wouldn't have been discussed nearly as much. In other words, there are many significant differences between Irenaeus' assessment of Jesus' age and his assessment of gospel authorship, and your failure to address and properly take into account such differences is another example of your carelessness.
Irenaeus was corrected by many early sources who had a more accurate view of Jesus' age. But his gospel attributions were reaffirmed rather than corrected. It's far more likely that all of those people were right than that they were wrong.
You write:
"According to James White our very oldest traditions supposedly handed down from the apostles are unreliable. Apostolic tradition can't even survive to the end of the 2nd century. I would have to say that I agree."
James White isn't defining his terms the way you are, and he doesn't include something like Papias' gospel attributions or those of Irenaeus in the category of apostolic tradition that he's dismissing. If he did, I would disagree with him. I'm not James White.
You tell us that "apostolic tradition can't even survive to the end of the 2nd century". Since Irenaeus reported many things that are credible, including information that you accept as correct (his attributions of some documents to Paul, for example), you can't be arguing that he was wrong about everything. What you're saying is that he was sometimes wrong. But the same is true of you and of every other human. Historians think that Josephus was sometimes wrong, as were Suetonius, Tacitus, etc. Some false claims were being made about the founders of America before the nineteenth century was over. Using your reasoning, we can conclude:
Jewish tradition can't even survive to the end of the 1st century.
Roman tradition can't even survive to the end of the 2nd century.
American tradition can't even survive to the end of the 19th century.
Etc.
Tertullian is one of the earliest sources to identify the author of the Annals attributed to Tacitus. If Tertullian and some other sources tell us that the Annals were written by Tacitus, how much sense would it make for me to use a mistake Tertullian made on another subject to dismiss what he and the other sources report about the authorship of the Annals?
Nobody denies that Irenaeus was sometimes wrong. He was also sometimes right. You need to explain to us why we should think that it's probable that he and so many other sources got the authorship of John's gospel wrong. His error on the age of Jesus doesn't lead us to the conclusion that he erred on the authorship of the fourth gospel or the authorship of the other gospels. The fact that you keep discussing issues like what happened to Judas and the age of Jesus suggests that you don't have much of a case on the issue of who wrote the gospels. It doesn't look good for your side of the argument when I'm citing a broad consensus of early sources and the close ties the early Christians had with Polycarp, Pothinus, and other eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the apostles, then you respond by discussing what Irenaeus said about the age of Jesus.
I'm still waiting for you to address the other issues I raised earlier. If the gospels were initially anonymous, as you've argued, why did the early Christians repeatedly accept these anonymous documents in the first place? And how did a document like Mark change from being anonymous to being universally accepted as a work of Mark? How would a document like John have remained anonymous for a long time when the author (John 21:24) is repeatedly identified as a disciple of Jesus who was close to Peter? Since what the fourth gospel says about its author aligns with what other early sources tell us about John, why would it take decades for people to realize that the purported author was John? If they did realize early on that it was John, then John's disciples would have still been alive at the time, and they would have known that John never told them about any such document and that they never heard of its being circulated while he was alive. If a gospel's authorship isn't easily identified by its internal contents, as is the case with Mark under your scenario (without an author's name attached), then how do you explain the universal agreement that Mark wrote it? If a gospel's purported authorship is easily identified by its internal contents, as is the case with John, then how do you explain the fact that disciples of John didn't correct the misconception once people began attributing the gospel to John?
You don't have a good case against the authorship attributions of any of the gospels. What you have is a desire to dismiss the authorship attributions, along with the dishonesty to keep following that desire in the face of large amounts of contrary evidence.