How Influential Was Papias?

In another thread, Ed Babinski quoted Howard Clark Kee commenting:

"Justin Martyr (100-165 CE) relying on the testimony of Papias refers to the gospel of Mark as the 'memoir' of Peter"

Ed's motive in quoting Kee on this subject seems to be to suggest that Justin Martyr's testimony about the background of Mark's gospel isn't of much significance, since he was just repeating what he had read in Papias. This sort of argument is common among critics of Christianity. Testimony from multiple sources will be dismissed on the basis that some or all of the sources can be traced back to one source, then that one source will be dismissed as unreliable. As the apostle Paul is often portrayed as the only source for much of what the earliest Christians claimed about Jesus, Papias is often portrayed as the only source for many of the beliefs of the earliest post-apostolic Christians.

There are many problems with that sort of theory, whether it's applied to Paul, Papias, or somebody else. The only early Christian figure who was widely recognized as having universal authority above the authority of anybody else was Jesus. Paul was an equal among the apostles (1 Corinthians 9:1, 2 Corinthians 12:11, Galatians 2:7-10, Ephesians 2:20, Revelation 21:14, Ignatius' Letter To The Romans 4, etc.), and Papias had no status we know of that would have resulted in his being regarded more highly than anybody else. He was a bishop and probably a disciple of the apostle John, but many other bishops and disciples of the apostles were alive at the time. Irenaeus, commenting on Papias' contemporary Clement of Rome, another probable disciple of the apostles, wrote that "there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles" (Against Heresies, 3:3:3). It's highly unlikely that somebody like Papias would be the only source of information on an issue like the background of Mark's gospel. Papias himself refers to his dependence on other men of his time who had known the apostles (Eusebius, Church History, 3:39:3-4). Whatever information Papias had attained from the apostle John, he hadn't known all of the apostles, so he probably would consult other sources for some of his information. He tells us that he did. As Papias would have had access to many of these sources, so would other people.

Does Justin Martyr mention Papias by name? No. Collections of the fragments of Papias, such as the recent collection by Michael Holmes (The Apostolic Fathers [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2005], pp. 562-591), don't include any material from Justin Martyr. There's no reason to conclude that Justin had Papias as his source for his comments, and it's unlikely that somebody in his position would have been dependent on Papias for such information.

Justin lived in more than one location. He had been in Israel and in Rome (where Mark's gospel is thought to have originated), for example. He was in contact with a variety of Christian and non-Christian sources, as we see reflected in his Dialogue With Trypho. As he explains repeatedly in his writings, the gospels were read in Christian churches along with the Old Testament scriptures (First Apology, 67) and were believed to have been written by "apostles and those who followed them" (Dialogue With Trypho, 103). Notice the plural: "apostles" and "those who followed them". The use of the plural matches our four gospels: apostles (Matthew, John) and those who followed them (Mark, Luke). Justin doesn't cite the number four anywhere, but his comments are consistent with the collection of four gospels that sources living just after Justin's time refer to. In another place, Justin refers to the apostles composing gospels (First Apology, 66), so he can't just be referring to the apostles as the subject matter of the gospels. He attributes some of the gospels to apostles and some to disciples of the apostles.

Why would the early Christians attribute the second gospel to Mark rather than to Peter? If they were dishonest or careless in such matters, why didn't they just claim that Peter wrote the gospel? The concept that the minor and questionable (Acts 15:37-39) figure Mark wrote it, with Peter as his primary source, is credible and is consistent with what other sources tell us about both Peter and Mark. And as Martin Hengel has noted, the widespread early reports about Mark's reliance on Peter differ in some of their details, and it doesn't seem likely that they all were relying on one source (The Four Gospels And The One Gospel Of Jesus Christ [Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2000], pp. 35-38, 40-41). The influence of Peter on the gospel of Mark is also supported by internal evidence:

As far as Mark is concerned, church tradition tells us that he penned his gospel from the teachings of Peter. Martin Hengel discusses several internal considerations from Mark that support the external evidence, among which I found the following significant:

1. Peter is the first disciple to be called immediately after Jesus' public appearance. His name is also the last of the disciples to appear in Mark (Mark 1:16; 16:7).

2. In Mark 16:7, the and Peter, according to Hengel "disrupts the narrative and is completely superfluous", and it is notable that this unnecessary addition is omitted by Matthew. Hengel states that it is also odd that only here when the disciples and Peter are mentioned together that Peter is mentioned at the end, whereas elsewhere he always is mentioned at the beginning. From this Hengel concludes that Mark structured his gospel so that Peter would be named at the beginning and end in order to give it Peter's stamp of authority.

3. Mark's gospel is predominantly Galilean in character compared with Luke and John, which is significant since Peter served as the "spokesman of the Galilean disciples."

4. According to Hengel, the "disciples" are mentioned a total of 43 times, but Peter is emphasized as he is mentioned 25 times. Matthew also mentions Peter 25 times, but the "disciples" in his gospel are mentioned 75 times. Plus, Matthew's gospel is 70% longer than that of Mark. In an end-note, Hengel cites the work of Feldmeier, who determined ratios for the number of times Peter is mentioned per the number of words in the three Synoptic gospels. The ratio is substantially higher for Mark at 1:443, with that of Matthew and Luke standing at 1:772 and 1:648, respectively. Of course, if the Markan priority paradigm is accurate, then this is that much more significant since the emphases that Matthew and Luke also place on Peter could be largely the result of their use of Mark as a source.

5. Finally, Hengel states that the mentions of Peter tend to accumulate at important parts of Mark's gospel, such as at the beginning of Jesus' activity (ch. 1), the denouement in chs. 8 & 9, and of course, the passion narrative in ch. 14.

And quoting Hengel's conclusion:

Only secondarily is it to be noted that the period of tradition between Jesus and the time of Mark is not more than forty years and the remembrance of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee and Jerusalem was still vivid. In other words, the fact that the name of Simon Peter has been quite deliberately and massively retained in his Gospel is grounded not only in the importance of Peter for the evangelist, but also in remembrance and historical reality. For Mark, the chronological distance from Jesus of about forty years could still be surveyed relatively easily, and hardly more than five years separate him from the martyrdom of Peter, his teacher. Even if we did not have the reports of Irenaeus, the two Clements and Justin, the Papias note and I Peter 5.13, we would have to assume that the author of the Second Gospel is dependent upon Peter in a striking way, for historical, theological, and quite personal reasons. [Hengel 2000; 82-85]

Given the large amount of internal and external evidence we have for Mark's authorship of the second gospel under Peter's influence, why should we think that Justin Martyr and other sources were just repeating an unreliable account they got from Papias? Similarly, why should we think that somebody like Irenaeus would only repeat what he had heard from Polycarp, as if Polycarp was his only source? Even if Polycarp was Irenaeus' only source, we have good reason to think that Polycarp's testimony would be reliable. But given Irenaeus' contacts with a variety of apostolic churches and given his possession of earlier writings that are no longer extant and his relationships with other contemporaries of the apostles (like Pothinus), we don't have any good reason to conclude that Irenaeus would have been relying on only one source for his information on issues like gospel authorship.

The apostles traveled widely, and contemporaries of the apostles were in contact with a wide variety of sources, as we see reflected in the letters of Paul, the correspondence between Clement of Rome and the Corinthians, the letters of Ignatius, etc. Christians often traveled, and messengers would transmit information from one church to another. The early churches were highly networked, even as early as the time of Paul, and that networking would have increased with the passing of time. An issue as significant as who wrote the gospels or whether Mark had Peter as his primary source wouldn't have been informed or determined by only one person, like Papias. The fact that modern critics of Christianity resort to this sort of argument tells us more about their desperation than it does about an alleged lack of evidence for a Christian view of the origin of the gospels. Martin Hengel probably is correct about a motive of modern critics in rejecting the traditional view of Mark's gospel: "there is probably also an unacknowledged modern apologetic interest, characteristic of Protestant theology after the Enlightenment, namely offence at the numerous miracle stories in the Gospel" (Ibid., p. 88).