When skeptics put forward hypotheses in which second-century Christians speculated about New Testament origins without having received much information on those issues from their predecessors, those hypotheses aren't just highly unlikely in the abstract. They're also contrary to the testimony we have from multiple first- and early-second-century sources. So, one way you can respond to such skeptical claims is by citing such testimony. Here are a few examples.
Whoever you think wrote the fourth gospel, it would be hard to deny that he was a first-century source. And he showed interest in the origins of his document and passed that information on to his audience, which included people who lived into the second century (e.g., John 19:35, 21:24). See here for further discussion of that material in the fourth gospel.
Clement of Rome discusses the origins of 1 Corinthians when writing to the Corinthian church (First Clement, 47). The ages of the people in the Corinthian church (and the Roman church) at that time would have ranged across the spectrum. Some of those individuals would have lived into the second century. Think of 1 Corinthians being written in Ephesus, then being sent to Corinth, with information about the document and its origins making its way to Rome as well. All of that occurred and is mentioned in passing, as if it's common knowledge, in a first-century source (First Clement).
I've said a lot in the past about Papias' comments on the gospel of Mark, in which he cites what an individual he refers to as "the elder" said about the origins of that gospel. You can read the post just linked for more of what I think about Papias' comments. And see here, among other posts, for my reasons for thinking that the elder Papias refers to is John the son of Zebedee. Whoever he is, he's a prominent church leader of the first century, at least a contemporary of the apostles and somebody who influenced individuals like Papias. We don't know of any close association the elder had with Mark's gospel. Yet, he had some significant information about the origins of the gospel and relayed that information to other people. We have a first-century source, the elder, communicating with another first-century source, Papias, about the origins of the gospels, and that information is discussed in a document Papias writes in the early second century.
The elder's knowledge of the origins of the gospel of Mark is reminiscent of how Paul was so well informed about the other apostles and repeatedly refers to meeting with them or communicating with them in some other way, following what was going on in their lives, etc. (Romans 16:7, 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:22, 4:9-13, 9:5, 15:11, Galatians 1:18-19, 2:1-21). He often refers to messengers he was in contact with, who carried information to him or brought information from him to others. We see similar characteristics in other New Testament and early patristic sources (1 Peter, First Clement, the letters of Ignatius, Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, and so on).
Since the apostles traveled so much (e.g., 1 Corinthians 9:5), they would have been part of the process of bringing information from one location to another. The elder's comments reported by Papias are an example of that and of some particular types of information the apostles and other early Christians were interested in (authorship and other origin issues related to documents like the gospel of Mark).
And the nature of the elder's comments about Mark is such that he seems to be comparing Mark's presentation of Jesus' life with what's found in another source, possibly another gospel. There's a good chance, then, that he was commenting on the origins of multiple gospels, especially given that we know Papias also commented on Matthew's writings, not just Mark's gospel. And that opens the door to the elder's having commented on other New Testament documents as well. I've argued elsewhere for John's presence in Ephesus until the late first or early second century and how much he influenced second-century Christianity. Notice that the Ephesian context increases the likelihood that he would have commented on documents with a close relationship to that city: 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and, of course, all five of the Johannine documents. What the passage in Papias does is give us direct, explicit evidence that John (or some other prominent church leader, if you think the elder was somebody else) was interested in and commented on authorship issues and other matters pertaining to the origins of the New Testament literature. There's no reason to limit his interests to Mark or Mark and one other source he was comparing Mark to. It's more likely that somebody with such interests in the context Papias was addressing also had those interests in other contexts.
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