Some of Jesus' disciples who never speak as individuals in the Synoptics do so one or more times in the fourth gospel. Or they're more prominent in John than in the Synoptics in some other way. And that can be used as an argument against the historicity of the Synoptics or John, typically against John's historicity.
It's not much of an objection, given how selective authors have to be, especially when they're covering as much ground as the gospels do. And we have many examples of such selectivity in other contexts in life in which the historicity of the sources involved is widely accepted. Even in the Synoptics/John context, we know John gave little attention to some themes he surely had heard about and accepted (e.g., Jesus' statements about the kingdom of God, his exorcisms).
But there's a neglected line of evidence in the Synoptics (and Acts) that corroborates the material in John that I'm focused on in this post. All of the lists of the disciples give Philip a somewhat prominent place, just after the foremost disciples (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13). He's always listed fifth. That aligns well with Philip's place in John, where he isn't at the level of Peter or John, but there are a few contexts in which he's prominent.
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