When we say that we don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Mark, what is it what we actually are claiming?

Two things: the author was not named Mark; and therefore the Mark of legend (Peter’s secretary, and Paul’s assistant, the cousin of Barnabas) was not its author.

My first point would be that many times there would have been a name tag written on something, that told who wrote the particular Gospel. So eventhough the name of the writer were not in the text, they would still know who wrote it because of this name tag. I suppose R. T. France is the person who has made this kind of argument.

I hope not. Because that would make no sense in the context of ancient literature. It would be a fallacy of special pleading, inventing a practice (and an observed consequence) never elsewhere evident in the whole gamut of ancient books. Because regardless of how codex or scroll tags worked, Kata Markon simply means “as told by Mark,” not “as written by Mark” (a different Greek phrase was used for the latter). It is a designation of source, not authorship. Which, as a title, generally was something invented ad hoc (otherwise you would have the author, “as written by,” saying he got his information from Mark and who Mark was and so on). In any case it never means “written by.”

Christians (alone in antiquity, and solely in this case) quickly conflated these concepts because they needed the sources to be the authors themselves, and legends grew advocating that view (e.g. it’s obvious Irenaeus, and everyone else, got this idea from Papias, who says he learned it from dubious oral lore, even though Papias was a stupid and gullible man, as Eusebius reports, and what he wrote about the Gospels is either false or not even referring to our Gospels, since we can see it fails to match them).

…but there are others (Justin Martyr…

He never mentions who the authors of the Gospels are.

The others say nothing more than what Papias does (beyond elaborating on it with even more ridiculous legends) and they either identify Papias as their source (e.g. Irenaeus) or don’t even mention how they know what they report.

Another thing is that Mark is not an Apostle. Many times later writers used the names of the apostles, so it would not make sense to use Mark’s name.

Actually, we don’t know that Mark was not an apostle. Paul names numerous apostles we have never heard of otherwise, and it’s clear there were many more unknown to us. In fact, Christian legend knew Mark as not only an apostle, but the apostle who brought the gospel to the Alexandrians.

But what Christians in later centuries thought will not be the same thing earlier Christians were thinking (such as the Christians who attached names to the Gospels). So we can only speculate why they chose the names they did. Or when.

In this case, the name Mark was likely chosen because Paul mentions a trusted assistant named Mark (albeit in forged letters, nevertheless canonical; and Acts repeats this legend), and Mark is a Pauline Gospel (Papias errs in thinking it’s a Petrine Gospel, when in fact it is anti-Petrine and promotes Paul’s view, not Peter’s). Thus, one can infer an attempt was being made to connect it as directly as possible to Paul, without trying to claim Paul wrote a book no one ever heard of before (a claim that would raise immediate suspicion, since Paul’s writings were known, and known not to have included or referred to any such book).

Then someone in Peter’s sect got annoyed by this and “rewrote” Mark to sell Peter’s sect instead of Paul’s…that Gospel is known as Matthew. Since it copies verbatim from Mark, it clearly isn’t an honest book (they are pretending to tell the true story, but secretly stealing someone else’s story, word for word, and passing it off as their own, and changing it, rather than telling their own story). Matthew is an apostle’s name. So when this name became attached, someone was trying to bypass Paul and connect the Gospel directly to Jesus. And they chose the only apostle connected with a profession that would suggest knowing how to write (a crucial trick, since Acts claims the apostles were otherwise all illiterate, and therefore one would arouse suspicion if somehow an illiterate fisherman was writing a book in educated Greek).

Like Mark, Luke is mentioned as a trusted educated fellow in Paul’s company (again according to forged letters, albeit canonical). The Gospel of Luke is an attempt to refute Matthew and bring the Gospel back to the intended teachings of Paul, by rewriting Matthew (some will challenge that take, but IMO it’s far more plausible and explains the evidence far better than traditional Q hypotheses). Someone then naturally wanted to pass this off as a more educated and researched Gospel, by linking it to the only man Paul’s letters refer to as being educated and trusted. That made sense, since the quality of Luke is superior to what one would expect even from a taxman, much less an illiterate fisherman, so a name had to be chosen that could connect the Gospel with the authority of Paul, without being Paul (whom by then everyone otherwise knew had not written a Gospel), and who would most plausibly have had the requisite high degree of education, and only one name can be made to fit that bill from the canon: Luke.

My first point would be that many times there would have been a name tag written on something, that told who wrote the particular Gospel. So eventhough the name of the writer were not in the text, they would still know who wrote it because of this name tag. I suppose R. T. France is the person who has made this kind of argument.

I have also understood that Mark is the only name ever that has been proposed to that Gospel. So it would be early tradition to suggest the Mark as an author of the Gospel. There is two titles that is known to the Gospel: “to kata Markon” and “to kata Markon hagion euangelion”. If there were no name tag or title for the Gospel, there would be much more divercity.

The Church Fathers agree that Mark is the author of the Gospel. Most important source for this is Papias (I guess we really can’t trust Papias because his gullibility), but there are others (Justin Martyr, Origen, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Eusebius…). And it is possible that Muratorian fragment talks about the same thing.

Another thing is that Mark is not an Apostle. Many times later writers used the names of the apostles, so it would not make sense to use Mark’s name. Mark is not even an eyewitness, and isn’t any kind of central person in New Testament. He has only a small role in Acts. So it would not make sense if his name was not connected to the Gospel by the beginning.

I have also heard that the authority of Gospel of Luke has never been questioned. No ancient sources even try to deny that Luke were the writer. If the Gospel was nameless for years it would be reasonable to assume that there would be many names that would be offered to it. Like Mark, Luke has only small role in New testament. He is not an apostle and not even eyewitness. It would make no sense to put the name of this kind of man to the Gospel, if it was invented.

What we can know about the author is that he knew Greek (eventhought didn’t write it very well); he knew hebrew and aramaic language; he knew Jewish social, political and religious groups; and he knew Roman legal praxis. Are we telling the truth when we are saying that we don’t know anything about the writer? Or what does it mean in this context?

Mk. 16:9-20 are not at all Markan in style, but in fact based on the Gospels written later. They were most definitely never in the original. See my detailed analysis here.

Yes, Papias claims that (although we can’t confirm that he was referring to the same Gospel we have) half a century after the fact. But Papias shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He thinks Matthew was translated from Hebrew when in fact it’s a direct copy of the Greek of Mark and relies on Septuagint Greek elsewhere, and the Greek edition of Q (if you believe in Q), and thus can’t ever have been in Hebrew. And he evidently doesn’t know that Mark is a Gentile Gospel, whereas Peter was a Torah-observant Christian, and thus would never have been preaching the version of the Gospel we find in Mark (but rather the version we find in Matthew, if anything). There are other quotes from Papias that show he was very gullible and believed all kinds of absurd stories. Even Eusebius said he was a man of very little intelligence. He’s pretty much the worst source you could ever base anything on.

I suspect that’s a garbled version of a different story: the discovery of a 16th century forgery. The “year 1500” became in the telephone game “1500 year-old.”

“The lesson to learn here is never to trust the media, much less the rumor mill, when claims of an amazing new find like this crop up. Wait for the evidence to actually be presented, for many independent experts to actually analyze it. Then see what survives. Usually, nothing.”

Ain’t that the truth. If the media outlets would just at least now and then follow up with an “Oops-that-turned-out-to-be-nothing” story.

Not having to do with any fake 1st-century MSS: a couple of months ago there was a story about a possibly 5th- or 6th- century Syriac MS of the Gospel of Barnabas. (I know: the only Gospel of Barnabas known so far was forged centuries later than that in Europe.) It had been seized by Turkish police, spent over a decade in storage in a courthouse, now it had moved to a museum, the Vatican had requested to inspect it, Catholophobes saw “requested to inspect it” and read “requested permission to destroy it, what are they trying to cover up, those fiends, oh well I guess we’ll never know now, another victory for evil!” and so forth.

Do you know anything about this MS? Do you know of any websites or publications which give intelligent overviews of recently discovered and/or forged MSS?