The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[athrock]

I didn't mean they were written in the second century, I meant any reference to them or physical evidence by which we might evaluate the claims of the OP vis-à-vis authorship.

They are referenced extensively, including in the second century from other writings. I think what people forget is that a new testament manuscript exclusively refers to a manuscript that contained at least one book of the new testament (and most contained more than one book, it's only these really early ones that are only one or two books). The New Testament contains many quotes from the OT, and many more direct and indirect references as well, and second century church writings also quote from the OT, the NT, and even the apocrypha. The reason why you find quotes from the apocrypha in second century writings but not in any of the first-century NT writings is anyone's guess really, but I believe it's because most of the books were written by 66AD - including all three synoptic gospels. This was a time when the church was ruled from Jerusalem, and from 70AD on it wasn't - it was more decentralised and chaotic - and we don't really know what happened in the years following the destruction of the original church, but we do know what came of it later. Anyway, by the second century they had a greater appreciation for some of the writings that the Jews of the time rejected. This might have been why they began using Greek versions of the OT as well - perhaps it wasn't just for convenience, but because it separated them from the Jews that read it in Hebrew. We know by the late second century there were at least 4 complete translations of the OT (comprising all 49 books/22 scrolls as we know them).

The letters of Ignatius are written early second century (c. 107AD), and contain quotes from the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, the pastoral epistles, Hebrews, and James. And there's 1 Clement - again it's written either late first century or early second century, and contains a small number of NT quotes including Paul's letters, James, Hebrews, Acts, and 1-2 Peter.

So you're wrong, the earliest literary evidence is from the early second century, where there are not just references but direct quotes from many (but not all) of the NT books.

If you ask the Catholics, they will say that Clement was the fourth pope (after Peter, Linus, and Anacletus), and that his letter to the Corinthians provides evidence of the primacy of his see because the Corinthians asked for Clement's assistance and he did not hesitate to express himself authoritatively over another local church.