Okay, our next question concerns the 70 disciples that Jesus sent out, and was Mark or Barnabas you know part of that? So the questioner sent in this question. I always thought that Mark who wrote the gospel, John Mark of Acts 15, and Marcus, the relative of Barnabas, he mentions Colossians 4:10, were all the same person. I believe this has been the traditional view. However, recently, I came across Hippolytus ' list of the 70 apostles, and he lists them as three different individuals. What do you make of this?
Is there other early church support for them as three different individuals? In some places, it is referred to as the list of pseudo hippolytus. So in short, is this list reliable? Okay. So interesting question. And to give you a brief, very brief answer, no, the list is not reliable. Most patristic scholars do not view it as a genuine work of Hippolytus. So when they say pseudo Hippolytus, I don't really like that expression. They use that with everybody.
And what patristic scholars mean is usually what they're meaning is this work was thought to be a work of Hippolytus. Maybe it was included among the writings of Hippolytus, and they've concluded he didn't really write it. But it gives the impression that somebody wrote it under his name you know falsely. And that's not usually the case on these, quote, " pseudo this is or that.
" It just means people thought that particular person wrote it because it was included in their writings, but that we have concluded since because of the style or something like that, that it's not really them. So it doesn't mean that somebody made this list up and put his name on it. It just means it was thought by some people that Hippolytus made up the list. But like I say, it's not usually viewed as being genuinely from him.
But you know even if Hippolytus wrote this list of the 70, I myself would not consider it a primary source because he lived 150 years after the 70 were chosen. And so how would he know their names when the Bible doesn't provide a list of their names? Now, let's say it was Clement of Rome who lived in the first century. You know Let's say he gave us a list of the 70. Well, now that would be different. That would be a lot closer to the time period. It would have some validity. It wouldn't be infallible.
But you know I would look at it as something as a strong piece of evidence, but not from Hippolytus, you know 150 years after the time of Christ. And then when it's not even really Hippolytus who wrote it, it could be from you know the 4th century, 5th century, something like that. So yeah, don't pay any attention to it. So whether these different people named Mark are one in the same or three different people, I don't think we know for sure.
I guess I would hold to the traditional view that Mark, who wrote the Gospel of Mark, was also the cousin of Barnabas and the one who traveled with Paul and later traveled with Barnabas. And we know later he became a companion of Peter. Yes, there could be that's a very common Roman name, extremely common. So yes, it would be easy that these would be different people. But because this particular Mark does so many things, he was so active in missionary work.
It does give credence to the view that these were one and the same people. But what we do find through the ages is that various people kept coming up with hypothetical lists of the 70s, but these were simply guesses. If God had wanted us to know the names of the 70, I think He would have provided them in Scriptures. Now, I think, sure, it's very feasible that Mark, who is active very early on, that he could have been of the 70.
I think it's very possible Barnabas was and some of these other people, but we don't know. And I don't think we should speculate on things we don't know. Okay. Well, I think we've used up our time for today. I had some other questions here. I was going to address that perhaps we'll get to the next time that we do a Q&A. I appreciate everyone who sent in questions. And if we didn't get to your question today, then hopefully we'll be able to get to it in the next question and answer. So thank you for listening.
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