Thus the words 'quibus tamen interfuit et ita posuit' refer to St. Mark. What is their meaning? The dominant view, introduced by Th. Zahn, (Harnack, ZNW, 24, 1925, p.9, n.3) suggests the reading 'ali-/quibus\ assuming that St. Mark had been present at some events of Jesus' earthly ministry and faithfully recorded them. This I find hard to believe. There is no reputable tradition that St. Mark had been a personal disciple of Jesus. In fact, the fairly frequent change of the position of the Gospel according to St. John was due to our Second and Third Gospels not being Apostolic in the strictest sense [Arnold Ehrhardt The Framework of the New Testament Stories p. 12]
Of course I strongly disagree with Ehrhardt's claim that there is no 'reputable tradition' that supports this contention. The Coptic tradition of Alexandria comes immediately to mind and the implicit inference of the Letter to Theodore too. But then again finding out that my reading of the material (which I thought was marginal at best) turns out to be the 'dominant position' back when scholarship still was something is interesting.
