Evidence of early dating - Bartimaeus

Like in the case of Simon of Cyrene, Mark 10:46 has a strange remark:

And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.

This blind beggar Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and Jesus cures him. John also cures a blind beggar in John 9:8:

8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.”

So how come Mark mentions the name of a blind beggar, but John does not? The name Bartimaeus does not occur anywhere else in the Bible, so what use is it to mention it, and also his father’s name? Just for fun? Mark is the most terse and succinct gospel account. He doesn’t waste any ink if there is not good reason for it.

The reason is that it was meaningful to his readers. Mark is essentially saying “If you do not believe me, go ask Bartimaeus how Jesus cured him. This means that at the time when Mark was written, Bartimaeus was still alive, otherwise such a challenge to the readers would have been meaningless. And John proves this.

The gospel of John was written around 96 AD, by which time the beggar he writes about would likely already be dead, which would make such a challenge pointless. Since the average life span in the first century was around 32 years, maxing out around 60-70 years, by 70 AD it would be unlikely Bartimaeus would still be alive, so it shows that Mark was likely written before 70 AD.