Wow! I guess the gatekeepers of the orthodox just couldn't take fresh and new thoughts. More power to you, my friend. 👍

Oh, we do hope you’ve saved that thesis. Your time has come!

Keep the faith brother. The Jesus Consciousness is alive and well. Ask it for guidance, grit, optimism and insight. Blessings

@Igor_Chernyavskiy_2023 Absolutely not. Were these texts first century the entire face of Christianity in the second century would not be what it is. My suggesting to you is learning how to read.

​@Igor_Chernyavskiy_2023 There are no gospel manuscripts found which date to the first century. The gospels may have existed in some primitive form before Marcion, but the argument here is more that the entire gospel material was not finished until after 130 A.D, and it was directly influenced by the movement of Marcionism. We already know that the early church added scriptures to the end of the gospel of Mark, for example. As soon as you learn to read and pay attention to the gospel material, the validity of Marcion's position becomes undeniable.

-$There never was multiple Gospels by multiple authors. The Gospel was originally one book, written by Lazarus in consultation with the Apostles [John 21:24] and published soon after Jesus left them on their own. The religion was hijacked by Rome, the Gospel was broken up scrambled adulterated into a bunch of competing narratives. Later four of those adulterated gospels were canonized with falsely ascribed authorship and a Gnosticism cover-story. It was the finding of an original Gospel of Jesus scroll in Jerusalem that gained the Knights Templar power over the Church and their eventual undoing when the church finally retaliated against them Friday 13th.

Cream not arrived?@@termination9353

Do it!

He simply picked up an earlier version of them. Although most of them are still closer to the canonical version than the originals.

It seems to me Marcion should be reevaluated as a founding father of Christianity as we have it, not an idealized and sanitized version, but what actually became the religion of the West.

New gods were nothing new. This is what apotheosis was all about and now a new temple has been found that demonstrates that even Constantine was still involved with imperial cult worship.

❤

There's no evidence that there ever was a "god of Abraham and Moises". In fact the Jewish religion is only about 100-150 years older than the early Christians themselves were.

No, but his mistake is understandable. That mistake being the same one everyone makes today, thinking that the Old Testament is 100% literal and factual. Those stories are meant to teach lessons, and not much else. Also if you look at the prophets and wisdom parts of the Old Testament you'll see it is much closer to Jesus, and they were in conflict with the priestly class which wrote most of the law codes.

*Derek

Merrick is his real name. It's tattooed in an unmentionable place, though, so there are few of us who know about it. ;-)

@@mgbilby I was so damn drunk when I wrote ‘Erick’…

-#There never was multiple Gospels by multiple authors. The Gospel was originally one book, written by Lazarus in consultation with the Apostles [John 21:24] and published soon after Jesus left them on their own. The religion was hijacked by Rome, the Gospel was broken up scrambled adulterated into a bunch of competing narratives. Later four of those adulterated gospels were canonized with falsely ascribed authorship and a Gnosticism cover-story. It was the finding of an original Gospel of Jesus scroll in Jerusalem that gained the Knights Templar power over the Church and their eventual undoing when the church finally retaliated against them Friday 13th.

@@termination9353 that is a lie. I’m sorry you have not been taught the truth yet & hope you will do the honorable & honest thing and question why you need a lie over the truth.

@@kariannecrysler640 I give evidence from the Gospel that it is the truth. You show me no evidence or reasoned rebuttal that I lie. You make false accusation yet call yourself interested in new scholarship? "At least one group of Crusaders brought back more than just heretical hearsay-- they reportedly returned to Europe with hard evidence of error and duplicity in church dogma." -Jim Mars, Rule By Secrecy (Secrets of the Freemasons)

@@termination9353 special pleading for me to give credibility to your opinions.

@@termination9353 How utterly convenient that the story of Lazarus is only mentioned in the book of John and no others, It is almost as if the last written book of the gospels, that the story was given legitimacy of including those passages to attest to its own authenticity. however Lazarus never wrote any books and the claim that he passed on that experience is dubious when he died 30 years after his resurrection eg. AD60, and Johns gospel is commonly believed to have been written AD120-150. The Crusades were many Centuries after the events and the Gospel of Jesus is not scholarly at all.

From what I've seen, most Catholic scholars still cling to that story; but non-fundamentalist Protestant ones tentatively agree with John Calvin: "rubbbish published under Ignatius' name."

The Ignatius of the longer form of his epistle to the Romans is a veritable Yoda or Mick Jagger on a grand farewell tour leading up to his known death. It aligns Ignatius' hagiography to that of Polycarp, who voluntarily accepts his martyrdom as an old man, as well as common Greco-Roman depictions of aged philosophers being put to death for offending rulers; see the depiction of Seneca by Tacitus, for a clear example, and Greg Sterling's article "Mors philosophi", for the broader literature. The short form of Ignatius' letter to the Romans--as Jack described in our recent chat on the Patristica channel--lacks the entire plot of the farewell tour of the aged philosopher. It is still a martyr story, but a far simpler and more historically plausible one.

@@mgbilby Yes, great insight. See also the death of Socrates. I didn't make the connection, but now that you point it out, I can see there were multiple motives to make him 86. Like so much else, the editors borrowed a common mythological trope from the time.

@@juliancate7089 Indeed. The trope of the aged philosopher is part of the imitatio Socrati tradition. It also, by my lights, aims to garner sympathy for the community telling the story and honoring such philosophers. (What a travesty of justice to execute old men like Seneca, Polycarp, and Ignatius!). It also likely reflects an audacious truth-telling associated with the elderly. Nearing death, they apparently have no s***ts left to give and will speak their minds. Reminds me of an elderly Russian woman who was recently interviewed on camera and posted by a user named Glatnost Gone on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

@@mgbilby I'll be sure to employ the ancient philosopher defense the next time I offend the easily and permanently offended. Thanks for the video and conversation. I enjoyed and learned from both. All the best.

?

It was the Apostles that provoked the zealots into "Bar Kochvah" revolt against Roman occupation in the first place. There never was multiple Gospels by multiple authors. The Gospel was originally one book, written by Lazarus in consultation with the Apostles [John 21:24] and published soon after Jesus left them on their own. The religion was hijacked by Rome, the Gospel was broken up scrambled adulterated into a bunch of competing narratives. Later four of those adulterated gospels were canonized with falsely ascribed authorship and a Gnosticism cover-story. It was the finding of an original Gospel of Jesus scroll in Jerusalem that gained the Knights Templar power over the Church and their eventual undoing when the church finally retaliated against them Friday 13th.

@termination9353 Oh okay.

@@dougrobinson6683 oky doky

I agree. After the failure of Bar Kochba the early church tries to pinch the OT. Clear with the all the messiah, born in Jerusalem, David's line. Makes more sense c150

@@Dybbouk Bah! We have no idea of true history. History is revisioned to cover stuff up. "At least one group of Crusaders brought back more than just heretical hearsay-- they reportedly returned to Europe with hard evidence of error and duplicity in church dogma." -Jim Mars, Rule By Secrecy (Secrets of the Freemasons)

Not to mention, Matthew 5 is based directly on Marcion's Antithesis.

He was drinking beer and playing pool. Here, hold my Q

Evidence is far more plentiful than we might imagine. Each of us produces thousands upon thousands of data signals every minute. We can't mine ancient data (vocal and material) as much as we can data produced in recent years, but there is still an abundance of ancient data to mine for statistically significant patterns. Just one stroke of a ancient stylus has a whole story to tell, if you know how to interpret it.

The oldest was probably the Hebrew Matthew. Then Mark wrote down material it didn't have, and then they were combined multiple times.

If Marcionite priority is legit, then a lot of the courses that Derek is sponsoring are anachronistic and inaccurate with regard to much of their content, both about Paul and the Gospels, essentially interpreting a range of mid-2nd century textual productions as if they belonged to the mid- to late- first century and accurately represented historical persons living during those times.

In my view, Mark's Gospel has two clear evolutionary moments. About 1/3 of it is early (70s or so, just post-Jewish war) and 2/3 of it is mid-second century (post second Jewish war). The first part aligns almost perfectly with content and order in Marcion's Gospel, the second part, hardly at all. See my First Gospel book for detailed statistical proofs.

That makes absolutely no sense. Luke contains whole passages from Matthew, and the first 4 verses admit that it is drawing from earlier sources.

@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 It's the Qn part that's most Hebraic, which is 75% of Marcion's gospel. Ironic that it ended up in his hands and not ours.

@@crystalvulpine2314 That doesn't mean anything, and the Q source can just as easily have originated from a Hebrew source that Marcion adopted. This is why I have come to dismiss all of these synoptical reconstructions. They can be arranged in all the ways that match the reconstructor's bias. I've even come around to Huller's thinking from years ago that the synoptics originated from a Diatessaronic source that merged the Ebionite, Petrine, and Johannine books. That Marcion is associated with "circumcising" a Gospel, and Luke begins acknowledging other books, would point in that direction. Fact is, Marcion is a nonexistent agent in all of this, and he more than likely never existed.

@@crystalvulpine2314 Yes, this, precisely. The aggadic story of Lazarus (= Eleazer), the Aesopian framing (highly popular among the early rabbis), together with many elements traditionally ascribed to Q, reflect this Hebraic/Galilean context. Ironically, Marcion--later dismissed as being anti-Jewish--preserves the gospel most closely aligned with and sourced by the earliest Hebraic textual stratum. The regular positive use of Hebrew scriptures apart from LXX quotations and fulfillment explanations is yet another sign of this greater antiquity.

@@mgbilby One problem, just a slight problem, nothing too big... These texts were not used by the earliest Christian communities, so how can you make such judgement calls? Lazarus is not used as an allegory. It is used as a literal pronouncement of the Paraclete, one that pre-existed within the substrata of Gospel texts, hence all of the seeming duplications of events and people, e.g. Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry his cross; Joseph of Arimathea letting Jesus be buried in his own tomb, which Jesus rises from; Jesus literally being called to John the Baptist redivivus. And that is why it is impossible for the so-called Gospel of the Lord to have been paired with Paul, because Paul was the Paraclete and the only Gospel to foretell his coming is proto-John. All of this hullabaloo about Hebraic sources is a waste of time, used to legitimize some bs history that never was.

I'd say Marcion probably compiled some "Pauline" material together into 10 epistles - 7 of which look like they were largely written by one person. But yeah; the "Pauline corpus" seems essentially a Marcionite invention.

@@gavinmatthewlyall Do you think that Marcion edited Paul's letters so that they told a story that Marcion wanted to tell, that Marcion created the Paul character and his writings or that Marcion just collected and published Paul's writings?

Yes, a third of the Gospel of Mark (= early Mark) does predate Marcion's Gospel, but two thirds of Marcion's Gospel comes from Qn, which predates early Mark.

Marcion's was probably the first one (that we know of) that was based on Mark and Q. Luke is an expanded version of Marcion, and Matthew is an entirely new Mark/Q hybrid written in reaction to Marcion (as proved by Matthew 5 being based on his antithesis).

I'm functionally illiterate in Arabic, so I'm definitely not the guy to lead the effort, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me to see progress in that space in the not too distant future.

That's great news thanks for asking and hopefully Derek would like and love to bring that on his channel

@@mgbilby you're a pioneer and I hope that this concept is embraced by others... let's give your platform the publicity it deserves. Like so many other people who have died and returned ( I was neurologically flat lined for seven minutes, no electrical activity in my brain ), I know that there's Consusness outside of the body...I also know that religion is a Artificial substitute for true Spirituality. God is not religious. Just something I have been wanting to share with an academic. Are you familiar with Analytical Idealism? I just wanted say that there's such a thing as rational spirituality. I hope this becomes the norm...for me, meditation and introspection have replaced church for me. Sorry for going off subject, but not often I get to speak with an academic. Thanks for all your time and contributions to understanding.

Don't stop believing. Stop believing in inerrancy.

@@crystalvulpine2314 would elaborate on that statement?

@@ShiniGuraiJoker Why are you disbelieving entirely just because you found out that one of the gospels is an expanded version of an older one? It's not even a heretical gospel, it's just shorter and less polished.

The Diatesseron as we have it is a confabulation of the four canonical gospels, standardized by Irenaeus around the end of the 2nd century. I've usually seen it put at 170 or so; but I'd say it was written no earlier than Iranaeus' Adversus Haereses. The earlier estimates are based on the common but unsupported assumption that the canonicals were written and accepted as exclusively canonical much earlier.

Tatian, as a student of Justin Martyr, was a generation or two after Marcion. Justin in his First Apology (c. 150 CE) refers to Marcion as an "old man" who has been around a long time. Tatian's "Gospel of the Mixed" (its original Syriac title) is indeed a harmony, but not one that was limited to the four canonical Gospels elaborated by Irenaeus, and not one that included everything from those texts, since it often engages in omission as a harmonization strategy. The later Greek name "Diatessaron" ("through Four") presumes Irenaeus' four-gospel canon and can be therefore misleading.

Here's the thing, if you compare the Evangelion and the Apostilikon together, they simply do not read continuously, and there are a few places I have noticed where they both outwrite contradict with one another (one important facet people seem to over look is that Jesus/Isu in the Gospel isn't docetic. He eats with the disciples). If the whole aim of the Apostilikon is to give authority to Paul, why is Marcion the one singled out? Because he tampered with Luke? This is such an obvious red herring that it begs credulity, and it is likely that passage in Irenaeus is an outright insertion, because later in Against Heresies Irenaeus uses Matthew against Marcionites! And Tertullian even writes that his own Against Marcion is a second edition because the first one got out and was used by his competitor. (Irenaeus?)

Based on his firsthand reading of the text, Epiphanius gives a meticulous list of most of the passages entirely missing from Marcion's Gospel, and several missing from the Apostolos. Tertullian, writing some 200 years earlier and independently from Epiphanius, attests to some missing material, but consistently skips over the very passages Epiphanius says were missing, plus several others. While not technically a verse by verse commentary, Tertullian clearly proceeds in sequential order in books four and five of Against Marcion. If one takes Roth or Harnack as the basis for how many verses can be known in Marcion's Gospel, Tertullian attested 90% of this content. If one takes my reconstruction or BeDuhn's, that number is 80%. Klinghardt goes way too far with his 13,000 words, ending up making Tertullian a truly random attester of verses at 50%.

@@mgbilby How do you know it's firsthand?

Two thirds of Marcion's Gospel comes from the Qn source that I discovered (far more precise and considerably longer than previous reconstructions of Q). One third from an early version of Mark. But Markan priority is too sloppy of a concept, because about two thirds of Mark was composed/added in the mid-2nd century.

@@mgbilby That sounds fascinating. Have you published this work so I can look more closely at your findings? I very much enjoyed your participation in this panel. All three of you did an excellent job as did Derek. One question I have is, how do you know Marcion used a "source" as opposed to creating the material based off of oral traditions as well as his own creative ideas?

@@ObjectiveEthics Search "Bilby First Gospel Zenodo" for the open science book on this topic and numerous detailed scientific proofs of how the earliest gospel (Qn) can be reconstructed from Marcion's Gospel. There is no evidence that Marcion wrote the Evangelion text except for heresiologists claiming that he chopped down the canonical text. And there is no significant external sample of his writings that can be used to test his authorship scientifically. It is clear, however, that the Gospel that he popularized had two sources, and this is based on a diverse breadth and statistical depth of highly divergent features between two thirds of the text (focused on the justice for the poor and enslaved, and halakhic teachings), and the other third (focused on ritual piety and controversy stories). The Qn portion of the text is a coherent imitation of Aesop traditions, from beginning to end, and features women in significant leadership positions, and is largely disconnected from the narrative in the Gospel of Mark. The portions of the text that align perfectly with Mark care nothing for the poor and entirely ignore women leaders.

It is typically called "Marcion's Gospel", but as Tertullian states, "Marcion attaches no name" to the text. Its authorship was anonymous. Later Marcionites, as quoted in the Adamantius Dialogue, attributed the composition to Jesus himself (!). But yes, if we were to conform it to canonical titles, it might aptly be "Euaggelion kata Markiwnon", except that he was a real historical person, while the ostensible authors of the canonical texts may have been fabrications, in part if not in whole, developed around 150 - 175 CE. Justin Martyr, writing in Rome around the mid-2nd century, shows no knowledge of these names or even of stabilized, canonical forms of these texts. Things were far more fluid and evolving in late 1st to early 2nd century than most scholars would like to believe.

I may have written a little bit on this topic.

Sadly, I'm old enough to get Brady Bunch humor. 🙂

@@mgbilby Excellent. I was hoping someone would get it.

Dear Ed, I thingk you got it right - I have worked on the Gospel of Peter and published the German translation for the collection of Schröter/Markschies together with a colleague. And in my book on "Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels" I show that the Gospel of Peter is not only making use of the Synoptics, but first of all of Marcion: Whenever the three or even four canonical Gospels more or like agree on verses, present in the Gospel of Peter, these verses are present in Marcion's Gospel, whenever verses are not present in Marcion, the three or four canonical Gospels widely disagree. Thanks for your comments, yours Markus

The Marcion's Gospel was the only source for all the other gospels (as Klinghardt and Vinzent think) doesn't explain the production of the Gospel of Thomas, but a serious modification of the Q hypothesis does. What's crucial to see here is that all these texts were evolving, not one off productions. Marcion's Gospel has two clear, scientifically demonstrable sources (Qn and early Mark), and Marcion probably didn't have much if any role in composing or editing them (see the works of BeDuhn, Gramaglia, Nicolotti, Gianotto, and myself).

@@vinzentm2011 Thank you Markus, its really fascinating.... that means all the dating of the gospels origin ist obsolet. All gospels were written past 150 A.D with a common Marcion "core" and special ad ons depending what extras were to be transported.... kind of William Borroughs like Cut-Up technic... here a little more family, there some more sayings... or miracles... each version dedicated with an "according to "Marc,/Luke/Matthews/John" by annonymous scribes and without location, which is also odd. Most likely all written in Rome...?.The version called "gospel according to Marcus" seems the most "sober one. Isnt it? And all having an antisemitc and pro Roman bias... one more the other less.... ts.... Assuming that Marcions work was for a while dominating and mainstream, it was obvious an attempt to create something TOTALLY new ... a mix of Neo Platomism and Hebrew monodeism.... Strictly pacifistic and pro Rome.... demonising the Jews as failing on Jesus.. .

@@mgbilby sure, Q and Marc are said to be the most reliable authentic sources,, where by Q remains ominous but extremely relevant... Q transports a lot of the sayiings, right?

@@edvaneckert2348 Exactly. Q is the halakhic repository of the early Jesus movement likely preserved intact in Marcion's Gospel, but re-shuffled significantly in the evolving Matthean composition and likewise in the evolving productions of the Gospel of Thomas and Gospel of Peter (if P.Oxy.5575 is a witness to GPeter, as it seems to be).

In the quotation you provided, Justin literally states that Marcion's followers are called "Christians". Moreover, Justin's entire literary program is about positioning himself as a philosopher and head of a philosophical school. And his was one of many Christian philosophical schools current in Rome around the mid-2nd century. All of them were claiming to be the true Christians. It's quite similar to the diversity of denominations/traditions today--each claiming it has the best / most authentic / original understanding and/or practice of Christianity. It's only if we privilege Justin's interpretation and texts as having a priori validity, and ignore all the rest of the evidence, that this flimsy framing stands.

@@mgbilby Thank you for responding. Yes, Justin affirms that Marcion and his followers are blasphemers and God-deniers, and are yet called ‘Christians’. He then immediately makes clear the fallacy of making any inferences based on that label, expressing that they are no more Christians (~ taken to mean followers of Christ) than a random guy named ‘Marcus’ is in alignment with the philosophy of emperor Marcus Aurelius. Of course Justin is exaggeerating here. It is a polemical statement. It could be that I misread the thrust of his polemics, but I do not think so at the moment. I am trying to understand quotations such as the one above within it’s literary hermeneutic unit - as one always should, as far as sound exegesis is concerned. The hermeneutic context is that Marcion is cast by Justin as being in league with devils and as promoter of blasphemy. Justin has stated this immediately before the section that I quoted. Can you explain to me on what literary hermeneutic grounds my reading of Justin, as being in clear opposition to labeling Marcion a Christian in any meaningful sense, is unjustified? I desire to understand Justin before I venture to criticize him and interpret his opinions by retroactive psycho-analysis. Paul is always writing according to rhetorical conventions. He puts on a mask that is fitting to the circumstances. How do we know that Justin is not promoting the ‘philosophical school’ motif, as an apologetic prosopological device?

An interesting point

Hi Daniel, no special pleading - simply what we get from Tertullian. Motives? Marcion seems to have given the first version as teaching lectures in his classroom. "Sectarian leader" is anachronistic - every teacher had his "heresy", which at the time was no negative term. Pauline collection - it was part of him collecting material that related to this "Christ". Why Rome? He was the oldest among a number of others (like Justin) who, as we are told, moved to Rome after the failed second Jewish war.

@@vinzentm2011 What we get from Tertullian is based on several conditions that I am no longer willing to grant. The history Tertullian delivers simply does not make sense, nor would it make sense for Marcion to deliver two versions of the Gospel then claim that his is authentic, nor would this help his case against the Judaizers a la Galatians, or help his claimant as simply being a publisher. Simply put, Marcion is a fiction, his text never existed, it was made up by people trying to explain away why their texts didn't date back farther than Antoninus Pius and to distance themselves from Marcia's Christian sect.

Google Hebrew is Greek by Joseph Yahuda, he'll show you proof that Hebrew and Aramaic came from the Greek language, Israelites were Greek, Jews are Asian Greeks,why they took his book out of circulation.

See BeDuhn's recent Greek reconstruction and my reconstruction in the First Gospel LODLIB for texts of Marcion's Gospel likely around 80%-95% accurate (Roth and Klinghardt, by comparison, are likely 50%-60% accurate as restorations, based even on simple word counts). Like all NT texts, that of the Gospel according to Mark is itself a scholarly reconstruction, done by a committee trying to tame a massive diversity of evidence and highly fluid transmission history. A look at the NA28 apparatus shows some of this diversity, but even it leaves out most of the variants in the actual manuscripts. Reuben Swanson's books on NT manuscripts of the Gospels--presenting the different manuscript traditions in an internlinear format--is far more helpful for seeing the diversity, fluidity, and subjectivity involved in producing any edition of canonical NT texts. The INTGP has online resources for many NT texts that take this even further, stacking all the different NT manuscript readings as transcriptions and allowing for them to be collated with tools such as Python CollateX. The New Testament texts that most people read are "NT Jr." children's books that present an artificial simplicity and unity that doesn't reflect the diverse and complex data in the manuscripts themselves.

@@mgbilby I know youtube does not allow links. What i need is a description for google search terms that will show me a gospel text in greek or translated, which shows at least something to beginn with. Some github commit codes is just not enough. My opinion about Mark being published in the 70s and being the first of his kind is very strong. It's not even comissioned by the church but it is what i would call a Jesus legacy mockumentary from an ex-christian deconvert, with a very strong polemic against the pillars and against Paul. It's less about Jesus than about the two major church factions. Matthew tries hard to remove/cover up the John the Baptist / Jesus controversy (an allegorical fight between the essene / pauline branch) and Mark's Herodian mystery-thriller stuff from Mark, despite Matthew speculating about Mark's Nazareth co-latitudenal symbolism in his 3 stargazers and egypt story. So the reason why we have Mark is that Matthew was faszinated and disgusted about Mark. Without Matthew, Mark would have simply rot in some roman private library.

@@iwilldi Mark cannot be post 70 because Mark knows of the bar Kochba revolt and possibly the plague of 165 ad. If the only argument you have is a based on its niche novelty then you have a foundation of quicksand.

@@iwilldi Search Journal of Open Humanities Data and Harvard Dataverse for BeDuhn's critical edition and accompanying datasets.

This is a non-argument.Why do church groups still exist after predicting the end that fails to materialize? Entire denominations have been built on and around failed prophecy.

A good point

If all is myth and you ask who is the creator of all, then that is us for we create myths.

Thank you. I'll remember that going forward.

Eusebius attests to an enormous amount of writings against Marcion and his texts from the mid-2nd century to the early 3rd century. But the first commentaries on the canonical Gospels don't appear until we get to Origen between 225 CE and 248 CE. Yet Tertullian wrote three versions of polemical commentaries on Marcion's canon in the late 2nd century and beginning of the 3rd century. If Irenaeus or Tertullian or Hippolytus of Rome had written commentaries on the canonical Gospels, there would almost certainly be some attestation to them or trace of them, given the preservation of many of their other writings, but there isn't any such trace. Vinzent's point is sound and shared by other critical scholars who work on all kinds of texts: the reception of texts needs to be considered seriously (as do many other data points) to establish a date for their respective origins. My UVA dissertation on the reception of canonical Luke 23:39-43 shows that it was received quite late (170 CE or after), but that another distinct tradition (esp., Gospel of Peter) about the co-crucified bandits was not only likely earlier, but also a source used in, yet significantly expanded by, canonical Luke.

@@mgbilby OK! You make some good points

@@mgbilby A good question one of the commenters asked: "If the canonical Gospels are so late, then why do they contain 'failed apocalyptic prophesies' by Jesus?" What would you respond to that? Thanks

good observation - needs to be thought over, pershaps it indicates earlier traditions.

@@vladislavstezhko1864 Matthew included a long failed prophecy of Jesus’ return. The simplest explanation would be that too many people believed, or Mark believed too strongly , that Jesus has said such a thing to Caiaphas - that he would see the Son of man return on a cloud. Caiaphas died within a few years of Jesus’ supposed death.

This traditional dating is a house of cards built on a postage stamp. P52 is more commonly dated between 175-225 CE, and its outer bounds from mid-2nd century to early 4th century. Even its reconstructed text gives us less than 100 words, a thin slice upon which to build an entire quasi-historical edifice. Critical scholars (Brown, Barrett, von Wahlde, MacDonald) of John moreover have demonstrated a multi-stage production of John. Marcion's Gospel (Lk1) and canonical Luke (Lk2) similarly evidences multiple stages. Similar multi-stage evolutionary models also best account for the disparities in theme, style, and social settings within the Markan and Matthean compilations. Even Papias attests to multiple versions of Matthew, and the Curetonian Matthew is quite different from the canonical. Additionally, the 66-73 CE Jewish War was not the only war-time context or occasion when Jerusalem was laid waste. The Kitos War of 115-117 CE and bar Kochba revolts of 132-135 CE may also be part of the background presumed in the little apocalypses in the canonical texts. Marcion's Gospel has a "little apocalypse", but it is probably much shorter and simpler than the more elaborate re-writes found in the canonical texts.

Now available on my YT channel.

It has long been recognized that Justin does NOT quote the canonical Gospels, but a kind of harmony - but he could have known the canonical Gospels, as he writes against Marcion, hence, must have known his NT and those Gospels that Marcion called plagiarisms of his Gospel. And yet, Jack is correct. despite Justin's criticism, it is only the beginning of Marcion being ostracized. Even with Irenaeus and long into the third century Marcionites are in communion with the Roman church. No one is brusching over that Justin holds to the God of Israel, but in this Marcion and Justin differ.

I'd like to see the verbatim of the quote you claim for Jack, that Justin had a "tolerant" view of Marcion. To the best of my recollection, that is not what any of us claimed, and if that is true, then your entire argument is predicated on a straw man logical fallacy. All of us readily admit that Justin was a dogged opponent of Marcion and his Christian movement/followers. Indeed, as Vinzent has noted in multiple publications, Justin was the first Christian on record to attempt to get other Christians killed by the Roman government. Augustine did something similar in the early 4th century with the Donatists, who likely outnumbered Catholics in certain parts of Northern Africa at the time. Justin pictures Marcion as promoting a deficient Christian philosophical school, and advances and pictures himself as the head of the superior / original / rival philosophical school. Justin's polemic is also an important early example of Hellenistic Christian supersessionism, that he and his ritual compatriots were the true heirs of Israel's piety and scriptures. Based on his scriptures, Marcion did not advance this kind of Hellenistic supersessionism; he was a dual heir, both of a deeply Hebraic/Galilean Gospel tradition and of commonplace Hellenistic Jewish philosophy.

@@mgbilby Hi Mark. Here is the words of Jack, beginning from @40:28 "...Marcion has become in some way a friend, and this friendship is ACTUALLY also one that extends extends back to the earliest part of the church: We have received, about Marcion, only negative things ... [Ed: the latter strikes me as correct and non speculative] .. and have assumed that he .. always on the other side, because of people like Irenaeus and Tertullian, but it seems to me, @40:50 ACTUALLY, in the earliest part of Marcions career and life, he was ACTUALY TREATED AS A FELLOW CHRISTIAN - BY JUSTIN MARTYR for example ...[Ed: this is the third time Jack uses Actually to express a view that is contrary to the uniform testimony of Justin - or am I mistaken about the thrust of his rhetoric?], alien, yes, and different ... [Ed: This is way too kindly put by Jack. Justin actually says that Marcion in league with devils, that he is a 'wolf' and a teacher of atheist doctrines, who in effect denies both the creator God, and his Son, whom Justin confesses as the before-written Christ!] ... but RECOGNIZED at least as part of the Christian denomination, and AS A FOLLOWER OF JESUS .. [Ed: this is wishful interpretation! - Justin says that Marcion only carries the label 'Christian' as a name assigned to him, without being characteristic of him] ... we are dealing with someone who was at the time, ACCEPTED, I think, not mainstream @41:20 but CERTAINLY ACCEPTABLE WITHIN the realms of what was allowed as a Christian. " (end quote from Jack Bull) This is the point where you jump in, and sum up that Marcion is ".... not your crazy uncle.." but " ... your daddy". I think you both got carried away. You clearly have great affection for Marcion, and you have decided that he was unfairly treated. I am sure that he was unfairly treated, out of fear for what is different, and because he was so successful, as Justin also attests. Demonizing what is perceived as a threat and badly understood happens all the time when human emotions are involved, sadly, but I do not think that is a justification for Jack twisting the evidence in the first apology and the quotation from Irenaeus to the degree that was practiced in the section of the video, that I quoted from. And it seems to me that you agreed with Jack completely (or at least it came off like that to me - especially when you likened Marcion to Origen, who was considered a heretic, but erroneously so, as the church later recognized). I hope we can agree that I was not straw-manning or misrepresenting what was claimed by Jack, and that my quotations from the first apology were relevant. You raised a new point about Justin, that I was unaware of: I have great admiration for Justin, from reading his dialogue with Trypho, and would like to know his darker side also: From what I have read in the first apology, Justin does not claim that Marcionites committed the atrocities that Christians were commonly accused of. He says that he has no knowledge of such things. That seems honest. Later heresiologists accused Marcion of gross immorality. Justin does not. Just harmful doctrine that leads to ungodliness - to minding what is earthly. I am therefore quite surprised by your statement that Vincent has asserted multiple times in print, that Justin tried to get other Christians killed - presumably for holding to opinions that Justin did not like, and having done nothing contrary to recognized Roman law, that would deserve capital punishment. What is the evidence that you (since you concur with Prof. M. Vincent) base this claim on, that Justin was attempting to get other Christians killed by the Romans? PS. I find your work on gospel origins very interesting and worth engaging with. I wonder if I have overlooked speciffic evidence for Marcion’s gospel and his Pauline texts being coherent literary hermeneutic units. Is the ‘mutilation’ of the texts as result of a restoration process only present in the eyes of the heresiologists? Do Tertulian and Epiphanius quote from Marcions text in a way, that indicates that his versions of the texts had literary integrity? I ask because I see a lot of literary beauty in the canonical texts being absent from the Marcionite texts (Beduhn’s reconstruction), such as the double ‘ginomai-hina’ constructs and Christ ‘out-from-buying’ (exagorazo) us from the curse/law, and the resultant reception of the Spirit, which closely links Galatians 3.13-14 and 4.4-6 in the canonical letter. By the way: Ginomai in the canonical texts of Gal 4.4 and Rom 1.3 does not mean ‘born’ but ‘to transition / come to be’. Ginomai is a fulfillment word in Romans 1.3 (the-one having-transitioned-to-be from-out-of a-descendant of-David) and Galatians 4.4 (had-transitioned-to-be from-out-of a-woman). Marcion may have recognized the implied fulfillment and chose to ‘sanitize’ the text like he did with all fulfillment quotations in Paul (not a single ‘kathos gegraphtai’ in Romans of the Corinthian correspondance seems to have survived in his edition of the Pauline letters. Or is there any actual evidence that Marcion had any explicit fulfillment quotation in his Evangelion or Apostolikon? I am trying to engage in discussion honestly, and would like to know my blind spots. Kind regards, Christian Michael

@@vinzentm2011 Thank you for responding. Marcionites are not Marcion. Marcionites are the ‘lambs’ in Justin’s polemic. Marcion is the ‘wolf’. Jack promoted the view that Justin accepted Marcion as a fellow Christian and follower of Jesus. This is just not true. If Justin quotes from a harmony in all instances (I doubt that it is all, but it is probably the case in some instances - I recall a quote from Sanders’ ‘Studying the Synoptic Gospels’ that looks like an intentional harmonization by alternating between the wording in gMatthew and gLuke) then it just seems to push back the date of composition of gMatthew and gLuke to well before to before the first apology - at the very latest concurrent with the publication of Marcion’s (restored?) gospel. And as you also know, Justin would appear to refer to gMark 3.17 in relation to a literary composition he calls ‘the memoir of him’ (Peter) (we know of no other text that fits ‘sons of thunder’ than gMark). Papias further testified, based on statements attributed to John the presbyter, a 1st century figure, that Mark wrote down the preaching of Peter, as best he remembered. Justin elsewhere says that apostles and their followers composed the memoirs (they are not called ‘gospels’ by Justin, who says that others call them ‘gospels’ - perhaps in response to one-up Marcion, who has just one book?) In sum, I think the evidence noted warrants placing gMark no later than late in the 1st century - which is prior to Marcion’s activity by conventional dating. Justin also claims that the memoirs of the apostles [Justin says in one place that the memoirs are also called gospels - it is clear to me that for Clement of Rome and for Paul and for the author of Hebrews, in contrast to Marcion, the ‘gospel’ is clearly not to be identified with texts, but is rather a new mode of existing in the world, intimately tied to mystic union with Christ, by adoption to his sonship of God in baptism, and by partaking in the eucharistic meal, and thus strengthened, coming to espouse ‘the mindset of Christ’. I would label this ‘Kingdom-living’] are read during the sunday service, along with the Jewish prophets (e.g Moses, psalms of David, Isaiah, Jeremiah ..) Do you Think Justin invented this praxis of reading aloud from ‘the memoirs’ along with the Jewish prophets, or do you think that the praxis of reading of the memoirs was a very recent phenomenon that arose in response to Marcion? if so - have you written on this anywhere?

From what I can tell most of Justin's appraisal of Marcion 1) is very likely manufactured by later editors (Justin's work shows signs of splicing, compare DoT when Justin tells Trypho he will publish their dialogue yet dedicates it to a Marcus Pompieus), and 2) can be determined to not have been as maligned as later heresy hunters as his book on Marcion in titled "To Marcion", not Adversus Marcionem. Incidentally, it is rather conspicuous that Justin in his Apology forsooths the devils bringing forth Marcion, similar to Polycarp, Irenaeus's teacher, calling Marcion the first-born of Satan. Irenaeus supposedly had Justin's book on Marcion, and Tertullian makes an accusation that his own first edition on Marcionism had been plagiarized and corrupted.

How can you read the bible if you don't know the beginning?!. How can you know the word of God!?? Hebrew 4:12

It's actually a distillation of statistical analysis, both independent and joint, by myself and Vinzent, over the past several years. See his recently published Concordance to the Precanonical and Canonical New Testament for the nitty gritty details. #nacholibre