Jesus in the 30's ad

[Giuseppe]

When the temple was destroyed, the Christians took this as a sign that their imminence predictions were coming to pass. But was the temple's destruction specifically part of the original prophecy? Maybe, maybe not. Mark seems to be trying to square that - trying to include the temple's destruction into the "this generation" prophecies that predate him.

If I understand well, Mark has a problem: the temple's destruction is not contemplated in the original prophecies pre-70 or, if it was, had to be the work of the Superman Jesus, not of the Romans. In both the cases: contradiction.
From this point of view, what Mark is doing is a pure apology, not an allegory 'of the destruction of temple'.

But what if the destruction of the temple was simply the visible sign of failure of the god of Jews?

So Judith M. Lieu:

The effect of such omissions would be for the crucifixion to be marked
primarily by the dramatic darkness; for Tertullian this makes no sense –
surely creation should rejoice at the death of the opponent of the Creator –
but Marcion could no doubt offer a more congenial interpretation, perhaps
that it was a sign of the defeat of the Creator’s powers. Unlike Epiphanius,
Tertullian also refers to the splitting of the Temple veil, caused, he says, by
the violent exit of the angel deserting ‘the daughter of Zion’ (AM IV. 42.5).
It is uncertain whether this represents his own interpretation or something
that was in the text before him; such a tradition is found in a variety of forms
in the second and third century, in some cases signifying the departure of
God’s presence or spirit from the Temple. This takes a distinctive form in
Eznik of Kolb’s account of Marcion, where the Creator darkens the sun and
tears ‘his robe and the curtain of his Temple’ in anger at the trick played on
him (De Deo 358)
(Marcion and the Making of a Heretic, p.217-218, my bold)

Mark would have a precise theological interest in 'trying to include the temple's destruction into the "this generation" prophecies that predate him' because only in this way he can give a solution for the marcionite antithesis ('the Messiah is came but the end didn't arrive').

But if this is the case, why marcionites put Jesus in 30 CE?

A possible solution I would re-value is the known cruelty of Pilate.

As story goes in Mcn:

1) Pilate finds Jesus innocent, at contrary of the Jews.
2) the 'Just' Creator, only by his permitting indifferently the crucifixion of Jesus the Innocent, becomes unjust according to his own law.
3) therefore the Creator becomes more unjust than - and therefore more guilty - the same Pilate (who is a known war criminal). The message is: after the crucifixion of the Son, the Creator is really more cruel than the worst of the Romans.

[Giuseppe]

Wells and others went on to argue that at some point
Christians took to trying to locate the death of their savior in the historical past, finally fixing
upon the reign of Pilate, a notorious villain. To have done so would have entailed no risk of
Roman disfavor, since as we have seen Pilate was disgraced in the eyes of the Romans.
Choosing him would in fact be a way of currying favor with Rome, much as Josephus sought
to do by pleading that it was not Rome per se but only the occasional rotten Roman apple
that created trouble with Jews.
(extract from Deconstructing Jesus, Robert Price, my bold).

I think that the reason is another (assuming, with Klinghardt 2015 - very unfortunately a book I cannot read - that Mcn was the Earliest Gospel) to fix Jesus upon a reign of Pilate.

The logic of Creator is this:

1) every transgressor of the Law deserves death.
2) every human being is a transgressor of the Law.
3) therefore: every human being deserves death.

So Pilate:

...This man hasn't done anything to deserve the death penalty.
(Luke 23:15)

This is a clear contradiction, when meant allegorically/ironically as an objection to the logic of Creator.

But there is another contradiction, and it's fatal:

1) Pilate, 'a notorious villain', Pilate found Jesus innocent.
2) the Creator god thinks that Jesus is guilty (because otherwise he would have prevented the crucifixion of the innocent in his world).
3) therefore: the Creator god is more unjust than the same Pilate, the 'Pol Pot' of time.

Point 3 does not say simply that for the first time the 'Just' God is unjust, but that from that moment on, he does not deserve more respect and adoration than it merits a bloodthirsty tyrant like Pilate.

The antithesis is the following:

if the only person who considered innocent Jesus was a bloody Pol Pot of that time, how much even more so will be the Creator god who instead believed worthy of death the divine Jesus?

The marcionite answer: the god of Jews is unwhorthy of being called God.

This would explain why Pilate is a pure 'saint' in Mcn, contra Josephus's account on him.

And this would explain why to fix an half-historicized Jesus under Pilate in the earliest gospel.