But what if the opposite is true? What if the Epistle to Galatians had taken another form, but always manifesting the same pauline antipathy against Peter and James? I think that in every possible configuration of (situations in) Galatians, the rapid conclusion of people is that the first Gospel is always based on Galatians, and not vice versa. This because Peter and James in Mark are fixed men-symbols, ''static'' men as opposed to ''dynamic'' men photographed dinamycally in an apparent historical context by author of Galatians.
But I 'm going to suspect that Galatians has inherited from the first gospel his antipathy towards Peter and James (by fabricating episodes that reflect such antipathy). Not the contrary.
If I accept this thesis, then the conclusion would be that the author of the first Gospel has fixed once for all the ''game rules'' about who should be the actors in stage around Jesus.
The actors would be:
1) Jesus, the hero
2) John the Baptist, the principal antagonist of the hero
3) the 12 + the brothers of Jesus
4) the scribes and Pharisees
What are these people? Were they really Jesus followers? And if not, why did the first evangelist mention them?
I'm reading two books of Chris Albert Wells about these questions. Here my short review (not just definitive on the topic).
Who knows his position, he can realize that what Albert Wells is doing is to name the sects behind these symbols (or better, label) above.
I saw something of similar made by Stuart when, for example, he identifies the ''scribes and Pharisees'' with real Proto-catholic opponents of Marcion. This is surely true, but what if the genius of Marcion was precisely to superimpose ably its later sectarian schemes on a previous Gospel that lent its purpose effectively as already presenting an original conflict situation? And if that was the case, then who were the actors of that conflict?
But is it possible to find potential candidates behind these symbols which are neither too much specifics nor too much posterior?
