Is Mark a valentinian Gospel?

[Giuseppe]

If the eastern school of Valentinians is the earliest as scholars seems to suggest, aren't you barking up the wrong tree trying to connect the adoptionist view of Mark with Valentinians?

Mark is not adoptionist. He is separationist. The difference is crucial.

Jesus is not adopted by God. He is possessed by the spirit of Christ. The man Jesus dies when he is not more possessed by Christ. Who rises after three days is the same ''son of man'', but transfigured as the Church and/or as Paul, in the Galilee of gentiles.

The high priest (Caiaphas/Cephas) will see the son of man coming with power, and he will meet him in Jerusalem personally: Galatians 1:18-19.

[Giuseppe]

Jesus is the mere son of man. At best he will become the Son of Man, the pauline sect.

While the spirit of Christ is the real ''Beloved'' Son of God proclaimed such during his coming down on Jesus in his baptism.

[g_n_o_s_i_s]

That is not the earliest Valentinian position. Only in the later western school did they hold that view.

[g_n_o_s_i_s]

In the earliest doctrines the spirit descends and receives a body in Mary's womb by the Demiurge. No adoptionist or separatist doctrine in the earliest forms of Valentinianism.

[Giuseppe]

Then they were not the Valentinians the first heretics who adopted Mark but other heretics more properly described as separationists by Ireneus (the our earliest witness of who used Mark).

[g_n_o_s_i_s]

That might well be. Valentinians seems to not fit what you are arguing.

[Giuseppe]

My current position is in short:

1) that if Mark is the earliest gospel (the consensus view) then the separationism in Mark was only originally a literary device to make ''Jesus'' an allegory of the material Israel and the ''Christ'' (possessing ''Jesus'') the spiritual Israel. That separationism became a heretical Christology when Mark became the gospel of the first historicist Christians that adopted it.

2) in alternative, if Mcn (and not Mark) is the earliest gospel (Vinzent's view), then Mark was probably written directly by real separationists in reaction against Marcion.

I have to decide still who was the first gospel, if Mark or Mcn.

[g_n_o_s_i_s]

Ehrman seem to argue for #2 (from The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture)

[Giuseppe]

Very thanks for this:

In fact, it appears that the move went in just the opposite direction, away from a pure docetism towards a separationist Christology.

If the ''pure docetism'' was basically Marcionism, then all fits coherently: Mcn before and Mark after. Mark, the separationist ''heretical Mark'', would be ''proto-catholic'' and ''Judaizer'' insofar he is correcting the radical ''pure docetism'' of the gospel of Marcion. Now it is explained why Ireneus is sympathetic with these separationists, hoping in their more easy and rapid cooptation into the Great Church: they shared basically the same fear of Ireneus about Marcion.

I am happy to be not alone in seeing separationism as reaction against radical cosmophobic docetism. Even Ehrman (sic) agrees with me.

[Giuseppe]

At this point, to make the point of prof Vinzent (absolute priority of Mcn) it is sufficient only to find evidence that:

1) Mcn precedes the canonical Luke

2) there are evident clues of separationism in Mark, and separationism, per Ehrman, is a correction of original ''pure docetism'' (and not the contrary).

3) therefore: Mcn precedes Mark.