(Ireneus, 3, 11, 7)For the Ebionites, who use Matthew's Gospel only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains. Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. Those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John, to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by means of this very Gospel, as I have shown in the first book.
So the Mythicist Georges Ory:
(Analysis of Christian Origins, p. 53)This confirms that the Gospel of Mark was corrected to refute the “false” doctrine of the followers of Cerinthus, who lived around the year 100.
The followers of Cerinthus hated the God of the Jews:
(Haer. 1.26.1):
Pseudo-Tertullian, Adv. omn. haer. 3 :A certain Cerinthus, then in Asia taught that the world was not made by the Supreme God, but by a certain Power highly separated and far removed from that Principality who transcended the universe, and which is ignorant of the one who is above all, God. He suggested that Jesus was not born of a virgin (because that seemed to him impossible), but that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, in the same way as all other men but he was more versed in righteousness, prudence and wisdom than other men. And after his baptism, Christ descended upon him from that Principality that is above all in the form of a dove. And then he proclaimed the unknown Father and performed miracles. But at last Christ flew again from Jesus; Jesus suffered and rose again while Christ remained impassible, being a spiritual being
So there is the concrete possibility that:“His successor was Ebion, not in agreement with Cerinthus in every point, because he says that the world was made by God, not by angels, and because it is written, no disciple is above (his) master, nor a servant above (his) lord, he brings to the fore likewise the Law, of course for the purpose of excluding the gospel and vindicating Judaism.”
1) Mcn was proto-Mark used by Cerinthus (and therefore dated after 70 CE), or
2) proto-Mark used by Cerinthus was another reaction to Mcn (and therefore dated after 135 CE) and later redacted to become the our canonical Mark.
In both the cases, Mark 4:11-12 is surely a proto-Catholic interpolation, as shown and proved here.
The question is: why did the Cerinthians adopt a separationist/adoptionist view, if they hated the Creator?
My suspect is that Cerinthianism was ''gnosticism preached to Jewish-Christians'', just as Marcionism was ''gnosticism preached to only gentile Christians''. As form of compromise, Cerinthus promised a more earthly future Kingdom of God to his followers, rather than the entirely trascendent Pleroma of the Gnostics. His successor, ''Ebion'', continued the already tested compromise with the nascent Jewish-Christianity, by accepting (and adding) the cult of the Creator. And when the same Jewish-Christianity became a more serious rival to gentile Christian Gnosticism (via his rapid diffusion among the Diaspora), proto-Catholicism was born from it.
Therefore the presence in proto-Mark of a ''right man son of Joseph and Mary'' was already a first timide concession by the previous Christian gnosticism to nascent Jewish-Christianity. His meaning is that it was not completely vain, after all, to observe the Law, until to the apparition of the Unknown God of Marcion, even if that Law was given by an inferior god and had to be overcomed by the spiritual Christ possessing the man Jesus. As first step, it was not a bad step, to bring the first Judeo-Christians closer to gnosis.
In this view, Paul, author of the original Epistles, was a proto-Gnostic Apostle insofar he hated the Creator (2 Cor 4:4), and he was the one of the first apostles to merge Diaspora Gnosticism of 40 CE into a local Jewish cult of Joshua (by calling an celestial Christ with the name of Joshua in the Hymn to Philippians) represented by the Pillars. But the simple adoption of the name ''Joshua'' for Christ was not sufficient, as concession to a nascent Jewish-Christianity destined to grow more and more after the 70 CE.
Other concessions had to be made. In the form of Gospels more and more judaized.
