I know this sounds like a crazy theory, and maybe it is, but it has long been acknowledged that citations which 'seem to come' from Luke and explicit mention of a gospel named 'Luke' aren't exactly the same thing. The first mention of Luke appears in Irenaeus. Irenaeus makes mention of Luke for the first time in the Marcionite section of Book One of Against Heresies and Luke takes up a lot of Book Three which is at once also the first introduction to the 'four gospels as one gospel' concept. Irenaeus says things to the effect that Marcionites and the other heretics who use sayings which now only appear (= in the four gospels as one gospel arrangement) in Luke have to accept Luke and Paul (meaning the orthodox version of their apostle) if they want to retain or use 'Lukan sayings' at all. In other words, 'Luke' is a kind of trap set for the heretics. Luke defined not only who Paul was (because allegedly Paul chose Luke over John Mark in Luke's own Acts and to write his gospel) but also Luke proved that Paul did not want to set up a church separate from the Jerusalem Church.
My question has always been - how did we get here? Of course if all the things contained in Acts are true or mostly true then Paul and Peter's fight in Antioch wasn't as big a deal as the heretics claimed. They patched things up, made a unified Church and the Marcionite Church based solely on 'the Apostle' was one of history's great scams. But there are so many problems with this claim of Paul agreeing to subordinate himself to the authorities of the so-called 'Jewish Church.' I don't believe it for a minute and instead I ask the readers to consider whether the third edition of Against Marcion (our surviving version of the text ascribed to Tertullian) might be the 'smoking gun' for understanding how Paul was falsified.
Let's start with the most basic claim of the orthodox - Paul didn't write a written gospel. Why do the orthodox believe this or claim this? Clearly the Marcionites said he did write a gospel and they had possession of it and used it as the basis to their separate Church. I think that the Marcionite understanding makes basic sense. I am not saying that everything the Marcionites claimed - i.e. that their gospel was the first gospel - was necessarily true. But the idea that an ego maniac like Paul who did a lot of writing would likely have taken the time to write a gospel and that at least part of the split between the two factions of the Church (however defined) was over the 'true text' of the gospel.
We see the same thing in Jewish and Samaritan communities. One text of the Torah was written by Ezra (or someone at that time) and either the Jews removed references to the sacredness of Mount Gerizim or the Samaritans added them in. I tend to support the former. But the other textual differences amount to things which just creep into written texts when they become 'sectarianized.'
The orthodox counter claim to the Marcionite understanding is basically to say that NEITHER Paul nor his opponents in Jerusalem wrote a written gospel in the beginning. In other words, it seems like a systematic denial that the Antioch incident might have been about or related to a written gospel. By saying in effect gospel in the Pauline writings meant 'oral gospel' it seems not only an excuse influenced by Jewish thought (regarding a strange category called 'oral Torah') Paul looks less and less like the founder of a separate religion .
Going back to the Jewish-Samaritan example, I noted that Books One and Two of Against Marcion have no trace of references to Luke. They don't bother to mention the idea that Paul didn't write a gospel (or even any mention of Paul whatsoever) for the simple reason that they are closer to the original historical situation regarding the dispute between the Marcionites and the proto-orthodox. The fight wasn't about Luke vs a Marcionite gospel which looked like Luke, or whether Luke was the disciple chosen by Paul to write his gospel. Luke wasn't even known before the third edition of Against Marcion. I am arguing that the third edition of Against Marcion is the point in history in which 'Luke' was invented and introduced to the world.
Indeed Books One and Two show that the original debate between the Marcionites and the proto-orthodox was over the so-called 'antitheses.' The Marcionites believed Chrestos was the kind god of Philo of Alexandria and earliest (pre-monarchian) Judaism. In the same way that the 'judge god' came to Moses to reveal 'the Law' his counterpart the 'kind god' introduced a doctrine of love which was the gospel. The antitheses (basically again the Marcionite equivalent to Matthew 5:17f) made the case that (a) Chr(i)st was a god, one of two in the Jewish religion and that (b) in the same way the Law was associated with Yahweh, the gospel was associated with Elohim. It was really that simple.
Somehow by the time the first edition of Against Marcion was written there were two principle communities in Christianity each of whom used a 'super gospel' (i.e. a so-called gospel harmony like Justin Martyr which contained stories from the four gospels). But the Marcionite gospel was distinguished for its inclusion of 'the antitheses' a point by point which contradicted the authority of the Law. 'The Law says X but I say ...' These are the antitheses which are now preserved in Matthew in a 'not-so-radical' version. The reason Matthew has the 'antitheses' now is in my mind part of the genius of the 'editor' of the 'third edition' of Against Marcion (I suppose that the editor of the four gospels was one and the same with the final editor of Against Marcion and the work itself was written as an introduction to Luke).
You couldn't leave the 'antitheses' in the Marcionite gospel and hope to have unity in the Church. So what did he do? He demolished the original argument of Against Marcion by inserting a fabricated 'Book Three' (developed as aforementioned by taking arguments against the Jews in Against the Jews and twisting them in strange ways against the Marcionites) thus interrupting the flow between what is now Book Two and Book Four. Take a look at the end of Book Two:
and the first lines of Book Four:Now if my plea that the Creator combines goodness with judgement had called for a more elaborate demolition of Marcion's Antitheses, I should have gone on to overthrow them one by one, on the principle that the instances cited of both aspects are, as I have already proved, jointly in keeping with (a sound idea of) God. Both aspects, the goodness and the judgement, combine to produce a complete and worthy conception of a divinity to which nothing is impossible: and so I am for the time being content to have rebutted in summary fashion those antitheses which, by criticism of the moral value of the Creator's works, his laws, and his miracles, indicate anxiety to establish a division, making Christ a stranger to the Creator—as it were the supremely good a stranger to the judge, the kind to the cruel, the bringer of salvation a stranger to the author of destruction. Instead of dividing, those antitheses do rather combine into unity the two whom they place in such oppositions as, when combined together, give a complete conception of God. Take away Marcion's title, take away the intention and purpose of his work, and this book will provide neither more nor less than a description of one and the same God, in his supreme goodness and in his judgement— for these two conceptions are conjoined in God and in him alone. In fact Marcion's very anxiety, by means of the instances cited, to set Christ in opposition to the Creator, does rather envisage their unity. For the one and only real and objective divinity showed itself, in these very instances and these very deductions from them, to be both kind and stern: for his purpose was to give evidence of his kindness, particularly in those against whom he had previously shown severity [2.29]
and you see at once that Book There is a deliberate interruption of the original flow of ideas from Against Marcion. The work that followed in Book Four was simply going to argue that rather than having two gods the Jews had only one god and so Marcion's antitheses between a 'kind god' (Chrestos) and a 'judging' Lord is disproved.Every sentence, indeed the whole structure, arising from Marcion's impiety and profanity, I now challenge in terms of that gospel which he has by manipulation made his own. Besides that, to work up credence for it he has contrived a sort of dowry, a work entitled Antitheses because of its juxtaposition of opposites, a work strained into making such a division between the Law and the Gospel as thereby to make two separate gods, opposite to each other, one belonging to one instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament), one to the other, and thus lend its patronage to faith in another gospel, that according to the Antitheses. Now I might have demolished those antitheses by a specially directed hand-to-hand attack, taking each of the statements of the man of Pontus one by one, except that it was much more convenient to refute them both in and along with that gospel which they serve: although it is perfectly easy to take action against them by counter-claim,1 even accepting them as admissible, accounting them valid, and alleging that they support my argument, that so they may be put to shame for the blindness of their author, having now become my antitheses against Marcion. So then I do admit that there was a different course followed in the old dispensation under the Creator, from that in the new dispensation under Christ. I do not deny a difference in records of things spoken, in precepts for good behaviour, and in rules of law, provided that all these differences have reference to one and the same God, that God by whom it is acknowledged that they were ordained and also foretold. [4.1.1f]
But my point here is that the final editor of both Against Marcion and the Christian gospel canon wasn't satisfied with the original state of the argument against Marcion. As we have seen he took arguments against the Jewish claim that Jesus wasn't the Christ of the 'Old Testament' and brought them into the discussion. The big question has always been 'why?' Why do something so incredibly stupid and ill-informed? My answer is that he did so first of all to take the argument away from the Marcionite understanding of Chrestos (= Christ). The Marcionites simply said that Christ wasn't a name which appeared in the forward-looking Jewish prophesies. The only place it appears in our canon in this light (i.e. future prophesies) is Daniel 9:24 - 27 - at least theoretically and Theodotion's translation of the material squashes that possibility (because mashiach is translated otherwise).
So to get around this Theodotion firewall set up by the Marcionites the final editor of Against Marcion took a treatise written by a user of Theodotion which argued on behalf of Jesus being the Christ of the Jewish prophets. The idea that 'Christ' was expected by the Jewish prophets is just assumed even if the name 'Christ' isn't actually uttered by them. Why take Against the Jews this way? I think the author wasn't necessarily a knowledgeable or deep thinking Christian thinker. Maybe he wasn't even a Christian at all. He was on a mission to transform Christianity from within by using things already written by other Christian writers and adapting them in such a way that would suit the interests of peace in the Empire. Sort of like if George Bush had tried to rewrite the Quran after 911.
The point is that Against the Jews had a very interesting section for the author - a place where the author points to a pattern in Isaiah which was used to 'prove' that Jesus was Isaiah's 'Christ' (again even though Isaiah never specifically used the terminology). Against the Jews makes reference to a pattern of 'preaching and power' related to two sections in the Book of Isaiah which the 'final editor' reused in his Book Three of Against Marcion in a slightly different, more calculated manner. Book Three says in effect Jesus was the Christ of the Jewish prophets because he proved himself by his consistent pattern of 'preaching and power' which I will demonstrate in the next book, which deals with the Marcion's gospel, the gospel of Luke.
Does anyone really believe that someone who would falsify one pre-exstent text (i.e. Against the Jews) and reshape in a direction which was not intended by its original author into the Third Book Against Marcion 'just happened' to find a gospel (= Luke) which exhibited the ultimate messianic proof linking Jesus to the Jewish prophets? Indeed Book Four is intended to complement Book Three - i.e. where Book Three says the Jewish prophets predicted Christ to 'preach and (exhibit) power' Book Four we are told at 3.17 will prove that Marcion's gospel (Luke) shows Jesus in exactly this light. But what are the odds that a falsified Book Three should presage a hitherto unheard of gospel supposedly which was the original gospel of Marcion? I say always mistrust a proven liar, forger and cheat. My guess is that in the same way Against the Jews was falsified as part of a plan against Marcion so too was the gospel of Luke arranged in a similar manner.