Did Mark write two Gospels about John and Jesus?

[Giuseppe]

If Mark was pauline, then accordingly he had to follow the pauline hymn about Jesus being called Jesus only after the death and resurrection of the Son of God. Hence he had to chose a name for "Jesus" before the post-Resurrection reception of the name of Jesus.

Was that name John?

This would explain the strange rivarly between John and Jesus in matter of disciples, prayers, resurrection, title of Christ, who is greater, less or more anti-Phariseism.

My hypothesis would suggest that the Earliest Gospel had John as the name of the future Jesus Christ.

Since that first gospel would have caused questions about John being really the true Christ (accusations of separationism) , then "Mark" was obliged to edit his earlier book by replacing any occurrence of "John" with "Jesus". But, since in whiletime he had invented the figure of John, then he had to eclipse the his previous central role as the Christ by reducing him to the mere baptizer of the future Christ. Now, Jesus will receive the supreme name at the moment of the baptism. So the reader can realize easily that it is not John who will receive the supreme name after the death, since before him there is already a guy who is called Jesus and who is called "my beloved son" by God himself.

If this scenario is correct, then the existence of John would be merely the fruit of a wrong editorial choice by "Mark" based on the Hymn to Philippians.

[davidmartin]

there's also the question that, how come John doesn't become Jesus's disciple or immediately retire?
Yet he carries on baptising as before, despite losing some disciples to Jesus and knowing who he is
One logical conclusion is they were on the same team and working together, or one took over from the other
The later accounts forced them apart as you note, and may even have tried to make John still appear to be alive after Jesus had started his ministry.. which makes sense as people confuse Jesus for John, but if Jesus was already preaching while John was alive, how could they later confuse him for John?

A purely fictional narrative wouldn't be so messy and leave all these loose ends to ponder