The facts then that at least three sources intimate that the Marcionites put Marcion in a position of prominence in the first century helps explain the 'problem' noticed by proponents of a second century origin for Christianity. Why is it that the Catholic tradition seems to 'explode' in the middle to late second century? Why are there no reliable sources which seem to date back to the fifty year period (70 - 120 CE)? Indeed the specific Marcionite identification as 'the apostle' actually encroaches on the lack of information about the apostle called Paul by the Catholic tradition independent of Marcion. The two ideas go hand in hand, in fact. In other words, when Tertullian complains for a number of paragraphs at the beginning of Adv Marc 5 that - as a new member of Christianity he can find no information about 'the apostle' from Marcionite sources (and thus clearly reinforcing the authority of the Marcionites over 'the apostle' still) there is a clear blurred distinction between 'Marcion' on the one hand and 'Paul' on the other.
This may well explain why it was so important for Tertullian and company to establish Marcion as 'actually' being witnessed by prominent Catholics as late as the Antonine period. Tyson and Hoffmann do a good job in this respect and Knox's pioneering work dating Luke-Acts to the same second century period help solidify the proper perspective with respect to the development of the canon. The Catholic Church was only getting off the ground in the second half of the second century as a reaction to Marcionitism. The problem of course is that 'Marcion' as Marutha makes explicit and Clement implicit was 'an apostle' - even 'the apostle' the head of the Church - that is, the Christian church previous to the second century reconstitution.
As Morton Smith notes in his cited opinion 'Marcion' stands in the place of Mark in Clement's formulation with good reason. There must have been great suspicion raised whenever Mark was extolled as having a superior position to his supposed master Peter. Smith uses the reference in Clement to connect back to his discovery of Secret Mark. Here Mark clearly had a separate 'revelation' which led him to add new ideas to Peter's original testimony about Jesus. Clement speaks here in terms of a 'mystical' truth but the same idea is found in Tertullian with respect to those who extol Paul over Peter. In other words, Tertullian says over and over again (the idea comes from Irenaeus) that some extol Paul for improving upon Peter's gospel, setting forth a 'secret' and more prefect understanding of Jesus.
The Catholic reconstitution of Christianity assumes - paradoxically - that there was no 'superior' gospel, that all the apostles said the same thing because they communed with the same Holy Spirit which came from the one God. We can turn this around however and assume that the heretics said that Peter understood Jesus to be a familiar divinity. In other words, in the first century the destruction of the temple didn't just mean the destruction of Judaism was divinely sanctioned (at first a jarring and seemingly wrong-headed supposition on the part of the heretics). The problem for us is that we can't get around our systematic submission to a monarchian understanding of Judaism (i.e. that the Jews only worshipped one God). For whatever reason the late second century saw Christians, Jews and Samaritans purge their tradition of those who argued - rightly - that more than one divine power appeared in the Pentateuch.
The original manner of reading the Pentateuch was clearly that there were a number of divinities - at least two overtly - where, as rabbinic authorities were wont to point out - god stands with Moses in the fire while a voice from heaven is speaking. This means (at least) two gods were active in the redemption of Israel. There is a strong sense from Clement's list of sacred works no longer available to us (the Preaching of Peter etc) that the Jews were guilty of venerating angels and that Jesus came to 'correct' the religion to recognize the highest power in heaven. This seems to have been the original message of Christianity in the earliest period (what I identify as 'first century Christianity). Nevertheless the Catholic tradition emerging in the middle to late second century imposed a rabid reactionary doctrine of monarchianism (undoubtedly with Imperial assistance). Now not only was there no longer and god but the one God (no matter how hard that was to explain given the overt statements in the Pentateuch) but more importantly THERE WAS NEVER A DOCTRINE OF TWO POWERS IN HEAVEN. This is key because the heresies - both Jewish and Christian (was there really one tradition witnessed separately by Jewish and Christian sources?) - which clearly existed as early as the first century had to be 'recreated' as only recent aberrations with the argument made by Jews and Christians that the current 'orthodoxy' ALWAYS existed from the very beginning.
This is patently absurd of course. The Jews did not venerate a single god. The Pentateuch is clearly based on a revelation of an angel to Moses. This is the basis for Jesus revelation to his age (i.e. that he was the angel who came to Moses and the Patriarchs) and so not surprisingly you have that argument made by the earliest heresiologists like Tertullian:
Now these attributes, however different they be, cannot possibly make two gods; for they have already (in the prevenient dispensation of the Old Testament) been found to meet in One. He alludes to Moses' veil, covered with which "his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children of Israel." Since he did this to maintain the superiority of the glory of the New Testament, which is permanent in its glory, over that of the Old, "which was to be done away," this fact gives support to my belief which exalts the Gospel above the law and you must look well to it that it does not even more than this. For only there is superiority possible where was previously the thing over which superiority can be affirmed. But then he says, "But their minds were blinded" ----of the world; certainly not the Creator's mind, but the minds of the people which are in the world. Of Israel he says, Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart; " showing that the veil which was on the face of Moses was a figure of the veil which is on the heart of the nation still; because even now Moses is not seen by them in heart, just as he was not then seen by them in eye. But what concern has Paul with the veil which still obscures Moses from their view, if the Christ of the Creator, whom Moses predicted, is not yet come? How are the hearts of the Jews represented as still covered and veiled, if the predictions of Moses relating to Christ, in whom it was their duty to believe through him, are as yet unfulfilled? What had the apostle of a strange Christ to complain of, if the Jews failed in understanding the mysterious announcements of their own God, unless the veil which was upon their hearts had reference to that blindness which concealed from their eyes the Christ of Moses? Then, again, the words which follow, "But when it shall turn to the Lord, the evil shall be taken away," properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze Moses' veil is spread, to the effect that, when he is turned to the faith of Christ, he will understand how Moses spoke of Christ. But how shall the veil of the Creator be taken away by the Christ of another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not possibly have veiled----unknown mysteries, as they were of an unknown god? So he says that "we now with open face" (meaning the candour of the heart, which in the Jews had been covered with a veil), "beholding Christ, are changed into the same image, from that glory" (wherewith Moses was transfigured as by the glory of the Lord) "to another glory." By thus setting forth the glory which illumined the person of Moses from his interview with God, and the veil which concealed the same from the infirmity of the people, and by superinducing thereupon the revelation and the glory of the Spirit in the person of Christ----"even as," to use his words, "by the Spirit of the Lord" ----he testifies that the whole Mosaic system was a figure of Christ, of whom the Jews indeed were ignorant, but who is known to us Christians. We are quite aware that some passages are open to ambiguity, from the way in which they are read, or else from their punctuation, when there is room for these two causes of ambiguity. The latter method has been adopted by Marcion, by reading the passage which follows, "in whom the God of this world,"516 as if it described the Creator as the God of this world, in order that he may, by these words, imply that there is another God for the other world. We, however, say that the passage ought to be punctuated with a comma after God, to this effect: "In whom God hath blinded the eyes of the unbelievers of this world." "In whom" means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel is still hidden under Moses' veil. Now it is these whom God had threatened for "loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their heart was far from Him," in these angry words: "Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see with your eyes, but not perceive; " and, "If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand; " and again, "I will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought the understanding of their prudent ones." But these words, of course, He did not pronounce against them for concealing the gospel of the unknown God. At any rate, if there is a God of this world, He blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be understood from His Scriptures. Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length524 this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage, indeed, I might have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready to hand in interpreting "the god of this world" of the devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: "I will be like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the clouds." The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands, so that he blinds effectually the hearts of unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion's. Now he did not observe how much this clause of the sentence made against him: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to (give) the light of the knowledge in the face of Christ." Now who was it that said; "Let there be light? " And who was it that said to Christ concerning giving light to the world: "I have set Thee as a light to the Gentiles" ----to them, that is, "who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death? " (None else, surely, than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of the future, saying, "The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath been displayed upon us." Now the person of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: Christ, who is the image of God." Since Christ, then, is the person of the Creator, who said, "Let there be light," it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel, and the veil, and Moses----nay, the whole of the dispensations----belong to the God who is the Creator of this world, according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and certainly not to him who never said, "Let there be light." I here pass over discussion about another epistle, which we hold to have been written to the Ephesians, but the heretics to the Laodiceans. In it he tells them to remember, that at the time when they were Gentiles they were without Christ, aliens from (the commonwealth of) Israel, without intercourse, without the covenants and any hope of promise, nay, without God, even in his own world, as the Creator thereof. Since therefore he said, that the Gentiles were without God, whilst their god was the devil, not the Creator, it is clear that he must be understood to be the lord of this world, whom the Gentiles received as their god----not the Creator, of whom they were in ignorance. But how does it happen, that "the treasure which we have in these earthen vessels of ours" should not be regarded as belonging to the God who owns the vessels? Now since God's glory is, that so great a treasure is contained in earthen vessels, and since these earthen vessels are of the Creator's make, it follows that the glory is the Creator's; nay, since these vessels of His smack so much of the excellency of the power of God, that power itself must be His also! Indeed, all these things have been consigned to the said "earthen vessels" for the very purpose that His excellence might be manifested forth. Henceforth, then, the rival god will have no claim to the glory, and consequently none to the power. Rather, dishonour and weakness will accrue to him, because the earthen vessels with which he had nothing to do have received all the excellency! Well, then, if it be in these very earthen vessels that he tells us we have to endure so great sufferings, in which we bear about with us the very dying of God, (Marcion's) god is really ungrateful and unjust, if he does not mean to restore this same I substance of ours at the resurrection, wherein so much has been endured in loyalty to him, in which Christ's very death is borne about, wherein too the excellency of his power is treasured. For he gives prominence to the statement, "That the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body," as a contrast to the preceding, that His death is borne about in our body. Now of what life of Christ does he here speak? Of that which we are now living? Then how is it, that in the words which follow he exhorts us not to the things which are seen and are temporal, but to those which are not seen and are eternal ----in other words, not to the present, but to the future? But if it be of the future life of Christ that he speaks, intimating that it is to be made manifest in our body, then he has clearly predicted the resurrection of the flesh. He says, too, that "our outward man perishes," not meaning by an eternal perdition after death, but by labours and sufferings, in reference to which he previously said, "For which cause we will not faint." Now, when he adds of "the inward man" also, that it "is renewed day by day," he demonstrates both issues here----the wasting away of the body by the wear and tear of its trials, and the renewal of the soul by its contemplation of the promises.
