Van Manen and Van Eysinga argued for Marcionite Priority (== the baptism by John was a late addition)

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Giuseppe
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Van Manen and Van Eysinga argued for Marcionite Priority (== the baptism by John was a late addition)

Post by Giuseppe »

It's a fact: Van Manen and Van Eysinga denied the presence of the baptism of Jesus by John in the Earliest Gospel.

The Earliest Gospel has already been mentioned more than once; it is necessary now to speak of it at greater length. The mutual connection of all the Gospels known to us either wholly or partially is already a proof that there must have existed before them an original Gospel, which was used either directly or indirectly in the composition of all the others. This hypothesis is supported by tradition, by the language of the Gospels, and by the results of historical and critical investigations. What this Earliest Gospel was like can only be approximately indicated. Probably its contents, compared with those of our canonical Gospels, were very meagre. It contained no account of Jesus's ancestry, birth, early education, or meeting with John the Baptist; nor was there anything in it about the baptism in the Jordan or the temptation in the Wilderness. It confined itself mostly to a sketch of the coming-down from heaven of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; his appearance at Capernaum; his casting-out of demons; the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven; the Trans figuration; his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. About the teacher or religious preacher from Galilee it said nothing of consequence. The Gospel used by the heretic Marcion, which is partially known to us from the works of his opponents, was more closely related than our canonical Gospels to the Earliest Gospel, and sheds, at all events, some light on this obscure subject.

https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
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MrMacSon
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Re: Van Manen and Van Eysinga argued for Marcionite Priority (== the baptism by John was a late addition)

Post by MrMacSon »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 5:17 am It's a fact: Van Manen and Van Eysinga denied the presence of the baptism of Jesus by John in the Earliest Gospel.

The Earliest Gospel has already been mentioned more than once; it is necessary now to speak of it at greater length. The mutual connection of all the Gospels known to us either wholly or partially is already a proof that there must have existed before them an original Gospel, which was used either directly or indirectly in the composition of all the others. This hypothesis is supported by tradition, by the language of the Gospels, and by the results of historical and critical investigations. What this Earliest Gospel was like can only be approximately indicated. Probably its contents, compared with those of our canonical Gospels, were very meagre. It contained no account of Jesus's ancestry, birth, early education, or meeting with John the Baptist; nor was there anything in it about the baptism in the Jordan or the temptation in the Wilderness. It confined itself mostly to a sketch of the coming-down from heaven of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; his appearance at Capernaum; his casting-out of demons; the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven; the Trans figuration; his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. About the teacher or religious preacher from Galilee it said nothing of consequence. The Gospel used by the heretic Marcion, which is partially known to us from the works of his opponents, was more closely related than our canonical Gospels to the Earliest Gospel, and sheds, at all events, some light on this obscure subject.

https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
I don't necessarily agree with all of this quoted below, but I'll put it here to contextualise what 'Earliest Gospel' might mean


45
Why did the Church protest against Docetism? Because it did not do justice to the humanity of the God-man. The idea of a divine humanity could only speak to the multitude in a life the life of a man. Hence, as Arthur Drews says, the historical existence of Jesus was a dogma from the first. Jesus led the Church to victory not as an historical personage, but as an idea; this idea of a being who was both divine and human has been the inspiring element in Christianity. True, the " Word made flesh " in the Fourth Gospel is still a divine being, whose personality is as indefinite as that of the Logos of Philo. It is as though the Evangelist were anxious not to prejudice the divinity by laying too much emphasis on the humanity.

The position in the Synoptic Gospels is much the same; in them, too: Jesus is the God-man. This was clearly recognised by van Manen (1842-1905), the well-known scholar who maintained the spuriousness of all the Pauline letters, and thus belonged to the Dutch Radical School, although he continued to believe to the end that a real historical Jesus must have formed the background of our Gospel narratives.

About this Jesus he did not venture to say anything for certain. It is a striking proof of van Manen's calm, unprejudiced, critical sense that, in his 'scientific' analysis of the New Testament, he never failed to recognise the supernatural element as the essential part of it, although his matter-of-fact common sense was not in sympathy with this element. In his opinion, the Earliest Gospel (see page 50) originated among the Gnostics, who were utterly lacking in the historic sense; this was why such 'historical facts' about the life of Jesus, as were 'known' to the earliest Christians, were distorted beyond recognition by all kinds of speculative accretions. Thus van Manen found room for the miraculous, unhistorical, picturesque, which he not only recognised in our surviving Gospels, but also assumed to have existed even in the Earliest Gospel.

In the winter of 1886-7 there was found at Akhmim, in Upper Egypt, a fragment of the Gospel of Peter a work exhibiting very striking peculiarities, which make many critics think rather of an apocryphal production of the second century than of an ancient and primitive document ... In this fragment of Gospel history the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus are described one after the other. The saying on the cross, as given there, is: " My power, my power, thou hast forsaken me " ; and in this word "power" (dunamis) attempts have been made to find an evidence of the later Docetic character of this Gospel. Van Manen places this passage in the same category with others which
mention the Spirit of God, or the Power of the Most High, which overshadowed Mary; or, again, with Mark v,80, where it is said that Jesus himself felt that power was gone out of him.

https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
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48
The Earliest Gospel, which we no longer possess, was probably written in Greek with a progressive and anti-Jewish tendency; this can be seen clearly from the Gnostic version of it (see below), of which fragments still remain. Our Synoptic Gospels draw from an Aramaic version of this Earliest Gospel. Matthew has given it a Jewish colouring. The Jewish sympathies of Mark were less pronounced, and therefore he occasionally comes closer to the Earliest Gospel. His catholicising tendency in other words, his effort to reconcile and unite opposite parties is apparent. These two features easily explain the greater popularity which Mark still enjoys compared with Matthew. Mark strives to be realistic. In spite of this, however, the greater simplicity of his style, which is supposed to be a sure proof of his greater antiquity, rather suggests grave suspicions. W. Wrede has shown modern scholars how completely they have overlooked the dogmatic element in Mark. At the very outset, his description of the activity of Jesus immediately after its commencement (Mark i,28, 45; compared with ii,1; iii, 6) suggests grave doubts not only whether Mark wrote genuine history, but whether he ever intended to write it. https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
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50
The Gnosis (and along with it the Earliest Gospel) taught Knowledge is essential to salvation. After the Jewish version of the Earliest Gospel had been written, this idea was to some extent thrust into the background ; in the case of Mark, who was advancing in the direction of a universal Church, the idea recurs, but in a more ecclesiastical form; the emphasis is no longer laid so much upon know ledge (gnosis) as upon doctrine (didache). It almost looks as if Mark, in his effort to do full justice to the supernatural grandeur of Christ, felt the need of ascribing to him, by way of a corrective, certain emotions which prevent him from being removed entirely from the sphere of humanity: thus already anticipating the spirit of the later teaching of the Church, which was to propound the doctrine of two natures in Christ.

[Then, as above]
The Earliest Gospel has already been mentioned more than once; it is necessary now to speak of it at greater length. The mutual connection of all the Gospels known to us either wholly or partially is already a proof that there must have existed before them an original Gospel, which was used either directly or indirectly in the composition of all the others. This hypothesis is supported by tradition, by the language of the Gospels, and by the results of historical and critical investigations. What this Earliest Gospel was like can only be approximately indicated.
Probably its contents, compared with those of our canonical Gospels, were very meagre. It contained no account of Jesus's ancestry, birth, early education, or meeting with John the Baptist; nor was there anything in it about the baptism in the Jordan or the temptation in the Wilderness. It confined itself mostly to a sketch of the coming-down from heaven of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; his appearance at Capernaum; his casting-out of demons; the preaching of the Kingdom of Heaven; the Trans figuration; his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. About the teacher or religious preacher from Galilee it said nothing of consequence. The Gospel used by the heretic Marcion, which is partially known to us from the works of his opponents, was more closely related than our canonical Gospels to the Earliest Gospel, and sheds, at all events, some light on this obscure subject.

https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
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CONCLUSION

Behind our Pauline Epistles we have been able to detect a Gospel which shows a more original form than the four Gospels which have been admitted into the Canon. It is more closely related than these to the hypothetical Earliest Gospel, which is of Gnostic origin.

https://archive.org/stream/radicalviews ... t_djvu.txt
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