STEP 1: Baarda's Reconstruction of the scene from the Marcionite gospel:
STEP 2: Two Pieces that Belong Together Separated at the Birth of Luke (the Nazareth Synagogue ch. 8 and the Question About John the Baptist ch. 38)He entered the synagogue as was his custom, on the Sabbath day ... and had begun to teach ... he entered Bethsaida among the Jews. It does not indicate that they said anything to him other than, Physician, heal yourself. ... they stood up and they led Him out [from] the town and brought Him by the side of the hill [on which their town was built,] in order to cast Him down [When?] they cast Him down from the height into the depth [and?] he did not fall and was not hurt/harmed... through their midst He passed [and?] He flew [in the air?] and He descended [from above] to Kapharnaum
STEP 3: TERTULLIAN'S MENTION ABOUT THE FIRST MENTION OF JOHN THE BAPTIST (ch 11):Piece 1: Here, as I for the first time ob- serve that hands were laid upon him, I am called upon to say something definite about his corporal substance; that he who admitted of contact, contact even full of violence, in being seized and captured and dragged even to the brow of the hill, cannot be thought of as a phantasm. It is true that he slipped away through the midst of them, but this was when he had experienced their violence, and had afterwards been let go: for, as often happens, the crowd gave way, or was even broken up: there is no question of its being deceived by invisibility, for this, if it had been such, would never have submitted to contact at all. "Touch or be touched nothing but body may, is a worthy sentence even of this world's philosophy.d In fine, he did himself before long touch others, and by laying his hands upon them—hands evidently meant to be felt—conveyed the benefits of healing, benefits no less true, no less free from pretence, than the hands by which they were conveyed.
Piece 2: Christ knew the baptism of John, whence it was. Why then did he ask the question, as though he did not know? He did know that the pharisees would not answer him. Why then did he ask, to no purpose? Was it not that he might judge them out of their own mouth, or even out of their own heart? So take this episode to bear on the justification of the Creator, and on Christ's agreement with him, and ask yourself what the consequence would have been if the pharisees had returned an answer to his question. Suppose they had answered that John's baptism was from men: they would at once have been stoned to death. Some anti-marcionite Marcion would have stood up and said, 'See a god supremely good, a god the opposite of the Creator's doings! well aware that men were going to fall headlong, he himself put them on the edge of a precipice. For this is how they treat of the Creator, in his law about the tree. But suppose John's baptism was from heaven. And why, Christ says, did ye not believe him ? So then he whose wish it was that John should be believed, who was expected to blame them for not believing him, belonged to that God whose sacrament John was the minister of. At all events, when they refused to answer what they thought, and he replied in like terms, Neither do I tell you by what power I do these things, he returned evil for evil.
How are these passages reconciled? On the one hand, Tertullian:From what direction does John make his appearance? Christ unexpected: John also unexpected. With Marcion all things are like that: with the Creator they have their own compact order. The rest about John later, since it is best to answer each separate point as it arises. At present I shall make it my purpose to show both that John is in accord with Christ and Christ in accord with John, the Creator's Christ with the Creator's prophet, that so the heretic may be put to shame at having to no advantage made John's work of no advantage. For if John's work had been utterly without effect when, as Isaiah says, he cried aloud in the wilderness as preparer of the ways of the Lord by the demanding and commending of repentance, and if he had not along with the others baptized Christ himself, no one could have challenged Christ's disciples for eating and drinking, or referred them to the example of John's disciples who were assidous in fasting and prayer: because if any opposition had stood between Christ and John, and between the followers of each, there could have been no demand for imitation, and the force of the challenge would have been lost. For no one could think it strange and no one be put to grief if the rival preachings of hostile divinities were also discordant in their rules of conduct, having begun by being discordant in the authorities imposing the rules. Consequently Christ belonged to John and John to Christ, and both to the Creator, both concerned with the law and the prophets, as preachers and teachers. Otherwise Christ would have repudiated John's rules, as pertaining to a different god, and would have commended his disciples for quite rightly following different practices, having been brought into the service of a different divinity of opposite character. As things are, by submissively offering the explanation that the sons of the bridegroom could not fast so long as the bridegroom was with them, and by promising that they would afterwards fast when the bridegroom had been taken from them, he did not commend the disciples, but rather found excuses for them, as though the rebuke was not without cause, nor did he repudiate John's rule of conduct but rather gave it approval: for the present he allowed it to John's circumstances, for the future approving it for circumstances of his own. Otherwise he would have repudiated it, and commended its opponents, if the rule which then existed had not been a rule of his own
i. acts as if the initial "Jewish house of worship" scene was at Nazareth (along with all the orthodox baggage that Nazareth "proves" i.e. that Jesus was known by all at his "hometown," his family was known, they were all enrolled in the genealogies)
ii. the initial quotation of Isaiah immediately after the descent into Capernaum was removed i.e.
iii. this confirms Luke's claims that his gospel had an "orderly account" and Marcion's corruption of Luke made his text "disorderly"3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:
“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
5 Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
6 And all people will see God’s salvation.’”
7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him,
iv. we should see that iii is an adaptation of Papias's original logic about the superiority of Matthew to Mark because of the "dominical logoi" where the citation of Isaiah "grounds" the correct narrative where John is the voice crying in the wilderness viz. the necessary precursor for Jesus
v. yet can we go one step further and assume that ANOTHER "original passage" about John the Baptist - one that actually appeared in the Marcionite gospel but not the orthodox - was removed?
vi I submit that the questions about John's baptism at the very end of the gospel doesn't make any sense. If you accept Luke as being anything but the fake gospel I think it is you have to believe that a year into his ministry and months after John the Baptist's death almost at the moment Jesus is about to crucified the question about John's authority comes up:
I don't know about you but when I see that the editor inserts himself and we are told what the Jews were thinking IN THEIR MINDS (how did the gospel author know what the Jews were thinking?) this is a clear sign of later redaction.Luke 20 One day as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. 2 “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said. “Who gave you this authority?”
3 He replied, “I will also ask you a question. Tell me: 4 John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
5 They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
7 So they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”
8 Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
My suggestion is that Against Marcion and the allusion to the supernatural Jesus incident where Jesus can fly and pass through crowds which remains because of sloppy editing on the part of Irenaeus or Tertullian makes clear that rather than the dominical logoi of Isaiah the first John mention in the Marcionite gospel was this question of authority. Clearly, and against the use of Isaiah in the Catholic gospels, the Marcionite gospel put forward that Jesus came from a god higher than the "Jewish god" and John didn't know about Jesus's Father.