What the interpolated John the Baptist in the incipit of the Marcion's Evangelion has eclipsed forever: the Gospel Paul

[Giuseppe]

The incipit of the Evangelion of Marcion, according to any reconstruction of my knowledge:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar Jesus Christ, Son of God, descended from heaven and appeared in Capernaum, village of Galilee...

Implicit in the mention of the precise date of a mythological event is the claim that someone witnessed the descent of Jesus Son of Father ("Bar-Abbas") on the earth. For Marcion, that particular witness could only be: Paul.

The Judaizers interpolated John the Baptist in that same incipit:

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— during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

(Luke 3:1-2)

Now, with the interpolation, John the Baptist assumes the role of the ocular witness of the descent of a mythical being ("the logos of god").

This means that in the original incipit of Marcion's Evangelion, the voice of god addressed Paul himself, with the words:

You are my beloved Son

Since so we read in Galatians 1:15-16:

But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles,my immediate response was not to consult any human being

This explains why the incipit of Mark 1 is read easily by Tarazi, Dykstra inter alia as midrash on Paul.

My point is that Paul, in the original (but lost) marcionite incipit, figured as the original witness of the descent of Jesus on earth.

This explains why: 15° year of Tiberius.

[Giuseppe]

The original incipit, therefore, in Marcion's Evangelion, was something of similar, more or less, to this:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar the word of God came to Paul, saying: you are my beloved Son.

This explains definitively why Pilate and all the other historical characters who figure in the gospel: their unique merit was to be contemporaries of Paul the Apostle.

[davidmartin]

Giuseppe,
Well here is a riddle then for you!
I've been of the view for a while that some of the pastorals (eg Titus) could really be talking about Paul rather than Jesus
I forget the specific ones that made me think this there's a few but..
eg
"For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good"

Reads nicely if you replace 'it' with 'he' and omit 'Jesus Christ' and it looks like it's talking about Paul huh?
So yeah i could believe a segment of Paul's churches saw him as the saviour figure .. but it didn't last long there are the remnants still there

But the riddle is that marcion's gospel didn't contain these pastorals
if you argue they are later and the product of later orthodoxy that is possible but why assume it?
it could be they are from a non-marcionite branch of Paul's churches sometime in the late 1st (by non-marcionite i mean the roots of marcionism were already around before him and they were opposed to it)

If this is true the pastorals are more interesting than they might first appear which i think has been commented on before regarding the importance of Timothy to some

EDIT - what some poor schmuck needs to do is the thankless task to comb the Pauline writings for any hint of this and see if there's any meat there. I'm bailing on this!

[Giuseppe]

Sorry, but for me the Pastorals don't matter because they are late Catholic products.

My point here is NOT that Paul was in the place of Jesus.

(It is evident that you don't know the recent findings of Tarazi and Dykstra about Paul and Mark. I invite you to update your knowledges about these authors).

My point here is that in the original Marcion's Evangelion the "logos of God" originally descended on Paul as the man, adopted by the Unknown God ("you are my beloved Son"), to witness the descent of Jesus Christ (not a historical character) on the earth (in the wilderness?).

The Judaizers removed Paul from the scene and introduced in his place John the Baptist.

[Giuseppe]

Corollary: obviously, the Judaizers would have never confessed their replacement of Paul with John the Baptist in the incipit of the original Evangelion.

At contrary, rather, they accused falsely Paul as the usurper of the legacy of John the Baptist.

The Paul accused by them of usurpation was called: Simon Magus.

[Giuseppe]

In Acts 9:4, it is curious that the Spirit or the voice of Jesus descended on Saul.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

But Saul is close in sound to Sheol.

Here is the origin of the equation Capernaum==Sheol.

The marcionite Christ descended on Capernaum, allegory of Sheol for Heracleon. But Sheol==Saul.

The marcionite Jesus descended on Paul. This confirms independently my thesis above. □

[davidmartin]

You are saying Paul was in the place of Jesus though
That is what you say that Marcion said in his original apostolicon
If he wasn't historical then Paul was claiming first rights to the claim
not that i think Paul was the first by any means

i demand proof before what you say about the pastorals can be assumed beyond all doubt!
why should they be 'late Catholic' and not the views of another early sect?
they are hardly very Jewish with their rampant paganist mode of expression

I really don't know what Tarazi and Dykstra are saying and it isn't my job to force myself to explore every theorists's views. This is an open
forum - if you think they are right then try to convince why they are right and what they say

The Judaizers might have introduced anyone.. whatever their definition of Jesus might have been sure John the baptist is possible but most of all the pillars is what they introduced. The pillars is the most suspect introduction of all

[Giuseppe]

The Parable of Sower may have perfect sense if the tiny seed where the "Logos of God" descended successfully (giving a lot of fruit) is: Paul.

[Giuseppe]

You are saying Paul was in the place of Jesus though
That is what you say that Marcion said in his original apostolicon

I am saying that in the Marcion's original incipit, who witnessed the descent of Jesus Christ on the earth was a man selected by the Unknown God by the latter's voice: "you are my beloved Son" addressed to him. That man, in all probability, was called Paul.

The Judaizers removed him and had the "voice of god" address John the Baptist in his place, to make now John, and not more Paul, the privileged witness of the arrival of Christ on the earth.

This explains why Tarazi et alia see in the Jesus baptized by John a continue allusion to Paul's conversion story from Galatians 1.

[davidmartin]

The Parable of Sower may have perfect sense if the tiny seed where the "Logos of God" descended successfully (giving a lot of fruit) is: Paul.

that is too generic to be certain of anything
i think the pillars is the real hit job on the early Jesus story, that we have these James and Peter who magically turn out to be the most pious of law observant pharisees who it is reported were really poor fisherman without the slightest training or inclination to that kind of religious orthodoxy. i think you are missing a much bigger story but that is just my opinion of course!