@GakuseiDon
I agree that 2 Cor. 4:4 could be taken as such, but if "god of this world" is a reference to Satan, then it is at home with proto-orthodox beliefs.
But it seems that the proto-orthodox had to largely make due with what was in front them as best they could. The problem is that if Yahweh-God was the creator of the world and Yahweh-God is good and the Father of Jesus, then why should the world be bad at all? Why is the world ruled by Satan? The introduction of sin is one thing, but the idea that the material world should be wiped away entirely seems quite another.
Why would Paul have thought that the material world was bad, if he thought that the material world was created by the Father of Jesus?
The despising of the material world only makes sense if you think the material world was creator by the demiurge, who is not the Highest God and thus not Father of Jesus. So the issue is that the whole logic of "the spirit", which is espoused all over Paul, really only makes sense if one thinks that the material world is corrupt because it was not created by the Highest God. Can Satan really be so powerful as to utterly corrupt the material world to the point that you want to see God's creation destroyed? No. The logic of wanting to see the world come to an end only makes within a framework where the world is not the masterpiece of the Highest God.
The Synoptics have the devil taken Jesus onto a high mountain and offering Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, suggesting the devil had the ability to do this.
Mark doesn't say this. Only Matthew and Luke, which are proto-orthodox revisions. It was the proto-orthodox to essentially replaced the demiurge with Satan and positioned Yahweh-God as the Highest God.
The issue I have is that, if any passage that exists prior to proto-orthodox revisions makes it through to the proto-orthodox layer without being removed or changed, then it indicates some kind of consistency with proto-orthodox beliefs in the first place.
Not necessarily. I think that the revisions of the underlying texts were fairly poorly done. What I think happened was Marcion's material was the foundation upon which Luke, Acts, and the Pauline letters were built. That was likely done by a single individual. That person created Luke by simply just taking Marcion's Gospel and adding Luke 1 & 2, along with 24 to it, with some other relatively minor editing throughout the body. But you can see that they did a really bad job on Luke. Its a very inconsistent work with a number of editorial errors. So we can establish that they were a poor editor and they missed a lot of stuff. The same goes in Acts. I used to consider the "we passages" a result of "poor editing", but I no longer think so. Rather I think the we passages do come from a source, but they were intentionally left in the first person in order to appropriate the identity of the original writer (possibly Luke). But even still, there are many editorial errors in Acts. So, when it comes to the letters, I think we can expect the same. The editor wasn't able to thoroughly revise everything. It was likely a single person, working relatively rapidly, to put out a counter work to Marcion. They totally appropriated Marcion's work, didn't actually make that many changes to it, and focused largely on Acts to flesh out the narrative that tied Paul (Marcion's champion) to the "Law and Prophets" and to subordinate him to the disciples.
Now, whatever this person did was largely just accepted by those who received his work. They noticed problems in the text, but assumed it was all authentic, and thus we see people like Irenaeus, Origin, etc., all working to explain and deal with the problems that existed in the collection. So there weren't a bunch of people editing and revising these works to try and conform them to proto-orthodox views, there was just one person or small group, and everyone else just had to deal with what that person did. They accepted the works at face value, believing they were authentic.
There may also be an issue in thinking in terms of there being only two streams of early thought: gnostic/Marcionite and proto-orthodox. There were probably numerous numbers of ideas that incorporated an accessible heavenly Jesus, as per my own "magic Jesus" origin of Christianity theory.
True, but Marcion is the one that produced a collection of scriptures. It appears that, if anything, the works of the NT are largely built on Marcion's foundation. Yes there were others ideas, but it appears that the writings put forward by Marcion were the main works the proto-orthodox were dealing with. The Gospel of John, however appears to be a non-Marcionite "Gnostic" type work that was revised. I suspect that it comes from Valentinian origins. Thus the NT contains a collection of works from the two major Christian "Gnostics", which were appropriated and revised by proto-orthodox editors.
What is needed is a list of gnostic/Marcionite passages in Paul that were left in by the proto-orthodox and an explanation of why they left it in. Were they consistent with proto-orthodox beliefs in the first place? If so, why believe they were gnostic in origin and not proto-orthodox?
Agreed, this would be good.