Another strong clue supporting Marcionite priority: the "disciples of John" are really Christians

[Giuseppe]

If Rivka Nir is correct to identify Jewish-Christians behind the interpolators of the Baptist passage, and to deny the existence of followers of John who identified John as the Messiah, then I interpret all this as another strong clue supporting Marcionite priority.

Since only Marcion could invent 'disciples of John' ex nihilo, merely as another name to mean: rival Jewish-Christians.

Once those 'disciples' were invented by Marcion, the other evangelists could only continue to play with them, by making them now "incomplete Christians" (see Acts's Apollos), now not even Christians at all (see Origen on the presumed "John the Messiah" party).

The existence itself of 'disciples' of John carries with itself the germ of an intrinsic rivalry with the followers of Jesus. But that was precisely the goal of Marcion, since in Mcn John and disciples of John are always considered coldly distant from Jesus & company.

Well, apart the enigmatic logion about the origin of the baptism of John, where I hope that prof Vinzent will do the 'dirty job' to explain it in a Marcionite pov.

[Giuseppe]

Prof Vinzent is victim of the false belief that the disciples of John existed as an independent group, distinct from Christians.
Given that false premise, he is obliged to assume that Marcion introduced the disciples of John because he was preserving a Jewish tradition from Judea, a tradition he could't ignore not even if he had wanted.

Really, just as it was typical by Orthodox groups to label the rival Christians as 'disciples of Cerdon', 'disciples of Apelles', 'disciples of Satornilos', etc, so it was entirely expected by Marcion to label the rival Jewish-Christians as 'followers of John the Baptist'.

So: John is only a name, just as Cerdon, Apelles, Satornilos. He could be the Pillar John, or the John of Ephesus. What matters really for a historian is to judge him an anti-marcionite icon invented by Marcion himself.

[Giuseppe]

The great Joseph Turmel was the first to see the void behind the 'disciples of John the Baptist'.

Those disciples never existed. Why didn't none think about this, beside me and Turmel?

Replace 'Luke' with 'Marcion' in the original Turmel's text, and you have precisely what I have in mind.

[Giuseppe]

20: 1 And it came to pass, that on one of those days,
as he was teaching the people in the temple,
and announcing the glad tidings,
there came upon him the chief priests and the scribes with the elders,
2 And spake unto him, saying,
Tell us, by what authority doest thou these things?
or who is he that gave thee this authority?
3 And he answered and said unto them,
I will also ask you one word and tell me:
4 The baptism of the Jewish Christians, was it from heaven, or of men?
5 And they reasoned with themselves, saying,
If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then believed ye them not?
6 But if we say, Of men; all the people will stone us:
for they be persuaded that the Jewish Christians were prophets.
7 And they answered, that they knew not whence it was.
8 And Jesus said unto them,
Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.

Moral: if the Scribes didn't even accept the Jewish Christians, how could they join the Marcionite Christians?

[perseusomega9]

Prof Vinzent is victim of the false belief that the disciples of John existed as an independent group, distinct from Christians.
Given that false premise, he is obliged to assume that Marcion introduced the disciples of John because he was preserving a Jewish tradition from Judea, a tradition he could't ignore not even if he had wanted.

Really, just as it was typical by Orthodox groups to label the rival Christians as 'disciples of Cerdon', 'disciples of Apelles', 'disciples of Satornilos', etc, so it was entirely expected by Marcion to label the rival Jewish-Christians as 'followers of John the Baptist'.

So: John is only a name, just as Cerdon, Apelles, Satornilos. He could be the Pillar John, or the John of Ephesus. What matters really for a historian is to judge him an anti-marcionite icon invented by Marcion himself.

Occasionally we find the needle in the haystack from Giuseppe. The last bold sentence need not strictly apply.

[rgprice]

It seems far more likely to me that John the Baptist was invented by Mark from Mark's use of Josephus, which also shows in Mark's prediction of the End Times in Mark 13.

[dbz]

It seems far more likely to me that John the Baptist was invented by Mark from Mark's use of Josephus, which also shows in Mark's prediction of the End Times in Mark 13.

I concur and Cf. Mark's inadvertent reliance on Hyrcanus II:

In the same way [as demonstrated with other unrelated but likewise dislocated accounts], Josephus’s John the Baptist story reads as a doublet or different version of Hyrcanus II chronologically dislocated to the time of the wrong Herod. In this case Josephus did not place the two versions of the death of Hyrcanus II close together in the same time setting as in some of the other cases of doublets. If Josephus had done that, the doublet in this case would have been recognized before now. Instead, Josephus mistakenly attached one of the traditions of the death of Hyrcanus II to the wrong Herod, just as he separately mistakenly attached documents to the wrong Hyrcanus.

[...]

If this analysis is correct—that Josephus misplaced this story to the wrong Herod in Antiquities—then there is no attestation external to the New Testament of the Gospels’ figure of John the Baptist of the 30s CE. The implication would seem to be this:

either

• the Gospels’ John the Baptist has been generated in the story world of the Gospels,

or

• he derives from a different [unevidenced] figure than Josephus’s John the Baptist, [and then was] secondarily conflated with Josephus’s John the Baptist.

These issues are beyond the scope of this paper.

Gregory Doudna 2019, pp. 132, 136. [NOW BOLDED and FORMATTED]. ISBN 9780567686572. (Available Online).

The narrative similarities between Antiq 18 and Mark (especially) 6 seem striking:

1. Flashbacks: Both accounts are widely recognized as literary ‘flashbacks’.
2. “Herod” instead of “Herod Antipas”: “Antipas” does not occur in any of the passages under consideration in Josephus’s Antiq, but only “Herod”; “Antipas” does not occur in Mark’s account, only “Herod”.
3. “John a good man”: Josephus expresses that John “was a good and righteous man” (18.117); “Herod in awe of John, knowing him to be a good and holy man” (Mk 6:20).
4. Reference to John’s arrest: Because of Herod’s suspicions, John was brought in chains to Machaerus (18.119); “Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison” (6:17).
5. A reason for John’s arrest: Herod’s fear of John’s persuasive effect may lead to a form of sedition (18.118); “On account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her” (6:17).
6. Herodias’s previous marriage: Herodias was previously married (18.110); Herodias was previously married (6:17-18).
7. Herodias’s previous husband identified: Correctly as Herod’s step-brother (Herod II, 18.106); incorrectly as Philip (Mark 6:17).
8. Herodias has a daughter: Herod II and Herodias have a daughter named Salome (18.136); Herodias’s daughter is not named in Mark.
9. A “Philip” in both narratives: Philip as Herodias’s daughter’s (Salome’s) husband (18.136); Philip as Herodias’s first husband (Mk 6:17).
10. Criticism of Herod and Herodias’s marriage: Herod and Herodias’s marriage criticized for traditional / religious reasons (18.136); Herod and Herodias’s marriage criticized for traditional/religious reasons (Mk 6:17).
11. Leviticus 18:16 and 21: Implicit reference to Leviticus (18.136); implicit reference to Leviticus 6:17-18).
12. Reasons for John’s death: Because of Herod’s suspicion that John’s ability to persuade the people may lead them to revolt (18.118); not because of John’s persuasiveness and fear of sedition, but because of his denouncing of Herod for taking his brother’s wife (Mk 6:17).
13. Herod executes John: Antiq 18.116-19 and Mk 6:16,27).

From a narrative perspective, it seems that the material in Antiq 18 could provide auMark [author of Mark] with much of the narrative material that would be needed to frame the ‘death of John’ narrative in Mark 6—very similar to, as just one example, how the narrative material in LXX Jonah 1:4-16 served as his framing material for the Jesus “calming the sea” narrative in Mk 4?

Comment by Brad McAdon—13 December 2020

—per Godfrey, Neil. "Another Pointer Towards a Late Date for the Gospel of Mark?". Vridar. 10 December 2020.

McAdon, Brad (2017). “Josephus and Mark”. Alpha: Studies in Early Christianity. 1: 92–93. “The author of our canonical Mark may have been influenced by several texts . . . Josephus’s Antiquities Book 18, and the Septuagint. If so, there will be significant implications concerning the historicity of Mark’s John the Baptist narratives, the dating of canonical Mark, and Mark’s compositional practices.”

[Giuseppe]

John the Baptist was invented by Mark from Mark's use of Josephus

hardly you can say 'invented' if John the Baptist existed per the Baptist Passage in Josephus (assumed by you as authentic).

But Rivka Nir has argued extensively for the Baptist Passage being a late post-Origen interpolation by Jewish-Christians.
She has collected the various arguments against the authenticity made in past, and in addition she gives what she considers the more strong argument to doubt about the authenticity of the passage: the baptism of John the Baptist was Jewish-Christian.
Nir argues that also the belief that the Messiah had to be preceded by Elijah is a Christian belief.

In short, everything about John is invented by Christians. A good way to test the goodness of a theory is to measure its degree of dependance from the hypothesis of a historical John the Baptist. More it is high, more said theory is not satisfying.

[schillingklaus]

John in FJ is a very late and abusive patristic interpolation with no influence on the formation of the gospel story.

John is an euhemerization and Judaization of the herald of the baptise in the pool, described in the Corpus Hermeticum IV. The goal of the baptism is the acquisition of divine intellect. This goal was corrupted by the Judaizers into acquistion of the charismatic spirit of the prophets (by ointment or imposition of hands) and even later into remission of sins (by washing).

The early story of John did not have him baptise but only preach the baptise in virtue of the coming of the messiah, just as Eliajah was supposed to do. That's why in the Beza Codex, the mob of jerusalem visits teh Jordan to be baptized in front of, not by, John. Likewise, Lk does not introduce John in its incipit as a baptiozerr. Thence it becomes clear that only at a late point, when the common source of Mt and Mk was made, John became the baptizer and baptized the mob, even Jesus as such.

This has already been ourtlined by Jeran Magne in LOGIQUE DES SACREMENTS.

Marcionism could not accept Jphn even just preach the coming Jesus as in the Marcionist ideology, Paul was the first to experience Jesus and the Father. (the latter had been previously and illogically identified with YHWH, a spurious identification which Marcionism tried to revise again but with poor success)

[Giuseppe]

Jean Magne in LOGIQUE DES SACREMENTS.

The Magne's thesis specifically about John the Baptist suffers of the same problem that afflicts the view of who thinks that John was originally a thing independent from Christian tradition. The independance of an original John is a chimera.
Even worse, the same presumed independance of John is an invention by Christians:

Against the testimony of Jesus, to whom the Pharisees say 'You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid' (8:13), John must be portrayed as an external, objective and independent witness, whose testimony is ininfluenced by any affiliation with Jesus. This is in line with the stricture of Jewish law, which disqualifies the competence of witnesses who are affiliated or interested parties.

(Rivka Nir, The First Christian Believer, p. 174, my bold)