Marcionite priority points towards John the Baptist == the unnamed Samaritan prophet killed by Pilate

[Giuseppe]

Really, if the Marcionite priority points towards an undated John the Baptist fixed arbitrarily by Marcion under Pilate, then this evidence talks about John being introduced in the Gospel tradition as an enemy, as a rival of the Christian Jesus. If the same polemical rivalry had moved, after Origen, the anti-marcionite Christians to interpolate John the Baptist in Josephus, then we are dealing not with a banal forgery, but with an anti-marcionite forgery.

What could be of anti-marcionite in the Baptist Passage interpolated by Christians in Josephus?


Georges Ory gives the answer:

A Christian evidently wanted to insert an account of the forerunner of Jesus together with praise in his regard. He did so in order to combat the preceding passage (regarding the unnamed Samaritan upstart, XVIII.4.1) which he felt included perfidious material regarding John.21 The interpolator needed to show that John was not an agitator but a peaceful and good prophet. In this way Josephus—a historian who viewed the Samaritans as troublemakers—is made to contradict himself in his own writing.

I am more and more persuaded that Ory is right, i.e. that:

• Theudas/Dositheus/John the Baptist was the unnamed Samaritan false prophet killed by Pilate;

• Marcion used Theudas/Dositheus/John the Baptist to mark the boundary between the time of Jewish prophetism and the novelty that was brought by Jesus; Marcion agrees with Josephus about the negative portrayal of Theudas/Dositheus/John the Baptist:
  
  • 
    
    “The man who excited [the Samaritans to tumults] was one who thought lying a thing of little consequence…”
    
    (XVIII.4.1)
  • 
    
    All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them
    
    (John 10:8)

• The anti-marcionite gospels (Mark in primis) rehabilitated the memory of John the Baptist, just as the interpolation of the Baptist Passage in Josephus rehabilitated the memory of John the Baptist, by merely separating him from his real identity: the unnamed Samaritan false prophet killed by Pilate.

[Giuseppe]

Why was Jesus dated by Marcion under Pilate?

Because Marcion wanted that Jesus was a contemporary of the man who, in Marcion's view, had to mark the boundary between the time of Jewish prophetism and the novelty that was brought by Jesus: the unnamed Samaritan false prophet killed by Pilate, i.e. "John the Baptist".

[Giuseppe]

Curiously, Marcion doesn't connect John the Baptist with Herod.

For Marcion, John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded by Pilate.

It was "Mark" (author) who connected the first time John the Baptist with Herod, in order to dissociate John the Baptist from Pilate.