Another argument supporting Marcionite priority of *Ev over the Canonical Gospels

[Giuseppe]

Where is the force of the argument based on the Zebedeides?

In the fact that there is indeed a pattern:

• the Zebedeides wanted the places of glory, but Jesus answered 'no';

• also Moses and Elijah wanted the places of glory (and the idiot disciple Kephas wanted even to build tents for them) but an invisible god exalted only Jesus above them;

• the places of 'glory' are occupied by two thieves, i.e. said in other terms, also the two thieves wanted the places of glory (but failed).

This pattern is evidence of the hope that the glory of Jesus was someway shared by presumed apostles (=Zebedeides) and/or presumed precursors (=Moses and Elijah). A such hope is frustrated: the glory is all of Jesus. To mean that a rival Christian sect perceived any sharing as a limitation of the glory reserved to Jesus.

The evidence of a collective crucifixion disappears.

Marcionite priority wins again and again.

[Giuseppe]

And it is evidence of the marcionite priority because:

• the pattern can exist only if you read the Transfiguration Episode as anti-YHWH (the voice from heaven coming from an unknown Father, not from YHWH) since only in this way the presence of Moses and Elijah is put in contrast with the presence of Jesus;

• the only Christian sect that was interested to deny that Jesus had true disciples in the figures of the Zebedeides was the Marcion's sect;

• the only Christian sect that was interested to deny that Jesus had true precursors in the prophets (=Elijah) and in the Law (=Moses) was the Marcion's sect.

[spin]

What you really first need to deal with is the relationship between the synoptic gospels and the gospel that Marcion used (you call *Ev). The textual evidence says that *Ev is closest to Lk and yet the textual evidence points to both Mt and Lk being derived from Mk. There is no direct sign that you can place *Ev prior to Mk on any text analysis basis (ie before you introduce narrative tropes).

This much text analysis says:

Mt <- Mk -> Lk

It may also say:

*Ev -> Lk

which might suggest:

Mt <- Mk -> *Ev -> Lk

but certainly not:

*Ev -> Mk

I tried very hard a while ago to make sense of the relationship of *Ev with the synoptics working from Roth's "The Text of Marcion's Gospel", without success, as the indications are too elusive. But it is only this sort of endeavor, ie working with text construction, that has a hope of giving priority.

[Secret Alias]

All these so-called "revelations" about the Marcionite Gospel need to be properly contextualized. Irenaeus of Lyons, in his original Adversus Marcionem, explicitly states that he will argue using the canonical Luke, which he claims Marcion manipulated. He argues that even in its "Marcionite form," Luke still testifies to the Creator. Importantly, Tertullian frequently copies from Irenaeus. For example, his Adversus Valentinianos is essentially a reworking of the first 12 chapters of Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses Book One. Tertullian essentially streamlined Irenaeus’s more complex argument to make it appear more credible, omitting parts of the argument about Luke and Marcion.

However, Irenaeus's original argument has three major flaws:

1. The claim that Marcion falsified Luke: Irenaeus provides no real proof for this claim. If we follow Tertullian’s writings, there’s no mention of Marcion erasing the first four chapters of Luke, which is odd. Irenaeus’s argument hinges on the idea that Marcion's "hatred of the Creator" can be disproved by the portions of Luke that remained. But what if Luke itself was a response to Marcion? Irenaeus’s approach conveniently ignores any possibility that Luke’s gospel may have been a reactionary text, placing all blame on Marcion.

2. The idea that Marcion "hated" the Creator: There's no solid evidence to support this. Irenaeus, as a staunch monarchian, likely exaggerated Marcion’s supposed "hatred" of the Creator. What Irenaeus may have perceived as hatred was probably more of a philosophical disinterest or indifference toward the Creator. It’s like a strained relationship—indifference often develops over time, but it doesn’t necessarily imply hatred. According to Philo, Yahweh (or kurios) is a lower power, not the Almighty despotes. Marcion likely followed a tradition, where Yahweh, the god of justice, wasn’t supreme but instead part of a system of dual powers—a god of mercy and a god of justice. It’s clear Marcion wasn’t driven by hatred but by an ancient belief system that saw Yahweh as lesser, as even Philo’s interpretation suggests.

3. The idea that Irenaeus actually had access to a falsified Marcionite version of Luke: This is simply nonsense. There’s no solid evidence that Irenaeus had such a version.

When Roth and others claim to have distilled the "original Marcionite gospel," they have not. What they’ve done is merely misrepresent the original Irenaean claim, filtered through Tertullian, regarding Irenaeus's section-by-section argument from an alleged "falsified Luke." They argue that the supposed "very text Marcion employed in his churches" still testifies to the Creator.

The issue is that "modern scholarship," dating back to the 19th century, assumes that the Church Fathers were somehow bound to tell the truth and that we can take their statements at face value. By this, I mean that scholars assume both individual Church Fathers and the collective group of Fathers are reliable. What is often underestimated is the extent to which the Church Fathers, as a collective, reused older material, modifying it slightly to purge any perceived "heresy" and adapting it to new controversies. For example, what Justin wrote in the mid-2nd century was repurposed by Irenaeus, and then again by Tertullian, and so on by later Church Fathers.

I’m not suggesting that Irenaeus or Tertullian consciously admitted to quoting earlier generations. They passed these works off as their own. Ironically, they accused Marcion of doing the same thing with Luke. However, I’m not implying that because Irenaeus, Tertullian, and others reused earlier works, Marcion necessarily did the same with Luke. The point is that the early Patristic period was surprisingly permissive with forgery. That Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John could exist as "holy forgeries" within a canon speaks volumes.

Therefore, using Adversus Marcionem as a "roadmap" to reconstruct the Marcionite gospel is utterly laughable. It’s a fake roadmap leading to a fake gospel—no more real than the island in Fortnite where players land and shoot each other repeatedly. There is no more reality to the preserved "gospel of Marcion" fragments than Lazy Lagoon or those other Fortnite locations.

[spin]

When Roth and others claim to have distilled the "original Marcionite gospel" they have not. All they have done is imperfectly represent the original Irenaean claim, filtered through Tertullian, with respect to Irenaeus's section by section argument from an alleged "falsified Luke" that the alleged "very text Marcion employed in his churches" still testifies to the Creator.

Where are you getting your ideas regarding what Roth is doing? It doesn't seem to be from the text I cited.

[Secret Alias]

I've read the book. He's citing from Tertullian and other Irenaeus-based Patristic sources. There is no reality to his citations from the gospel of Marcion. I've illustrated the "reality." The reality is forgery.

1. There was an original treatise written by Justin which bore some relationship to Marcionism. It was written in the middle of the second century. Irenaeus obliquely references this text.
2. There was Irenaeus's Adversus Marcionem which Irenaeus references in Adversus Haereses and the logic behind the work.
3. There was Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem which clearly "apes" the logic behind Irenaeus's work but only "streamlines" the underlying methodology to make it seem that the author has before him the actual Marcionite "falsified" Luke. The vulgarity of these Church Fathers is always underestimated owing to the "faith" in their sanctity. In Irenaeus it was still an abstract "concept" i.e. Irenaeus makes the case that Marcion "falsified" Luke and then in his argumentation cites directly from canonical Luke with occasional (but very rare) specific citations of alleged Marcionite "wording." Often times it is difficult to discern even from these fleeting references what the actual Marcionite readings were.
4. Epiphanius clearly had Irenaeus's text of Adversus Marcionem in Greek in front of him when compiling a random list of Marcionite passages which strangely add up to the gematria 114 or whatever number he arrived at. He claims to have the Marcionite canon in front of him but again, typical Epiphanian bombast.

Bottom line: we don't have the right to say we are "quoting" from the Marcionite gospel. Only making reference to citations used by Irenaeus against Marcion from Luke which may or may not have mirrored what was in the Marcionite gospel and then subsequently filtered through the later Church Fathers sometimes being translated into other languages (Latin). It's nice to say we know the Marcionite gospel. It makes us feel we have some context for the canonical four. But we don't.

[spin]

Yes, he cites numerous sources. Where does he indicate he distilled the "original Marcionite gospel"? What makes you think that Roth make an argument from an alleged "falsified Luke"? Roth consistently puts the notion of the creator as Tertullian's interpretation, so where does this come from: They argue that the supposed "very text Marcion employed in his churches" still testifies to the Creator?

Roth's effort is quite a useful resource and is quite open to alternative outlooks on Marcion. It's the best we have to date and your stated view seems not to be relevant to his effort.

[Secret Alias]

It's more subtle than that. I am saying that Tertullian picked up a copy of Irenaeus's original treatise where Irenaeus himself argued from "the portions of canonical Luke which Marcion originally falsified" i.e. a text like the ones we have before us every day and transformed that argument which doesn't specifically say "I am arguing from our canonical Luke." In Tertullian there isn't any specific reference to what type of text he is using against Marcion (i.e. he never says "I have a captured Marcionite gospel." The recycling process erased the specificity that was in the original. This was originally an argument from Luke, not a "captured" Marcionite falsified edition of Luke, but just ordinary Luke. Tertullian through his refinement process has obscured this part of the original argument. Now we have a text that makes all these references to a Luke-like gospel which seems to have been in the hands of the Marcionites (at least according to the existence of a strange text like Adversus Marcionem i.e. "that it exists" proves that this must be so). But the mere "existence" of the text isn't a valid argument as to the constitution of the Marcionite gospel. Irenaeus had a system where four heresies used four different gospels which ended up becoming together "the one orthodox gospel." The Marcionites just happened to be the backstory to Luke in the same way the Ebionites were for Matthew and the Valentinians John. But the whole association between Luke and Marcion is artificial. It develops because of an editorial decision by someone down the chain from Tertullian (= Irenaeus) and now the tires are so bald we can't see the original connection to Luke.

The Marcionite gospel could have resembled Matthew. It likely did in parts. It could have resembled Mark. It did in parts. Even John. That Irenaeus decided to devote a work to arguing against Marcion from canonical Luke says little if anything about what the actual Marcionite gospel looked like, smelled like, acted like. All we learn about, and even this is minimal, is that Irenaeus decided to argue against Marcion by means of Luke. Doesn't tell us a lot about anything given the literary superstructure behind Adversus Marcionem.

[Giuseppe]

But it is only this sort of endeavor, ie working with text construction, that has a hope of giving priority.

When Britt & Wingo have applied their statistical tools to the Pauline epistles, they have found that, independently from their research, Bob Price resulted correct a lot of times despite of the fact that Bob Price based his arguments only on assigning any portion of epistles to this or that rival Christology according to his own intuition.

I am making something of similar here: if I see that a theological interpretation is correct on the Marcionite priority, then probably the textual arguments will support it independently from it.

If you want only textual arguments, then you have to consult Klinghardt.

It can't be a coincidence that Klinghardt's results fit so much to the Marcionite interpretations given by Vinzent to *Ev.

[spin]

"But the whole association between Luke and Marcion is artificial."

It would seem you are in denial that, from the remnants that exist that purport to being from the gospel that Marcion used, there is a notable relationship between it and Lk. Do you think the anti-Marcionite sources starting with Irenaeus were just cribbing from Lk and the Marcionic text didn't have that material? Can you make that make sense to anyone?

This is Roth, p.45.

Indeed, the challenges to reconstructing Marcion’s Gospel have often been noted. Therefore, any renewed attempt to reconstruct Marcion’s Gospel from the sources is inextricably linked with methodological questions concerning one’s approach to the sources. Up to this point, the discussion has largely focused on the shortcomings of previous studies, even if areas where scholarship has advanced have also been noted. At the same time, the crucial need for providing a positive contribution to the understanding of the sources for Marcion’s Gospel and to methodological considerations has become evident.

Roth isn't as doctrinaire as you in this matter. I feel that you are at the point of saying you can't say anything about the text other than these other guys are wrong.