Short list of arguments that are going to persuade Giuseppe that Marcion precedes Mark

[Giuseppe]

NOTA: The following list obviously may only increase in future:

• Argument from the Incipit of Mark:
  

  If the gospel is an 'eu-aggelion', hence Mark is the beginning of the message of an angel, then how can the Mark's Jesus be a mere man coming from Nazareth to be baptized by John?
  
  For Paul also Jesus is an angel, even according to Errorman.

• Argument from the Earliest Rivalry between Jesus and John the Baptist
  

  2) If John's disciples are intended. along with the Pharisees, then they are hostile to Jesus.
  
  3) This is a holdover from an earlier, pre-Markan source in which John was hostile to Jesus.
  
  4) This source can be identified as the Evangelion

  he has Jesus turn to the crowd and ask them "What did you go out into the wilderness (εἰς τὴν ἔρημον) to behold ?" (ἔρημος, compare, Matthew 3:1, 5; Mark 1:4-5), which of course is John. But he insults John by saying they would only see a weak reed blown around by the wind, not a strong staff of power. This same imagery it found in the OT insulting the rod of power of the Pharaoh (Ezekiel 29:6, 2 Kings 18:21 / Isaiah 36:6).

• Argument from the Delayed Entry of Jesus in Mark:
  

  
  

  Why would Mark begin to introduce his book that is going to be a narrative on Jesus’ life, deeds and words not with a message of Christ, but with John the Baptist as a messanger with a message about Jesus Christ? Of course, Christian readers who are so used to the Synoptics’ accounts of John the Baptist may no longer feel this strange character of a delayed opening. In contrast, if we ask the question, could Mark have added this passage to counter one of Marcion’s challenges, the answer is readily at hand.

  
  

• Argument from the Hateful Denial of the his own family by Jesus in Mark:

  
  

  Marcion's Christ, who had no earthly birth and descended from heaven, could well answer the tempters, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" This denial, in Mark, would be hateful, if it were not devoid of sense: yet it has been preserved there.

  
  

• Argument from the strange aura of formlessness to the trial before Pilate in Mark
  

  the result in Mark is well described by Klinghardt at page 295:
  
  

  By relocating the real trial against Jesus to the nightly trial before the Sanhedrin, Mark awards a strange aura of formlessness to the trial before Pilate, in which the charges against Jesus (thereby giving away the influence of *Ev) merely gets to ask Jesus whether he is the 'the King of the Jews'. Even if these are not the only reasons for Mark having the trial against Jesus take place not before Pilate during the day, but in the flagrantly unlawful manner at night and before the Sanhedrin, the editorial intent is still clearly recognizable.

  
  (my bold)
  

  It would seem that on K.'s reading, the governor skipped asking Jesus about the issues which were his responsibility and asked only about an issue that was not.

  answering partially to this, see what note 25 reads:
  
  

  [...] The narrative coherence suffered considerably by the editorial changes of Mark: how could Pilate arrive at the idea to ask Jesus about his kingdom even if Pilate was familiar with the charges before the Sanhedrin? This question originated from *Ev.

  
  (my bold)

• Argument from "Barabbas" meaning Son of Unknown Father in Mark:
  

  When Jesus is asked whether he is the Christ, i.e. the Jewish Messiah, he protests: "It is you who say so" (*Ev 26:63). Pilate, without understanding anything, releases the "Son of the Father" (Barabbas), and has only his appearance crucified (*Ev 27:33).

• Argument from Simon Peter being the original polemical target in the place of Simon the Leper:
  

  Hahahaha, the Gramaglia's objection is worthy of being quoted since it makes perfectly the point of a colossal earliest rivalry between Jesus and Peter:
  
  
  

  The pros ton Petron of Lk 7:40 in the Codex Vetus Latina of Brescia and in the Codex Palatinus (Afra) is totally isolated, because one codex of the Vetus Latina has pros ton Simona and refers to the Pharisee, taking the name of that personage from Mk 14:3, while all the other codices of the Itala and Greek texts (including D) have pros auton and refer to the Pharisee; the two Latin codices, which refer to Peter, have simply misinterpreted the 'Simon' of the banquet, which was attended by a sinful woman in Mt 26:6 and Mk 14:3, creating a paradoxical and comical situation of a Peter, who inwardly mocks Jesus himself, which is unthinkable for Luke. Obviously to attribute the Codex Palatinus (Afra) gimmick to Marcion's text belongs to science fiction; after all, by what criterion do we exclude the Codex Vercellensis or Codex Veronensis? Is it conceivable that Peter would be accused of wrongness in hospitality by Jesus, a fellow traveller of pauperism?

  
  (source, p. 158, note 177)
  
  'unthinkable in Luke!", evidently the Catholic priest Gramaglia is totally unable in thinking about Marcion, or a radical gentilizer in his place, as the original author of the episode.
  
  Note then the stupid final objection:" by what criterion do we exclude" orthodox readings on behalf of a more 'heretical' reading?
  
  The answer should be obvious: the more irritating reading from a Catholic/Petrine point of view, especially when we are dealing with false accusations of forgery thrown against Marcion, has to be surely privileged and eo ipso considered the original reading.

[Giuseppe]

Argument from the Parable of the Wineskins found in Mark:

• • The Parable of the Wineskins is identical in Marcion and Mark: who wrote it before?
  • "Luke" (Catholic editor) sanitized it by adding "and both are preserved";
  • If "Luke" (Catholic editor) worked so, it was only because he sensed that the Parable of the Wineskins was marcionite in essentia (and there is no reason at all to disagree with the Luke's sense of smell, in this case);
  • Therefore: Mark derived the Parable of Wineskins from Marcion and not vice versa.

[dbz]

If the gospel is an 'eu-aggelion', hence Mark is the beginning of the message of an angel, then how can the Mark's Jesus be a mere man coming from Nazareth to be baptized by John?

Mark's Jesus is hardly human.

• Godfrey, Neil (8 July 2019). "The Mystery of the "Amazing" Jesus in the Gospel of Mark". Vridar. "Mark’s Jesus is not at all “human” in any way, which is to say he is the opposite of the “most human” figure that some critics declare is found in that earliest gospel."
• Godfrey, Neil (4 May 2019). "Once More We Rub Our Eyes: The Gospel of Mark's Jesus is No Human Character?". Vridar. "The Gospel of Mark . . . made very little sense as a genuine history or biography. The people simply did not act like real people. [...] Here are [William Benjamin] Smith’s justifications for his assertion (the subheadings are mine): [...] The Unknown Background of Jesus [...] No More Emotion than Attributed to God [...] there are other reasons for interpreting Mark’s Jesus as a cipher, a type, a literary figure somehow beyond the genuinely human sphere."
• Godfrey, Neil (17 November 2010). "The acts and words (and person?) of Jesus as Parables in the Gospel of Mark". Vridar.
• Arnal, William E. (2014 [2005]). The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity. Routledge. pp. 75–76. ISBN 978-1-317-32440-9. "The Gospel of Mark . . . is a narrative that includes a cast of characters comprising, inter alia, God, a son of God, angels, the devil, demons, holy spirits, evil spirits, and what seem to be the ghosts of Moses and Elijah. It is a story that features miraculous healings and exorcisms, as well as walking on water, feeding thousands of people with a handful of loaves and fishes (twice!), face-to-face conversations between people who lived centuries apart, spooky prognostications, trees withering at Jesus’ simple command, a sun darkening in the middle of the day, and a temple curtain miraculously tearing itself in half. [...] Just as the myths and legends about Herakles are simply not about a historical person, so also the gospels are not about the historical Jesus."

[Stuart]

Argument from the Parable of the Wineskins found in Mark:

• • The Parable of the Wineskins is identical in Marcion and Mark: who wrote it before?
  • "Luke" (Catholic editor) sanitized it by adding "and both are preserved";
  • If "Luke" (Catholic editor) worked so, it was only because he sensed that the Parable of the Wineskins was marcionite in essentia (and there is no reason at all to disagree with the Luke's sense of smell, in this case);
  • Therefore: Mark derived the Parable of Wineskins from Marcion and not vice versa.

First two may be correct, but your final one, that Mark copied Marcion, is likely not true, and does not follow from the first two, as no dependence is established.

You are working from the false assumption that the underlying theology of various Gnostic theologies originated in Marcionism, and that the Marcionites thus wrote the initial gospel, or rather Marcionism was behind the initial gospel. Marcionism has been described by many scholars as a first attempt at Catholicism from a pseudo gnostic movement that was Christianity. In almost every gnostic view, Jesus' father was not the Jewish god, not the creator (demiurge/cosmocreator, etc.), rather an unknown, unknowable high god far above the creator. They read the Jewish scriptures ("law and prophets" = OT) as suggesting a hidden god, who was the father of the true messiah, who was revealed to those who belonged to him. His Christ replaced the Jewish god and his works. Such a statement about wineskins with the meaning that the Marcionites understood, and which the proto-Catholics were aware, could have come from any gnostic sectarian.

This is important, because there was no need for the proto-orthodox to invent a NT or a gospel, as they had scripture and interpretation for their Christ. But for the gnostic, the OT was not from their god, so they would have had greater incentive to replace the scripture, to write something like a gospel; that is the prototype gospel(s) that form the common underpinning of the synoptic gospels we have. Note, these gnostics worked from the same OT scriptures as the proto-orthodox, in similar (identical) communities. It is not a stretch for them to have used the OT as template to build the gospel stories.

In fact it's unlikely a "first Catholic" movement like the Marcionites, that attempted to make this forming NT scripture that backbone of Christianity, would have been the originators. Such a movement requires the existence of the building blocks for them to be defenders of them.

With that in mind, it seems far more likely both the Marcionite writer and Mark drew from a common source for their gospels. We simply do not see Mark pulling much of the Marcionite specific material, rather mostly triple and some double tradition, suggesting Marcionite Luke is not his source.

[Ken Olson]

NOTA: The following list obviously may only increase in future:

• Argument from the Incipit of Mark:
  

  If the gospel is an 'eu-aggelion', hence Mark is the beginning of the message of an angel, then how can the Mark's Jesus be a mere man coming from Nazareth to be baptized by John?
  
  For Paul also Jesus is an angel, even according to Errorman.

• Argument from the Earliest Rivalry between Jesus and John the Baptist
  

  2) If John's disciples are intended. along with the Pharisees, then they are hostile to Jesus.
  
  3) This is a holdover from an earlier, pre-Markan source in which John was hostile to Jesus.
  
  4) This source can be identified as the Evangelion

  he has Jesus turn to the crowd and ask them "What did you go out into the wilderness (εἰς τὴν ἔρημον) to behold ?" (ἔρημος, compare, Matthew 3:1, 5; Mark 1:4-5), which of course is John. But he insults John by saying they would only see a weak reed blown around by the wind, not a strong staff of power. This same imagery it found in the OT insulting the rod of power of the Pharaoh (Ezekiel 29:6, 2 Kings 18:21 / Isaiah 36:6).

• Argument from the Delayed Entry of Jesus in Mark:
  

  
  

  Why would Mark begin to introduce his book that is going to be a narrative on Jesus’ life, deeds and words not with a message of Christ, but with John the Baptist as a messanger with a message about Jesus Christ? Of course, Christian readers who are so used to the Synoptics’ accounts of John the Baptist may no longer feel this strange character of a delayed opening. In contrast, if we ask the question, could Mark have added this passage to counter one of Marcion’s challenges, the answer is readily at hand.

  
  

• Argument from the Hateful Denial of the his own family by Jesus in Mark:

  
  

  Marcion's Christ, who had no earthly birth and descended from heaven, could well answer the tempters, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" This denial, in Mark, would be hateful, if it were not devoid of sense: yet it has been preserved there.

  
  

• Argument from the strange aura of formlessness to the trial before Pilate in Mark
  

  the result in Mark is well described by Klinghardt at page 295:
  
  

  By relocating the real trial against Jesus to the nightly trial before the Sanhedrin, Mark awards a strange aura of formlessness to the trial before Pilate, in which the charges against Jesus (thereby giving away the influence of *Ev) merely gets to ask Jesus whether he is the 'the King of the Jews'. Even if these are not the only reasons for Mark having the trial against Jesus take place not before Pilate during the day, but in the flagrantly unlawful manner at night and before the Sanhedrin, the editorial intent is still clearly recognizable.

  
  (my bold)
  

  It would seem that on K.'s reading, the governor skipped asking Jesus about the issues which were his responsibility and asked only about an issue that was not.

  answering partially to this, see what note 25 reads:
  
  

  [...] The narrative coherence suffered considerably by the editorial changes of Mark: how could Pilate arrive at the idea to ask Jesus about his kingdom even if Pilate was familiar with the charges before the Sanhedrin? This question originated from *Ev.

  
  (my bold)

• Argument from "Barabbas" meaning Son of Unknown Father in Mark:
  

  When Jesus is asked whether he is the Christ, i.e. the Jewish Messiah, he protests: "It is you who say so" (*Ev 26:63). Pilate, without understanding anything, releases the "Son of the Father" (Barabbas), and has only his appearance crucified (*Ev 27:33).

• Argument from Simon Peter being the original polemical target in the place of Simon the Leper:
  

  Hahahaha, the Gramaglia's objection is worthy of being quoted since it makes perfectly the point of a colossal earliest rivalry between Jesus and Peter:
  
  
  

  The pros ton Petron of Lk 7:40 in the Codex Vetus Latina of Brescia and in the Codex Palatinus (Afra) is totally isolated, because one codex of the Vetus Latina has pros ton Simona and refers to the Pharisee, taking the name of that personage from Mk 14:3, while all the other codices of the Itala and Greek texts (including D) have pros auton and refer to the Pharisee; the two Latin codices, which refer to Peter, have simply misinterpreted the 'Simon' of the banquet, which was attended by a sinful woman in Mt 26:6 and Mk 14:3, creating a paradoxical and comical situation of a Peter, who inwardly mocks Jesus himself, which is unthinkable for Luke. Obviously to attribute the Codex Palatinus (Afra) gimmick to Marcion's text belongs to science fiction; after all, by what criterion do we exclude the Codex Vercellensis or Codex Veronensis? Is it conceivable that Peter would be accused of wrongness in hospitality by Jesus, a fellow traveller of pauperism?

  
  (source, p. 158, note 177)
  
  'unthinkable in Luke!", evidently the Catholic priest Gramaglia is totally unable in thinking about Marcion, or a radical gentilizer in his place, as the original author of the episode.
  
  Note then the stupid final objection:" by what criterion do we exclude" orthodox readings on behalf of a more 'heretical' reading?
  
  The answer should be obvious: the more irritating reading from a Catholic/Petrine point of view, especially when we are dealing with false accusations of forgery thrown against Marcion, has to be surely privileged and eo ipso considered the original reading.

I have a question for the other members of the list (i.e., other than Giuseppe), especially those who agree that Marcion's Evangelion preceded Mark. Which, if any, of the arguments on Guiseppe's short list do you think ought to persuade a reasonable person that Marcion (or the Evangelion) preceded Mark?

If you consider one of the arguments is basically sound, but needs to be restated, please fell free to restate it in sound form.

Best,

Ken

Addendum: The standard 'ought to persuade a reasonable person' may set the bar too high. Which of these arguments, if any, do you consider a strong argument for Marcion's (Evangelion's) priority to Mark?

[Secret Alias]

My number 1 reason. No exegetical tradition. If we believe the Church Fathers Marcion established a Lukan exegetical tradition. Let's just accept this. Let's be similarly superficial about Matthew and say Papias established an exegetical tradition. And the Valentinians John. Fine.

What is this Walmart (to use my son's terminology) exegetical tradition for Mark brought up by Irenaeus? Half-heartedly. It's so half-hearted it's like a husband's 43rd anniversary gift. No names, no details, no nothing. Just a scribble on the back of a napkin to fill up the space for Mark in the pertinent section of Adversus Haereses.

So Irenaeus can't come up with some bullshit for Mark. But a parallel version of Adversus Haereses, the Philosophumena has Mark as the gospel of Marcion. Maybe that's why Irenaeus couldn't come up with an exegetical tradition for Mark. It was originally Marcion. Then he went.with this "four-fold" explanation. Marcion goes from Mark to Luke. Irenaeus has to scribble some BS about an anonymous group. How else is it explained? Irenaeus doesn't normally have a problem making up details.

How long is it reasonable to suppose a holy book didn't have an exegetical tradition associated with it? Let's look at the Mishnah. The person who started it off was Meir the pupil of the heretic Abuyah otherwise known as "akher" (another) https://www.academia.edu/24227592/An_an ... Rabbi_Meir. Rabbinic tradition is uniform:

A. An anonymous mishna is according to Rabbi Meir [Sanhedrin 86a].
B. When Rabbi Meir is named in a source, and his decision is disputed, either by Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Yose, Rabbi Shimon or Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov, the halakah is like his opponent [cf. Eiruvin 46b and 62a; Sanhedrin 27b; Yevamoth 93a].
C. When it is stated “others say” (אֲחֵרִיִם אוֹמְרִים), Rabbi Meir is meant [Horioth 13b].

There are countless examples of this phenomenon. But the Talmud that survives in the name of Judah the Prince is built on top of this "other" Talmud. This is how I see the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Marcion. I will make a separate thread about this not to hijack this one.

[Giuseppe]

But for the gnostic, the OT was not from their god, so they would have had greater incentive to replace the scripture, to write something like a gospel; that is the prototype gospel(s) that form the common underpinning of the synoptic gospels we have. Note, these gnostics worked from the same OT scriptures as the proto-orthodox, in similar (identical) communities. It is not a stretch for them to have used the OT as template to build the gospel stories.

In fact it's unlikely a "first Catholic" movement like the Marcionites, that attempted to make this forming NT scripture that backbone of Christianity, would have been the originators. Such a movement requires the existence of the building blocks for them to be defenders of them.

good point. Note that the Klinghardt's claim is that *Ev is the Earliest Known Gospel, not that *Ev is the Earliest Gospel among all the known and lost gospels.

[Peter Kirby]

It's definitely helpful to have them all written down. If you think of more, keep them coming.

[maryhelena]

All Giuseppe has been doing is playing individual gospel stories, tropes, off against another. Consequently, his arguments can easily fall on deaf ears. Why? because the Jesus and Pilate story is not confined to the individual elements of the storyline. The Jesus and Pilate story is based upon chronology, based on a specific time period in history. It is the chronology of the Jesus and Paul story that is foundational. Nothing is gained by debates over which story element is the oldest. It is the oldest dating structure of the Jesus and Pilate story that is far more relevant.

Once the gospel in Marcion's possession is viewed as older than Luke's gospel, that it is not a mutilated copy of Luke, then debates over where to place this gospel within the synoptic 'canon' become relevant.

The immediate 'crisis' arises over the gospel of Mark, a gospel that has generally been viewed as the earliest of the synoptic gospels. However, this gospel has, apart from Pilate, no chronological indicators. Consequently, placing the gospel attributed to Marcion apart from the gospel of Mark becomes necessary. Marcion's gospel belongs within a chronological Jesus and Pilate system. Hence arguments regarding which story trope was first are a secondary issue within a wider perspective of gospel development - if in fact such an assessment was possible.....

Yes, Mark's gospel has had a long innings as being the earliest synoptic gospel. But consensus is not the ultimate argument - as there are now a number of NT scholars arguing for Marcion's position as being early in gospel storyline development.

My view is that the gospel of Mark has become a comfort blanket - both for the Jesus historicists and for the Carrier mythicists/ahistoricists. What Markan priority does do is shut down research into early christian origins. An open and shut case on early christian origins.....debate over. Not so. Grown-ups face the difficult decisions and leave the comfort blanket behind them. Yep, difficult road ahead - a road signposted by the chronology indicated by the Jesus and Pilate story.

[davidmartin]

It's interesting how Mark begins by immediately quoting the prophets.
If Mark follows after a Marcionite gospel that avoided (or voided) the prophets then that's Mark differentiating itself, laying out a gospel that Christians who accepted the prophets could believe in. If that's so there should be other places in Mark like this

But how could Marcion have a gospel if he only accepted Paul (who had no gospel about the life of Jesus)?
In that case Marcion would himself be drawing from sources unconnected with his favourite apostle
This makes the synoptics farther removed from the most ancient sources than the gospel of John could be
Chronological order and familiarity with the origins are not the same thing - and that only helps John's gospel