Marcion saute

[StephenGoranson]

Who was this "publisher"?
And tell us about the ancient world of publishing into which you imagine him.

[DCHindley]

Publisher.At some point, someone decided to go to a higher organizational level to divide the tasks in the project. He substantively distributed responsibilities and authorities to ensure the best possible effectiveness of the organization at every level. This is how the publisher emerged.
The Gospels are not the work of a single author - they are products written to meet the publisher's requirements

Jarek,

I took you to refer to whoever "published" (basically, did the final editing on) the Christian gospels.

It is commonly asserted that all NT books were at some point "published" (assembled into final form). See Harry Gamble Books & Readers, although I thought he was imagining that early Christian editors had the resources available to a rich person's household (specially trained scribes in a rich Roman's household who acted as librarians).

It is often assumed that Clement of Alexandria and Origen were such specialized scribal/librarians of a master (yes, that would mean they were slaves or emancipated freedmen).

Trobisch thinks that the Pauline corpus was edited from several smaller collections, and that all the books now included in the NT were published in 4 distinct collections (editions if you want), corresponding to the books commonly transmitted together: "e," "a," "p," & "r."

He would have it that Polycarp of Smyrna was the publisher of these groups, and these were transmitted up into the heart of the empire via Irenaeus who happened to work in the heart of Roman supply lines to the north located in Lugdunum in Gaul. What resources Polycarp had access to before their times is not specified, but he is closer to Pontus than Alexandria.

I have felt that Trobisch had made good points, although I'm not sure if he "proved" they were published that way.

This also leaves open the possibility that other books were "published," maybe not to same degree (as collected editions) such as a single book. Clement of Rome. Barnabas. To Diognetus. More ambitious would be the Ignatian corpus (the "middle" form). If the references to non-canonical gospels in the Apostolic fathers can be trusted, there are those, as collected by Schneemelcher.

Unfortunately there are problems with all of these proposals. An easy solution seems to be just out of reach.

If you are proposing that there was a "publisher" for all the canonical gospels, plus Marcion's Evangelion, I think Stephen is asking "just who is supposed to have done this?"

Polycarp again can be suggested, but why did his "disciple" Irenaeus denounce the Marcionite gospel and Apostolikon and favor the ones that were formally designated as our NT much later?

If Marcion was indeed a wealthy shipowner, then he would likely have had his own trained scribes and librarians in his hometown of Pontus or at the business end of his ship voyages, Rome. If he was like the shipowners lampooned in Roman novellas, he was not traveling himself, but sets up shop at one end of his usual route or the other, maybe someplace in the middle, a nice villa. If he traveled to Rome in one of his own ships, he was a brave man, although we do have an inscription where a shipowner bragged how many trips to Rome he had made personally.

DCH

[JarekS]

A publisher is a person responsible for carrying out the process of preparing and delivering a product, i.e. a written work, to the market. He cooperates with the author, editor, and sometimes with the translator, paying them. The editor and translator receive a fixed salary, and the author receives an advance on royalties. It was the same in antiquity, only the legal environment looked different. Of course, there were no royalties, only contracts settled on the basis of one-off or recurring payments. But there were still authors, editors and publishers, as well as financial obligations and the division of income between players. I spent 30 years in the content business and I can say that historians don't know what they're talking about. There were bookstores and libraries, collectors and readers. Business was booming despite modest technological and legal solutions.

The whole history of the synoptic problem is the search for the first original evangelical author. And this is what all 2SH and 2GH models are like. Someone's priority is always assumed.
Mark's priority, Matthew's priority, Luke's priority. In the case of the Klinghardt model, this is another ghost writer who wrote *Ev. Vinzent claims it was Marcion himself.
The problem is that none of these models work.
What works? Multilevel multi-source models. Burkett, Boismard, Rolland. There is a problem with them - they assume the existence of many unconfirmed sources, many unconfirmed compilation stages. But there is a solution - the authors of the texts, let's call them Mark, Matthew and Luke, were sitting in the scriptorium at one table when the Publisher burst into the room and said:

"Gentlemen, there's work to be done. We've just got a client from the province who wants to have popular stories about Jesus written down in a coherent form with an attractive narrative. Good money, short deadline. Let's get started."
See properly working model for Markan Priority from Boismard. Similar models You must create for Luke or Matthew priority. Proto A, Proto B, C material, q material - complicated relations, intermidiate versions. No testimonies that anything existed.
One solution only. One team

[JarekS]

Marcion created a self-financed missionary organization before arriving in Rome. Otherwise he had no reason to go to Rome. Multi-level organization - leader, content providers, missionaries. In Rome, Marcion's organization created the NT1.0 kit seeing a lot of different content that needed to be collected, selected and standardized. They made a selection from the existing content offer. It was about a common message for the new religion. Marcion failed to dominate the other leaders despite the huge advantage he had at the time. The whole story.
Trobisch is right in his On the Origin. However, he sticks to the version of the original author of the first gospel *Ev. For him, NT 2.0 is the answer to Marcion. This is where he's wrong. NT 2.0 is just another stage in product development

[Giuseppe]

The problem is that none of these models work.
What works? Multilevel multi-source models. Burkett, Boismard, Rolland.

There is yet a difference between Boismard and Rolland. The following image shows the Rolland's solution:



Obviously I ignore here the speculative nature of the "many unconfirmed sources, many unconfirmed compilation stages", but there is a difference: Rolland is yet assuming an original first story behind it all. Do you agree?

Second question:
If Marcion limited himself to make cherry picking from a content already found there and fabricated by this school or scriptorium or publisher, then this says us that basically the original content (of which *Ev was only the piece of cake eaten by Marcion) reflected the same basic theology and christology. Do you agree?

[StephenGoranson]

JarekS, given that you have spent many years in the "content business," might it be possible that you are retrojecting that model, imposing it on some ancient history?

Does the beginnings of Christian literature seem to you to have been organized ab initio top-down by a single content-provider corporation?

[JarekS]

Rolland Burkett and Boismard assume that the first original written history was proto-Mark which was edited into two versions Proto-A ProtoB, otherwise the differences in the dual tradition material cannot be justified. The fact that they have different names for these boxes doesn't change anything
Klinghardt tried the same thing - *Ev is proto -Mar - and after a few years he came to the same conclusions. You need proto-Mark in two editions, intermediate versions... and he said it didn't make sense and it couldn't be like that.
But Klinghardt also claimed that there was the first original written history. He proposed that *Ev, written by some new ghost-writer, was the first one. But this was opposed by Gramaglia, who was supported by other biblical scholars, especially philologists. According to them, *Ev was written by Luke, *Ev contains fragments of Matthew, *Ev is also a compilation like the synoptic gospels.
The first gospel is the work of a team, created in Rome. Marcion stayed in Rome for a few years and, together with the Romans, created the foundations of an organized church, with standard content created by one publishing center. He sponsored the Roman Church with money, as Tertullian writes. He offered him part of his book collection, which can be read in the anonymous prologue to the Gospel of John.
Until one day, challengers appeared who effectively undermined his position, sabotaged his leadership and that's how the cooperation ended.
This is actually a very simple story. Classic power struggle.
Boismard, Burkett and Rolland are the same model, but the boxes are named differently - if you distribute the content in all these models, the boxes with different names in each of them will contain the same texts.

[JarekS]

StephenGoranson Biblical scholars know publishing mainly from cooperation with modern university publishers OUP, CUP or with mass publishing houses such as Harper One. When buying content, I used all methods of cooperation, including the primitive ones available in antiquity, bypassing the structures dealing with the protection of copyright, performance rights or producer rights. Writing the gospel based on oral histories, the LXX, Josephus, popular romances or other ancient literature was a necessity for organizations planning extensive missionary activity. Collaboration was necessary to create a coherent figure of the historical Jesus.

[StephenGoranson]

Whatever you did in your career is not what I have asked about; rather I am interested in ancient gospel production.

[JarekS]

Stephen Goranson
The creation of early Christian literature was a top-down process for which publishers were responsible, leading teams of ghostwriters and editors. This applies to both the gospels and the Pauline Corpus, the Ignatian Corpus, and the Shepherd of Hermas.