proto-Mark versus Mcn
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:13 pm
while it is clear (at least for me) that the Earliest Gospel (after the 70 CE) allowed only a gnostic interpretation (his principal hero is not the Jewish Messiah), I am not sure if it coincided with an earlier form of Mark or if it was basically a mix of all the three synoptic Gospels (even if following generally the structure of proto-Luke) meaning that the man Marcion (and only him) was the his author (after Bar-Kokhba).
The difficulty is expected since the later editors (even our Mark) didn't remove or neutralize all the gnostic points, giving rise to contradictory readings in the same Gospel between different theologies.
For example, it is not clear that the show of secrecy in Mark (4:11-12) was a conservative reaction against the growing explicit gnostic propaganda or it was part and parcel of that same ''explicit'' gnostic propaganda.