Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

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rgprice
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Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by rgprice »

I've been reading a lot about Marcion recently. I haven't seen anyone propose this yet, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis.

Marcion's Gospel, the Evangelion, shares a number of features with both Luke and the Gospels of Mark and John. Several of the works I'm reading now propose that the Evangelion either was a proto-Luke or was derived from a proto-Luke, i.e. that Marcion's Gospel is not a redaction of Luke. If anything, Luke took the Evangelion and added a birth intro and post-resurrection ending.

But it has also been noted that the Gospel of John seems to have some relationships with Luke. I could be wrong, but I know of no indications that John is derived from Matthew. Everything that John shares with Matthew can be explained via Mark or Luke (unless I've missed something).

But, John has no birth narrative and is also sharply anti-Jewish. These are both features of Marcionism.

Given that John has no birth narrative it would be unusual that John would have been derived from Luke, which has a birth narrative. But, as far as I can see from the reconstructions of the Evangelion, everything John shares distinctly with Luke is also in the Evangelion.

That doesn't necessarily mean that John is a Marcionite Gospel. It would be strange that it is given that it was adopted by Catholics in opposition to Marcinism. But the primary reason for Catholic use of John was just that they believed it was an eyewitness account. It was the supposition that it was produced by an eyewitness that drove its adoption, not any particular doctrinal claims. Indeed, the introduction of John is highly compatible with Docetism.
lsayre
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by lsayre »

In the 'Enigma of the Fourth Gospel', Robert Eisler presents a case whereby Marcion acted as John's scribe and actually penned the Gospel of John, but took the liberty to corrupt it with his own thinking while so doing.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Secret Alias »

The beginning at Jerusalem in John resembles the Syriac Marcionite gospel (the only that matters) and Irenaeus's 'Judea' opening.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Secret Alias »

Here's something you should think about when trying to figure out the relationship between John and the synoptics (which theoretically Marcion's gospel was).

1. the synoptics had only one Passover
2. John has many
3. Irenaeus makes reference to the multiple Passovers in Against Heresies 2
4. the periodic appearance of 'Passover' in the Jesus narrative was used by orthodox people to 'ground' what they claimed was a rather 'loose' ordering of Mark and the rest of the synoptics.

In other words, we read Mark and the gospels as a year long story. John seems to have been introduced as a means of reconciling the one year 'year of favor' understanding of the gospel narrative with something else. WHAT that 'something else' was is up for debate. But HOW John worked seems to be known or is becoming known.

Apparently there were 'titles' built into the Gospel of John which correspond with the Passover reference. It's been a while since I've looked at it. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/ ... 84463/html But it seems that 'heads' are also referenced in the defense of the Gospel of John against Gaius. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefa ... ion_01.htm What I am seeing is that early Christianity reminds me a lot of Google in the modern world. The gospel of the orthodox was a new technology to correct 'erroneous opinions.'

To that end, not only were 'chapter headings' https://www.alangarrow.com/uploads/4/4/ ... isions.pdf used to correct heresy but also the laying of four gospels side by side. This was another new technology which came from Alexandria and was used first by 'Ammonius' and later Origen. It originated among the scholars of Homer where many different versions of Homer circulated.

I also noticed when I went through the Russian State archives that some of the oldest books there were four gospels aligned side by side so that when you opened two pages there was 'Matthew and Mark' on the left page and 'Luke and John' on the left. This arrangement of the 'Diatessaron' is never confirmed in any study before me. But I think we have to get away from thinking of John as a 'standalone' gospel. Rather it functioned as an index page for the claims of a one year ministry from pre-Johannine communities including Marcion.

Remember when Papias preserves the story of 'John' mentioning Mark being in the wrong order? I think the idea here is that John arranged for a four-part 'harmony' where he added things not present in previous versions of the gospel but all in a kind of 'fourth column' in a four column arrangement of the gospel. I think by its very nature it implies that the Catholic version of the gospel was the latest. Just look at the way Papias references John as one layer, and Mark and Matthew as previous layers. Mark wrote something, Matthew corrected it and then - if we take 'John' in the story to be the evangelist - he, knows of both layers but then contextualizes the interrelationship with this 'fourth column' which grounds the understanding into a multi-year ministry - something foreign (or if you prefer the language of the original orthodox apologists 'implicit' or 'latent') to them.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Secret Alias »

The point here is that according to the orthodox narrative Papias tells us about 'Mark' and then 'Matthew's correction of Mark' and then implicitly John's contextualization of Mark-Matthew-Luke's 'silence' about the multiyear ministry of Jesus with his 'headings' in the fourth column. But then there is this third column which essentially goes unmentioned until now - Luke. Why is Luke 'third'? The only clue we have is Tertullian's statement that Marcion 'saw' all four gospels - i.e. a collection with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John undoubtedly in their four column 'original' state, but only chose to falsify the Luke column to make his own gospel.

This is very curious because of the Papias testimony of John's relationship to Mark and Matthew. Heresy derives from the verb to choose. It had no inherent 'evil' meaning in Greek. But Marcion, who was the first heretic of any real consequence is condemned for 'choosing' only one of the four gospels which properly belonged to a set. Indeed I think that Irenaeus (and later Tertullian) literally understand that Marcion KNEW of a fourfold arranged gospel and 'chose' one as a mirror to Eve tempting Adam to 'choose' the forbidden fruit. There is an underlying parallel in the logic. The orthodox believer doesn't choose just one gospel but receives all four.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Secret Alias »

But you can't get into the trap of thinking in terms of 'a gospel of Marcion.' Whatever the gospel of Marcion was we don't have that. The canon rather was arranged in such a way to condemn the Marcionites for insisting on a single year ministry for Jesus and so arranged this elaborate nonsense about a 'fourfold arrangement' by John which Marcion disobeyed and 'chose' just one of the four. I don't know if your brain can grasp the context, but I think its important. It's not 'the gospel of Marcion' and 'the gospel of Mark' and this and that but a 'set up' by Irenaeus to condemn a group of believers who developed 'incorrect beliefs' from the implication that Jesus had a one year ministry that ended on the Passover.

The mistake people make is that they don't read the sources CAREFULLY. By the time Irenaeus's emerges we are coming into contact with a sophisticated form of Christianity. Clement is a Christian Platonist. Irenaeus is familiar with Plato and formal pagan education. Christianity has seeped into the highest rungs of the Empire. This is about controlling the message with spurious versions of lost gospels. None of the gospels which get passed on from Irenaeus are ancient.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by MrMacSon »

rgprice wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:07 am I've been reading a lot about Marcion recently. I haven't seen anyone propose this yet, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis.

Marcion's Gospel, the Evangelion, shares a number of features with both Luke and the Gospels of Mark and John. Several of the works I'm reading now propose that the Evangelion either was a proto-Luke or was derived from a proto-Luke, i.e. that Marcion's Gospel is not a redaction of Luke. If anything, Luke took the Evangelion and added a birth intro and post-resurrection ending.

But it has also been noted that the Gospel of John seems to have some relationships with Luke. I could be wrong, but I know of no indications that John is derived from Matthew. Everything that John shares with Matthew can be explained via Mark or Luke (unless I've missed something).

But, John has no birth narrative and is also sharply anti-Jewish. These are both features of Marcionism.

Given that John has no birth narrative it would be unusual that John would have been derived from Luke, which has a birth narrative. But, as far as I can see from the reconstructions of the Evangelion, everything John shares distinctly with Luke is also in the Evangelion.

That doesn't necessarily mean that John is a Marcionite Gospel. It would be strange that it is given that it was adopted by Catholics in opposition to Marcinism. But the primary reason for Catholic use of John was just that they believed it was an eyewitness account. It was the supposition that it was produced by an eyewitness that drove its adoption, not any particular doctrinal claims. Indeed, the introduction of John is highly compatible with Docetism.
Gregory Doudna posted this recently on the virdar blog -
In the recent Boccaccini conference on John the Baptist the paper by Clare Rothschild (4th day)* made a good argument that Luke preserves a birth-origin story of John in circulation among the disciples of John. In that story John is supposedly born to aged elderly parents beyond the age of childrearing (local gossips questioned that story of paternity), however the aged parents do not raise the child themselves but John is raised “in the deserts” (Lk 1:80) ... https://vridar.org/2021/01/25/john-the- ... ent-130866
* which I think would be a reference to [2/3 of the way down the webpage]
Clare K. Rothschild, “John the Baptist in Luke and Acts”
This paper presents John the Baptist in the Gospel of Luke, highlighting and interpreting the differences of his portrait, such as his diet and clothing (Mark 1:6 || Matt 3:4), from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. It also addresses Christian perpetuation of John’s memory in Acts (e.g., 1:22) in particular Acts 19:2-7 in which his baptism is characterized by Paul’s followers as devoid of the holy spirit. All reports contribute to a Lukan revisionist historical program in which John the Baptist and Paul, somewhat remarkably, represent different ends of a single continuum of Christian origins. - ''DAY 4 (Thursday, Jan 14, 2021),'' via http://enochseminar.org/online-2021
Pity there isn't more information available on Rothschild's views.


There's also this
.. Brian Dennert...argu[es] that Matthew presents Jesus to be the continuation and culmination of John's ministry in order to strengthen the claims of Matthew's group and to vilify the opponents of his group. By doing this he encourages Jews yet to align with Matthew's group (particularly those who esteem the Baptist) and to gravitate away from its opponents. The author examines texts roughly contemporaneous with Matthew which reveal respect given to John the Baptist at the time of Matthew's composition ...

an account (the abstract(?)) of a 2015 book by Brian Dennert, John the Baptist and the Jewish Setting of Matthew, Tübingen [Germany]: Mohr Siebeck
There might be more of relevance here http://www.4enoch.org/wiki4/index.php?t ... _(subject)

(eg. perhaps: Tamás Visi, The Chronology of John the Baptist and the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth: A New Approach, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 18 (2020) 3-34.



eta: of course I've addressed John the Baptist not the Gospel of John which hardly mentions John, but I wondered if aspects of use of and a shift from John the Baptist could have influenced what may or or may not have been included in a Gospel named as 'John's'
Last edited by MrMacSon on Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
rgprice
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by rgprice »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:18 pm The point here is that according to the orthodox narrative Papias tells us about 'Mark' and then 'Matthew's correction of Mark' and then implicitly John's contextualization of Mark-Matthew-Luke's 'silence' about the multiyear ministry of Jesus with his 'headings' in the fourth column. But then there is this third column which essentially goes unmentioned until now - Luke. Why is Luke 'third'? The only clue we have is Tertullian's statement that Marcion 'saw' all four gospels - i.e. a collection with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John undoubtedly in their four column 'original' state, but only chose to falsify the Luke column to make his own gospel.

This is very curious because of the Papias testimony of John's relationship to Mark and Matthew. Heresy derives from the verb to choose. It had no inherent 'evil' meaning in Greek. But Marcion, who was the first heretic of any real consequence is condemned for 'choosing' only one of the four gospels which properly belonged to a set. Indeed I think that Irenaeus (and later Tertullian) literally understand that Marcion KNEW of a fourfold arranged gospel and 'chose' one as a mirror to Eve tempting Adam to 'choose' the forbidden fruit. There is an underlying parallel in the logic. The orthodox believer doesn't choose just one gospel but receives all four.
Tertullian & co. were just plain wrong. Marcion wasn't a heretic because there was no orthodoxy during his time. Tertullian calls Marcion a heretic several generations later, in relation to a set of texts that likely didn't even exist when Marcion put out his Gospel. There is no evidence of Luke until after Marcion. Irenaeus was writing after Marcion. Nothing had been established before Marcion. There was no canon, nor even any agreed upon important texts. Roman Christians still mostly used the Jewish scriptures and paid little attention to newer texts. The initial rift with Marcion was his claim that the old scriptures were no longer valid, all you needed was these new texts, Paul and The Gospel. Everyone else then went scrambling. Marcion was initially winning the arguments and gaining converts. In reaction to Marcion the Catholics started putting together their own canon and putting emphasis on the connection to Judaism. That's why Acts has Paul denounce his actual teachings about opposing circumcision and the law. That's why Luke adds on a birth narrative that ties Jesus into Jewish traditions. It was all reactionary to the claim that Jesus was unborn and that he had completely replaced the old scriptures and revealed a new God, who was not the God of the Jews, but rather a God who had never been known before, even by the Jews.

What existed prior to Marcion was a brand of Judaism that embrace a new Jesus redeemer, but still held to Jewish traditions and the interpretation of Jesus through the Jewish scripters. Marcion cast all that out, claimed you no longer needed the Jewish scripters, just this "New Testament." Then, because Marcion was using a Gospel, then the Roman Christians started assembling Gospels to stack up against Marcion and try to claim that his teachings weren't supported even by other accounts of the life of Jesus, because they couldn't use the Jewish scriptures to refute him because he didn't care about them. So essentially the only way to combat Marcionism was by appropriating Paul and using other Gospels.
Secret Alias
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Secret Alias »

Marcion wasn't a heretic because there was no orthodoxy during his time
But I think we have to be careful that we don't end up fighting shadows. This is what I see from a lot of people who try to engage in 'critical' scholarship of the period. The first thing we have to figure out is WHAT THE SOURCES ARE SAYING. It appears to me again that it isn't about 'orthodoxy' vs 'heresy' really but an issue of technology - something like today when people use Google vs a traditional library. I was recently writing a paper on an idea originally established by a pre-Google scholar. It's not even close. He comes up with ONE example of a phenomenon, with Google I come up a thousand examples. It's not even close. He's smarter than me, more knowledgeable. But I have the power Google. I win.

The orthodox were saying effectively - John, the companion of Jesus, the one who lay on his breast ESTABLISHED TECHNOLOGY for us to know the truth - i.e. the fourfold canon (ultimately an Alexandrian innovation from scholars of Homer) and John's chapter headings (chapter headings or 'heads' were also a new innovation) inside of the fourfold gospel which 'calibrate' the original story from one year to four or more years (Irenaeus says = 19 year ministry).

Even though they never say it - Marcion becomes the scapegoat for the 'one year ministry' of Jesus/the synoptic tradition. Even though you get the same knowledge from Mark, Matthew etc the Marcionites were likely screaming it in the streets. So the orthodox set up a scenario where John exists at the beginning of the second century creating this ancient pre-cursor to Google and Marcion misused the technology. The orthodox were essentially:

1. mis-placing Marcion in a era that was convenient for them.

They did so by mis-representing Hegesippus's reference to Marcelina coming to Rome under Anicetus AS Marcion coming to Rome under Anicetus AND Justin being a witness to Marcion's coming. It was a two part mis-representation - Hegesippus (misreading) AND Justin (misrepresentation/forgery). There are some who say that Marcion was apostolic (i.e. before the destruction of the temple). The orthodox created a scenario where John established the canon and Marcion 'chose' a single gospel from the perfect four. That's what's important to see.
Charles Wilson
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Re: Is John based on Marcion's Evangelion?

Post by Charles Wilson »

The thing is, there was more than one Passover represented in the Gospels.

The first is the Symbolic Story of the Passover of 4 BCE, where Immer => "Immar" (Lamb) gets slaughtered in the first few days of Archelaus' reign.
The second was 12 years later when the original Priest - Transvalued as the created "Jesus" character - does get crucified. This is seen in John.

The two stories are telescoped into a single story. The "12 Years" gets Transvalued and is seen in Mark as "Jairus' Daughter" ("She was 12 years old.") and the "Woman with the 12 Year Issue of blood". The very, very curious thing is that the 2 Markan stories cited MUST have been developed AFTER this second Passover. John's Passover was therefore Intentional, either to correct or complete the Gospels.

CW
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