Is Marcions Gospel First? - Dr. Markus Vinzent Vs. Dr. Dennis MacDonald 

Wow What a privilege to listen to such erudition on the synoptic problem - I feel like I'm in 1-on-1 session with an Oxford or Harvard professor.

This was extremely high quality. Thank you for gifting us with these excellent interactions, Jacob. Do you think part 2 will still happen?

This was fun. Excited for part 2.

very cool to see Dr Dennis engaging with literally everyone. His inclusion into the youtube and online community in general is very welcomed

Great discussion! Social Identity Theory was introduced into biblical studies by my PhD supervisor Philip Esler, who has an extensive bibliography. He is a New Testament specialist, but he dabbled in patristics a little by writing an article on social identity in 1 Clement.

59:00 That argument works for the historical Jesus question as well, exactly. Namely, that wherever the opinions lie, an opinion that undoes entire careers, both academically and financially, is aggressively ridiculed and shunned, regardless of its merits.

45:00 Markus hasn’t even concluded his well constructed, on-the-spot analogy countering Dennis’ commentary about social identity theory…and Dennis’s response to it is “the analogy doesn’t work for me.” I’m sorry, what??? And with no explanation of why this is the case, nor a concession that maybe Markus has made a point that he himself hasn’t considered enough. That’s not an appropriate response, let alone an adequate one.

I'm glad you're speaking close to the mic, Jacob; and not trailing off when you speak, now. I think this is a very interesting topic, and I'm glad the two interviewees are congenial. I feel like they didn't get very deep into what convinces them one way or another here - i.e. what their differences were. I look forward to that; although background is important too. I lean toward the Marcion POV, since the NT has many decidedly un-Jewish POVs in it, and a Demiurge-type philosophy fits very well with such a wholesale revision of what was originally a fairly Jewish POV.

It seems that Dr. Vinzent is claiming that the canonical gospel writers were commissioned by 2nd century Church leaders to produce stories depicting the life of Jesus to be read during church services. The audiences for these gospels differed from each other. For example, Matthew was commissioned to write a biography of Jesus for Torah believing Jews who were moving toward Christianity, whereas Mark and Luke were writing for a Gentile congregation. The authors of these gospels were schooled in Greek literature in addition to being aware of the Septuagint, consequently they drew from this literature when composing their stories about Jesus. Vinzent's claim (if this is his claim) makes a great deal of sense to me. It's also possible that these Church leaders commissioned these gospels to counter the Marcion gospel which was being read in church meetings because the Marcion gospel claimed that a new, better god was the father of Jesus and the Jewish god of the Torah, although he created the world, was evil.

This is so exciting!

One argument against the hypothesis that the authors of the canonical gospels wrote at the same time is how the expectation of the second coming is immanent in Mark, delayed in Matthew, Luke and John. In fact John’s eschatology is mostly realized. Scholars generally account for the expected delay in terms of the relative lateness of the date of authorship i.e. John is later than Luke and Matthew which are later than Mark. If they were all written at the same time, how do we account for the expected delays?

So with the idea of Marcion being the first gospel, was this document still conceived as a series with the canonical book of Acts or did a later writer expand Marcion as well as adding Acts? Also this was a nice discussion. Pleasant gentlemen discussing the big questions. Glad to be introduced to the German scholar through this channel.

The four articles I've published in the Journal of Open Humanities Data and eight related datasets in the Harvard Dataverse, normalizing all past published editions of Marcion's Gospel in Greek, should be the basis for any serious, future scientific/critical assessment of Marcion's Gospel and its role in the development and editing of early Gospel strata.

I love Dr. Vinzent's comment about FBI persecution! He is so right!

Dennis and Markus seem to agree on a lot but they do have serious disagreements. Still, it's infuriating for me to find out they can't get notice in but do get excommunicated by the legacy schools of New Testament scholarship which seem to have got stuck in a roundabout of circular arguing mostly boilable down to two sides fighting, each saying "We're right and you're wrong." There is so much more diversity of thought outside the academy than within it.

Thank You🍃🍊🍃🪔🍃🍊🍃

Finally, thanks Jacob for getting these two together. Surprised given the mutual friendships they share they have never met before. Though I must say it was kind if disappointing the discussion didn't get much past them each stating their views and the views of other with very little debate. Though knowing MacDonald he's as entrenched in his views as the people he claims are too entrenched. Looking forward to a part 2 IF it has some actual debate. I will say this was eye opening about MacDonald in a couple ways. I had never heard him acknowledge or give a view on Marcion's gospel before and his views on Q were a little surprising. He seems in his other interviews so adament a defender of Q but I never heard him explain his view of what Q is, is not what the general consensus believes Q to be. This is confusing and so I wish he would stop referring to it as Q if that's not what he really means.

Dennis' methodology is completely devoid of external considerations. It's all subjective determinations on priority and "primitivity". I much prefer Dr Vinzents method of utilizing Patristic quotations and reception among the communities where these gospels we're supposedly composed. And it really saddens me that Dr MacDonald is STILL not taking Marcion seriously given what we know about him

58:36 Boy Howdy! Like Dr. Robert M. Price has said, "I want to be proven wrong" - that attitude dismantles dogma!

Had been looking forward to this !

Very interesting! Have to go with Markus on this, given we have marcion and the work mark Bilby has done!

Thanks Jacob, Dennis and Markus. I want to see Dennis and Jack Bull in a video. Considering they are so far apart it would be quite challenging for Dennis and would be a great discussion.

Thanks!

Dennis MacDonald referred to the *"discovery"* of Marcion's Gospel. Does he mean the reconstruction, or has a manuscript been discovered? I have found plenty on the former, but nothing on the latter. One would think the discovery of a manuscript would cause a stir.

This is great stuff.

58:06 This is why scholars need their own websites so they can publish their own papers to the masses. Then discourses like this can be moderated on RU-vid bypassing the middleman.

I find any claims of order based upon which statements are "more primitive" to be highly dubious. This seems to assume that christianity developed as a homogeneous ideology at any given point in time, and new concepts and interpretations were universally accepted or rejected, and propagated instantly among the adherents. We have massive evidence to the contrary. We would expect substantial differences on geography alone, as we have pockets of christianity all over the Mediterranean world with substantial time delays for even direct messages, let alone natural message filtering and mutation as it meanders along various social groups. We have people with vastly different backgrounds before they were introduced to christianity, with various sects of Judaism, Hellenism, or other religions in the area, who incorporated their pre-existing concepts with their new religious ideas. We have varying works to draw on, mostly 2nd century but sometimes earlier, and a lack of a unifying narrative before the gospels were actually produced. And of course we had competing gospels, though they might all have been later. That would be sufficient, but we also KNEW of some of those groups. We have docetists, Marcionites, Jewish christians, gnostics, and Pauline branches at a minimum. We had adoptionists, dualists, Arians (who weren't named as such until the 3rd century but they never called themselves that), modalists, and trinitarians (though the concept of the trinity wasn't fully developed until much later). This was a brand new religion, and it's absurd to expect everyone to be on the same page, when they certainly aren't 2000 years later. I have no trouble conceiving of a highy-ideological writer, such as Matthew and John appeared to be, to be introduced to a "less primitive" concept and revert it to a "more primitive" concept that fit their own ideologies. They were in fact making a point, or there wouldn't have been more than one gospel. For that matter, most of the analyses I've seen of the synoptic problem seem to assume that the writers were trying to be accurate, either to history or to at least their sources. But we have no reason to believe that. Matthew certainly wanted to preach, and John certainly wanted to be defiant. Luke might have cared about being true to his sources, but also has his own obvious agenda against the rich. Mark isn't clearly and obviously fiction, but he drops a lot of clues that seem to indicate that. I find no compelling reason for Q and certainly not Papias. I would argue that Papias does not know of Judas beyond what was available in Mark and any oral stories that might have developed out of Mark. His story of Judas completely contradicts both Matthew and Acts. Any difficulty we have in determining whether Luke copied Matthew or Matthew copied Luke can be attributed to later scribal tradition of harmonization, mistakes, and editing for theological reasons. Any case where Matthew or Luke had the other's gospel makes Q entirely superfluous, so them being used in tandem is possible, but not parsimonious. I have a LOT of trouble placing the canonicals after Marcion. We have to move Ignatius's death well past 108 CE, and we have to have the gospels written in short order to be available for Justin Martyr in 155 CE. It's strictly possible, but not at all plausible. It's fun to assume the early church had fabricated a case against Marcion, but there's no evidence to suggest that they had.

Justin Martyr quotes everything he found about Jesus. Yet, he only mentions 2 verses from Luke 1:35, and 1:38 both of which are in the Infancy Gospel of James, c 140 CE. He knows nothing of John's gospel first quoted by Theophilus Patriarch of Antioch, 169-182.

Dennis comes to his ideas as if the gospels were created organically. Another words the different writers didn't have a common cause. Whereas Markus comes from an idea that a small creatively inbred group. I can see that idea as being plausible. This small group worked in creating a religion or at least an epic story like homer had became, another words it was planned. Therefore according to the schooling of the time in creating story telling, the three stores would vary in ways to make them believable. If they didn't vary then it wouldn't appear as separate testimonies. All probably paid by big bucks that Rome could afford, and in the very courtyard of the Flavins along with Flavius Josephus. Of course the conical gospels were continuing to be redacted even after that time.

Thumbs down for the crap moderator not lifting a finger. Why can't these types stick to the TOPIC of the video? I listened for over an hour and Marcion was barely mentioned. What a waster of time. I came to lhear about marcion and heard about the synoptics, acts and just about everything BUT Marcion.

Can any of the honoured scholars Tell me, why a naked child ist being together with Jesus when bound in Olive Garden by Roman soldiers?(mk.14,51)???

Jacob, perhaps it would be better to first define the problem to orient your audience before your guests present possible solutions.

"I'm an atheist" For a moment we thought he was an intelligent guy.

Both MacDonald and Vinzent are fringe schloars 😅.

Long story short, no