Staging Early Christianity 

Agreed, very thought provoking interchange

The 4th Gospel was not written by a disciple or anyone who knew a disciple. It's a 2nd Century work, that was multiply redacted before it got to its canonical form. The prologue probably did not originally belong to the Gospels but was separately composed and added the the Gospel. Much of the 4th Gospel shows signs of having been reworked from an originally Marcionite version.

@@Ken_Scaletta I think you misunderstood me as I am in complete agreement that it's 2nd century CE but I think the entire work is 2nd century CE.

History Valley ! I love your channel too!

@@History-Valley Did you mean John the Elder instead of the Apostle? I guess I thought you meant Zebedee. A John called the Presbyter is a strong possibility but it looks like it's been reworked from a Marcionite or at least Gnostic text (Jesus distances himself from Judaism, from his mother and from the Jewish God). Even THAT stage looks like it was worked from a Signs Gospel and the synoptic traditions. I used to think he knew Luke, but now I think (from the work of scholars like Bilby, Vinzent and Litwa) that what looks like John is getting from Luke might be from Marcion's Euaggelion. I'm a fan of your channel, btw. Long time sub.

J D Audlin takes the old Latin prologue very seriously. He punctuates and translates the Latin differently. As a result, his reading differs radically from Vinzent’s. It has the huge advantage of dovetailing with other ancient witnesses. It does not place Marcion and John in direct relation. It is clear, however, that Marcion at some point came to Papias - possibly in Hierapolis, to seek his favor. He did not get it, but was expelled, because he suggested contrary matters (Latin: contraria). I wonder if this incident with Papias was the source of the first of two (2) explusions of Marcion from the mainline church…first from Hierapolis, and then later, from Rome. To me, Audlins punctuation seems more plausible than that of Vinzent. Vinzent’s reading creates too many problems. It seems to me that Vinzent must effectively accuse.Tertullian of lying or of being ignorant when Tertullian states that ‘the facts of Christendom’ were published a century before Marcion published his gospel - a gospel that was published AFTER Marcion in a letter initially had expressed that he was in agreement with the position of those to whom Tertullian traces his own ancient tradition about the writings called ‘gospels’.

Kind of. I don't think "bishop" had quite the same authoritative meaning it had later, but the Greek word that became "bishop" was "episkopos" and that is used in the NT (in Acts and in pastoral epistles) and in very early writings of the Apostolic Fathers as some kind of official leaders within the early church. It's that usage that the later more formalized and hierarchical bishops derive from.

I think it most likely that the the encounter with Marcion happened in the early 2nd century, during the reign of Hadrian, and that the encounter was with Papias of Hierapolis rather then John the presbyter. It may have been in Marcion’s youth, and may have been the first of two recorded occasions where he was expelled from communion, long before he published his gospel and accompanying Antitheses. James D Audlin’s punctuation and translation of the old Latin prologue to John supports that scenario, and it also has the advantage of dovetailing with the ancient witnesses that say that John [the presbyter?] penned the gospel attributed to the apostle, and it dovetails beautifully with the statement in the Panarion of Epiphanius concerning Marcion having been rejected by the students of the disciples of apostles. Figures like Polycarp and Papias fut that description, but not their senior, John the Presbyter, who was a gospel-author and a non-apostolic disciple and hearer of Jesus in the flesh - if we take Papias on his word in this instance also. (Continued below)

(…continued and updated) Here is Audlins punctuation of the old Latin prologue to the gospel of John, and his English translation: Evangelium Iohannis manifestum et datum est ecclesiis ab Iohanne adhuc in corpore constituto; sicut Papias nomine, Hieropolitanus, discipulus Johannis carus, in Exotericis, id est in extremis quinque libris retulit; descripsit vero evangelium dictante Iohanne recte verum. Marcion hæreticus cum ab eo fuisset improbatus eo quod contraria sentiebat, abiectus est. A Johanne is vero scripta vel epistolas ad eum pertulerat a fratribus {missas} qui in Ponto fuerunt. “The Gospel of John was published and given to the churches by John [the Presbyter] when he was still in the flesh; so recalled Papias, a beloved disciple of John named [by him as the bishop] of Hierapolis, in Exotericis [Explanations], that is, in the last of [Papias’s] five books: ‘John in fact wrote the gospel down faithfully from the correct truth dictated to him.’ Marcion, the heretic, when he had been rejected by him (Papias) because he (Marcion) had suggested contrary matters, was expelled. He (Marcion) had brought to him (Papias), {sent} from the brothers who were in Pontus, the writings and letters by John.” Note that the Latin word ‘contraria’ is straightforwardly translated as ‘contrary matters’ by Audlin. In context it means matters contrary to the Johannine truth - a truth that was loved by Papias. A truth that is expressed in the letters by John, in contrast to those who would deny that Jesus was (and still is) the Messiah, having been sent forth by the God the Father. I can easily imagine a heated dispute between a young Marcion and Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis, over the correct interpretation of 1 John 2.19-23. That is if Audlin’s punctuation of the Latin is correct and Marcion had indeed brought with him copies of ancient letters penned by John the presbyter, that had been kept in Pontus. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out, that it might be plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and know that no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also.” The same Latin word (contraria ~ contrary matters in the above scenario), takes on a very different meaning in Vinzent’s radically different punctuation and translation, is interpreted by him as ‘Antitheses’ - a hermeneutic move I think is hard to justify. Contraria is not the same title or description that Tertullian uses for Marcion’s work. Tertullian at first characterized the work as ‘opus ex contrarietatum oppositionibus’ and subsequently referenced by it’s title: ‘Antitheses’. The Latin word in the Papias fragment which Vinzent interprets as ‘Antitheses’ is ‘contraria’. This word is used by Tertullian four times in book IV (a book where Tertullian is referencing the Antitheses of Marcion directly), simply to mean ‘contrary’. Not a single time is it used with reference to the work entitled Antitheses, authored by Marcion. In book V it is used another five times - again, never as a shorthand for Marcion’s Antitheses. I would postulate boldly that ‘contraria’ only references the Antitheses in the mind of a scholar who is looking for evidence in favor of a pre-formed hypothesis.

@@brianpetruska1825 without his text it so hard to say!

Peter never wrote anything. He was illiterate and only knew Aramaic.

@@Ken_Scaletta know him personally did you?

Papias says Mark wrote down some things that Peter told him (but out of sequence) so Peter's literacy is not relevant in any event.

@@brianpetruska1825 Mark's Gospel is composed in literary Greek and exquisitely ordered, not only chronologically but it uses Greek literary structures like chiasm and intercalations ("Markan sandwiches") which cannot arise from natural speech. It also uses Hellenistic literary tropes and several scholars (noatably Brodie) have shown that Mark's narrative is largely constructed from the Elijah/Elisha cycle. The Passion is constructed almost entirely from OT passages, especially Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. There is no possible way that Mark could have come from a memoir or be a translation of verbatim recollections. Mark. I don't know what in Mark even COULD have come from peter since Mark is extremely hostile to Peter and denies him any witness to the resurrection. Peter is a coward who runs away and is given no redemption by Mark. . Nothing connects Canonical Mark to Peter but Irenaeus' incorrect identification of Canonical Mark as the memoir supposedly dictated by Peter to an emanuensis called Mark. If such a writing ever existed, it's gone now. We have no idea what Peter taught or thought about Jesus. I think Pauline Christianity really had no historical connections back to disciples and had to fabricate them. I don't think the Jerusalem Apostles ever accepted Paul's revelations or even accepted his money.

@@kuettler that's a great question! I have written on this with respect to the three-fold ecclesial hierarchy. The answer is yes on that front.

​@@Patristicajust wondering what your thoughts on Jesus not existing at all but in fact Jesus was a reference to the magic mushroom 🍄. I've been working on this topic for the last decade and it seems the evidence is overwhelming

@@mcosu1 haha. Actually no. The proof is very clear. It's telling that you aren't interested in the truth. Just some made up nonsense. Why, when offered an actual explanation that makes sense do you deride it?

@@mcosu1 anybody that claims to have a lot of experience with mushrooms and christ but still thinks Jesus was a man has clearly not met either one. Lol.

@@kuettler scientific term 😜

It's like you didn't listen to Markus as he keeps qualifying his own statements.

@@TheDanEdwards I listened and am not satisfied. It was more of a CYA. I very much got the same mystical vibe you get when you listen to that one guy who claims the Middle Ages were actually made up and Jesus was born in 1200. He has a delightful story explaining how the medieval monks doctored all these documents to cover it up. It’s a less extravagant version of the same thing to claim Paul’s letters and the Gospels are all fake, but that you know what the original starting point was. Similar to scholars who claim to have reconstructed Q, which is actually a far more modest claim but again it’s fundamentally just made up.

​@@JoseGomez-n4kwhat's something that you would expect to see if the staging hypothesis is true?

@@simonodowd2119 Many things COULD be true - we can craft infinite possible scenarios for the creation of the NT. Nevertheless we have to ask ourselves what the manuscript evidence tells us. The further afield we get into constructing airy castles in the air, the less likely they are true. And indeed the evidence such as Dead Sea Scrolls suggests in the case of the OT a much more conservative estimate to scribal errors and interpolation is correct. That’s not to say there isn’t some interpolations or some errors. Wholesale planned fraud seems much less plausible unless direct evidence is found to support it

@@simonodowd2119 So to answer your question, we need to find something that suggests such an intentional and planned fraud. Such as a letter bemoaning how Paul supports Marcion and what are we to do about that!

@@hermanhale9258 Because he’s a Catholic scholar, and it’s in honor of the original Catholic scholars the monks who worked in closets

@@JoseGomez-n4k Oh!

@@hermanhale9258 I can't afford a big house with 12 rooms and we lack storage.