The Ideological Motives And The Thirst For Publicty Of Contemporary "Biblical Scholarship"

A WHILE BACK the Youtube from Religion for Breakfast video "How Scholars Are Reconstructing the Lost Gospel of Marcion" came up and I listened to it starting out with more than a little skepticism.  My initial reaction to it was that the attempt to reconstruct something for which there is so little actual evidence is a pretty pseudo-intellectual enterprise,  though it is typical of the kind of stuff that you can do and maintain a sort of career as a scholar these days.  

A comment the other day that a would-be fashionable, but I'd say stuck in the 00s despiser of Christianity made reminded me of it and I went back to listen to the video again.  It includes a number of the gimmicks of both that scholarly racket and the rampant religious popularizer racket so I thought it would be worth going through it. 

If you go to the bother of listening to the twenty-four minutes at the above link, I'd ask you to go into it noticing some of the things I did about it.

First, notice the premise of the entire thing, that the scholars are, supposedly, reconstructing THE "lost gospel" of Marcion of which there is no direct textual evidence apart from some alleged excerpts contained in some very ancient anti-Marcionite texts.  But of which there is no evidence of how accurate they are about the "gospel" Marcion actually is said to have produced.   

Second, the variant versions of the Gospel of Luke that are depended on by the scholars to come up with their reconstruction have absolutely no claimed connection to Marcion or his edition of Luke.  None.  There isn't even any evidence that would say that whoever wrote out the manuscripts - often only a tiny scrap of paper - which is the basis of these claims had even a knowledge of Marcion or his followers.  

I will note in relation to both of the above that any gospel that Marcion had produced would have, itself, been known only in manuscript copies of the thing and who knows how many variants that manuscript tradition produced? 

Third, some of these fragments may not be even be parts of intended copies of a Gospel, without more of the original that they are fragments of, there is no way to know if they were copies of an existing manuscript of the Gospel, maybe fragments given from memory as a part of an entirely different text or context, etc.  There isn't even any way to know if some of them were trying to quote from a manuscript of a Gospel or if they were paraphrasing what they remembered hearing.   The video makes a big deal over the variant in whether the paralytic was let down on a bed or a mat but without accounting for what the provenances of the use of those two words.  It is impossible to know that and what you can't know you can't draw reliable conclusions from.

Fourth, notice how the Youtuber  claims that variants in what the cannonical Gospel of Luke says and what Tertullian and some of the other fragments (which may or may not be related to Marcion's "gospel")

suggest that variations of Marcion's gospel are not the result of his edits they may actually reflect an alternate version of Luke that was circulating during his lifetime maybe even an older version

Notice how much work the words "suggest" and "may" are doing in that passage.  Well, why can't the same things suggest that Marcion's gospel was exactly what the his far more nearly contemporary opponents said they were instead of professionally invested 21st century scholars and Youtube hucksters on the make say they were?   Why doesn't it suggest that Marcion's gospel was exactly what they said back then, a more recent distortion of an older text?   That Luke as we have it now is a product of a local consensus reading of a number of variant manuscripts (as, in fact, just about all ancient texts published in later editions were at that time as they are now) lends absolutely nothing to the ideologically or professionally motivated claims that Marcion was more authentic a representation of the author of Luke's Gospel.   I find absolutely no reason to believe that the author of Luke's Gospel believed Jesus believed in a different God than Moses or the Prophets did. 

That the Youtuber says he relied heavily on one of the would-be reconstructionists of the Marcion version of Luke to make a Youtube on a topic he wasn't especially well versed on is a good reason that you should take everything said as representing that ideological-professionally interested POV.   Unfortunately, and this is something I only came to realize when I read the unfiltered thinking of many a supposedly educated internet using population, most even allegedly educated People will watch the movie and not ever fact check its claims or look at the actual background, especially checking out the opponents to the favored point of view, they won't even think critically about what's being claimed in it. 

In his book The Real Jesus, ripping the "Historical Jesus" industry to shreds, one of the most valid facts that Luke Timothy Johnson gave to back up his arguments was that the "Historical Jesus" scholars hadn't come up with anything like a consensus agreement on "The Historical Jesus" but came up with wildly variant and impossible to reconcile "Historical Jesuses."   The same is likey as true of "The Gospel of Marcion" or "Q" or "The Community of "Q" or "John" or any of the other imaginary 2000 years on mining operations of these scholars and, in so many cases, entirely bogus "scholars" on the make.   You can find that kind of junk all over the place, most of it having more in common with Dan Brown than with any legitimate scholarship.  Johnson also pointed out that none of the "historical Jesuses" that the scholars constructed was as useful for moral guidance, spiritual uses or even intellectual interest as the views of Jesus in the cannonical Gospels and, lest anyone forget, the Epistles, Acts and even (I point out with hesitancy due to its promiscuous and flagrant abuse) Revelation.

I am afraid that in total online popularization of scholarship is making more People less informed and more credulous.   That's especially true when there is a veneer of scientific scholarship over the soggy cardboard it's made of. 

I have my own bottom line.  Anything that detracts from the Jesus who taught the Golden Rule, that what we do to the least among us we do to God, to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that only those without sin can throw the first stone, etc.  is not only useless, it is the kind of Jesus that will be most of use to a VD Vance or Paula White or the rest of the Trumpzis.   I think the Historical Jesus-New Testament revisionist industry is more help to them than could have been imagined in the worst nightmares of the late Robert Funk or the late John Spong.  Only I doubt they ever had enough humility or self-questioning to have those nightmares.