Haran

Yuri, respectfully, you seem to reject that Marcion adopted Luke's gospel. I've noticed that this seems to be part of your TC theories as well. In light of the evidence from early church fathers, why do you reject that Marcion adopted and then chopped up the gospel of Luke?

Thanks

Yuri Kuchinsky

Haran,

My basic assumption is that the earliest gospel was rather short, and that the later editions were expanded with more material. This shouldn't really be so controversial, since this is the same assumption that underlies the mainstream 2ST. After all, according to 2ST, Mk was the earliest gospel (being relatively short), and then it was expanded with more material (resulting in Mt and Lk).

Thus, when I see Marcion being accused of "truncating" his gospel, that he called "Evangelicon", I get a strong suspicion that it was in fact the Catholic editors who were expanding theirs instead.

I can well accept that Marcion made some changes to his gospel to suit his own ideological preferences, but I don't really see how these changes could have been so far-reaching. He may have changed a few key passages here and there, but I don't really see him making any huge revisions across the board. There just wasn't any real need for him to do so. Thus, in my opinion, Marcion's gospel was in fact a lot closer to the early forms of the gospel, compared to what his opponents later had under the name of "Luke".

And the same reasoning basically applies to the epistles, that are now know as the epistles of Paul.

All the best,

Yuri.