stephan huller

Professor Markus Vinzent hasn't blogged in a while at his site. His latest entry is quite provocative though:

tanya

Thank you for the link to Vinzent's web site.

Neither of you provided the essential link to the Marcionist text, from which Vinzent's analysis has been derived, a modification, as he has noted, of a comparable chart contained within a recently submitted doctoral thesis from Tubingen, by Timothy Henderson.

Absent Melissa Cutler's excellent travail, I would have had no idea what the two of you were rambling on about.

Vinzent proposes, in harmony with, (despite failing to acknowledge), 19th century author, Charles B. Waite, (a federal judge from Illinois, appointed by President Lincoln to serve in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA), that Marcion's Evangelion (gospel) precedes, rather than follows, Luke, and the other gospels.

I find this idea, both appealing, and believable, but, I do have a couple of questions:

a. Can the same conclusion be drawn, with respect to the Apostolicon (epistles) written ostensibly to Galatians and Romans? Were those two components of Marcion's original bible also published separately, after their inclusion as components of Marcion's text? In plain English, was Marcion the source for "Paul's" epistles, as Vinzent proposes for the gospels? If not, then, Vinzent's (and Waite's) idea that Marcion's text precedes genesis of the gospels loses some of its appeal.

b. Was Charles B. Waite a Mormon? This is not unimportant in view of the forthcoming presidential election in USA. The situation may not be well understood, here at BC&H, but the USA was embroiled in a civil war, and the mormons were hostile to the federal government, hence, sympathetic to the confederacy. They ran the federal judges out of town, and Lincoln appointed Charles B. Waite to replace one of them. Here is the comment of a Colonel in the USA military (i.e. a northerner), not exactly unbiased: