Chapter 8 is where we finally get into the data, and the supposed evidence for many of the claims that are made throughout Christ Before Jesus. Since many of the claims made through the book rely on these results, it becomes important to see if they check out. And as a note, there are claims that we will be skipping over in this chapter, as they are more fully developed elsewhere, and thus we will look at them then.
Britt and Wingo begin with what they say may be the most important result in their analyses. It’s a result they claim is also backed by textual evidence and “undermines the mainstream dating of almost all New Testament texts.”
The claim they are attempting to support is that Marcion’s gospel, the Evangelion, predated the Gospel of Luke, and that the author of Acts in fact had added material to the Evangelion, and in turn, created the Gospel of Luke. This would mean that Luke and Acts could not predate 144 AD.
They go as far as saying that their stylometric analysis definitively proves this claim. But how does their analysis really stand up? As we previously discussed, the methodology they are using is shaky at best, but we will still dive into it.
Before we begin though, we already have a few issues. First, their “Exhibit 1” is a heavily cropped image, which deletes most of the important data from the graph. In many ways, this makes the evidence they provide largely useless.
In order to try to get a glimpse of their full analysis, I ran the data through Stylo myself. To try to replicate their results, I ran it according to their methodology as covered previously. I began with Eder’s Simple, yet the results didn’t match. I moved to Eder’s Delta, which got closer, but still differed. From there, I ran the data with every distance measure, seeing if one replicated “Exhibit 1.” None did.
That in itself should invalidate their analysis, as it’s not possible to replicate. By them cropping their image, and removing the relevant data, which would tell us how they ran the data, they destroy the possibility to check their work. More so though, they do not tell us even what texts they ran. As far as we can tell by looking at their graph, they ran Acts, Luke, and Mark.
To be thorough, I ran everything from all the Gospels and Acts, to just Acts, Luke and Mark. Nothing I ran matched. So we are left with just their incomplete analysis, and the task of seeing if that perhaps tells us anything that would change as much as they claim.
It doesn’t. Nor could it, as we are missing around half of the relevant chapters here. The issue here is that they make the argument that if Acts and Luke were written by the same person, we wouldn’t expect to see a separation between the two. Yet, they don’t even show for sure that there is a clear separation as they only show half of the chapters from either book.
If we look at the five graphs above, we see more mixing of the two. But we also see a wide range of differences between each. We also see that the graphs are a bit hectic, and that simply removing one book can change the connection between individual chapters in the remaining books.
The bigger issue though is that their main claim here isn’t even supported. They state Luke 1-4 and Luke 24 are connected with Acts, and not with Luke. The conclusion they make is that this demonstrates that these chapters must have been added, or heavily edited, by the writer of Acts. Thus, they aren’t original to Luke.
Their graph doesn’t show this though. Yes, Luke 3 is kind of situated with a couple of chapters of Acts, but it’s also in a similar position to Mark 16. Luke 1, 2, 4, and 24 though, are grouped more with the other chapters of Luke that are displayed. In fact, in this bunching, we only have one chapter from Acts being present. Using their logic, this would suggest that that chapter was written by the author of Luke. Which just so happens to be the mainstream position, as the consensus is that every chapter of Acts was written by the author of Luke.
Now for the biggest issue. Britt and Wingo have already decided that Marcion’s Evangelion is the original text here. They have already made a conclusion, and they simply read the data as if it supports their conclusion. In doing so, they also ignore every other possibility. They simply claim that Evangelion has to be the “original publication of the content in most of Luke.”
Before we move on though, it should be noted that Marcion never titled the gospel he used. It was often just called the Gospel of the Lord, or simply, the Gospel. While I’ve been calling it the Evangelion, following Britt and Wingo here, the term evangelion means good news, or gospel. Calling it the Evangelion is technically incorrect, because it would be akin to saying the Gospel, which in context makes little sense as it doesn’t specify what gospel is being referenced. But as Britt and Wingo refer to Marcion’s gospel as such, I will continue using that same naming convention. Just be aware that technically, it’s incorrect.
Moving back to their argument, even if we assume the data states what they claim, that doesn’t equate to Marcion’s Evangelion being the original. This is an either/or fallacy. There are other options. Such as, Marcion’s Evangelion was an edit of Luke, or that both Luke and the Evangelion are built upon a proto-Luke. Or that they both used the same sources.
To complicate things further, Britt’s and Wingo’s argument here, that Luke and Acts had to have been written after 144 AD, relies on the assumption that Marcion wrote the Evangelion. Yet, if we jump forward, their own analysis suggests that the Evangelion was a composite work in itself, written by multiple authors, and only later compiled together. This would suggest that the creation of the Evangelion had to have occurred prior to 144 AD.
Now, some may be wondering, well this is chapter 8 in their book, maybe the authors already demonstrated that Marcion wrote the Evangelion? The answer is no. They’ve made the claim in their prior chapters, but no evidence has been provided. We will dive into this more in-depth when we cover those chapters, but suffice to say, there is no reason to think Marcion wrote the gospel that he used.
In order to try to bolster their argument for a later dating, Britt and Wingo then state that in Marcion’s version of Luke 24:9, we see the phrase “Redemption of Israel,” which is the same phrase seen on Bar Kokhba coins that were minted in the 130s. And since, as they claim, this phrase is not seen on any coins or in slogans from around the time of the First Jewish War, it must mean that the Evangelion, and thus Luke, were written after Bar Kokhba’s revolt.
Almost nothing in that argument is true though. Starting with Marcion’s version of Luke 24:9, it reads, “And returned from the sepulcher, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.” This is exactly how the Gospel of Luke, 24:9 reads as well. There is no change. Looking through reconstructions of Marcion’s Gospel, the phrase Redemption of Israel never appears.
Later on, we will dive into this much more, but it’s important to note here that we don’t have Marcion’s Gospel. No manuscript of it exists. What we have are quotations from it by critics. This is just something we need to keep in mind. For our purposes, I am relying on Dieter T Roth’s and Jason BeDuhn’s reconstructions of Marcion’s Gospel. Roth’s work, “The Text of Marcion’s Gospel,” was the first reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel that I was introduced to while in college, and for that reason, it’s the one I personally go to. However, Britt and Wingo recommend BeDuhn’s book, “The First New Testament,” so to be as fair as possible, I’m also consulting that work as well.
In neither case though, does the phrase, “Redemption of Israel,” appear. Making matters worse, the phrase “Redemption of Israel,” is also taken out of context when applied to the Bar Kokhba coins. Before we even begin though, if we turn to page 19 of the Handbook of Biblical Numismatics, as Britt and Wingo cite for their claim, we see a map of the Hasmonean Dynasty. This is from 134-76 BCE. There isn’t a single coin on the page.
Now, we can find the coins on page 67, but this is just sloppy citations. This sloppiness is something we’ve seen on quite a few occasions now. But let’s look at the coins.
What some of the coins say is, “Year One of the Redemption of Israel.” This is just used for the first year of the war. In the second year, coins were inscribed with, “Year Two of the Freedom of Israel.” This was followed by, “For the Freedom of Jerusalem.”
So technically, the phrase, “Redemption of Israel,” is inscribed on some of the coins, but that is only the second half of the phrase. Britt and Wingo purposely ignored the first half of the phrase. This is not the only thing they ignored in their own source.
They claim that this slogan, which again does not show up in Marcion’s version of Luke 24:9, is not used around the time of the First Jewish War. If we flip to page 53 of their source though, we see that during the First Jewish War, coins were minted with the phrase, “For the Redemption of Zion.”
One could argue that the phrase isn’t an exact match, but the idea is the same. In both cases, what is being promoted is redemption for Jerusalem, and in turn, for all of Israel. Clearly both are building from the same framework here. Both are calling out to the idea of redemption for Israel, a view in which the whole Messianic idea centered around. Nonetheless, the argument is irrelevant as Marcion’s Gospel never uses the phrase, “Redemption of Israel.” Again, what this all shows is just overall sloppiness.
With this claim failing, much of what follows is based on the assumption that they already made their case, and thus doesn’t even get off the ground. But there are a few points that we can look at. For instance, they argue that even though Matthew isn’t shown in the graph they presented, we should just take their word that it “acted similarly to other New Testament texts that show up in the second century.”
They use this claim to argue that Matthew also copied from the Evangelion, but the argument here really boils down to, trust me. But they just failed to show that Luke or Acts are second-century texts. Their argument fully collapsed. To be fair, if we look at the graphs above, we do see the chapters of Matthew being intertwined with Mark and Luke. But this is what we would expect if the consensus view is correct. If Matthew and Luke copied from Mark, and also have some other shared tradition, of course there is going to be some mixing.
This would not have any bearing on their dating though, nor could it tell us which work came first. Stylometry here can only tell us that they are related. Which is something everyone agrees with here.
Britt and Wingo do claim here that they provided evidence elsewhere in the book that Matthew copied from Evangelion, and this supposedly only confirms such. But no, they haven’t. We will get into that later, but most of their arguments were simply stating a position, and then claiming it was true. Or stating that their stylometry analysis proves it. At best though, all this would show is that there is some stylistic similarity between the two.
The authors take this a step further by claiming that Matthew also took from Marcion’s Antitheses. Yet, their entire argument here begins with the conclusion that Marcion’s work predates Matthew, and thus the similarity between them is because Matthew copied from Marcion.
In this case, they cite Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” This is a famous verse. Now, in order to show that Matthew took this from Marcion, he cites the third or fourth century work, Dialogue of Adamantius, as well as the fourth or fifth century apologist, Isidore of Pelusium, (as well as “others”) who say that Marcion reversed this phrase.
Now, we don’t have a manuscript of Marcion’s Antithesis; it’s classified as a lost work. What we can gather about it is that it’s a commentary on New Testament, or Christian texts. And even then, we don’t really know.
When it comes to Marcion’s Antithesis, what we know really comes from Tertullian’s books 1 and 2 of “Against Marcion,” as well as the aforementioned Dialogue of Adamantius, and “Acta Archelai” by Hegemonius.
Most likely, the text was something compiled over time, and served almost like a reference for countering arguments. It’s something that grew as new challenges arose. A big aim of it was to contrast Jesus with Hebrew prophets, and really show that Jesus came from another father, apart from the Jewish God. And much of this was done through contrasting passages from Christian scripture, or what they considered to be Christian scripture, and the Old Testament.
These are hard and fast rules though. For instance, it seems at times it really only focused on an Old Testament passage, and as I mentioned above, it seemed to be a commentary of sorts.
So building too much of an argument off Marcion’s Antithesis isn’t wise as we don’t know much about it. And as you may have noticed, Isidore of Pelusium wasn’t mentioned in the sources used to really look at this Marcion work.
This once again points to the sloppiness of Britt’s and Wingo’s research here. Neither Adamantius or Isidore state that Marcion’s Antithesis contains this passage. Adamantius Dialogue 2:18 reads:
[Marcus the Marcionite:] The Judaists wrote this, i.e. “I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” However, Christ didn’t say that, but “I came not to fulfill the law but to abolish it.”
Adamantius doesn’t point to any text, but Isidore does. You can find his work in “Patrologia Graeca 78, where this particular letter is 371, and was sent to Pansophius. There he states:
“If the advocate of Marcion promotes blasphemy, take up and read their so-called Gospel, and you will immediately find its absurdity in the opening passages. For they have cut out the actual genealogy that leads down to Christ from David and Abraham.
And proceeding a little further, you will see another instance of their malice. For they have altered the Lord’s words: “I did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets”, and changed it to: ‘Do you think that I have come to fulfil the Law or the Prophets? I have come to abolish, and not to fulfil.’
From this, you will understand how they fabricate enmity between the two Testaments, having contrived to make Christ a stranger to the Law.”
What Isidore tells us then is that the view was that Marcion, or those within his group, changed the text. This does cause some issues. First and foremost, this passage from Matthew has no equivalent in Luke, and thus, if it is truly found in Marcion’s Gospel, it means we have something we don’t expect.
The consensus view among scholars is that Marcion’s Gospel is an edit of the Gospel of Luke. Our earliest sources that deal with Marcion’s Gospel, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius, discuss how Marcion removed text from Luke. This is the predominant view.
But even if we look at the view Britt and Wingo are proposing, that Marcion’s Gospel is the original, the argument still rests on the premise that the author of Acts added to and edited Marcion’s Gospel. Matthew simply doesn’t factor in here.
If we take the view that Marcion’s Gospel is the original here, it would then mean that Luke removed the passage, while adding other content to the text, only for Matthew to then reinsert it, but flip it. It would also mean that Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius simply ignored this verse in Marcion’s Gospel.
This doesn’t seem probable. BeDuhn, in “The First New Testament,” states that “None of these witnesses [sc. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius] mention any additional material in the Evangelion that was not also found in Luke.”
There are other options here. We don’t see any witness to this change until, at the earliest, the third century. In both cases where this change is noted, neither Adamantius nor Isidore state that Marcion himself placed this text in his Gospel. They both refer to Marcionites. So it could very well be that this is a later addition to Marcion’s work. If so, then it post-dates Matthew, and shows that Marcionites are more than willing to change the text. Even if we assume that this passage wasn’t added later on, but was part of the original Marcion Gospel, it would still suggest that Marcion was reacting to Matthew, not the other way around. However, we don’t find this verse in the actual reconstructions.
Another possibility is that this was perhaps in Marcion’s Antithesis, but it wasn’t cited as such. This could be that Marcion’s Antithesis isn’t a proper work. And if Marcion’s Antithesis was a reference to counterarguments, this could make sense. Again though, that would make the text later than Matthew, as you can’t make a counterargument before there is an argument.
If we view Marcion’s Antithesis as something like a commentary, the association with this passage, if it belonged there, with Marcion’s Gospel, makes logical sense.
It could also have been within some other Marcionite writing that just got conflated with the Marcion Gospel by Isidore. We just don’t really know. What we do know though is that no one cites this as being part of Marcion’s Antithesis, and it’s not even mentioned until, at the earliest, the third century, which even with Britt’s and Wingo’s dating of the Gospels, would still place it after their authorship. Meaning, this would be Marcionite reaction to Matthew, not the other way around.
Regardless of how we look at the data though, none of it supports the view that Matthew 5:17 demonstrates that the author of Matthew took Marcion’s Antitheses, and kept the parts that agreed with their theology and reversed those things that didn’t. Because again, there is no suggestion that the parallel verse is found in Marcion’s Antitheses. The data would suggest, as per Isidore, that the passage was found in Marcion’s Gospel. And that only causes more issues.
It also demonstrates how Britt and Wingo read into these texts, seemingly, what they want. They’ve made conclusions, and they seem to be trying to find ways to support their conclusions. In many ways, this is the same issue that modern apologetics have.