"you decided to tell...". I haven't "decided" anything
Yeah, people who tell have decided to tell, that's just logic.
I don't have an agenda. I believe you do and to you if it's not in the canonical gospels is not proof.
I have one agenda, namely Jesus. Something not in the gospels might well be proof. But if you contradict every fact of history on a subject, in or out of the gospels, that requires extraordinary evidence. Jesus 100% upheld Hebrew Scripture, no historical evidence teaches that he told his disciples secretly that Scripture was wrong, there would be no movement without dedication to Scripture. That's why your narrative on that point is just a narrative. Nothing in Nag Hammadi has your narrative.
my story mentioned by early Christian theologians and evangelists like Marcion of Sinope
Nope. No text mentions such an imaginative retcon as you propose. If you had said you're just Marcionite, it would've made more sense, because he did teach that, but he didn't say that Jesus and the Apostles taught it (as you did): he implied that the Apostles worked for the Demiurge (WP); his Scriptural canon still included details contrary to the Demiurge theory, against his edit attempts otherwise; and his work on antitheses is now lost, and does not even appear in the newly uncovered documents. So what you're doing is imagining something that could've happened if only Marcion was totally right in his view and had a perfect tradition from Jesus's time and every other indication of history is wrong. No historian would view this as a workable theory of what actually happened.
So yeah, when you double down on apparently rejecting facts of history instead of interacting with them, my tone does tend to change.
For 2,000 years, we have been told that God is love, that he is the father of light. Yet, open the Old Testament, and you meet a different entity entirely.
The evidence is that Jesus's teachings made headway among the Jews because they agreed with the God depicted in Hebrew Scripture. All the apostles and evangelists emphatically used Scripture as a final authority, and several times they recognized that each others' works were Scripture too. The fact that Marcion invented a duality narrative, or based it on other gnostics, doesn't mean that narrative existed in primitive Christianity.
Could it be that our so-called official New Testament might have actually been deliberately reassembled later to counteract Marcion's version? IMO, that's exactly what happened.
Marcion admitted that confirmed evangel and confirmed apostolic writings were Scripture. The difference between the NT and Marcion's canon is entirely one of degree. Because Scripture is holistic, you can prove any core tenet of traditional Christianity with reference to Marcionite Scripture alone. If you admit the Marcionite canon, you would have no reason to reject other gospels or epistles that say the same thing (just as I do not reject all the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, but only hold them to a lower standard of authority).
They took his challenge so seriously that they constructed a new cannon, four gospels, Acts, and everything else in such a way to police his ideas.
The books of the canon were already circulating, nothing was constructed anew, even as your own (liberal) dating would prove. His ideas may have been "policed" (though there was no political power to force anything for another 200 years) but only because all other churches but the Marcionite "church" recognized the internal contradictions of the system early. You say the Marcionite church was regarded as very widespread, so without arguing that either way I'll note it, but if it were "coherent" Christianity it would have survived instead of essentially disappearing in the 3rd century. The orthodox arguments and texts stand, and Marcion's works didn't survive, which is not an indication that Marcion was so much better but an indication that he had nothing to say that wasn't expressed by his canon and the quotations of him that survived. Althist is fun, but must be admitted as such.
Scholars like Adolf von Harnack
Didn't I say 19th-century German unbelievers? Harnack was counted as a Christian but he rejected the Apostles' Creed on Jesus and rejected the Bible.
So the inclusion of say Acts and the Old Testament cannon came in as a sort of counterpoint.
No, the Hebrew canon had been getting closed in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. All the Hebrew books were recognized as Scripture, and taught to be so by Jesus and the Apostles, with the exception of a couple late disputes persisting for a time over books like Esther. The only reason Marcion could reject the OT utterly was that he was in a Greek milieu where reliance on the Hebrew had begun to wane (but was still extant throughout 2nd century patristics). It wasn't about the OT "coming in", instead the NT shows that it was the NT books that were slowly coming in to join the OT.
These became deliberately essential to the new narrative
No, they were not regarded as essential until late 4th century. They were regarded as inspired, useful, beneficial, and sufficient, but there was no argument of essentiality. Look, if the church has Luke-Acts for 100 years, and then suddenly Marcion says only most of Luke is good and none of Acts, it's clear to everyone that he is innovating on received tradition, and it's clear from history that they continued to preserve the whole Luke-Acts because Marcion's version didn't have a slate of dedicated copyists throughout the known world like the established tradition did. There is no althist available where Marcion's Luke existed as Scripture, and Acts, which was written by the same man around the same time to the same audience, was accorded universally as useless until somebody got it to be thought of as inspired as if it counteracted Marcion. It's Luke, it's the same author! Did you know that Papias, quoted by Eusebius, mentioned and named the four gospels around the 120s, long before Marcion or Irenaeus step up?
many modern scholars argue that the NT was published as a collection specifically constructed against Marion's challenge
Nope, nobody published the "NT" until Constantine, much later. Nor was his canon "constructed" but it consisted of all Greek Scriptures that rose to the level of inspiration and acceptance that other works (including some verses added by Marcion) didn't.
the comforting narrative that the canonical Bible just dropped fully formed from the heavens
I agree with you in rejecting that narrative. All mature Biblical Christians recognize and admit the same.
So, if history is written by the winners, then perhaps our understanding of early Christianity is missing, has deliberately omitted a whole perspective.
I'm very empathetic to Romanism omitting perspectives and have consistently appealed here for primitive Christianity. Gnosticism isn't primitive Christianity and never had approval from Jesus's apostles or their appointed successors at large. When gnosticism is tested as a theological system (as it was), it fails logic, history, and inspiration.
Now, in all our conversations I've been attempting to find out how you know what is true. I don't see that answer. I see you sticking to a storyline, even imagining what Jesus might have said that totally contradicts what history shows he did say. If you had quoted Gospel of Thomas, I wouldn't object because Jesus may have said everything in there in context, and there may be an echo of apostolic tradition in it. But you're coming in with Marcion whose only tradition, if any, comes from either part of the holistic Bible (which was accepted along with the rest), or Valentinus or Simon or Menander before him, who were never accepted. It was apostate (standing aside from Christianity), never something that acted as if part of the same Christianity as everyone else kept. So you don't seem to be committed to seek the truth wherever it leads and to accept the facts of history. You're free to show me otherwise.
Yeah, people who tell have decided to tell, that's just logic.
I have one agenda, namely Jesus. Something not in the gospels might well be proof. But if you contradict every fact of history on a subject, in or out of the gospels, that requires extraordinary evidence. Jesus 100% upheld Hebrew Scripture, no historical evidence teaches that he told his disciples secretly that Scripture was wrong, there would be no movement without dedication to Scripture. That's why your narrative on that point is just a narrative. Nothing in Nag Hammadi has your narrative.
Nope. No text mentions such an imaginative retcon as you propose. If you had said you're just Marcionite, it would've made more sense, because he did teach that, but he didn't say that Jesus and the Apostles taught it (as you did): he implied that the Apostles worked for the Demiurge (WP); his Scriptural canon still included details contrary to the Demiurge theory, against his edit attempts otherwise; and his work on antitheses is now lost, and does not even appear in the newly uncovered documents. So what you're doing is imagining something that could've happened if only Marcion was totally right in his view and had a perfect tradition from Jesus's time and every other indication of history is wrong. No historian would view this as a workable theory of what actually happened.
So yeah, when you double down on apparently rejecting facts of history instead of interacting with them, my tone does tend to change.
The evidence is that Jesus's teachings made headway among the Jews because they agreed with the God depicted in Hebrew Scripture. All the apostles and evangelists emphatically used Scripture as a final authority, and several times they recognized that each others' works were Scripture too. The fact that Marcion invented a duality narrative, or based it on other gnostics, doesn't mean that narrative existed in primitive Christianity.
Marcion admitted that confirmed evangel and confirmed apostolic writings were Scripture. The difference between the NT and Marcion's canon is entirely one of degree. Because Scripture is holistic, you can prove any core tenet of traditional Christianity with reference to Marcionite Scripture alone. If you admit the Marcionite canon, you would have no reason to reject other gospels or epistles that say the same thing (just as I do not reject all the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, but only hold them to a lower standard of authority).
The books of the canon were already circulating, nothing was constructed anew, even as your own (liberal) dating would prove. His ideas may have been "policed" (though there was no political power to force anything for another 200 years) but only because all other churches but the Marcionite "church" recognized the internal contradictions of the system early. You say the Marcionite church was regarded as very widespread, so without arguing that either way I'll note it, but if it were "coherent" Christianity it would have survived instead of essentially disappearing in the 3rd century. The orthodox arguments and texts stand, and Marcion's works didn't survive, which is not an indication that Marcion was so much better but an indication that he had nothing to say that wasn't expressed by his canon and the quotations of him that survived. Althist is fun, but must be admitted as such.
Didn't I say 19th-century German unbelievers? Harnack was counted as a Christian but he rejected the Apostles' Creed on Jesus and rejected the Bible.
No, the Hebrew canon had been getting closed in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. All the Hebrew books were recognized as Scripture, and taught to be so by Jesus and the Apostles, with the exception of a couple late disputes persisting for a time over books like Esther. The only reason Marcion could reject the OT utterly was that he was in a Greek milieu where reliance on the Hebrew had begun to wane (but was still extant throughout 2nd century patristics). It wasn't about the OT "coming in", instead the NT shows that it was the NT books that were slowly coming in to join the OT.
No, they were not regarded as essential until late 4th century. They were regarded as inspired, useful, beneficial, and sufficient, but there was no argument of essentiality. Look, if the church has Luke-Acts for 100 years, and then suddenly Marcion says only most of Luke is good and none of Acts, it's clear to everyone that he is innovating on received tradition, and it's clear from history that they continued to preserve the whole Luke-Acts because Marcion's version didn't have a slate of dedicated copyists throughout the known world like the established tradition did. There is no althist available where Marcion's Luke existed as Scripture, and Acts, which was written by the same man around the same time to the same audience, was accorded universally as useless until somebody got it to be thought of as inspired as if it counteracted Marcion. It's Luke, it's the same author! Did you know that Papias, quoted by Eusebius, mentioned and named the four gospels around the 120s, long before Marcion or Irenaeus step up?
Nope, nobody published the "NT" until Constantine, much later. Nor was his canon "constructed" but it consisted of all Greek Scriptures that rose to the level of inspiration and acceptance that other works (including some verses added by Marcion) didn't.
I agree with you in rejecting that narrative. All mature Biblical Christians recognize and admit the same.
I'm very empathetic to Romanism omitting perspectives and have consistently appealed here for primitive Christianity. Gnosticism isn't primitive Christianity and never had approval from Jesus's apostles or their appointed successors at large. When gnosticism is tested as a theological system (as it was), it fails logic, history, and inspiration.
Now, in all our conversations I've been attempting to find out how you know what is true. I don't see that answer. I see you sticking to a storyline, even imagining what Jesus might have said that totally contradicts what history shows he did say. If you had quoted Gospel of Thomas, I wouldn't object because Jesus may have said everything in there in context, and there may be an echo of apostolic tradition in it. But you're coming in with Marcion whose only tradition, if any, comes from either part of the holistic Bible (which was accepted along with the rest), or Valentinus or Simon or Menander before him, who were never accepted. It was apostate (standing aside from Christianity), never something that acted as if part of the same Christianity as everyone else kept. So you don't seem to be committed to seek the truth wherever it leads and to accept the facts of history. You're free to show me otherwise.