Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [24]
... according to the Catholic Encyclopedia the book of Luke was not written till nearly two hundred years after this event [of Jesus's departure]. The proof offered is that the Theophilus to whom Luke addressed it was bishop of Antioch from 169-177 A. D.'4
The Gospel of Luke is a compilation of dozens of older manuscripts, 33 by one count, including the Gospel of the Lord. In using Marcion's gospel, the Lukan writer(s) interpolated and removed textual matter in order both to historicize the story and to Judaize Marcion's Jesus. In addition to lacking the childhood or genealogy found in the first two chapters of Luke, Marcion also was missing nearly all of the third chapter, save the bit about Capernaum, all of which were interpolated into Luke to give Jesus a historical background and Jewish heritage. Also, where Marcion's gospel speaks of Jesus coming to Nazareth, Luke adds, "where he had been brought up," a phrase missing from Marcion that is a further attempt on Luke's part to make Jesus Jewish.
Another example of the historicizing and Judaizing interpolation of the compiler(s) of Luke into Marcion can be found in the portrayal of Christ's passion, which is represented in Marcion thus:
Saying, the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be put to death, and after three days rise again.15
At Luke 9:22, the passage is rendered thus:
Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised."
The inclusion of "elders and the chief priests and scribes" represents an attempt to make the story seem as if it happened one time in history, as opposed to the recurring theme in a savior-god cult and mystery school indicated by Marcion.
Of this Lukan creation, Massey says:
It can be proved how passage after passage has been added to the earlier gospel, in the course of manufacturing the later history. For example, the mourning over Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 29-35) is taken verbatim from the 2n<1 Esdras (i. 28-33) without acknowledgement, and the words previously uttered by the "Almighty Lord" are here assigned to Jesus as the original speaker. I6
The Gospel of Mark (175 CE)
After the final destruction of Jerusalem and Judea by the Romans in 135, the Jerusalem church was taken over by nonJews. Of this destruction and appropriation, Eusebius says:
When in this way the city was closed to the Jewish race and suffered the total destruction of its former inhabitants, it was colonized by an alien race, and the Roman city which subsequently arose changed its name, so that now, in honour of the emperor then reigning, Aelius Hadrianus, it is known as Aelia. Furthermore, as the church in the city was now composed of Gentiles, the first after the bishops of the Circumcision to be put in charge of the Christians there was Mark.17
This devastation and changeover occurred in the 18th year of Hadrian's rule, i.e., 135 CE; thus, we see that this Mark of whom Eusebius speaks could not have been the disciple Mark. The date is, however, perfect for the Gnostic Marcion. Eusebius provides confirmation of this association of Mark with Marcion when he immediately follows his comment about Mark with a discussion of "Leaders at that time of Knowledge falsely so called," i.e., Gnostics and Gnosis. Indeed, legend held that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome and brought it to Alexandria, where he established churches, while Marcion purportedly published his gospel in Rome and no doubt went to Alexandria at some point.
Like Waite, Mead also does not put Mark first: "It is very evident that Mt. and Lk. do not use our Mk., though they use most the material contained in our Mk. . . ."18 In fact, all three manuscripts used Marcion as one of their sources.
Like Marcion, Mark has no genealogy; unlike Marcion, he begins his story with John the Baptist, the hero of the Nazarenes/Mandaeans, added to incorporate that faction. The Gospel of Mark was admittedly tampered