Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [25]
Mark also provides an example of how interpolation was used to set the story in a particular place:
For instance, Mk. 1:16 reads: "And passing along by the sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew ..." Almost all commentators agree that the words "by the sea of Galilee" were added by Mark. They are placed quite ungrammatically in the Greek syntax ... Mark, then, has interpolated a reference to place into a report which lacked it ... 19
As to the authorship of Mark, ben Yehoshua says, ". . . the style of language used in Mark shows that it was written (probably in Rome) by a Roman convert to Christianity whose first language was Latin and not Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic." It would seem, then, that the compiler of Mark used the Latin version of Marcion's gospel, while Luke and Matthew used the Greek version, accounting for the variances between them. Indeed, the author of Mark was clearly not a Palestinian Jew, as Wells points out that Mark "betrays in 7:31 an ignorance of Palestinian geography. "20
The Gospel of John (178 CE)
The Gospel of John is thought by most authorities to be the latest of the four, but Waite provides a compelling argument to place it third and reveals its purpose not only in refuting the Gnostics but also in establishing the primacy of the Roman Church:
So strong is the evidence of a late date to this gospel, that its apostolic origin is being abandoned by the ablest evangelical writers. . . . Both Irenaeus and Jerome assert that John wrote against Cerinthus. Cerinthus thus flourished about A.D. 145. [TJhere is evidence that in the construction of this gospel, as in that of Matthew, the author had in view the building up of the Roman hierarchy, the foundations of which were then (about A.D. 177-89) being laid. . . . There is a reason to believe that both [John and Matthew] were written in the interest of the supremacy of the Church of Rome.21
The tone of this gospel is anti-Jewish, revealing that it was written/ compiled by a non-Jew, possibly a "Gentile" or an "exiled" Israelite of a different tribe, such as a Samaritan, who not only spoke of "the Jews" as separate and apart from him but also was not familiar with the geography of Palestine. As Waite also says:
There are also many errors in reference to the geography of the country. The author speaks of Aenon, near to Salim, in Judea; also of Bethany, beyond Jordan, and of a "city of Samaria, called Sychar." If there were any such places, they were strangely unknown to other writers. The learned Dr. Bretschneider points out such mistakes and errors of geography, chronology, history and statistics of Judea, as no person who had ever resided in that country, or had been by birth a Jew, could possibly have committed.22
In addition, as Keeler states:
The Gospel of John says that Bethsaida was in Galilee. There is no such town in that district, and there never was. Bethsaida was on the east side of the sea of Tiberias, whereas Galilee was on the west side. St. John was born at Bethsaida, and the probability is that he would know the geographical location of his own birthplace.23
Furthermore, the writer of John relates several events at which the apostle John was not depicted as having appeared and does not record others at which he is said to have been present. Moreover, John is the only gospel containing the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which is an Egyptian myth.
That the Gospel of John served as a refutation of the Gnostics, or an attempt to usurp their authority and to bring them into the "fold," is obvious from its Gnostic style. In fact, it has been suggested that the author of John used Cerinthus's own gospel to refute the "heretic." As Waite relates:
The history as well as the writings of Cerinthus are strangely blended with those of John the presbyter, and even with