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Markus Vinzent, "Christ's Torah: The Making of the New Testament in the Second Century" (Routledge, 2023)
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Ari Varbalat
Hello. Welcome to the New Books Network podcast. I am your host, Ari Varbalat. Today I'm honored to engage in a dialogue with Marcus Vincent. We will discuss his newly published book, Christ's Torah, the Making of the New Testament in the Second Century, published in New York by Rout Publishers, 2024. Marcus, it is an honor to be in dialogue with you today.
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Marcus Vincent
Likewise. I thank you deeply for having Invited me to your podcast.
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Ari Varbalat
Marcus Vincent is a historian of religion specializing in early Christianity, altruistics, medieval studies, historiography, retro modernity, religion and business. He was a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London, where he has since retired. Presently he is a Fellow of Max Weber center for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies, Hereford Jury. Markus, it's an honor to be in dialogue with you today.
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Marcus Vincent
Likewise. Yeah, thank you so much. And also to your audience.
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Ari Varbalat
To begin, please kindly tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What formats and events in your life inspired your interest in the subject matter presented in this book?
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Marcus Vincent
Yeah, thanks for asking. I grew up at at the border between France and Germany. So. Right. A child of two languages and of two countries, two cultures. I have family in France, the rest of family is in Germany. But I left early. So from the age of few, twenties. I grew up then having my first experience in Great Britain, where I was a fellow at King's College of Cambridge in the uk. And after that I moved back to Germany, took my first professorship in Cologne and quite soon after moved back to the UK and became a professor at Birmingham University, where I stayed for over 10 years before then moving to King's College, this time not in Cambridge, but in London. And that's where I've spent the last years before I took early retirement three years ago because I also had a fellowship and guest professorship in Hereford at the Max Weber Institute, as you just mentioned. And in between I also had six years where I spent over summers in Korea University in Seoul. So I was traveling quite a bit. That's my upbringing, my intellectual exposure. I think in each of these locations I became interested in a variety of perspectives, in the cultural perspectives, the religious perspectives particularly. I think I was challenged by the experience in Birmingham, a city which has over 50% of non Brits and non white Brits. And yeah, you start thinking differently about religion, about cultures, about yourself. And I'm deeply grateful for those times.
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Ari Varbalat
What inspired you to prepare this book? What do you hope to convey, provide to your readers?
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Marcus Vincent
First of all, I started this book moving from patristics because that's the main area of research which I did for many, many years for my PhD, for my habitation. So I worked on the 4th century rather than on the 3rd, 2nd or 1st centuries of early Christianity. But I noticed that as a patristic scholar, a scholar who works on later times, even on the medieval period, I have a different entry into New Testament writings. And then I discovered that most of what we Know from the New Testament, writings are in fact documents which derive from later times, be it manuscripts or papyri. The earliest manuscripts of papyri that we have are dated to the late second, early third centuries. And then manuscripts come in the fifth centuries and later. So I thought I can bring to the table an insight in and through these later documents and rediscover the writings of the New Testament anew. And I was always struck that when we read the witnesses and the fathers from the second, third and fourth and later times, they are telling us about or giving us a different story to the New Testament than scholars who solely focus on the canonical New Testament. I mean, we have this small collection which we call New Testament today that contains 27 books, four Gospels, Acts and a few Catholic letters, as we call them. So two letters of Peter, letters of James, letters or letter of James, letters of John and letter of Jude and Revelation. So you wonder what happens to these texts, including of course, the 14 letters of Paul. And here, when we ask the fathers of the earlier times, they give us two collections. One collection which they call New Testament, which only has one Gospel and ten letters of Paul. And that collection is apparently the earlier one because that they credit to Marcion. Marcion of Sinope, a teacher from the second century who dies around the years 161. So whenever the fathers talk about a New Testament in the second century and in the third century, at least until Oregon comes along and has a different view, but until the middle of the third century, whenever our fathers talk about the New Testament, they always attribute that title to the earlier collection which they give to or which they think was redacted or brought together by Marcion or Sinope. That was an interest to me because I discovered that I was. Our colleagues who exclusively deal with the New Testament around the world, they ignore this earlier collection and focus on the broader collection of 27 books. However, that later collection, which we call the canonical New Testament, only becomes known in antiquity with colleagues like, like Polycarp and Irenaeus, and that's late in the second century. So for me as a historian, it was a thrill to dig out the earlier layer of the New Testament. Now, I'm not the only one. We have scholars from the 19th century who sometimes were looking at these earlier documents. But a real push towards digging this collection from the grounds, if you like, and from the manuscripts and from the witnesses. More than the manuscripts, I have to say, only happened in the last 15 years, since I set myself the task, published a book in 2011 for the first time where I mentioned this development of the New Testament in the second century. And then gradually, people and colleagues have picked it up and others have set their minds to it.
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Ari Varbalat
Can you kindly summarize this book for us? What themes and lessons are conveyed to the reader?
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Marcus Vincent
Yeah. As the title says, Christ's Torah is the precise definition, how Tertullian calls this book. It is a book, a New Testament, which comprises, if you like, Christ's Torah in two ways. One is it comprises one gospel and it comprises Paul's letters. In both these texts, we have the name of Christ's Torah. Hence, in this book, Christ Torah, I deal with the first part with the one gospel in this New Testament. And it's not four gospels, it's just one. It hasn't got a child story of Jesus. It starts with the adult Jesus, a Jesus who comes from above, whether from a hill or whether from heaven. The text doesn't say explicitly, but Tertullian interprets the text as if Jesus came from heaven. So straight into history, into the reign of the 15th year of Tiberius. So what I do in the book is I first give a summary how to locate the witnesses to this gospel. So I talk about Irenaeus, who is the prime suspect, who gives us a lot of information about the potential editor or redactor, who he calls Marcion of Sinope. And I give a few insights into other scholars from the second century who were, like Marcion, a schoolmaster and were in engagement with him. So I talk about Polycarp of Smyrna and his school because it seems that Polycarp, within which school Irenaeus himself locates it. So he had, as he says, and as he writes in the letter, Polycarp of Smyrna, which is in Asia Minor, as his teacher. And so we have one school, and I described that in the first chapter that is in negotiation with Marcion of Sinope, who has a competing school in Rome. Then comes a chapter where I go more into depth with this gospel. So what's the nature of this gospel and the opening of the gospel? And the most important sentence in that gospel is that the Torah and the prophets of the Jews only lasted until John the Baptist. And so I try to recapitulate in chapter two, what is the vision of that division? So why is John the Baptist here singled out by this gospel to give the boundary between the Jewish tradition and a new tradition, Christ Torah, the new message. And what is the position of John the Baptist? And then I show that the later canonical gospels try to redevelop John. John is no longer the barrier and the boundary between the old Jewish tradition, which is now called the Old Testament in Marcion's text. But for the canonical authors, for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, John is being redeveloped as a historical figure and particularly as a bridge which combines the Old Testament with the New Gospel. And you can see it's a reworking of that boundary which was set by Marcion. And I think, and I try to show that John the Baptist is not a historical figure. Maybe he was one, but certainly not for these texts. But he is a theological figure. For the older New Testament, John is the division between Old and new. And for the canonical Gospels, it is the bridge so far, a bridge that for John's Gospel, John the Baptist becomes even the person who brings the people of Jesus over and the people of John the Baptist over to the community and the movement of Jesus. Then in the last chapter, I give two insights into the core of Christ's Torah. The core for Christ's Torah, in Marcion's view, are the Beatitudes. And I try to show how the Beatitudes have made or have been altered. First of all, I give an insight in what is the most important part of the Beatitudes in Marcion's text, in this Christ's Torah. And I show that poverty is the core. So getting rid of everything you possess, because you will not have any inheritance other than than the spiritual things. So get rid of all earthly valuable things. The only thing that counts are spiritual inheritance. And that's why the first Beatitude is blessed are the poor because they will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And then I show in this chapter how again the canonical Gospels are turning this message upside down. In Matthew you will find a competing blessing, because in Matthew you read, blessed are the poor because they are going to inherit the land. So it's no longer the kingdom of heaven, it's the earth. And it's the dispute about the land of Palestine, the land of Israel, and a dispute which carries on until our days today. And the second element which I show is the pacific and the peace message that the Gospel of Christ to Ra has. And the counter argument you can see then in the canonical Gospels again, where violence and judgment become very important. Christ is the Christ who brings fire on the earth. And God is no longer a God of goodness. He is a God of judgment. So that rounds up the rest of the book.
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Ari Varbalat
How does your research shed new light on the formation of the New Testament?
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Marcus Vincent
The most important element is that this research shows that the New Testament as we have it, either in Marcion's version or in the canonical version, Art developments of the second century, we have no witness, no papyri, no manuscript even, not anybody of whom we know who gives us an insight into this writing of the New Testament and of the development from the first century. That's the first element. Second insight is when we are talking about New Testament writings, we are not talking about individual books, either individual Gospels or individual letters of Paul or other letters or individual writings like Acts or Revelation. All that we can attain today are collections. And anything the witnesses give us is always referring to collections. So all our papyri that we possess from the late second, third and later centuries, they only know these letters and these books in combination with other books. So hence they are always part of collections. We don't have individual books, we don't have individual writings. Hence, when we go back, the earliest physical and notional encounter that we have are with collections. And that's the further insight that I'm trying to show, which then makes the job that usually New Testament scholars pretend to have, namely to deal with writings from the first century a very difficult job because they are based on no evidence, because all the evidence we have only lead us to collections. And the earliest form of collections that they lead us to are these two collections from the second century. And that's, I think, a major reshuffle of a research area which usually deals only with the first hundred years of early Christian history. But in fact, it only starts and leaves us with a black box for the first century, and that we have to deal with the material which is second century material.
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Ari Varbalat
How can this study help readers better understand the moral and ethical teachings of and in the New Testament?
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Marcus Vincent
I think, yes. I mean, it's still early days for the book to make an outreach. It's got already responses, I'm invited to conferences, quite a number of discussions we have. The most important ethical reflection I think it gives is first of all, it questions this claim for land in Israel. The second insight is it is a gospel and a teaching of peace and not of the insistence on owning land. Third, I think it has not only a pacifistic impulse, but it also shows, it questions the ethical hierarchy that we have in our world because this is a gospel where, for example, women have the equal standing like men. It is not a patriarchal society, it's not a patriarchal community. It's an alternative community where gender is balanced. Women are prophetesses just as men are, contrary to later canonical revisions of this, which then start again. A patriarchal society, then we don't have slavery. This is a gospel that does not endorse that Christians should continue as the Jews, as the Romans, as the Greeks, as anybody in antiquity has, except for ascetic communities. And this is an ascetic community. It is a community of restriction which endorses that people are free, not only spiritually free. No, there are no slaveholders and there should not be slaves. So I think there are quite a number of very important different ethical rules which are playing out in this type of a text.
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Ari Varbalat
What does this book teach us about the reign of King Herod?
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Marcus Vincent
Herod is a difficult person even in the Jewish histories because he is not by nature a Jew. He comes from the Nepatean ground. Yes, he is circumcised, as many Semitic tribes are. But he plays a difficult role because he is a collaborator and he's been seen as a collaborator with Romans. Hence it's a difficult job for integrating him. On the other side, he seems to be historically important person for the shaping of a Greek speaking and Roman oriented Judaism. Now in this Gospel he doesn't speak and also in Paul's letters he plays a minor role. What we know from him is more or less the information that we have from Josephus. And it seems that this Gospel is also based on that information which we can receive from Josephus and not much more. So I think we can imagine that what we then learn in the canonical Gospels is even further building on what was reminiscent from Josephus. But it's quite clear this gospel has no big leaning towards the Herodian tradition A because it is skeptical of any type of Judaism which is directed to rule and to make a statement on a physical estate of Israel.
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Ari Varbalat
How does your research recontextualize the Pauline epistles?
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Marcus Vincent
The Pauline epistles are, as the New Testament first of all recontextualized in the second century. The version that we are having and which I've just reconstructed with a team, an international team and which is just about to appear, is a post second Jewish war text. So it's a collection of 10 letters, not of 14. And it reflects the context of that second Jewish war. I mean we could even call it a third Jewish war because as Barry Strauss just has released his book on the Jews versus Rome and he shows we have more or less three big upheavals. Usually we only talk about two because the third one is in the year 117 in Alexandria, which is more a local one. But the first one which rages in the late 60s in Jerusalem and Palestine, where Josephus was part of, was certainly a first major upheaval of the Jews against Rome. And it ends in a catastrophe for the Jews because the temple is being burned down still. The Jews live on in Jerusalem, so their history continues. And that comes to an end, if you like, at the end of the second Jewish War. And that Jewish war rages in the years 132 to 135 CE and with the end of that war, which was the bloodiest war, the Romans have fought for many, many decades and centuries, almost lost the war because Hadrian doesn't say to his Senate and doesn't write to the Senate. The emperor and the troops are fine, he keeps silent. And Suetonius makes the impression and gives the impression that the Emperor has admitted defeat. Hence the repercussions for the Jewish community, of which the Christians still were part of, is terrible. All circumcised people are being banned from Jerusalem. Only those, namely Christians who were not circumcised were able to to stay in Jerusalem. Now these epistles of Paul in the version that we have in this text collection gives almost a direct response to these situations. Why they claim that people should not revolt against Rome. We have to be pacific, we have to live with life. And it is also a dissociation, if you like, from this type of Jews who have instigated the revolt and by claiming a different Messiah, not like the revolting Simon Bar Kochba, but by following a pacific Messiah, namely the Jesus of Nazareth, of whom I think in the second century, as we can see from these texts by Paul, not much is known. So it seems that it is a memorization, maybe taken from Josephus, but it's building up a Messiah as a counter messiah to Bar Kochba, one who does not fight against the Romans and one who does not even claim the inheritance and the traditions of the Jews, of those Jews who went into battle. It is a fight against a form of Judaism which is like a Danielic Messiah, a Messiah that kills princes in order to re establish the state of Israel instead. This is the hope in this book, in this collection of Paul's letters, that this is a Messiah which re establishes a universal Israel, a spiritual Israel, and it claims that the true Israelites are the people, whether circumcised or uncircumcised. But these are real Jews who are spiritual Jews, ascetics Jews, people of mind, people of peace, people who engage with anybody, Jews and non Jews.
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Ari Varbalat
And you say something about the Qumranic document, a leading Cube belt, yeah, The.
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Marcus Vincent
Qumran documents, how they relate, It's. It is difficult to say because we have a huge amount of research done on the Qumran documents. And I think more and more scholars are convinced that these documents are somehow related to this community that lives and that archaeologists have dealt with in Qumran, which is close to the Dead Sea. Yet not all the documents seem to derive and have direct links to this community. Then we know that similar forms of life as we have it in Qumran were also present close to Jerusalem. Because we have these miqvot, we have documents. Then we have additional documents from various caves around the Dead Sea. So it is pretty difficult to establish precisely the location and the context of these texts. The community seems to have died out, at least the one in Quran around the year or in the year 68. So the question is, of course, what was the relation between this community and the Christian communities? There seem some relations, yeah, there is a messianic idea, but then other Jewish strands have also similar ideas. There are people who are in leading positions, like the Mikawot, So we have similar structures. And yet there are so many differences. I think through my research, when you shift the early Christian documents from them being written in the form that we have it today, in the first century, if we move that into the second century, the distance to Qumran becomes even bigger. And it explains why relatively few direct links exist between the documents in Qumran and the early Christian writings as we have them in our New Testament.
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Ari Varbalat
Can you say something about the woes narratives in the Bible, the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha?
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Marcus Vincent
You mean the woes which are connected with the Beatitudes? Yes, this is very important. And I have a longer section in the book about the relation between beatitudes and the woes, on which I show that the woes and the woes tradition goes way back to the early Jewish prophets, to the big prophets, and even then to later prophets. And of course, they are repeated in, as you say, in absurd epigraphic text, in apocryphal text. So the woes have. And even in Jewish texts, not just in Christian epigraphical text. So this was one form of fighting against the enemies, mostly the enemies in the Jewish community, but also the enemies outside the Jewish community. How is now our text or our collection of texts, and in particular, how is the Gospel, this one Gospel, in Marcion's New Testament, dealing with the woes, they are used almost as counter woes, whereas in the Jewish Tradition, you have Beatitudes, and then you have woes, as I said, against the enemies, internal and external. And the Beatitudes usually are the internal ones for the people who do good. In this Gospel, the woes are turned on their heads. Why? They are used only as a complementary to the Beatitudes, in a absolute complementary system. By having for each Beatitude, you have also a vo. So, for example, what we said before, blessed are the poor because they inherit the kingdom of heaven, comes the woe, woe, the rich. And for every Beatitude, be it the might, whatever it is, you have a vow that those people who may inherit or may receive something, that these people should not be proud because they are also losing what they possess. So at the end of the day, it's like a circle. People who are poor are promised inheritance, spiritual inheritance. But people who are blessed by the Beatitudes, they are equally under the woe, because they are always in danger to lose it again. So you should not, in any shape or form, start a kind of a hierarchy belonging to the people who are blessed, because as long as we are people, we are always on the losing side. But equally to the people who are on the losing side, they are not enemies, people who are having those woes against them, they are the ones who are promised the blessings. And so you can see that the woes are no longer woes, as in the pseudepigraphical or apocalyptical tradition, or in the prophetic tradition. They are not statements against others, against enemies. They are internal statements about oneself.
- [34:14]
Ari Varbalat
What does your research teach us about the Bar? How does it shed new light on the Barkokba?
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Marcus Vincent
It sheds light, new light on the Bar Kokhba tradition, because this is despite the fact that it was the most difficult war that the Jews and the Romans fought against each other. It is the war which we know least of. We probably have only 11 lines of text that describe this war, which is terrible for a historian, of course, because given that Josephus Flavius has written an entire book about the first Jewish War, we are left with very little about the second Jewish War. Nevertheless, over the last decades, people have dug out a few of the private letters, or public letters as you want them, by the leader of the Jewish revolt, Simon Bar Kochba. And yet what we discover now, if our writings like the gospel, this one gospel and the 10 letters, if they are shaped by the context of that second Jewish War, we get a much better insight. I will give you one example. Justin gives us the information. Justin lives in the mid second century he writes around 160 CE. So roughly 30 years, 35 years. 30. 30 years after the war, the second Jewish war. And he states that the leader of that war against the Romans punished the Christians to an utter extent. And we can only think that Simon Bar Kochba must have killed some Christians. Now, given our texts not being about the first century, but about this Jewish war, explains why martyrdom is such an important topic. Why Christ is a martyr, why Christians are being martyred and are prepared to be martyred for peace and not for starting a revolt. And the followers of Marcion are being called in the second century the community which claims to have most martyrs. And Lucian of Samosata, a Greek writer who belongs to the so called second Sophistic and mocks the Christians. He has as a prime story the story of a martyr who jumps into the Aetna and kills himself. So I think the entire storyline of Jesus becomes explicable as a counter story to Bar Kochba. And likewise the letters of Paul who insist of getting along with people with Romans, yes, but also with integrating Jews and non Jews are a form of non limitation. And explain the mood and the idea how to deal with the outcome of the second Jewish war.
- [37:45]
Ari Varbalat
How can your research bring Jews and Christians into dialogue in new ways regarding the relationship between Christianity and Judaism?
- [37:56]
Marcus Vincent
Very important question. Because usually the parting of the ways, as it is being called. The dilemma that Jews and Christians fight for the same writings, for the same traditions and are competing religious groups, which I think is terrible in a way gets a new light through this research. Why it shows that the Marcionite Gospel and the Pauline letters they opt for a New Testament, a new religious movement which is based on Jewish practice, on Jewish tradition. But it claims no longer to be the heia or the competition of the Jews. They are simply something different, as they say, something new. And they are not the only religious entrepreneurs who start their own religious practice in the years, let's say 100 before and 100 or 200 after our era. Now we have several of these entrepreneurs that start their own religious groups. But the difference is that Christians are not antagonistic to Jews. Yes, Marcion writes the antithesis, the preface to his gospel where he says, you have learned an eye for an eye and a leg for a leg. We are not teaching that for us it is giving and not revenge. We don't teach revenge. But likewise it doesn't say that the Jews who want to live their law and their Torah are in any shape or form no longer Jews or shouldn't do what they do? No, on the contrary, these texts say if you opt for the Torah of the Jews, then live the entire Torah as the Torah says, and you're okay. What we are intending is we have a new Torah, Christ, Torah, and this is the Beatitudes, this is the sermon of the plain. Hence we are two different religious groups. Each does what it does best and they are not against each other. And you can see the difference which happens then with the canonical New Testament. And it starts already with Justin, who we have already mentioned before. So in the mid second century, people like Justin, they are reading these texts by Marcion and they are dissatisfied. Why? Of course, we are 20, 30 years after the war and now we have a different social context for Justin. He makes the claim that everything the Jews have left, for example, in Jerusalem, the Torah, their prophets, their writings, their synagogues, their houses, pilgrimages, their goods, and anything that they can left and have left, then all of that belongs to the Christians. He writes a big dialogue with potentially a fictive Jew, Tryful he calls him. And in this dialogue he plays Christians against Jews. And he says to Trypho, when you are reading your books, you cannot even understand your own texts. Why? Because your Torah and your prophets and your writings do no longer belong to you, they belong to us. And you can see that with these types of ideas which are embedded then also in the canonical New Testament, we come to a supersessionist idea that Christians are better than Jews, that Christians disinherit Jews and Jews become the killer of Christ, the killer of Jesus, and they are disinherited. And then we have this story in the canonical New Testament which we don't find in Marcion's Gospel, that, for example, the vineyards which are being lent to them because they are owned by the Christians, that the people who are unfaithful and kill the sun and Tertullian is quite clear by this son Christ is meant the people who are working in the vineyard, that for that reason they should be killed. And you can see the whole drama, which then hundreds of years later end up in a holocaust, is embedded in the idea that Christians are revenging the death of their protagonist, of Jesus, and that this Christ is being killed by Romans and more importantly by Jews. So the whole disaster story between the relation and in the relation between Christian and Jews start with a canonical New Testament prepared by people like Justin Martyr. But having said that, I think even the earliest version that we can attain, Marcion's Christ's Torah, has already led towards that dramatic history. Because Even though I think Marcion was not an anti Jew, not an anti Semit, the idea itself to create out from the background of a Jewish tradition. And I think he himself was a Jewish proselyte, to create a new religion with ideas from the Jewish tradition, which is a messiah, which are prophetic psalms. You mention Isaiah, for example, which is also featuring in the Pauline letters and ideas which are embedded like the apocalyptic vision in the Gospel. These are traditional elements which are Jewish elements. And to claim those for a new religion, I think was a trigger that people like Justin and people like the canonical reductors were able to create a supersessionist form of Christianity which didn't leave any longer any place for any Jew. So I think it was a bad reading of Marcion's text, but it was also already preformed in Marcion's text. And I think that's one of the dangers probably that Marcia didn't see at the end of the second Jewish War, but which he himself certainly did not follow up. However, his opponents, like the canonical reductors and Justin did.
- [44:57]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
How does your research recontextualize the Jewish uprising against Rome recorded in the writings of Josephus?
- [45:07]
Marcus Vincent
Thus recontextualize it by clarifying. If you look into what the Gospel says about this apocalyptic vision of the lost temple, it is very different from how Josephus describes these events. Because for Josephus it's clear that's the vision he has. The end of the war means the end of the temple, not the end of Judaism. On the contrary, he sits down. I mean, he moves to Rome like after the second Jewish War. Most of the teachers like Marcion, they move to Rome and establish whatever the place is where they teach. Josephus does it differently. He lives in the Empress Villa in a comfortable environment and writes now the most immense books about Jewish history. He rewrites in the antiquities, from Genesis to his days, the history of Israel and opens up the history of Israel for a Greek speaking learned Roman populace. In the Jewish war he makes his big defense why the fighters and the fighting were somehow wrong. And he claims that the people who started the whole uprise, despite the fact that he was one of the leading people at the time in the uprise. But he still claims that these people who have instigated the whole thing are the ones who are to be blamed for the loss of the tender. In. In the writings which I have reconstructed together with colleagues, it becomes clear that this Marcionite New Testament has in a way a similar view as the one of Josephus. Although they have the advantage they were not part of the uprise like Justine said. Apparently these types of Jesus followers that existed kept themselves outside despite the fact that it appears that Shivon bar Kokhba had believed that the Christians should be on his side because otherwise why would he kill Christians if he killed Christians, why would he kill Christians if they were not meant to be supportive of his endeavor? So the texts themselves show there are parallels to Josephus in the position and endorsing in this way a certain collaboration with the Romans after the war. And Marcion himself, we know that he was a ship owner and that he earned his money and he seems to have quite a lot by lending ships to commercial people, maybe even to the army. And Irenaeus gives us a report by a presbyter who gives us insights into this type of collaboration of people who have means like ships and collaborate with the emperor's household. So I think Marcion was certainly a type of a commercial understanding who had all the means and all the will to collaborate also with Rome as he collaborated with Greeks, particularly also with Egyptians, because that was the wheat trade that run across the sea for ship trader, very important. And as for all business people, wars are never helpful. So I think there are parallels to Josephus and it explains why Josephus becomes in the second century and then later almost a church father for Christians. It also is the split between a form of Jewishness which is Greek speaking and Jewishness which is Hebrew and Aramaic speaking. Marcion's text, the New Testament, we have only Greek writings in this New Testament. And it continues as colleagues who are saying it continues a form of Jewishness which is a Hellenistic form of Jewishness. But it's also after the second Jewish war, the split which drives Jews who are speaking only Aramaic and Hebrew or predominantly into their own part. And so you have a Torah oriented, then pursue Midrash and soon Talmud oriented form of Jewishness and you have, as Keith Drumsa says, more a continuation of the sacrificial form of Jewishness. The Temple which is lost in the year 70 and Jerusalem that gets lost after the second Jewish war continues to live in the minds and hearts of those Greek speaking Jews who have been Christians by celebrating sacrifices rather than following a Torah tradition. And Diest Grumse says, if we want to qualify these two types of Jewishness, one has to say that what we call Christians today are continuing more the older form of Jewishness, Whereas the Hebrew oriented and Aramaic oriented Jews are following more the modernists of the days, namely the Pharisaic tradition that Incorporates a lot of elements from the Persian background and from the diaspora in the East. So I think this might locate these texts in the division or in the growth of these two Jewish traditions, one that is called Judaism and the other that they call themselves then Christians.
- [51:20]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
Can you comment on the relationship between poverty and wealth and between poverty and property in the New Testament?
- [51:27]
Marcus Vincent
Very important, yeah. Here we have one of the big differences between the canonical New Testament and this first early New Testament of one gospel and ten letters. Wealth. Maybe because Marcion was a wealthy person, he could easily say, well, or more difficult to say, well, this message is about giving away, it's not about possessing. It's like the birds which are fed by God. And that's why the sermon of the plain is the core will it Beatitudes is the core of this New Testament, which also comes back in Romans. It is absolutely the core. It is forgiveness. It is non possession. It's always been seen that the Gospel of Luke, which comes closest in words to Marcion's Gospel, has always been the most commercial gospel, but not in the sense of making money, but in the sense of talking about giving up money, giving up the possession, letting go. And I think this is one of the core elements. So poverty, I mean poverty, not in the sense of urged poverty of people who are subjugated to others. No, it is possessing, without possessing, a real reflection, which goes much further than Stoic philosophy of the time. And you have a similar element in the Pauline letters of that collection, because also there, as he says in Galatians 5, 21 or in 1 Corinthians 15:50, bones and flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. This is only possible for the Spirit. So it's a spiritual religion that is being created where not money hounds. We are not hierarchical positions found. All of that is gone. And you can see when you then read the canonical texts, they bring these hierarchical elements back. One of the key texts is of course, Acts, where Acts has still the idea that the Christian community are like a communist community, which has everything in common. But then comes the story that this couple retains things, and it seems to be the nature of human beings, that they're not living and they cannot simply give up everything. So you can see the stark difference between a New Testament, which is a New Testament of ascetics who give up everything, and others who by the nature of their lives and families live on. Of course, that entails that Marcion's New Testament is also a New Testament where, yes, you may marry, but as Paul says himself, it is better not to be married. And then the New Testament of this gospel and these letters of Paul state, even if you are married, there should not be a sexual relation, because a sexual relation means offspring. And when you have offspring, you have to look for them. And you can see this New Testament of Marcion is, let's say, an apocalyptic form of Christianity. It's a form which reckons with the coming of Christ in this very generation. They were not thinking in midterm or in long term. No, they were thinking the end of the world has come with the end of the second Jewish war. It will not last for much longer. This life is life before the end. Hence there's no need for looking after any possession. You can get rid of it. God looks after you. And that, of course, becomes more and more difficult in the years 160, 170, 180, Christ hasn't come, the war is long gone and people establish themselves. And so one of the most important bishops in Rome is a banker at the end of the second century. And you can see how the canonical New Testament is a New Testament which moves from a very rigorous ascetic form of Christianity to still a form of Christianity where these ideas are prevalent. But there are other ideas that come in of establishing an institution, of establishing connections with a state where you pray for the government, where you engage with them, where you get a firm status to develop a religion which becomes a colonial religion which spreads to other places. And that is a gospel. And those are gospels. And that is a canonical New Testament which serves part of the old ideology, but also embeds now itself into a world which needs some governance.
- [56:48]
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- [57:44]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
What do you mean by the term collection? In what ways is the New Testament a second century collection?
- [57:51]
Marcus Vincent
It's like a library. We are conducting the interview in Toronto's Jewish library and this is exactly what a collection is. It is a stack of books. So we have, in Marcion's collection we have a stack on which you find 11 books. And as with the library, you have stacks where the books are not just randomly placed on the library stack. No, you wouldn't find them. So you have a librarian who puts these books in a certain order, who even gives the books a catalog and exactly that. What we have in the New Testament, we have a preface in Marcion's New Testament which explains why and how first the Gospel comes and then the ten letters of Paul. Even these letters of Paul are ordered strictly according to the biography of Paul, because it starts with the letter to the Galatians, So where Paul writes about his own calling, about his own way into Christianity, and where he writes to the people in galatia, then come 1 Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, then comes Romans, and so forth. And he ends with the last letter to Philemon, where he is an old man and where he sits in prison in Rome. So you can see the letters are like on the library stack, ordered. And this is what we call a collection. It's not a random bringing together of books. It's a careful selection and a careful display of these books. And it makes a lot of sense that he puts the Gospel first because it starts with this form of biography, stories ordered in precisely the same way, namely from a younger Jesus to an older Jesus. And it's also a geographical order where he starts from his hometown and then moves to Jerusalem. And exactly the same way we have it in Paul's letters, it starts in Galatia and then gradually the writings and the letters move towards Rome. So it's biographically and geographically ordered, of course, different from a librarian. And here comes the end of the parallel between library and a collection, is that usually collections are redacted. I mean, the librarians fortunately don't reduct our books, they just stack it in kinds of orders there. They might introduce these books by a catalog, but they are not usually, at least the existed librarians as we know them, who have rewritten the books they have. But in the library you are today, hopefully that will not happen. So the manuscripts are still preserved without people writing into them, particularly not the librarians. But in ancient times, when you put together books in a collection, the one person who puts those together, he starts redacting the texts so that the texts are in harmony with each other. And that we can see in the earlier New Testament of Marcion, those texts have been thoroughly redacted. So not only the Gospel but also the 10 letters of Paul have been in a way rewritten. So what we have is not the original sound and not the original text, either by a Gospel or by these letters of Paul. And we can see that when we compare him with the later collection that is now the book as we have it today. Four Gospels, the Book of Acts, together with Catholic letters and Paul's letters and revelation. When these 27 books were combined in the school of Polycarp and Irenaeus, these texts were rewritten again, they were redacted and they are pretty different from the texts as we have them in Marcion's Gospel or in Marcion's New Testament. So that's why collections are important. They have their life or life of their own. I've made the comparison, for example, with the second century collection of the letters of Ignatius, and you can see it's a very parallel development. The first thing we have are three letters, a small collection of three letters, and they are very short compared to then a late second century collection of his letters where four more letters have been added and the three older letters have also been revised. So people who bring together a collection, they write and rewrite what they receive.
- [63:02]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
Why are there four Gospels rather than five in the New Testament?
- [63:06]
Marcus Vincent
Interesting that Irenaeus, when he talks about those four gospels and he says there should only be four and not five, there should also not be one, it should be precisely four. Then he compares those four gospels with regards to a passage, and there he compares not four but five, because he also takes into account Marcion's Gospel and he shows the difference. But why four? And why Irenaeus fight for four and against one or against five? I think that has to do with Marcion's one Gospel and with a preface to his New Testament which he wrote in around 135. Why? Marcion states in this preface that his Gospel was used by other people and was copied and changed by other people. And he speaks of two apostles that were the names given to these other writings and two pupils of apostles. So the titiling gives us the names. Matthew and John, the two apostles, and Luke and Mark, the two students of apostles. Which tells me that Marcial, in his preface to his New Testament criticized precisely those four Gospels, which for Irenaeus are the ones he defends. So why four? I think because Marcion discovered that from the copies that have been made of his Gospel, four stood out, which he saw as the most parallel, closely linked to his Gospel, but also the most deviating from his Gospel. And this is exactly those four that Irenaeus, as a member of the school of Polycarp, then starts defending. And that's how he ended up having four. Prior to Irenaeus, other attempts have been made to deal with gospels. And I mentioned again Justin Martyr as a very important person. To him, neither one nor four existed. So he deals with material which he calls the memories of the apostles. His student seems to have followed the idea that there should only be one gospel because Tatian brings together what we call a harmony. So I think the reason why Irenaeus gives us exactly only those four was because these four were discredited by Marcion in the preface to his New Testament.
- [65:56]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
What is your book's contribution to early church history?
- [65:59]
Marcus Vincent
One of the most important one maybe is the church in its earlier form. I'm not saying in the beginning, because we don't know too much about the first century and the beginnings, but at least from the time of the second Jewish war. So we are in the years 130something. The church is a church which lives from an endowment of a rich person, but doesn't care too much about money. It again brings us back to the idea of poverty. Yes, it lives from a stock of money, but it's not about money. It also has a rudimentary form of leadership, but we don't have bishops, we don't have presbyters. So it's not like the Jewish community is organized. It's not a community of 12 men, but it's a community of men and women. It is also not structured like in Qumran. So we don't have these fixed leaders, but we have people who are predominantly prophets, wandering prophets. So it shows that the institutionalization of the church is a product of the late second century at a time when also the Jewish community restructured itself. They start with establishing synagogues as teaching and community buildings. And so instead of saying the Christians have started very early, their own structure. No, there was for a very long, for a much longer time, very little structure. The other thing which we mentioned before, women had a central place in this form of early Christianity. And as I said, women prophetism had an enormously important place. And that links us back. Why is Tertullian so interested in this community? Why does he write almost obsessively against Marcion? I think because he was very close to him, he is interested and he is not a member. Towards the end of his life, he doesn't remain a member of the Roman Church. Why? Because he finds his inspiration in what we call the Phrygian community, which is a community of prophetesses and prophets. Very close to the idea that we have in this first New Testament. The Church is about prophetism. Prophetism by women and by men.
- [68:36]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
How does your research shed new light on the Judaic social and historical context of the New Testament?
- [68:46]
Marcus Vincent
Maybe that's the least what these texts tell us. It's really not much about Paul or even the Gospel being a Judaic form. It's more a Greek form. It's more an urban form of religion. Yes, the whole story plays in Palestine. It all starts in Nazareth, but it all drives towards Rome or it drives towards Jerusalem. It is an urban form of religion that is being displayed in these texts. And it's interesting that the colleagues who have hypothetically put together Q the source collection which they extracted from Matthew and Luke and the parallels between the two, whenever they had to choose between two versions, they placed the rural elements into Q and left aside the urban elements. And the urban elements were mostly taken from the stock of Fluke, which is Marcion's Gospel. And you can see we have this divide between a more urban form of religion, which is not even urban in the sense of Judaic. No, it's urban in the sense of Greco Roman. So the canonical texts are more historicizing re bringing back Judaic elements and make Christianity more Jewish, if you like, in the sense of Judaic Christianity. And it does so because of course, it wants that Christianity inherits or disinherits the Jews and wants to be the Jewish community.
- [70:39]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
What does this book offer to non Christians?
- [70:44]
Marcus Vincent
I think an honest approach, a non denominational approach, a non Christian approach in that sense. Not that it is criticizing Christianity, but the attempt of a historical approach to be modest in a way to state not more than the texts and the sources and the witnesses of those texts are giving us. So instead of making the old Christian romantic claim that after the death of Jesus we have oral traditions which are then captured for the first time by Paul, who writes in the 50s and 60s, and then oral tradition which laps on to the early writings of the first Gospel, namely Mark, and then continued by Matthew, building on Mark and building on further oral tradition, and Luke very similarly. And then around the hundreds we have John, who writes his gospel. So a long romantic development of knowledge in the first century which is captured in those Christian writings, all dating or mostly dating from the first hundred years, so very close to the origin. I think people who are not Christians will be and will normally be as critical to this type of a history as people who are not Muslims are critical of the story that we are told about the beginnings with Muhammad and the Quran. It's exactly the discrediting of one's own tradition. I think as soon as you are not going for a historical assessment, but for an ideological or a self religious embedding of a story. So instead of myth and instead of explaining to children in schools all the stories which those children at the latest when they become adults shed because they say, I can't believe that. Impossible. It's non historical. And I think it's correct. It's non historical. I think these are what we as historians call etiologies. They are myths making stories. And I think what non Christians, Muslims, non Muslims, what anybody can approach and can see in this book is it is the attempt of a historical assessment. We take what we read and everybody can read what I'm stating. The texts are given, the reconstructions are given and they are marked as reconstructions. And where we can't reconstruct, we. We have to leave the gut.
- [73:35]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
Would you like to express gratitude publicly to anyone who is helpful in your research, editing, writing or preparation process?
- [73:41]
Marcus Vincent
Absolutely. The biggest helps and helpers were colleagues from the 19th century like Harnack, Zahn, Hilgenfeld and others. But in contemporary times I think the greatest help was scholarship on Marcion. And it is Gerhard Mei who introduced me to Marcion when I was teaching with him at the University of Mainz. But then I think I should also mention Barbara Arland and most importantly Matthias Klinghardt, who had reconstructed the Gospel of Marcion together with Dietrich and other colleagues like Jason Bedoon, Judith Liu and in more recent times, Jan Heilmann, and of course my full team, which I have and helped to reconstruct the Pauline letters and also work on the Gospel. And that is Mark Bilby, Jake Bull and Lance Lathrop.
- [74:47]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
As we end our dialogue today, can you kindly tell us about where your time and attention have gone since completing this work?
- [74:55]
Marcus Vincent
Yeah, since I completed Christ Torah, I said, I mean this is four years ago. The German version, the English version has just appeared. But in parallel to doing the translation, I worked heavily on the reconstruction of not only the Gospel, but now the reconstruction of the Pauline letters. Of those 10 letters in that 10 letter collection. And I'm glad to say that the German version of those 10 letter reconstructions, it's all in four volumes. The first volume has just appeared a few weeks ago and the other three volumes with a Greek reconstruction are going to appear in the next days and the next months I'm going to spend to make a translation of the four volumes so that also the English readership in the next months can have the books with the reconstruction and the interpretation of those 10 letters, which are credited to Paul in its earlier version.
- [76:07]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
Sounds phenomenal. Sounds terrific.
- [76:10]
Marcus Vincent
Thank you so much, Ari.
- [76:11]
Interviewer (likely Ari Varbalat)
As we end our dialogue today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbelette, your host on the New Books Network podcast. Today I've been grateful to engage in a dialogue with Marcus Vincent. We have been discussing his newly published book, Christ's the Making of the New Testament in the Second Century, published in New York by Routlich, 2024. Marcus Vincent is a historian of religion specializing in early Christianity, patristics, medieval studies, historiography, religion, retro modernity, religion and business. He was a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London, where he has since retired. Presently he is a Fellow of the Max Weber center for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies in Erfurt, Germany. Thank you wholeheartedly.
- [77:08]
Marcus Vincent
Thank you.
- [77:21]
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