Quote:I hardly need tell you that these are generally dated a couple of decades before the Synoptics.
Yes, but that is the story which is in dispute.
The xtian writer Justin Martyr writing to the emperor Antoninus Pius c 160 knows nothing about any "paul" or any named gospels. Xtian writers denounce Marcion - whom Justin did know about - and tell us that Marcion's canon included a single gospel and 10 letters of Paul.
Quote:Tertullian claimed Marcion was the first to separate the New Testament from the Old Testament.[15] Marcion is said to have gathered scriptures from Jewish tradition, and juxtaposed these against the sayings and teachings of Jesus in a work entitled the Antithesis.[16] Besides the Antithesis, the Testament of the Marcionites was also composed of a Gospel of Christ which was Marcion's version of Luke, and that the Marcionites attributed to Paul, that was different in a number of ways from the version that is now regarded as canonical.[17] It seems to have lacked all prophecies of Christ's coming, as well as the Infancy account, the baptism, and the verses were more terse in general. It also included ten of the Pauline Epistles (but not the Pastoral Epistles or the Epistle to the Hebrews, and, according to the Muratonian canon, included a Marcionite pseudo-Paul's epistle to the Alexandrians and an epistle to the Laodiceans)[18] In bringing together these texts, Marcion redacted what is perhaps the first New Testament canon on record, which he called the Gospel and the Apostolikon, which reflects his belief in the writings of Jesus and the apostle Paul respectively.
But Tertullian lived after Justin - he was born in 160 and did his heavy writing in the late2d/3d century - and it is clear that the tale had time to evolve by then.
Perhaps the later perpetrators of xtianity decided that Marcion had to go but "Paul's" drivel was salvageable for their purposes?
