The New Testament Was Fabricated, Marcion was First! | Dr. David Trobisch

The New Testament claims to be a collection of writings from eight authors. The manuscript tradition and the first provenance narratives place its publication in the middle of the second century, when many other books on Jesus and his first followers were circulating.

Competing publications on Jesus communicate knowledge secretly passed on from generation to generation, transcending time and geographical boundaries. Like the Canonical Edition of the New Testament, they use first-century voices to address second-century concerns, such as whether the Creator of the world was the Father of Jesus, the role of women in congregations, the culture of producing and distributing books, and the authority of Jewish Scripture for Christians. The shared meta-narrative is the story of a divine messenger sent to earth to deliver the promise of eternal life to those who believe his message.

The editorial narrative of the Canonical Edition names a certain Theophilus as the implied publisher who assembles the collection, organizes it in four volumes, and presents it to the public when Paul is in Rome and faces his day in court. Historically, the New Testament was published a century after Paul's death as an interpolated and enlarged revision of the Marcionite Edition, which combined one gospel book with several letters of Paul. It presented itself as a publication of autographs for an international Greek-speaking readership in Central Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor, and Greece. This perspective provides new answers to old exegetical questions like the genre of the Johannine corpus, the function of synoptic parallels, and the authorship of the letters of Paul.

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𝕏Twitter: @Jacob56723278

[JC-vqcs]

I just bought the book! So glad to see Dr. Trobisch back. His arguments from your last interview really changed my thinking, along with the Patristica group. Looking forward to this.

[christopherlord]

Very interesting. Also the format of allowing these knowledgeable scholars to talk at length without trying to steer or interrupt them is very good.

[FlaviusBrosephus]

Great guest! Planning to buy his new book soon.

[elfrad]

This is not a new revelation. I recall reading German church historian Karlheinz Deschner. One of his works, published in 1980, is titled 'The Falsified Belief'. The author demonstrates in detail how the gospels and various church dogmas were created. His books were not translated into English.

[Peejayk]

Great interview! David Trobisch is always illuminating. Would be great to have him discuss things with Marcus Vinzent to sort out authenticity of Marcion’s Paul (Marcus now believes Marcion inherited the letters whereas Trobisch thinks Marcion produced them)!

[dennythedavinchi]

Straight forward, but still don't get what made Marcion write this kind of confusing motivated literature from first time.

[redskoda]

Great scholar, erudite humbleness and brilliantly realistic prespective.
Ordering the book.
Thank you Jacob for hosting Dr.David an episode that is truly enlightening.

[Mercury-Wells]

Excellent interview - thank you Jacob ❤

[No_Mormon_No_Cry]

Thanks Jacob. Keep up the good work 🎉

[kosmicwizard]

"This must stop!" I completely agree.

[jacqueslucas]

Wow! Powerful video! I now understand why Paul is so critical in the Jesus myth! Thank you!

[Cat_Woods]

I didn't expect to like this interview, because I thought it might go too far off the rails. Whether his name was ever Saul or Paul, I think some early church leader wrote at least some of the "authentic" letters of Paul. I of course knew that half of them have been very well demonstrated to be "inauthentic, " and I knew that even the supposedly authentic ones were pastiches of different letters, not what they purport to be. But this interview helped me really consider the implications of what is known about those letters and the nature of religious literature writing early in the common era.

As he says, we don't know that there wasn't an early leader who wrote the authentic letters, but we really don't know much about him even assuming there was. I suspect there was, because just wholesale inventing some of it would make less sense to me. Like all the stuff that makes Paul look like a petulant cult leader. I would think if one was completely inventing a heroic early church leader, one would leave out stuff like that. And the stuff that makes it clear that Paul was kind of buying himself into the original Torah-observant church with donations from his gentile flock. I guess that's kind of the criteria of embarrassment, which I don't generally agree with. But this is the kind of thing I really think they'd take out if they were just inventing a founder from scratch. And yet, even if my suspicion is correct and a guy existed who wrote earlier versions of the authentic letters, we have no way of knowing how well the extant versions of his letters reflect his opinions. Very interesting.

[RebeccaRaven]

I need to watch again. There were some comments offered as asides that really stopped me cold!

[JC-becc]

If they could only find one, which one would you want, Q gospel or Marcion's bible?

[David-kiff]

I bet a bunch of Christians would get a kick out of this interview and make their day.😂

[DamienZachariah]

I'd be fascinated to hear your thoughts on revelations.

[tonijoncevski]

In what meaningful sense is Dr Trobisch a Lutherran? I was a Presbyterian minister and now I am a Radical Agnostic and don’t identify as a Presbyterian. Am I a Presbyterian in Dr Trobisch’s sense of being a Lutheran.

[thomasprislacjr.]

The old Testiment was just a rip off of Akkadian and Sumerian tales. Do that video next.

[iwilldi]

What is this guy saying by _you cannot delete, you can only add_
We have a lot of examples of deletions.

[bobtim]

Fictional latter are canonized as Inspired word of god and are presented as such in a book called bible