The Gospel of Mark Belongs To Peter

Ligurian said:

(does it matter what I think about Paul? since Paul isn't the apostle of me.)

It might be "completely different" if this fact wasn't so easy to find.

The same Greek word in Matthew 24-25 is translated as "word" in the following verse:

John 1:1
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Therefore, "sayings" becomes "word":

Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

Which goes back to this warning:

Deuteronomy 18:18-19 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee(Moses), and will put My words in His mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. 19 And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever will not hearken unto My words which He shall speak in My name, I will require [it] of him.

Which is the warning that Jesus repeats here:

John 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on him that sent Me. 45 And he that seeth Me seeth Him that sent Me. 46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in darkness. 47 And if any man hear My words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. 49 For I have not spoken of Myself; but the Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. 50 And I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak.

And this is what Simon Peter believes:

John 6:68 Then Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

Me, too.

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So you believe Paul’s teachings are not helpful to those who seek salvation and life everlasting for those who believe in Jesus Christ and God the Father, and that coincidentally, the Gospel According to St. Luke is also less than helpful?

Ligurian said:

I've no idea why people still want to pretend that Mark wrote this Gospel according to Peter... when history says otherwise.

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No one's pretending anything.
If you look into the background, the, or one of the, source(s) that Mark used for his Gospel was Peter - no one's denying that. Mark wrote the material down and arranged it in some kind of order; Mark did all that, not Peter, so it is the Good News according to Mark.

Ligurian said:

And Mark wasn't even there...

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How do you know?
You refuse to answer the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane incident; maybe you can't.

Ligurian said:

Thank God, for these histories which give Simon Peter back his testimony of Jesus,
in the writings of Papias, Ireneus, Justin, Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius.

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So what do you want to achieve?
Sounds like you plan to go around talking about the Gospel of Peter, instead of Mark's Gospel in case Peter, who is dead and couldn't care less - is upset that he hasn't had any "credit".
You are free to do this. But I can assure you that most people either won't know what you are talking about, so you'll have to explain, or they will think that you accept the heretical book called "the Gospel of Peter."

Rather than getting hung up on the name of the author; do you read the Gospel and believe what it says? If not, it doesn't matter what it is called; you find it irrelevant.

Ligurian said:

Some of "we" don't disregard this testimony... and "some of we" therefore, don't think your theory is more accurate than Papias' record of history.

Via the process of translation, of course the literary style came from Mark... but the original words came from Peter. Just having interlinear Biblical texts should give you an idea of the choices that can made... like "sayings" instead of "word"... and "iniquity" instead of "no law".

In addition, I don't see Peter commissioning the work, but other people wanting Peter's preaching copied down by Mark... who seems to have been a long-time follower and disciple of Peter. Eusebius says Peter "neither directly forbade nor encouraged it."

“And the elder used to say this, Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.”--Papias

“Matthew composed his gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel in Rome and founded the community. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed on his preaching to us in written form”--Iranaeus

“It is said that he [Jesus] changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and it is written in his memoirs that he changed the names of others, two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’….”--Justin

“And so great a joy of light shone upon the minds of the hearers of Peter that they were not satisfied with merely a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, who was a follower of Peter and whose gospel is extant, to leave behind with them in writing a record of the teaching passed on to them orally; and they did not cease until they had prevailed upon the man and so became responsible for the Scripture for reading in the churches.”--Clement of Alexandria

“The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.”--Eusebius

I've no idea why people still want to pretend that Mark wrote this Gospel

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Because Papias, Ireneus, Justin, Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius among others say so. I mean, its pretty strange at this point when you have quoted all these Patristic references in support of Markan authorship and interpret them as claiming plagiarism, when none of them, not even Eusebius, who was an Arian heretic, and not a Christian, who was constantly kissing up to Constantine, along with his Arian non-Christian colleague Eusebius of Nicomedia, in a campaign to get the Council of Nicea reversed, which ultimately happened, with Constantius the son of Constantine leading the first wave of persecutions against the Christian Church since Diocletian, in an ill-fated attempt to replace Christianity with Arianism. Because the idea of God becoming man so that we might be saved through theosis was too much of a threat to the Roman establishment, in which their system was based on the idea that only the greatest men like Romulus, Scipio Africanus, Virgil, Gaius Julius Caesar, Caesar Agustus and Trajan on their own attained deity through apotheosis.

Strong in Him said:

No one's pretending anything.
If you look into the background, the, or one of the, source(s) that Mark used for his Gospel was Peter - no one's denying that. Mark wrote the material down and arranged it in some kind of order; Mark did all that, not Peter, so it is the Good News according to Mark.

How do you know?
You refuse to answer the young man in the Garden of Gethsemane incident; maybe you can't.

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Also, Mark owned the house that contained the Cenacle. It is a Syriac Orthodox Monastery today.

So what do you want to achieve?
Sounds like you plan to go around talking about the Gospel of Peter, instead of Mark's Gospel in case Peter, who is dead and couldn't care less - is upset that he hasn't had any "credit".

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Peter and Mark, having won crowns of martyrdom, are very much spiritually alive in Heaven among the Church Triumphant.

The Liturgist said:

Peter and Mark, having won crowns of martyrdom, are very much spiritually alive in Heaven among the Church Triumphant.

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Yeah, I thought that just after I wrote it.
What I meant was that as Peter is not around on earth, he's unlikely to get upset that he's not getting enough credit/attention, far less sue for "plagiarism", which is what the OP seems to be getting at.

Ligurian said:

So... Mark is dead...
But you think that Mark should get credit for being in Gethsemane...

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No, I'm saying that a number of people think that that is what happened. If it did, then that would answer your objection about Mark not being there.

And you seem to have a thing about people getting "credit" for doing things, or for writing the Gospel.

Ligurian said:

which, by your rule of thumb, Mark couldn't care less about...

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What ARE you talking about?

Ligurian said:

in order to make it look like Mark wrote that Gospel,
from a first-hand-witnessing standpoint.

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No, it's not "to make it look like Mark wrote the Gospel".
You stated that Mark "wasn't there" and didn't follow Jesus.
I replied that people believe that he WAS in the Garden of Gethsemane, because of that small, uniquely recorded incident. You have not answered this point; just, it seems to me, poured scorn on it.

Ligurian said:

John 17:20 matters, or that would never happen.

The Gospel according to Peter, translated by Mark*
Mark 1:14-15 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, And saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the Gospel."

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Again, what are you talking about?

In John 17:20 Jesus prayed for all those who would come to believe in him through the Apostles' teaching - what has that to do with Mark writing down the story of Jesus' life as told to him by Peter? I have been told that at the time the Gospel was written, the church was being persecuted, and Peter was trying to escape it. That would certainly explain the sense of urgency about his Gospel - he was in a hurry. It's a lot quicker to tell someone something than to write it down.

Like I said, how are you going to apply all of this practically? If you walk around talking about the Gospel of Peter, either people won't understand what you are talking about, or they'll think you are referring to a heretical book.

Ligurian said:

Read it again and again... out loud, if you have to.



To prove to you that I do actually read what you write... let me quote what you said back to you... and delete the author(s) you find objectionable from your opening list.

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I want to tell you I sincerely appreciate that you read what I write. We disagree, but you are an honest debater; you answer my questions, you are polite and courteous, and I really enjoy debating with you. Without good debate partners, this forum would be kind of boring, and you are an excellent debate partner.

Despite our disagreement on this and other issues, I would love to be your friend.

"Because Papias, Ireneus, Justin, Clement of Alexandria and _____ among others say so. I mean, its pretty strange at this point when you have quoted all these Patristic references in support of Markan authorship

Let me just stop you there, because none of those authors even suggested that Mark was the author.

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They said he wrote it! That’s considered authorship where I come from. With the exception of course of St. Justin Martyr, whose comment you quote did not refer to the Gospel in question, but rather St. Peter changing his name from Simon. Fun fact, by the way: in Syriac, and presumably other Aramaic languages such as Gallilean Aramaic and Judean Aramaic, the name taken by St. Peter is Cephas (you will find this in at least two translations of the New Testament of the Peshitta (the widely respected Syriac translation of the Bible, equal to, and possibly superior to the excellent Latin translation by St. Jerome, known as the Vulgate - the original, not the edited and rewritten Latin biblss published more recently by the Roman Catholic Church, primarily because Syriac is an Aramaic languages, and some , specifically the Etheridge and Murdoch translations.

Now, is it a derivative work? Sure, but any IP lawyer who you asked would tell you St. Peter is the author, of a derivative work, which according to the preponderance of the evidence (every relevant witnessexcept Eusebius), has said that St. Peter authorized the work.
,

“Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those iwho had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.”--Eusebius


As for your attempted character assassination of Eusebius...
(whose message you wished to kill?)... there's this:

"Church leaders opposed Arianism because it denied the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Prior to the Council of Nicaea, the church had temporarily excommunicated Eusebius because of his support of Arian Christology. But at the Council of Nicaea Eusebius took a middle stand in the Arian controversy and affirmed the council's creed."
How Eusebius of Caesarea Preserved the History of Early Christianity

Opinions vary. (shrug)

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So regarding Eusebius, it is a recorded fact that he resented the Council of Nicea and desired the Church to tolerate both Arian and Trinitarian theology. He was, at best, the fourth century equivalent of a Latitudinarian or Broad Churchman, a very broad churchman (these are Anglican terms which basixally refer to those Anglicans who want Anglican churches to tolerate a vast array of theological opinions in the interests of making everyone happy, and in the case of the Church of England, where the phenomenon began, arguably with the Elizabethan Settlement, but certainly by the 18th century, to unite England under one all encompassing church; this idea later spread to the presbyterian Church of Scotland, but only in recent decades, indeed, the Church of Scotland was solidly Calvinist and still is the prototypical Presbyterian church in the English speaking world; before the 19th century emergence of Scoto-Catholicism, and the closely related Mercersburg Theology, the Church of Scotland had an entirely homogenous theology).

Eusebius of Caesarea, as you did correctly state, did indeed sign the confession of faith at the Council of Nicea, but under protest, famously declaring “I sign this with my hand, but not my heart!”

Later correspondence indicates he was a semi-Arian or at least an Arian sympathizer, and a letter of his which expressed an Arian theological viewpoint was included in the evidence presented at the Council of Constantinople in 381. which reformed the Nicene Creed so as to exclude Semi-Arians, who in many cases felt able to comfess the original, somewhat lightweight Nicene Creed, but their theology was Arian, albeit not as hardcore Arian as, say, Eusebius of Nicomedia or Emperor Constantius, or the illegally appointed “Patriarch of Alexandria”, George, who was greatly unpopular with the Alexandrian populace, to put it mildly. The vast majority of Alexandrians desired the return of their exiled Patriarch, St. Athanasius, which finally happened towards the end of his life. Athanasius was much-loved; gentler in his canons than even St
Basil of Caesarea, and was also responsible for mamy critically important works, including the final, definitive 27 book New Testament canon, the theological masterpiece On the Incarnation , and also the Life of St. Anthony, and I encourage every Christian to read Athanasius and study his works, because he is exceptionally brilliant, to the point that he questioned what has become a major problem with the Big Bang Theory as the sole reason why we came into existence, in the fourth century, before the Big Bang Theory had even been proposed (that being the fact that the universe is non-uniform, but consists of a diversity of forms of matter).

Now, on the subject of character assasinatiom, please forgive me my brother, but it seems to me that the whole point of this thread is to question the moral and ethical principles of members of the Early Church. Your opinion, which you are absolutely entitled to, is that St. Mark was a plagiarist. In support of this, you quoted several Patristic figures, and of these, only one of them I object to, namely Eusebius of Caesarea, who was at least sympathetic to Arians, and was probably a so-called Semi-Arian, who did, under protest, sign the declaration of faith at Nicea. I don’t think he was a hard-core Arian, later referred to as Eunomians, after Eunomius, the leader of that cult in the mid to late fourth century, following the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, who, being a bishop, was the most powerful champion of Arius and his doctrine.

At any rate, I do want to tell you how much I appreciate your debating method; to reiterate what I said earlier, it is clear that you read every post, and write your own responses, and you are exceptionally polite. It is also clear that you have a strong Christian piety, and you are clearly Nicene. You also introduced me to a superb website, which I was unaware of, but that site ie excellent. I have made the mistake of debating rude members, who shall go unnamed, who don’t read my individual replies, and who instead copy and paste from apologetic websites for whatever doctrine they are promting, and you are not one of those people. I wish everyone on Christian Forums debated like you, in a considerate, honest and attentive manner.

I seriously want to be friends with you, despite our differences, because your conduct impresses me to the point where you have my esteem, respect and profound admiration. I realize we disagree on the authorship of the Gospel in question, and I do hope to persuade you to change your mind on that point, but you have every right to hold to your belief that the Gospel According to Mark should be attributed to Peter, the existing fragment of the Gospel According to Peter* notwithstanding, and it is by no means an article of Christian faith that the Gospel According to St. Mark was authored by him; rather this falls into the realm of what the Greeks call “theological opinions” (theolougmena) which do not infringe on the Orthodoxy of those who have them.

So, in conclusion, I would really like to be friends with you, and I hope you will accept my offer of friendship, because I admire you greatly for your earnest, polite and decent nature. And I would love to debate with you in other threads some of the points you have raised in this thread, for our mutual edification; I have found this debate not only excellent and intellectually stimulating, but also edifying, and I feel I have learned several interesting things in the course of this thread.

God bless you, my brother in Christ.


*I really simcerely wish we had that entire Gospel, because its account of the Passion of our Lord is exceptionally vivid, even though the Resurrection narrative is pretty weird, with angels whose heads extend into the heavens above, and the Holy Cross floating around and talking, but this Gospel was very popular into the fourth century, when the bishops became suspicious that it was heretical. I don’t think St. Peter wrote it, but it is fascinating, and I would encourage you to read it, not as a scriptural text or source of doctrine, obviously, but rather kind of like a fictionalized narrative of the death and resurrection of our Lord, because it makes for good reading.

Am I going to preach it in my church? Certainly not; I only preach the 27 books in the New Testament canon, and also the 22 canonical Old Testament books, and the deuterocanonical (some say apocryphal) books used by the Anglicans, which are included in the King James Version. I have thought about adopting the Ethiopian Orthodox “broad canon” because I believe 1 Enoch was valid scripture, because St. Jude quotes it, however, I think the Ge’ez language version in the hands of the Ethiopians is partially corrupt.

Ligurian said:

I am certainly not denying Paul's mission to the Gentiles.
Rather, I am quoting what Paul himself says about his ministry.
I'm NOT the one who doesn't believe what Paul says.



Why don't you believe Paul... isn't he your apostle?

Galatians 2:9 And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we [should go] unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.
Romans 11:13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles...
Colossians 4:14 Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.
1 Corinthians 7:18 Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised.

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I just had to ask, because there are people who reject the validity of St. Paul”s apostolate, and you obviously are not one of them.

I believe in all of the Apostles. Regarding St. Paul, he was not the only apostle to the Gentiles, but when he wrote that, I suspect he was the only Apostle to the Gentiles who was still alive, at least that he was aware of. St. Andrew the First Called took a northerly route, being the first Apostle to preach in Byzantium, and planting the seeds of faith as far north as the Slavic and Scythian people. There were Jews along much of St. Andrew’s route, however, and his northerly journey to what is now The Ukraine was an extra effort; perhaps St. Andrew was inspired by St. Paul, as they both preached in Asia Minor, and St. Andrew headed north. Like St. Peter, who insisted on being crucified upside down, St. Andrew also felt that he should not be crucified in the same way as our Lord, so when he won the crown of martyrdom, it was on an X shaped cross.*

Then there is St. Thomas, who I believe started out with his disciples Saints Addai and Mari, traveling across Syria, Mesopotamia, amd eventually reaching Kerala. There were Jews in all of these places, and I think his initial goal was to convert them, but he wound up converting large numbers of Gentiles. He was martyred in Kerala, India, which had a large Jewish population up until the formation of the State of Israel; now only a handful remain. The most famous Indian Jew is the late Vidal Sassoon, whose family was one of the most powerful and respected among Indian Jewery. In 53 AD, St. Thomas the Apostle received the crown of martyrdom when a Hindu Raja impaled him with a spear. However, this did not stop the Church in India, which grew and grew, and today there are millions of St. Thomas Christians, in several denominations, mostly Syriac Orthodox, Indian Orthodox, or members of either the Mar Thoma Catholic Church, which uses the East Syriac liturgy, like the Assyrian Church of the East (which is also present) and the Malankara Catholic Church, which uses the West Syriac liturgy of the Syriac Orthodox and Indian Orthodox churches. There is also one smaller independent Syriac Orthodox church which is not in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, which is in communion with the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is a reformed, Protestant church in communion with the Anglicans. So “doubting Thomas” was pretty successful. I believe the sayings Gospel attributed to him he probably wrote, as a reference for what Jesus said, but the surviving copy, which was recovered from a treasure trove of Gnostic scripture, is obviously corrupted by the Gnostics, with numerous interpolations of a Gnostic character. Perhaps someday we will find the real one; it might also be possible to restore the “Sayings Gospel” by deleting the Gnostic content and the small minority of quotes therein which are not found in the canonical Synoptic Gospels. If it is the oldest Gospel, as many scholars believe, even with the Gnostic corruption, it has the effect of validating the Synoptic Gospels, in terms of their quotations of Jesus Christ. But, on the whole, whether or not he wrote that sayings Gospel, St. Thomas the Apostle, who is often called “doubting Thomas” had a great apostolate; I think he set out with just converting Jews along his route, but he converted so many Aramaean, Assyrian, Mesopotamian, Chaldean and Indian gentiles that I consider him St. Paul of the East.

Sadly no epistles of his have come down to us; there is a wacky Gnostic Acts of Thomas, which is, like most Gnostic literature, about 40% true and 60% baloney. And there is a vile, blasphemous Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which was written by a disciple of Mani, the founder of the Manicheam Gnostic sect, which St. Augustine was born into, but thanks be to our Heavenly Father, he was converted to Christianity by St. Augustine. This infancy “gospel” is not to be confused with the Sayings Gospel I discussed previously, but is a purely blasphemous narrative of the childhood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the content of which is so horrendous, I wish the early church fathers had burned it exclusively and left every other book alone. It is such a work of filth I wish I had never read it, I won’t tell anyone what it contains, and I urge eceryone to avoid it. It, and the Satyricon*** of Petronius the Arbiter, are the two most filthy, revolting and disgusting works I have ever read, and it really infuriates me that those two pieces of filth survived, but we lost the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Hexapla of Origen.

Then we have the only other Apostles who set out to convert Gentiles. Saints Thaddeus and Bartholomew, who travelled to Armenia, where they received crowns of martyrdom, after being horribly tortured. I believe they were in Paradise together with Saint Stephen the Protomartyr and Saint James the Great Christ our King, and the Heavenly Father by the time St. Paul declared he was the Apostle to the Gentiles.

* This is where the design of the flag of Scotland came from, for he was adopted as their patron saint (some legends say he reached Scotland and preached there, but I am highly skeptical of these, as well as the legend that Our Lord visited Somerset in England; St. Andrew would, to reach Scotland, have to somehow sail across the channel, and then make his way north to Scotland without being killed by the Celtic Britons in what is now England,, who were extremely hostile to outsiders, as were the Celts and Picts who then liived in Scotland. Of course the modern English people did not exist yet, neither did the modern Scots; Scotland was subject to numerous Viking incursions and occupations, and the English are descended from the Celtic Britons, the Angles, who were originally from an area of Schleswig-Holstein called Anglia, which I believe is now in Denmark, and from the Danes themselves, who ruled England for a time from Jarvik, now called York, rather than the ancient capital of Londinium** now called London, and the Saxons, who then took over and ruled until the Normans conquered England at the Battle of Hastings, and over time, intermarriage produced the English people we know today.

** Here’s a fun fact: the effective capital of the UK is not the City of London, but the adjacent City of Westminster, home to Parliament, the Supreme Court, 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, and Whitehall (a road lined on either side by bureaucracies and military offices). Of course both are part of Greater London, which has a Council and a Mayor of London, but Westminster and the City of London, and the boroughs (I believe only Westminster and The City of London have city status) all have their own councils, which are quite large; I think the councils of Westminster and The City each have 50-60 members, and the City of London has its own police force responsible for patrolling the Square Mile, as the City is sometimes called, with distinctive uniforms with brass buttons and rank insignia and a red and white checkered pattern on their peaked caps, versus the Metropolitan Police, aka Scotland Yard, who wear silver buttons and rank insignia and have a black and white checkered pattern on their caps, and of course, a different badge on the classic helmet, silver rather than brass (every other police force in England and Wales looks like this) which patrols the rest of Greater London except for the Underground and the railway stations, etc. which are the responsibility of the British Transport Police.

The City of London Police also, if I remember correctly, patrol the numerous parks around London which are the property of the City (the formal title of which is The City of London Corporation). The council members of the City of London are semi-bicameral, in that there are Aldermen, who hold a higher rank. The City of London, unlike the City of Westminster., has its own mayor, not to be confused with the Mayor of London. The Lord Mayor of the City of London is largely ceremonial; according to the ancient rights granted to the City of London, the reigning monarch has to receive permission from the Lord Mayor in order to enter the Square Mile of the City. I believe this primarily happens at the annual Lord Mayor’s Show, which is like a parade, the organization of which is one of the main responsibilities of the Lord Mayor during his one year term of office (yes, thats right, the Lord Mayor, elected from the Aldermen, serves one year only). When the Queen enters the city, she is stopped by the Lord Mayor, who points a sword at her (!) as a celebration of the ancient rights of the City. And also, after WWII, the residential population declined dramatically, so just under 10,000 live there, but unlike anywhere else in the world so far as I know, corporations in the City are enfranchised; I can’t remember how many votes each company gets, I think it is related to the number of employees, but, corporations have the vote!

A friend of mine who lives in the burough of Blackheath likened the City of London to another country.

*** I had to do a book report on the Satyricon in high school; I am pretty sure my English teacher was a pervert; after reading it I refused to write a report and took a D, but appealed to the dean of students and the principal, and ultimately to the school board, and got that book banned from high school; unfortunately this was before paedophilia or the potential of it was as thoroughly enforced against as it is now, so I couldn’t get him fired, but I kept my 3.8 GPA. Again, like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I refuse to say what it contains, other than to say it is filthy and disgusting in the worst possible way, and no one should read it. It is so unfair those two works of pure trash survived, but we lost the Hexapla and the Gospel of the Hebrews, and we lack a complete copy of the Gospel According to Peter (not the one written by Mark which you are adamant was authored by St. Peter, but the other one I mentioned, which I doubt Peter wrote.

Ligurian said:

whew... good thing I'm not dispensational, then.

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Which doesn't change the fact that if you are promoting two different gospels then you are promoting the same heresy the hyper-dispensationalists teach.

One doesn't have to formally belong to a group to still be promoting and teaching the same errors as that group.

Nobody thinks that the Jehovah's Witnesses are literally Arians; but nevertheless the heresy they promote is a form of that same old Arian heresy.

If you are preaching two different gospels, then you are preaching heresy. It's pretty straight forward. There is only one Gospel, Christ's Gospel, and it's the Gospel which St. Paul preached.

-CryptoLutheran

Ligurian said:

If you were telling a baby Christian where to find the the gospel of Paul to the gentiles, which verses would you list for them?

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I don't know what "the gospel of Paul to the gentiles" is, so I wouldn't be telling them to find that.

A new convert should be getting proper catechesis in the church, regularly hearing the word being faithfully preached, and encountering the depth and beauty of the Christian faith in the living liturgy of the Church's worship. And in this setting, hearing and learning the Scriptures for all they are worth.

And if that is being done, then they are hearing the Gospel, and can be confident in the power of God, "For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17). For it, the Gospel, "is the power of God to save all who believe, the Jew first and also the Greek" (Romans 1:16).

If someone came to me and wanted me to go through the Scriptures with them to better understand the Gospel, I would be going all over the Bible, speaking of all of God's covenants and promises since the beginning. I would speak of God's will and desire to renew and restore all of creation, and how this is revealed to us in the words of the Prophets and the Psalms. And of the hope of redemption coming through Israel's long-awaited redeemer, the Anointed King, the Messiah, Christ. And that Jesus the Christ is this One long awaited, and in and through Him is brought to pass the long-awaited saving and redeeming work of God for the whole of creation. And go through the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles of St. Paul, the Catholic Epistles, the Apocalypse, and all the way back to Genesis, the Exodus, the Histories, the Prophets, etc in how God has brought to bear all that He has promised. And that He has kept His promise, continues to keep that promise, and will at last set the world to rights as He has declared.

That is to say, I would preach the Gospel to them.

-CryptoLutheran

Ligurian said:

Then it's just too bad that you don't believe Galatians 2:7-9, isn't it?.

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False accusation.

ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἰδόντες ὅτι πεπίστευμαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς ἀκροβυστίας καθὼς Πέτρος τῆς περιτομῆς.

"But on the contrary, when they saw that I was entrusted with the Gospel to the uncircumcised, and Peter to the circumcised" (verse 7)

"But on the contrary, when they saw that I was entrusted with the Gospel to the uncircumcised, and Peter to the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised."

That's one Euaggelion, Gospel, to both the Jews and Gentiles alike.

-CryptoLutheran