Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies: Vol. 2, Iss. 6 (June 2026)

In this issue: Between AD 144 and AD 175, a coalition of Roman bishops, Jewish scribes, and anti‑Marcionite polemicists executed a quiet but devastating literary coup. Seizing Marcion’s original, law‑free Apostolikon, they systematically intercalated seven Yahwist passages into Paul’s letters, larding the celestial gospel of the unknown Father with the covenant, law, and lineage of the Bronze Age war god Yahweh.

This thirty‑year window is the forensic heart of the crime: the period in which the canonical Pauline corpus was overwritten, Papyrus 46 was manufactured, and the African Old Latin Bible was born. The paper reconstructs the network—Pius I, Mattithiah ben Heresh, Hegesippus, Tertullian—and the pipeline that transformed a clean revelation into a synthetic, Yahwist scripture. The window is still open. The palimpsest is still legible.

Authored by: A.W. Mitchell, Chancellor - Marcionite Keleuthos Divinity School - DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20265848

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