WHY the Marcionites Identified the Acts of the Apostles as a Forgery

I know that Carlson and Jeffrey have this 'important job' they have to do - i.e. setting forth 'proofs' that Morton Smith's discovery of To Theodore is a forgery. Since they have done such a job convincing scholars as to this state of affairs with very little in the way of any 'real evidence' I was thinking we should hire these guys to help prove what many in antiquity repeatedly testified was another ANCIENT forgery - the Book of Acts.

The Marcionites always rejected this text as a forgery. All the Church Fathers testify to this state of affairs. I wonder when these modern detectives of Biblical forgeries are going to take up disproving this 'hoax'?

I will help give them a smoking gun that they never quite found in their case against Morton Smith. It is the reason WHY the Marcionites smelt a fraud. It goes beyond the portrait of their Apostle submitting to the authorities in Jerusalem. It goes beyond Mark being relegated to a servant of Peter and then Paul. It has everything to do with the gospel.

All these supposed experts should read the Dialogues of Adamantius again and witness firsthand what the Marcionites thought the gospel was. It was nothing short of a second Torah, a revelation out of heaven which found a human vessel for its composition. In many ways it is an ancient precursor of the Qu'ran.

It would be impossible for the Marcionites to conceive of a 'history of the Church' WITHOUT making the revelation of the gospel the central event of the narrative.

So where the heck IS the revelation of the gospel in the Acts of the Apostles?

Oh, it wasn't important enough to deserve mention? Or perhaps it was deliberately left out because no one could think of a rational fable to compete with the Marcionite understanding.

I think there is an IMPLICIT argument which was originally seen as being present in Acts. It developed out of the strange way that John Mark is the companion of Peter for half the book and then Paul for the rest. I think that in the time of Polycarp (i.e. the period before Irenaeus edited the text) John Mark was understood to have written the ONE gospel that was used in the Catholic churches. I can prove that 'John' was understood to have been the author of the gospel referenced by Paul in the pre-Irenaean tradition.

Of course, Irenaeus changed all of that by the time he wrote his Third Book of Against the Heresies. Now there were four gospels revealed to four different evangelists in four different parts of the world. Irenaeus can be seen even altering the contents of Acts to make Paul REJECT John Mark in order to allow for the idea that Luke rather than 'John' wrote the gospel of Paul.

Of course all of this PROVES that Acts and the Catholic history of the Church is every bit the fraud that Carlson and Jeffrey accuse To Theodore of being. Why don't these 'hoaxbusters' start working on a 'second act' for their careers?

At least in this case they will actually find a 'smoking gun' to prove their case. I just gave it to them ...