What I am saying is that here we have a set of readings contradicting each other and no one pays attention to them. There are more important matters such as establishing a common structure. People at the top fail to communicate and a split occurs – instead of working together, there will be separate action, creating mutual competition. A group of people is being created to search for possible true and false accusations. That’s all. What was Marcion’s preferred reading? I haven’t the slightest idea.
This is an old method of using the interpretation of doctrine to fight competitors – from 1920 to 1989 abused by the communists. Creating imaginary accusations was still in use when I was at school. People spent long years in prison, some of them on death row, because someone publicly attributed to them an idea that was extremely dangerous to the communist doctrine.