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Join us for a secular discussion of another fascinating academic paper published by the Marcionite Keleuthos Divinity School, titled: The Shasu Mutation: From Original Sin to Christian Identity Theft, Textual Inversion, and the Hijacking of Western Civilization.

On 3 December 1872, before a packed assembly of the Society of Biblical Archaeology - the sitting Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, among the political and ecclesiastical dignitaries - the self-taught cuneiform decipherer George Smith read his translation of Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh. When he reached the bird sequence of the Babylonian deluge, the room fell into stunned silence: the Noah narrative of Genesis was not a unique, pristine revelation delivered to Moses at the dawn of time but an adaptation of a pagan Mesopotamian blueprint written centuries earlier. This paper argues that the flood was only the first front of a larger operation.

The foundational narratives of Genesis - the Garden, the Flood, Babel, the birth of Moses - are a systematic appropriation of older Mesopotamian literature (Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, Adapa, the Sargon legend, the Code of Hammurabi), executed not by copying alone but by moral inversion: the knowledge, self-awareness, technology, and civic life that Mesopotamia celebrated as human ascent are recast as cosmic crimes, and natural mortality is recast as inherited guilt. That inversion - the doctrine of Original Sin - is the initiating anomaly of the present investigation.

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Read the full paper: https://zenodo.org/records/22932493

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PDF and ebook versions of this paper (with full slides and images) available soon - to be notified, email outreach (at) marcionitechurch.org

1. A. W. Mitchell, “The Theophanic Replacement Protocol: A Forensic Reconstruction of Divine Identity Theft, Textual Erasure, and the Formation of Nicene Christianity,” Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies 1, no. 5 (2025), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17964659.↩

2. A. W. Mitchell, “The Archivist, Not the Heretic: Marcion, Scriptural Proof, and the False Charges of Docetism, Ditheism, and Gnosticism,” Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies 2, no. 9 (2026), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21985332.↩

3. Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).↩

4. Aaron Lynch, Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996).↩

5. Bernard Cullen, “Parasite Ecology and the Evolution of Religion,” in The Evolution of Complexity, ed. Francis

The Keleuthos Divinity School has just published a new academic paper on St. Marcion in the Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies - and it changes everything you've been told about the most maligned figure in Christian history. Today, we join a secular panel as they dissect and discuss the paper in full.

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Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies

Download the academic paper free

Ebook version of the paper

What if the earliest Christians didn't believe the God of the Old Testament was God at all? That's the provocative thesis at the heart of this month's featured paper. We walk through the evidence from Paul's original canon, the forensic case against the heresiologists, and why it feels like Satan's earthly proxies are in growing control of the world. Plus: what apatheia is and why it matters right now. Join a panel of secular commentators as they discuss the paper and comment on Presbyter Darren Kelama's recent podcast which asks, "Is Yahweh actually Satan?"

Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies

The Very First Bible 144 AD

Marcionite Church

• BeDuhn, Jason D. The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2013.
• Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis VII. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, 520–560. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
• Epiphanius of Salamis. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I (Sects 1–46). Translated by Frank Williams. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. The Church History. Translated by Paul L. Maier. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2007.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Adversus Haereses. Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 315–567. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
• The Very First Bible: The Evangelion and Apostolikon (144 AD). 2020. Marcionite Church (marcionitechurch.org). ISBN: 978-0578641591. Link
• Mitchell, A. W. "Papyrus 46 and the Marcionite Apostolikon: Codicological Constraints, Apostolic Warnings and the Adulteration of the Pauline Corpus." Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies (June 2026). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20265848.
• Mitchell, A. W. "The Myth of the Jerusalem Continuity: Aelia Capitolina, the Marcionite Mission to Rome, and the Suppressed Apostolic Succession (AD 135–325)." Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies, Special Issue (2026). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20481484.
• Mitchell, A. W. "The Theophanic Replacement Protocol: A Forensic Reconstruction of Divine Identity Theft, Textual Erasure, and the Formation of Nicene Christianity." Journal of Pre-Nicene Christian Studies (2025). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17964659.
• Romer, Thomas. The Invention of God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
• Sorabji, Richard. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Tertullian of Carthage. Adversus Marcionem. Edited and translated by Ernest Evans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972.
• Tertullian of Carthage. De Praescriptione Haereticorum. Translated by Peter Holmes. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, 243–267. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.