Let’s review more from the passage from Tertullian that I cited above,outhouse wrote:
That does not make the church father a liar. He could be repeating what he had heard.
"The dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. … Nothing, however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the waggon-life of the Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the cloud, (of Pontus) colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled by Marcion's blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region." (Adv Marc 1.1.3-5)
Whether Tertullian actually believed all this hysterical rhetoric or not we’ll likely never know. But the point is that he went way over the top to discredit Marcion, and in the process impeached himself as a credible witness.
And that’s exactly MY point --- no one knows who is being truthful in the writings of Tertullian and his ilk.outhouse wrote:This is exactly my point, you don't have a clue who is or is not being truthful here. You just want to discredit these people for your own personal agenda. Shame on you.
You yourself have questioned the credibility of the Patristics in another thread addressed to Stephan Huller,
I do not want to discredit the patristic for my own personal agenda. I have chosen to discredit them as reliable sources of historical truths because I honestly believe that finding historical truths among the polemics and established church traditions can yield no more than very broad and inherently biased speculation.outhouse wrote:The only people that believe this are the same church fathers that falsely attributed disciple/apostle names to the unknown authors work. This right here ruins any credibility in the path you have chosen, as we know they are running down a rhetorical road.