The Marcionites Shared a Lot of Beliefs with Justin Martyr

[GakuseiDon]

Based on what you've said, it implies that there was one 'criticism' mentioned. It would be daring to conclude that there were no other criticisms that could be deployed from reserve.

Internal criticisms within the philosophical circles of Christianity, no doubt. Externally to the pagans, the one given is about the Creator god not being the true god. I suspect this would have been a problem to Romans who believed that the Creator god/gods had set up a world where the Romans currently ruled that world.

Justin writes in the First Apology that pagans persecuted Christians for, amongst other things, performing impious rites:

All who take their opinions from these men [Simon, Meander, Marcion], are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.

As for internal divisions, I agree with Secret Alias: the proto-orthodox held a lot of similar beliefs with Marcion. What would there have been in *Ev (removing the first sentence) and Marcion's collection of Paul's letters that the average paganised Christian would have had a problem with? From what I can see, very little indeed. They could have read through them all quite comfortably. It may be why Tertullian has such a hard time quoting from Marcion's *Ev and Paul. Most of the differences come down to Marcion's analysis that are external to those collections, such as the Creator god not being the true God. I don't think the proto-orthodox cared whether Jesus was called "Christos" or "Chrestos".

[Peter Kirby]

Based on what you've said, it implies that there was one 'criticism' mentioned. It would be daring to conclude that there were no other criticisms that could be deployed from reserve.

Internal criticisms within the philosophical circles of Christianity, no doubt. Externally to the pagans, the one given is about the Creator god not being the true god. I suspect this would have been a problem to Romans who believed that the Creator god/gods had set up a world where the Romans currently ruled that world.

Justin writes in the First Apology that pagans persecuted Christians for, amongst other things, performing impious rites:

All who take their opinions from these men [Simon, Meander, Marcion], are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.

As for internal divisions, I agree with Secret Alias: the proto-orthodox held a lot of similar beliefs with Marcion. What would there have been in *Ev (removing the first sentence) and Marcion's collection of Paul's letters that the average paganised Christian would have had a problem with? From what I can see, very little indeed. They could have read through them all quite comfortably. It may be why Tertullian has such a hard time quoting from Marcion's *Ev and Paul. Most of the differences come down to Marcion's analysis that are external to those collections. Such as the Creator god not being the true God.

IMO, something like this is a fair argument that the Marcionites did not originate the literature they accepted as authoritative.

[Secret Alias]

I don't know. Did a religion of Father and Son really believe in one God or was monarchianism imposed on Christianity ny the Emperor. Clearly the letter. That's why Marcion and Philo were earlier than Irenaeus and Judah haNasi. Whatever the former were the latter were surely execrable.

[Secret Alias]

Daniel 7 the cornerstone of Christianity is about two figures a divine old man and presumably a divine young man. Everything the late second century "orthodox" teach about this came from Caesar. Absolute garbage. How did Irenaeus and Judah have authority? Rome.

[Secret Alias]

The idea there is this "pipeline" from the first century pouring texts to us without a "treatment plant" to "purify" what comes to us is silly. Judaism used to be Philo. Christianity used to be Philo. What happened? The Empire went broke. That's what happened. Truth is a privilege.

[rgprice]

You keep saying that JM and Marcion shared "a lot of beliefs". Of course they would have shared a lot, such an argument can be made about any two people. I can argue that Barack Obama and Donald Trump share "a lot of beliefs". Both believe the world is round, both believe that humans need food to survive, etc., etc.

Surely both JM and Marcion worshiped "God the Father" and "Jesus his Son". But clearly a huge part of JM's focus is on proving that Jesus is the Messiah promised by the Jewish scriptures and that Jesus fulfilled hundreds of prophecies from the Jewish scriptures, which proves that he was foretold by Jewish prophets.

These concepts are supposedly antithetical to Marcionism.

[Secret Alias]

Ok part of the reason why I am rude at this forum is that I get disappointed when people don't share my wonder of some obvious facts. Let's start with Jesus. Whether Jesus was historical or not two traditions which supposedly hated one another (ot at least Justin hated Marcion) both held that (a) Jesus was always shape-shifting (b) that he appeared to be meek and kind but reappeared as the Man of War (for Justin according to the Psalms) and (c) both traditions understood Jesus descended into the underworld to conquer it and redeem the souls who had died without the Law. That's fucking crazy. Why? Because this never happened as a historical circumstance. How did it get passed between the Marcionites and the followers of Justin? So let's suppose there was this proto-Marcionite myth. Is it really conceivable that Justin and Marcion fought over the details? I find this hard to believe. It never happened or at least it only happened in the imaginations of Christians. Is there anything comparable in other contemporary religions? Let's say the proto-tradition dated from 100 CE and Jesus was alleged to have done these things in 21 CE, 30 CE or 36 CE. How can people have fought over something so stupid? It's not like there were eyewitnesses.

So let's suppose everyone agreed on the basic story. How did one tradition, the Marcionite tradition, ascribe everything to Paul. So Paul must have been the source of the haggadah. But Justin doesn't cite from Paul. So who invented this story? Was there someone inventing Christian myths before Paul? Unlikely. So Justin must have also secretly used Paul. His silence about Paul necessarily must have been owing to the sacredness of the writings. But doesn't that also cast a light on his use of "outlines" or drafts of the gospel when citing the sayings of Jesus? There must also have been a secret gospel in Justin's possession.

I don't know what other conclusions there can be. Why would Justin refer to the gospel as an unpolished memoir? A memoir is not equal or better to the Law. The Marcionites were touting something of supreme value.

[rgprice]

Whether Jesus was historical or not two traditions which supposedly hated one another (or at least Justin hated Marcion) both held that (a) Jesus was always shape-shifting (b) that he appeared to be meek and kind but reappeared as the Man of War (for Justin according to the Psalms) and (c) both traditions understood Jesus descended into the underworld to conquer it and redeem the souls who had died without the Law. That's fucking crazy. Why? Because this never happened as a historical circumstance.

Right, and this has long been my main point. What is extremely clear is this: Every single Christian we ever hear from at all only knows about Jesus from Gospel writings, period, end of story. We do not have one single account from any known actual person who displays any knowledge of Jesus independent of the Gospels. Justin, Marcion, Valentinus, Irenaeus, etc. are all arguing over how to interpret stories, and it is clear that they have no knowledge of this person at all outside of these stories.

And this also gets to the other issue of, not just that he didn't descend into the underworld, but that there was never any person who was crucified and then rose from the dead a few days later either. But every single account of Jesus, including the Pauline letters, tells us explicitly that the reason Jesus was worshiped was because he was raised from the dead. Rising from the dead is the thing that indicated that Jesus was a figure to be worshiped. And of course this never actually happened.

All of this crap about being some preacher who had followers and stuff and giving speeches is just a bunch of made up story telling after the fact. Even when you look at what Justin says, every reason that Justin says Jesus is to be worshiped, the "proof" that he is "Christ" or the son of God or Son of Man or whatever, 100% of it all rests on things that never actually happened and are only elements of Gospel stories. All of the "prophecy fulfillment" is just a product of how the Gospels were written, using the Jewish scriptures as their template. Every instance of "prophecy fulfillment" is nothing more than a literary invention. Every miracle is a literary invention.

So its clear that "Christians" as any kind of meaningful group ONLY EVER WERE worshipers of STORIES. There never ever was any CHRISTIAN movement prior to the writing of the Gospels. Whatever Paul was talking about, and whatever may have been going on before Paul, those people weren't "Christians" and in whatever manner they may have conceived of "Jesus" (if they even did at all) it had effectively nothing in common at all with Justin or Marcion or any actual Christian person we know anything about.

Pre-Gospel worshipers of Jesus, if any such real people even existed at all, had nothing at all in common with worshipers of the Gospel Jesus.

What I question is not simply whether Jesus existed (he did not), but whether there were in fact any real worshipers of "the Lord Jesus Christ/Chrest" prior to the writing of the Gospels. What I don't see is how pre-Gospel communities could have morphed into post-Gospel communities. The disconnect would have been massive.