A Marcionite Antithesis behind Jesus Bar-Abbas?

[Giuseppe]

thanks but for me ''Marcion first'' means that the Gospel used by Marcion (*not* created by him) was earliest. Marcion could be a pious historicist without therefore to preclude a priori the concrete possibility that Mcn was meant as allegorical by first proto-marcionites that wrote it. Mark is more allegorical than Marcion, ok, but that allegory works as compromise to overcome the explicit marcionite antithesis in a way more pro Jewish beliefs.

I'm thinking about the Cyrenaic episode and I would see this:

Cyren is for me prima facie symbol of a Jewish revolt repressed in a country far distant from Israel.
Simon is Simon bar Kochba.

Alexander is the FIRST Greek that taked Judea.

Rufus is the name of LAST roman governor of Judea, at time of bar Kochba's rebellion (when the Gospels were written).


1. As the rebellion of the Jews at this time grew much more serious, [1009] Rufus, governor of Judea, after an auxiliary force had been sent him by the emperor, using their madness as a pretext, proceeded against them without mercy, and destroyed indiscriminately thousands of men and women and children, and in accordance with the laws of war reduced their country to a state of complete subjection.

2. The leader of the Jews at this time was a man by the name of Barcocheba [1010] (which signifies a star), who possessed the character of a robber and a murderer, but nevertheless, relying upon his name, boasted to them, as if they were slaves, that he possessed wonderful powers; and he pretended that he was a star that had come down to them out of heaven to bring them light in the midst of their misfortunes.
(source: http://search.coxslot.com/look/Terentiu ... odG0=_blog )


''father of'' is better meant as relation of cause-and-effect: Simon of Cyren is the cause of Alexander and Rufus (the effects).

The meaning would this:

the revolt of Jewish messianists, if at Israel (with SIMON bar cochba) or in Diaspora (at CYREN), is destined to fail because produces as mere effects (''FATHER OF'') only the foreign domination, from the time of ALEXANDER the Great to the time when Mcn and Mark were written (when the roman RUFUS was governor of Judaea).

The more general meaning in context of Earliest Written Gospel Mcn is that the death of apparent Jewish Messiah ben Joseph ''Jesus'' (de facto the Messiah of a Stranger God) realizes not the arrival of warrior and winner Messiah ben David (contra Jewish hopes) but the start of Gentile times and of an all-loving God (*not* YHWH).

With the words of prof Markus Vinzent:

There were not ‘days of vengeance’ of the Lord, but days where ‘the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled’. Those who bring the sword and lead away captives will see that such times become fulfilled – overcome, as we will see by an all-loving God.
(source: http://markusvinzent.blogspot.it/2011/1 ... n-has.html )

As Jesus goes to deceive once and for all the demiurge, in parallel did collapse gradually the last hopes of Messianists Jews, both in Israel (with the suppression of the Simon Bar Kochba's revolt at time of governor Rufus) and in the diaspora (with repression of rebel Cyren)

I think more and more that the only polemical target of Earliest Gospel was not other kind of Christians, neither ''Jewish Christians'', but only and only pure Jewish messianists, zealots, apocalipticists, antiroman, xenofobes, etc, at best followers of a generic idea of venture, military 'Joshua' SALVATION (not of a deity that dies and rises).

Mcn was a kind of theological manifest that only decreed the end of rule of the demiurge. Point. Stop.

Were the protocatholics to invent the myth of ''Jewish Christianity'' to give prestige to themselves against the Marcionites.

But what was the origin of Marcionism ?

The idea of Demiurg comes after Kitos War among Diaspora Jews willing be ''no longer Jews'' (so Carl B. Smith).

But any religious community needed of a more spiritual fire (I refer to spiritual possession phenomena well described by Stevan L. Davies):
which was the first spiritual spark that caused Marcionism?

I don't know.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

thanks but for me ''Marcion first'' means that the Gospel used by Marcion (*not* created by him) was earliest.

Ah sorry, I have misunderstood that

Marcion could be a pious historicist without therefore to preclude a priori the concrete possibility that Mcn was meant as allegorical by first proto-marcionites that wrote it.

From the few things I have read about Marcion it was a surprise to me, that he seemed to reject allegory and to have a literal understanding of the scriptures. Therefore you may be right to establish your thoughts on the base of a proto-marcionite tradition and a proto-marcionite gospel.

Mark is more allegorical than Marcion, ok, but that allegory works as compromise to overcome the explicit marcionite antithesis in a way more pro Jewish beliefs.

If I understand correctly then you share the view that Mark is based on the Pauline epistles in the form as we know it today (more or less) and that most of the assumed interpolations in the epistles must have been done before Mark wrote. I agree with that. But that does not mean that there was a gospel before Mark.

What gave you the idea that Mcn is/could be first? About this topic I have only read a post by Prof. Markus Vinzent. I must confess that I found his arguments unconvincing.

[Giuseppe]

The reasons, until now, are the following (Vinzent 2014 has not persuaded me at all, but I'll read his future works. I'm sorry for Klinghardt 2015 only in German):

Before Marcion total silence about written Gospels.

Mcn is shorter than Mark.

John the Baptist is inserted in incipit of Mark only in order to claim ideal continuity with Judaism.

The parable of new wine in new wineskins is basically marcionite in nature and to claim the reverse you need more apologetical harmonizations.

The separationism/adoptionism in Mark would be quasi clearly a reaction to older marcionite docetism.

Mark is clearly pro Jewish customs and pro god of jews: http://www.jcrelations.net/The+Gospel+o ... 0.html?L=3

See Cerinthus: a proto-gnostic that according some scholars believed that higher god was the god of jews. Proto-Mark could be like him an 'heretic' but he was not the first to talk about identity Demiurg=YHWH.

Especially, this post of Vinzent is sound (it appears entirely in Vinzent's Marcion and Dating, too): http://markusvinzent.blogspot.it/2011/1 ... n-has.html

[Giuseppe]

The parable of new wine in new wineskins is basically marcionite in nature and to claim the reverse you need more apologetical harmonizations.



In this parable, we have a literally identical text for Marcion's Gospel and Luke, except for the last two verses. We all know the story. New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins, as the fermenting wine would crack and burst them and they would both perish, while when wine is put into new wineskins, both will be preserved. So far the logical conclusion. Luke must have adopted this story, but needed to change the ending, as Marcion used this story, as we are told by Tertullian, to show that the novelty of Christianity makes the new religion distinct from Judaism: the New Testament cannot be put together with the Old Testament, or even worse it cannot be integrated into the old wineskins of the Old Testament. To allow this inclusion, Luke cuts short Marcion's ending and replaces it with an addition that even the most traditional New Testament scholars have felt to be a radical breakdown in the logic of this pericope.

After having endorsed that new wine has to go into new wineskins, Luke adds, almost consternating the reader: 'No one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, "The old is good enough." So - why the story about the new wine and the wineskins at all? Is the novelty of Christianity not what one wants, because the traditional religion, Judaism with its Scriptures, 'is good enough'? Indeed, nobody before Marcion, with the exception of Hebrews, had picked up Paul's sole direct quote of the Lord from 1 Cor. 11 about his blood being 'the new covenant'; people who were called Christians had remained in ther old religious tradition of Judaism, as it was 'good enough' without feeling the need to see themselves or Christ's message as 'new wine' which needed 'new wineskins', new forms of literature, new sacraments, new liturgical rites, a New Testament, etc.
(Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating, Peeters 2014, p. 275-276)

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

I'm sorry for Klinghardt 2015 only in German

table of contents (in German)

I assume that our Stephan (Huller) aka (?) Secret Alias ordered the books. Maybe he can tell something about Klinghardts theory.

A little interview with Klinghardt (also in German)

The reasons, until now, are the following...

Thanks for your insights

But what was the origin of Marcionism ?

The idea of Demiurg comes after Kitos War among Diaspora Jews willing be ''no longer Jews'' (so Carl B. Smith).

But any religious community needed of a more spiritual fire (I refer to spiritual possession phenomena well described by Stevan L. Davies):
which was the first spiritual spark that caused Marcionism?

I don't know.

I think your are right, that this is the main problem for all theories of Marcion priority. It is a big step from the Septuagint to the canonical Paul and Mark, but from the Septuagint (or jewish beliefs) to Marcion it is significantly bigger. It needs to explained well.

[Peter Kirby]

But what was the origin of Marcionism ?

The idea of Demiurg comes after Kitos War among Diaspora Jews willing be ''no longer Jews'' (so Carl B. Smith).

But any religious community needed of a more spiritual fire (I refer to spiritual possession phenomena well described by Stevan L. Davies):
which was the first spiritual spark that caused Marcionism?

I don't know.

I think your are right, that this is the main problem for all theories of Marcion priority. It is a big step from the Septuagint to the canonical Paul and Mark, but from the Septuagint (or jewish beliefs) to Marcion it is significantly bigger. It needs to explained well.

I humbly suggest (and perhaps you might agree) that "Marcion priority" (i.e., a Marcionite viewpoint and Marcionite texts creating the rest of the Christian tradition) is just making problems for ourselves, for which we have nobody to blame but our own over-thinking. Marcionitism and Valentinianism are both very important and very early, given their appearance in the early second century, but they also presuppose an existing collection of Paul's letters and a gospel, which they aim to interpret. Like the Catholics, they also fail to get their interpretations to line up perfectly/neatly/with-no-loose-ends with the text they claim for themselves, and this is because all of these second century groups are trying to draw on the authority of texts that came before them all. If any of them were able to write their precise concerns into the letters of Paul, they'd look quite different. (Of course, the Catholics do have occasion to make some insertions into the letters we have.) Likewise, if the first gospel were 'Marcionite', then Huller would have to be right about it looking very different than the Gospel of Mark.

What trips us up, I think, is that Marcion and Valentinus were brilliant, faithful interpreters of Paul and of the Gospel. So yes, we see some of their ideas in the letters and the gospels (some of these points have been mentioned in this thread), but we should expect to do so. We are told that they just twisted things, instead of trying to read the texts and come up with more-or-less-as-reasonable-as-they-could-be theology based on it, but that's not really true. But neither does the truth--their ideas being in the New Testament--make the foundational New Testament texts such as Paul and Mark into productions under their aegis.

[Giuseppe]

I respect your views, Peter, and I 'll follow to read other alternatives under other mythicist hypothesis, but about Paul I can only say that I have read the commentary online of Dr. Detering on Galatians, and I humbly believe that in Gal 1:19 the only plausible reason that explains the very strange (=surprising, = unexpected = not probable, docet Carrier) fact that the the apostles weren't there that day at Jerusalem to meet Paul but James alone etc [a fact, please note, about which Carrier shows himself NOT surprised in his book, unlike the fact that it is mentioned ONLY James as presumed another apostle in addition to Peter], is that they were AFRAID to meet him because his reputation as anti-christian persecutor preceded him in some way (for which it was quasi a mission impossible for the apostle to approach a Christian after his conversion). But the entire legend of Paul persecutor is pure Catholic propaganda born from Acts onward, and hence I concluded that the epistles were all marcionite in origin, because Galatians without Gal 1:13-14,18-24 is surprisingly (=not probable as mere coincidence) similar to version used by Marcion, and the 'pauline' corpus without Galatians has not more reason to exist as 'only partially' authentic.

I disagree with you when you say:

...if the first gospel were 'Marcionite', then Huller would have to be right about it looking very different than the Gospel of Mark....

If the Catholic cooptation of Mcn happened by splitting it in our 3 synoptic Gospels, If Catholics had regarded Mcn as ''heretical'' a priori, they would not have used it. But if it's A FACT that they used it, then they they did not simply subscribe to Mcn, but they find in it a fascinating and powerful literature, so adopted it and made it their own, therefore no wonder if we find a *synoptic* view about our Gospels + Mcn. Indeed, both Mcn and Mark lack the birth story, they are much shorter than all the others, have fewer oracles, but instead deeds of the Lord: these similiarities between them require an explanation.

Tenorikuma wrote (I thank him for this):

Ory (yeah, sorry to keep mentioning him) suggests that Mark's symbolism was more Gnostic in nature: Pilate represents the archon of the world (the devil) who thinks he has captured and crucified the son of God, but in fact only crucified the Jesus of flesh. . .


I read in Marcion’s Love of Creation (Journal of Earl Christian Studies), by Andrew McGowan this:

The real experiences by Christians of trials before real judices are as (or more) likely to have provided at least the symbolic or experiential basis for describing and criticizing the lesser god in these terms; but more than that, local magistrates were arguably the actual practitioners of the lesser god’s rule.
(p. 304)

I read this, too:

For him, behind the Roman imperial administration stands the demiurge. In one passage in his Antitheses, Marcion himself characterizes the Roman bureaucracy explicitly as a representative of the demiurge.48 [Note 48. According to Marcion, in the official persecutions of Christians by the state the demiurge himself acts, since he has the hearts of the kings in his hand (text in Harnack, Marcion, 296x). Already apocalyptic literature (e.g., 1 Enoch 85-90) lets mythical persons, tormenting angels, become transparent figures for real political authorities. It is all the more understandable that for Marcion the demiurge, the God of the Jews and rulers of the world, stands behind the emperor when we observe the analogies between the emperor/state, on the one hand, and Judaism, on the other: (a) Laws and confidence in law play an equally prominent role for emperor and state as for the Jews, (b) The glorification of war in the Greek tradition since the time of Homer corresponds to the tradition of the holy war in Judaism.]
...
There is still a second, more remote possibility to find a background situation for the motif of the warlike demiurge in Marcion. As a God lusting for war, the Jewish God, the creator of the world, revealed himself also in the Zealot movement of the Jewish war of 115 to 117 C.E. (cf. also 66-73 and 132-35 C.E.). Cassius Dio (68.32.1-3) and Appian (Arabicus Liber, fr. 19) emphasize the military zeal of the Jewish rebels in North Africa at the time of Trajan (cf. also Orosius, 7.12.7; Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. 4.2.2). Corresponding to this, the gnostic Basilides, writing in Alexandria, characterizes the demiurge, ruler of the world and God of the Jews, as the one who "wished to subject the remaining people of the world to the Jews" (in Irenaeus, Haer. 1.24.4). Basilides undoubtedly here refers to the Jewish revolt originating in Egypt and Cyrene.
(extract from Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus)

Is it possible to see in the figure of Pontius Pilate, in Mcn, the same portrait of Demiurg as judice in Marcionite theology?

Certainly common to both Pilate and the creator god is the complete incapacity to administer justice (Pilate condemning Jesus while the just god making an evil world).

I suspect that if later Gospels transferred progressively the responsability of Jesus'death from Pilate to Jews (making the first innocent and the second totally evil) was maybe as reaction to Marcion because in Mcn a local magistrate, Pilate, was portrayed as ''arguably the actual practitioner of the lesser god’s rule'': the Romans should be reassured some way, against previous implicit marcionite critical clues against ''the order or array of things social as well as natural''.

...yet if Marcion’s Creator has a tendency to partiality, to disproportionate punishment and so forth, these are the characteristics not only (if at all) of “alttestamentlicher” rulers, but of the concrete and contemporary experience of Roman imperium. A political dimension, and not merely a metaphysical one, is therefore at issue here.
(p.303)

This lukane verses are part of Mcn:

6 But when Pilate heard of Galilee,
he asked whether the man were a Galilaean.
7 And when he knew that he was from Herod's jurisdiction,
he sent him up to Herod,
who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time.
8 And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad:
for he was of a long time desirous to see him,
because he had heard many things about him;
and was hoping to see some sign done by him.
9 And he questioned him in many words;
but he answered him nothing.
10 And the chief priests and the scribes stood vehemently accusing him.
11 And Herod with his soldiers set him at nought,
and mocked him, and arraying him in a gorgeous robe,
sent him back to Pilate.
12 And Pilate and Herod became friends with each other that very day:
for before they were at enmity between themselves.

That Pilate sends Jesus to Herod after learning his provenance from Galilee reminds me of the concept of justice of the demiurge: if I am not mistaken, in Marcionite theology the creator god had delegated the other pagan peoples under the jurisdiction of their gods (actually demonic archons allies and/or enemies of god creator) while reserving for himself the judgment and punishment of the Jewish people (as demonstrated in the Old Testament).

if I am correct, then, Pilate, by sending Jesus to Herod, scrupulously follows the same behavior that would keep in his place the demiurge.

Pilate remind me of Sauron in Lord of Rings: when Sauron's Eye sees a hobbit without the ring, he would ignore him because believes him harmless, while when the same evil Eye sees Frodo WITH the ring, he would hate him more than all other beings.
Mcn would describe a Pilate/Demiurg that feels that Jesus is hiding something but cannot do anything because ''apparently'' sees no fault in him (according to his lex romana, i.e. the Law of Demiurg).

Curious that Herod in catholic birth story not only KNEW that the children was the True King of Jews, but even attempts to kill him!

I wait to read Ory's book translated by Tenorikuma.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

But what was the origin of Marcionism ?

The idea of Demiurg comes after Kitos War among Diaspora Jews willing be ''no longer Jews'' (so Carl B. Smith).

But any religious community needed of a more spiritual fire (I refer to spiritual possession phenomena well described by Stevan L. Davies):
which was the first spiritual spark that caused Marcionism?

I don't know.

I think your are right, that this is the main problem for all theories of Marcion priority. It is a big step from the Septuagint to the canonical Paul and Mark, but from the Septuagint (or jewish beliefs) to Marcion it is significantly bigger. It needs to explained well.

I humbly suggest (and perhaps you might agree) that "Marcion priority" (i.e., a Marcionite viewpoint and Marcionite texts creating the rest of the Christian tradition) is just making problems for ourselves, for which we have nobody to blame but our own over-thinking.

I agree completely. Nevertheless that's the job to do.

(- A mythicist "should" explain how Christianity began without a historical Jesus.
- One who sees Mark as a very intelligent writer "should" explain that his famous "errors" are in fact not errors but meaningful hints.
- ...)

[Tenorikuma]

In the limited synoptic passages I have examined so far on my own, I have also concluded that Mcn was based on Mark, and Matthew in turn was based either on Mcn or proto-Luke (precursor to Mcn). Canonical Luke, in turn, was a revision either of proto-Luke or of Mcn with additions from Josephus, Matthew, and possibly John, as well as unique material added by the Luke-Acts redactor. This is basically Klinghardts's theory, from what I understand.

BeDuhn supports the Semler Hypothesis, that Mcn and Luke are parallel textual traditions with a common source (proto-Luke). I see no reason to doubt him at this time, though Schwegler (Mcn preceded Luke) is still a possibility. The Schwegler Hypothesis would simplify things a little, since it would let us collapse proto-Luke and Mcn into the same document.

[Tenorikuma]

What a shame that Klinghardts' new book costs over $200.