Does Galatians 4 imply a pre-70 AD perspective?

[Peter Kirby]

You keep citing the concept of "the Marcionite canon" without saying when and where.

It seems highly unlikely, on the face of it, that "the Marcionite canon" was the same always and everywhere.

The easy, unspoken identity made between the mid-2nd century "Marcionite canon" held by Marcion ... and whatever source now lies behind the statements in Tertullian ... is an error of method and a basic error of logic. Just because both can be described as a "Marcionite canon" does not mean that both are the one and the same "Marcionite canon."

[stephan happy huller]

Okay. That's your opinion. The Samaritans say they've never tampered with their five books. The Jews haven't done so in almost 2000 years or so. Certainly the Marcionites claimed to have a firm body of scripture. I don't know what to say or how to prove matters either way.

[stephan happy huller]

Do we ever hear Church Fathers accuse the Marcionites of changing their scriptures later on? I don't think so. You'd think they'd mention it if it had happened. But then again I think the Marcionites disappeared from the west after the beginning of the third century.

[Peter Kirby]

Further, it wouldn't have to be Marcionites that introduced any changes that may have intervened between Marcion's "Marcionite canon" and the source for Tertullian's "Marcionite canon," even assuming a genetic link between the two. It could be a non-Marcionite redactor standing inbetween.

Or Tertullian could be wrong entirely and the source for statements in Tertullian regarding a "Marcionite canon" doesn't descend from Marcion's "Marcionite canon" in the text-critical sense. It could be an entirely separate stream in the textual transmission of Paul's letters.

I agree that the whole subject can be very difficult.

[stephan happy huller]

Interestingly Moll points to Evans translation of Against Marcion as suggesting that all their works fit within one codex:

http://books.google.com/books?id=P3DGtd ... on&f=false

That the Antitheses were prefixed to Marcion's Gospel, that is, bound together with it, forming one codex of Scripture, as Evans' translation suggests [1]

[1]The wording quod in summo instrumento habent (Adv. Marc. 1.19,4) is translated by Evans as "which stands at the head of their document" (Evans (ed.), Tertullian. Adversus Marcionem: Books I-HI, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 49).

Maybe that isn't as strong a piece of evidence as I might like. I will have to think about it.

[Bernard Muller]

Stephan,
What is known about the Paludian tradition?
What evidence do we have for it?
Cordially, Bernard

[stephan happy huller]

I thought I have quoted some sources already. One Diatessaron, Acts and the Epistles of Paul plus plus plus (however this alone seems to pose a challenge for Luke being the author of Acts unless the Diatessaron began with Luke 1:1).

[stephan happy huller]

Here is what Walter Bauer writes:

If with some confidence we may conjecture such efforts on his part, then surely it is also permissible to explore this approach still further, and to explain a peculiarity of the Edessene Bible that is particularly striking along with the presence of the <ts>Diatessaron</ts>. The Pauline canon also had a peculiar shape in Edessa, since it contained a third letter to the Corinthians, or more correctly, an exchange of letters between Paul and the [[40]] Corinthians with a connecting passage in between. At the time of Ephraem, this material had a firm spot in the New Testament, and in Ephraem's commentary on Paul it is dealt with after 2 Corinthians. Since Aphraates already cites two passages of "3 Corinthians" as the words "of the apostle," the letter must have been accepted as canonical in Syriac-speaking areas, and above all in Edessa, around the year 330. Neither the Syriac <ts>Didascalia</ts> nor Agathangelos' notice about Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle of the Armenians,\94/ provide any evidence that this would have been the case earlier.

Indeed, Ephraem asserts that the Bardesanites had not admitted "3 Corinthians" into their Bible because it contradicted their teaching.\95/ And if he were correct, we would have to conclude that the letter was already regarded by the Palûtians as sacred by the time Bardesanes' false teaching arose; and that would guarantee for the Palûtians greater antiquity then has been conceded to them. However, the discovery and deciphering of the Coptic version of the <ts>Acts of Paul</ts> by Carl Schmidt\96/ has established that the correspondence originally formed a part of the <ts>Acts of Paul</ts>, and that makes the assertion of Ephraem impossible. For, [[*46]] as we learn from Tertullian, the apocryphal story of Paul had been composed only about the year 180 or even later, after Bardesanes was fully active, by a presbyter in Asia Minor, "as though he could add something on his own authority to the reputation of Paul" (<ts>On Baptism</ts> 17). The author himself confessed that he had acted out of love for the Apostle to the Gentiles. Thus we see here quite clearly an officer of the "great church" perpetrating a "forgery" that focuses upon an apostle. In view of these considerations, a Syriac translation of the correspondence and its use in Edessa before the third century is quite inconceivable. And it is not the patrons of "3 Corinthians" but rather Bardesanes and his people who bear witness to the earlier situation by their silence concerning the letter.

But Ephraem was correct at one point. In a life devoted to fighting [[41]] heretics he had learned by experience that the Bardesanites rejected "3 Corinthians" as non-apostolic because it conflicted with their viewpoint; they had become acquainted with this material at a later period through its incorporation into the Bible of their orthodox fellow citizens, and from their disputes with them. This makes sense, since the correspondence was intended, in the context of the work of its orthodox inventor, as part of the anti-gnostic polemic. Once again the question arises: who was interested in introducing such literature in Edessa? And again comes the only possible answer: only the orthodox -- with their farsighted and industrious bishop Kûnê leading the way. For it was in the century in which his tenure falls, from the beginning of the third to the beginning of the fourth century, that the exchange of letters must have been incorporated into the canon of the orthodox in Edessa.

[Bernard Muller]

Hi Stephan,

I thought I have quoted some sources already. One Diatessaron, Acts and the Epistles of Paul plus plus plus (however this alone seems to pose a challenge for Luke being the author of Acts unless the Diatessaron began with Luke 1:1).

What evidence do we have to support your claims?
Cordially, Bernard

[stephan happy huller]

On the gospel of the Palutians Bauer writes:

Thus we are confronted with the question: what did the gospel of Bardesanes look like? As has been said, it is out of the question that Bardesanes could have adopted the gospel used by the Marcionites; but it is equally unlikely that there was a special "Gospel of Bardesanes," of which we scarcely hear anything, and never anything of value.\69/ Likewise, it could not have been the so-called Gospel of the Separated [<ts>Evangelion da- Mepharreshe</ts>] -- i.e. the four canonical gospels arranged one after another but regarded as a unit. At a time in which Irenaeus strives rather laboriously to establish the fourfold gospel in the "great church," it cannot already have been in use in Edessa. Furthermore, if that had been the case, it is inconceivable how the fourfold gospel then could have disappeared once more from this city for a quarter of a millennium, or at least have receded so completely into the background for Edessene Christianity. The view that one or another of the four constituted the gospel of Bardesanes -- perhaps the Gospel of John, which the western Valentinians Heracleon and Ptolemy treasured so highly -- is purely a hypothetical possibility, the further pursuit of which is unrewarding.

Thus there remains, it seems to me, only the so-called <ts>Diatessaron</ts>, the [[*36]] harmony of the gospels which Tatian, shortly before the appearance of Bardesanes, offered to the Syriac speaking Christians as the first written gospel in their native language. In favor of the <ts>Diatessaron</ts> as the gospel of Bardesanes is first of all the general observation that for a Syrian living among Syrians, the most obvious [[31]] thing to do would be to obtain that Syriac book, the recent appearance of which in Mesopotamia could not have been unknown to Bardesanes because of his connections and his sophistication. It was much more comprehensive than the scanty\70/ gospel booklet of the Marcionites that had been used previously in Edessa. And even though Tatian himself had not done so, a member of his school by the name of Rhodon composed writings in opposition to the sect of Marcion just at the time Bardesanes flourished (EH 5.13.1), and thus established himself as a desirable ally. Under such circumstances there would have been hesitation only if the contents were felt to be objectionable, thus precluding it from acceptance as the true gospel.

... If Bardesanes already had introduced the <ts>Diatessaron</ts> in Edessa and [[*37]] had made it popular there, it becomes easier to understand how that later, among the orthodox Edessenes, the gospel edition of a person whose heretical position the church had never been able to overlook\74/ could gain canonical status. The numerically weak [[32]] group of Palûtians, composed of poor people -- the wealthy Christians in Edessa adhered to the prominent Bardesanes (see above, 26, 29) --were probably not in any position to provide their own Syriac gospel. Of the two books available, that of Marcion and the <ts>Diatessaron</ts>, the latter was decidedly more orthodox in orientation -- indeed, under a not very penetrating examination, it was simply orthodox. It would have had very little to fear from a comparison with the gospels used in the "great church" as books of instruction. There was scarcely a single instance in which Tatian had expressed his particular views by means of additions, but to a much greater degree had expressed them by means of omission. But such omissions are so characteristic of the style of a harmony that in a particular case one can almost never determine for certain whether the omission was due to literary considerations, or whether it reflects the malicious wickedness of the false teacher.

"Not only Tatian's group have used this book," says Theodoret of Cyrus as late as the fifth century (<ts>Her</ts>. 1.20), "but the adherents of the apostolic teaching also have innocently employed the book as a convenient compendium, since they did not recognize the deception of the compilation. I myself found more than two hundred such books which were being held in honor in the congregations of our region; I collected and destroyed them and in their place introduced the gospels of the four evangelists." This is the way in which the Palûtians also may have come into contact with the <ts>Diatessaron</ts>, and without prejudice, had put it to use. It was much better than having no gospel at all in the language of the people, in spite of its being tainted with the approval of Bardesanes -- possibly the Palûtians knew nothing of Tatian, since the name of a human author seldom remains attached to such gospel compilations, by their very nature.

As for the letters of Paul, it is first of all indisputable that a collection [[*38]] of writings of the Apostle to the Gentiles was used by the Christians of Edessa from the very beginning. For if Marcion stands at the beginning of Edessene Christianity, with him stands also the apostle Paul. It was only in the contents and order of this corpus that a difference existed between Marcionites,\75/ [[33]] Bardesanites,\76/ and the orthodox. To be sure, it is not entirely certain when this difference became obvious. The fact that both Ephraem and an orthodox Syrian canonical list from around the year 400 agree with Marcion in the arrangement of the letters of Paul at important points\77/ encourages the suggestion that in Edessa, with reference to the Pauline canon, Marcion's influence was not limited to his immediate adherents. We observe how "heretical," or better "original" conditions effect later epochs and how even the ecclesiastical structure cannot avoid this. That strengthens our belief in the correctness of the view presented above, that Edessene orthodoxy received the <ts>Diatessaron</ts> through Bardesanes and his community, just as it received the letters of Paul ultimately from Marcion.