Does Galatians 4 imply a pre-70 AD perspective?

[Bernard Muller]

to Stephan,

First of all, Tertullian is clearly using original arguments in Irenaeus so it is not as if two independent witnesses are being assembled. Irenaeus is saying this on his own authority and Tertullian is merely copying out - or 'copying' - what he is saying. We have a single person crying in the wilderness about Marcion.

Do you think Tertullian could not determine on his own that Marcion's works had many chunks missing when he was comparing them with the "catholic" corresponding texts?
Tertullian knew about both sets. Of course he took the "catholic" versions as the original & true ones and therefore said Marcion mutilated the "catholic" versions. He did not have to know about Irenaeus in order to come to that conclusion.

Cordially, Bernard

[stephan happy huller]

I think the Marcionites as known in the second century disappeared in the third (see Origen's comments in the newly discovered Homily on Psalms). In the western Empire. Maybe they went underground. But there is no evidence Tertullian ever met a Marcionite. All his evidence seems to come from second hand and third hand sources

[Bernard Muller]

Hi Stephan,

But there is no evidence Tertullian ever met a Marcionite. All his evidence seems to come from second hand and third hand sources

Maybe not, but Tertullian claimed to be working from Marcion's canon. That was all he needed for his chapters 4 & 5 of Against Marcion.
Why do you think that evidence did not date from Marcion's time?

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

Hi Stephan,

Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery

Why, if the audience are Galatians, why does Paul reference them being burdened AGAIN by a yoke of slavery? My assumption would be the audience were proselytes or those who were coming under the 'burden' Judaism. How could the audience be said to be 'Galatians'? Never understood that one.

Before their conversion, the Gentile Galatians were in servitude. When converted by Paul they got free:
4:30-31

but what saith the Writing? 'Cast forth the maid-servant and her son, for the son of the maid-servant may not be heir with the son of the free-woman; then, brethren, we are not a maid-servant's children, but the free-woman's.

And
3:23

And before the coming of the faith, under law we were being kept, shut up to the faith about to be revealed

And
4:8

But then, indeed, not having known God, you were in servitude to those not by nature gods,

However in next verse:
4:9

and now, having known God -- and rather being known by God -- how turn you AGAIN unto the weak and poor elements to which anew you desire to be in servitude?

If Paul's converts joined these Judaizing preachers, these Christians will be AGAIN into servitude.
Also to consider:
4:7

so that you are no more a servant, but a son [after conversion to Paul's Christianity!], and if a son, also an heir of God through Christ.

So the path would be: Slavery (before conversion to Paul's gospel) => Freedom (when staying under Paul) => Slavery AGAIN (if joining the Judaizing preachers)

Cordially, Bernard

[stephan happy huller]

But these are things to discuss later. Schmid got his PhD making a thorough compilation of things attested by Tertullian. But what is "it"? What is Tertullian's Against Marcion actually witnessing? A proto-Catholic canon superficially adapted to fit the orthodoxy of a later period. That's why the commentary on Romans ends so early without specifically mentioning Marcion's text ended in chapter 14. Tertullian probably didn't even know that. His source didn't see that as controversial

[Bernard Muller]

to Stephan,
Clement of Alexandria quoted Romans 15:4 as written by "the apostle", 15:29 as written by "the apostle", 16:19 as written by "the apostle, in the epistle to the Romans", and part of the doxology as "the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans".
So it looks Romans 15 & 16 and the doxology were existing during Clement of Alexandria's times

Irenaeus paraphrased & quoted Galatians 4:28 "as Paul does also testify" and "the apostle says in the Epistle to the Galatians:",
Clement of Alexandria quoted 4:30 as such:

"Wherefore I pray," says the apostle, "that your love may abound yet more and more, in knowledge and in all judgment, that ye may approve things that are excellent." "Since, when we were children," says

the same apostle

, "we were kept in bondage under the rudiments of the world [4:3]. And the child, though heir, differeth nothing from a servant, till the time appointed of the father." [4:1-2 abbreviated] Philosophers, then, are children, unless they have been made men by Christ. "For if the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free," [4:30] at least he is the seed of Abraham, though not of promise, receiving what belongs to him by free gift

So it looks Galatians 4 27-30 was existing in the times of Irenaeus & Clement of Alexandria.

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

the commentary on Romans ends so early without specifically mentioning Marcion's text ended in chapter 14. Tertullian probably didn't even know that.

Tertullian claimed Marcion's Romans was full of holes, but he never identified which passages were missing. So it is no surprise he never said Marcion's Romans ended on 14:23.

Cordially, Bernard

[stephan happy huller]

But you'd expect a reference to the ending. That's a massive omission. He mentions an omission of a little over a chapter with special interest (end of chapter eight to the end of chapter nine). But not a word about two and a half chapters missing from the end. There are plenty more signs that the text was developed by an author using a Palutian canon (i.e. Diatessaron + Pauline epistles + Acts etc). We've already touched upon the agreement between Pauline readings in Ephrem and Aphrahat from Schmid. Yet there are many more signs especially in the gospel section (Book IV). Tertullian references the 'flying Jesus' narrative identified by Baarda as being present in Diatessaronic gospels. The list goes on and on.

Again, it is impossible to definitively prove anything at the edge of knowledge here. But it stands to reason - it is more likely than not likely - that the material in Tertullian's Against Marcion was developed from a source who used the Palutian canon.

[stephan happy huller]

The ordering of Book 5 is another one. Tertullian makes no special mention of a Galatians first canon being 'wrong.' Instead he begins the entire discussion of the Pauline canon with the words:

Principalem adversus Iudaismum epistulam nos quoque confitemur quae Galatas docet. [5.2]

The term can mean 'first in order' or 'chief' which Tertullian employs in the sense of the archangels in heaven being 'first' in rank:

Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty" (this belongs to him as the highest (principis) of the angels, the archangel, the wisest of all); "amidst the delights of the paradise of thy God wast thou born" (for it was there, where God had made the angels in a shape which resembled the figure of animals). [2.10]

Everything will be open to suspicion which transgresses a rule. Now the primary order (principalis gradus) of all things will not allow that the Father should come after the Son in recognition, or the Sender after the Sent, or God after Christ. [3.2]

But what could so well befit the Creator's Christ, as to manifest Him in the company of His own foreannouncers? ----to let Him be seen with those to whom He had appeared in revelations?----to let Him be speaking with those who had spoken of Him?----to share His glory with those by whom He used to be called the Lord of glory; even with those chief servants (principalibus) of His, one of whom was once the moulder of His people, the other afterwards the reformer thereof; one the initiator of the Old Testament, the other the consummator of the New? [4.22]

Curious again that no specific mention of the 'wrong' order as we see in Epiphanius's reworking of the same material. The Marcionite order is clearly shared by the person writing the original source material. Nothing was 'wrong' with Galatians first and even Tertullian when copying out the material pays no mind to the 'incorrectness' of the ordering of the letters.

[Peter Kirby]

Peter

they aren't "Marcionite prefaces." Just a name made up by modern scholarship http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/marci ... 1_text.htm

"early prologues" would be more accurate (but less sexy) title

You don't believe there is sufficient evidence to identify the author of the prefaces as "Marcionite."