A Summary History of Christian Origins?

[Peter Kirby]

Probably just easier to say Galilean then Nazoreans which many will associate with a later cult.

I would have to say John the Baptist movement is the earliest possible movement we can trace anything back with any plausibility. I would lean towards a Aramaic Apocalyptic Zealot movement if I had to use a label.

As if we needed more proof that it is a mysterious and confusing topic at best...

•2) The Apostolic Movement,

I think this is a later Hellenistic invention based on the legends surrounding the "inner circle" oral traditions. Later mythology included 12 and the Apostolic Movement much of which Paul used rhetorically.

You're just reading the titles and putting your interpretation on them, generating some kind of introspective commentary. It's not relevant to what is quoted. Paul claimed to be an "apostle" (or, the letters of Paul claimed the implied author, Paul, to be an "apostle"). The title used here equated the so-called "apostolic" movement to whatever Paul was part of (or, whatever the original author of the letters were).

3) The Jewish Gnostics

Also a later movement based on the wide diversity in multiple cultures the mythology grew in.

You throw around the word "later," ex cathedra, like you had the authority of God Himself to decide what is and is not "later." And by "later," you apparently mean what most Christians basically mean when they apply the label "later" to the Gnostics, i.e., that they are weird and unorthodox and unworthy of serious study (with serious study going to those "early" New Testament folks).

In any case, you were replying to a comment about pre-Christian Jewish Gnostics. If they existed, they are "early," even "earlier," just by definition.

The Marcionite movement,

Much later movement

And by "much later," you mean earlier than most of our literary evidence and earlier than the catholic church organization (and someone who is one of the earliest recorded sources for some of our earliest sources, i.e., a Gospel and the Paulines), including earlier than Acts, Papias, Polycarp, the Pastoral Epistles, Hegesippus, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras of Athens, Dionysius of Corinth, Theophilus of Antioch, Polycrates of Ephesus, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, etc., etc., etc.

At any event, I already put a (non-subjective, non-value-laden, non-relative) timeframe on the origin of the Marcionite movement: somewhere in the period ca. 70-120, between the Jewish wars.

[Giuseppe]

Peter, but which is the problem with that quote gospel, even if originally marcionite in nature?

I remember about an academic paper that talked about the concrete probability that for marcionites at least some parts of the material world could be redeemed, removing them from Demiurg's influence, and that Eucharist had exactly that function. No wonder, then, that at least what was received from Lord (by revelation? Very likely, seen the hellenistic nature of that message) about that question was quoted in epistles.

My view is that in marcionite epistles are absent the Evangelion's quotes without for this to imply that their authors didn't know the Evangelion. At contrary, they knew it but didn't quote the semi-terrextrial Jesus in it because it was not for them a source of pride to boast of knowing an ''earthly'' Jesus, because all knowledge of an earthly Jesus was for them a reason of demerit rather than of merit.

This raises in me the strong suspect that the marcionites were the first inventors of an illusory 'terrextrial' Jesus for the exact reason to find a cause for condemnation of rival Christs.

You're not remembering the historical life of Jesus if your main purpose is to condemn precisely those who knew Jesus.

I repeat from my post above what I find fallacious in many commentaries of earliest Gospel (Mcn or Mark) even by more radicals of scholars like Robert Price, to say.

You all start with the assumption that the the earliest Gospel reflects internal disputes between Christians and then you commit the error of projecting in a far past (a past preceding the birth of the same story you're interpreting) the 'historical' authors of these disputes.

It's time to do precisely the exact contrary.

'Cepha' is only a literary symbol. But you believe in his historicity only because you think (wrongly) that, since you see clear disputes in Gospel, you need a name for labelling the 'historical' leader of opponents of the author of the Gospel BEFORE the writing of that Gospel. I don't want more to do this error (especially if without external concrete evidence).

[Peter Kirby]

Peter, but which is the problem with that quote gospel, even if originally marcionite in nature?

Perhaps you've forgotten what I've already written; perhaps it wasn't understood in the first place; perhaps you disagree but haven't said why.

... that is a 'problem' for you, since you perceive an internal inconsistency with the idea that the original Pauliana would just have this one glittering passage with perfect correspondence to a gospel text. And in that you are not imperceptive. But you also currently are infatuated with the appealing notion that the original Pauliana were entirely Marcionite compositions. But that makes the passage of 1 Cor 11 a 'problem' for you; after all, you said it. Because an interpolation that is already in the Marcionite Apostolikon points to a corpus that predated Marcion. Since that currently bothers you, you find it easier to deny the evidence and to claim that it were a post-Marcionite interpolation.

If the Marcionite Apostolikon has interpolations, then recovering the Apostolikon is not the same thing as finding the original Pauline corpus/texts.

Technically it is possible that there was more than one Marcionite recension, one with and one without the interpolation, but that's not a very parsimonious solution, given the other data that is also indicative of first century (and indeed pre-70) vorlage for the earliest versions of the earliest Pauline letters. Thus an explanation supported by other evidence is already at hand to explain the discrepancy between the earliest Pauline letters and the interpolated Marcionite Apostolikon--namely, Marcionite interpolations into pre-Marcionite compositions stemming from the first century.

Also, your own position suffers from the 1 Thessalonians 2:14 passage, another text that appears to be in the Apostolikon. This is more particular to your belief that the Marcionites were taking pride in the absence of reference to a life of Jesus on earth in the Pauline letters; to the contrary, there are not one but two such passages in the Marcionite's Apostolikon. While one could go back and revise your opinion of Marcionite views regarding Paul and an earthly Jesus (because this arises only from your own particular claims), this coheres both with the claim of a Marcionite origin (without any special attempt to avoid mentioning the life of Jesus) or an interpolated 1 Thessalonians, stemming from a pre-Marcionite period.

But then again, if you perceive that references such as 1 Cor 11 and 1 Thess 2:!4 do not accord well with the general attitude of the epistles, with the bulk having been written by someone without a historical Jesus, you should not shrink from the opinion that these passages stem from a later author. And again if you recognize the evidence that they were in the Marcionite version, you should then not shrink from the opinion that there was a pre-Marcionite version of the Pauline letters.

[Giuseppe]

Also, your own position suffers from the 1 Thessalonians 2:14 passage, another text that appears to be in the Apostolikon. This is more particular to your belief that the Marcionites were taking pride in the absence of reference to a life of Jesus on earth in the Pauline letters;

The theme of 'Jesus killed by Jews' is part of original myth, I believe, therefore no problem with that.

I see marcionites as hellenist 'no longer Jews' with the intention to instantiate for the first time what Robert Price calls the generic ''Gnostic myth of the Man of Light'' (a no historical being) into a Jewish context (hence the theme of Jews killers already in original sincretism) in order to undermine its theology.

This would be my choosen option:

And again if you recognize the evidence that they were in the Marcionite version, you should then not shrink from the opinion that there was a pre-Marcionite version of the Pauline letters.

the Jesus of Eucharist in 1 Cor 11 is no a problem for my view (and not in contradiction with marcionite theology) because its message is entirely revelatory and anti-Jewish (precisely the theme of theophagy) and for the theological reason posted above. See this:

https://www.academia.edu/905877/Marcion ... f_Creation

Idem for the other point of 1 Thess 2:14 : it's expected in original myth and therefore true both in a fictious polemical/allegorical story (the Evangelion) and according to true theological facts (that 'the archons of this eon' were 'the Jews').

Therefore I want 'to rip' by Peter the confession that it is at least possible that the Marcionites had invented quasi at the same time the celestial Jesus (by simple renaming 'Jesus' the generic gnostic 'Man of Light') and the (fictious) 'earthly' Jesus.

[Peter Kirby]

It appears that we are down to a contest between the probable (a pre-Marcionite version of Paul) and the possible (a Marcionite origin of the letters of Paul). Needless to say, I prefer the probable to the possible, as a general way of going about. I am sure that I can share more notes in the future regarding the subject, as there are many points of data for which to account. I don't see any point of extending this particular issue (relating to 1 Cor 11 and 2 Thess 2) out any further right now. (There is a saying that you cannot reason a man out of opinions that he wasn't reasoned into.)

[Peter Kirby]

1 Corinthians 9:13
“Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings?”

1 Corinthians 10:18
“Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?”

Romans 9:4
“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship…”

I've humored this opinion long enough and am certainly sympathetic to an advanced state of skepticism about all things, but the ugly truth of it is that the burden of proof is on the claim that the prima facie, apparent dating (pre-70) is not correct--by finding something problematic with that. If they were later, it would be surprising that you couldn't find any strong reason for believing that they were later.

If you enjoy speculating otherwise, that's just too bad. We need more than that.

[MrMacSon]

I see marcionites as hellenist 'no longer Jews' with the intention to instantiate for the first time what Robert Price calls the generic ''Gnostic myth of the Man of Light'' (a no historical being) into a Jewish context (hence the theme of Jews killers already in original sincretism) in order to undermine its theology.

I think the roles of the mystery-pagan cults/religions deserve consideration; especially with respect to the formation of the Pauline theology, as they seemed to have been quite active in the regions alluded to, in the Pauline texts, and at the same time.

[StephenGoranson]

Maybe off topic. Peter Kirby wrote: "(There is a saying that you cannot reason a man out of opinions that he wasn't reasoned into.)" That interested me, and I saw online attributions to Jonathan Swift. In case it's of interest, maybe this is a rewording of his:
"...are not be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the Christian religion, because Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired....," from
A letter to a young gentleman, lately enter'd into holy orders. By a Person of Quality (Jonathan Swift). London, 1721.

[outhouse]

As if we needed more proof that it is a mysterious and confusing topic at best...

.

I see habits of some people making it more confusing then it actually is or was.

A chain of events took place after 25 AD that led a peasant to a god.

many of these steps need levels of plausibility on them, and academia has in some cases.


I don't think it is in dispute with any credibility that a Galilean was baptized by John. Would you like to start there and run plausibility out and what that actually implies?

Or do we just throw that out and fish for alternatives with less support?

You're just reading the titles and putting your interpretation on them

Yes I admitted that much. I think some of these need addressing.

To many want to give credibility to real apostles. Sorry Paul was a murderer of the original followers and I dont see pauls claims as relevant here to any real follower of the Galilean. They are however relevant to the Hellenistic movement that had long started to evolved away from Judaism before the Galilean was martyred.




Maybe I took your post out of context, but I also posed it as my opinion which I think holds the mots plausibility as to what actually happened.

[Peter Kirby]

Sorry Paul was a murderer of the original followers

Was he? Did Paul kill anybody, or have anybody killed?