Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »

In this thread I would list all the more strong arguments supporting the priority of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn) over Mark:

1)

So Robert M Price:
Mark‟s gospel, for instance, holds what can hardly be called
other than a Marcionite view of the buffoonish twelve disciples and
a Gnostic view of secret teaching which, despite their privileged position,
the twelve simply do not grasp. Or think of the Transfiguration
(Mark 9:1-8)*: how can one miss the Marcionite implications of
Mark‟s setting up Jesus, Moses (the Torah), and Elijah (the Prophets)
as in a police line-up, followed by the Father‟s urging that, of the
three, Jesus alone is to be heard and heeded? And Mark, of course, refers
to Jesus giving his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Though
Mark fails to tell us to whom Jesus would be paying this ransom,
Marcion tells us. He paid it to the Creator, and no non-Marcionite
theologian has produced a better candidate
.
(The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems, p. 382-383, my bold)


2)

So Neil in his review of Dykstra:
Dykstra introduces his argument by pointing out how curiously uninterested the author of the Gospel of Mark is in the contents of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is said to teach with authority and crowds are said to be impressed with his teachings but exactly what he taught in the synagogues or to those who crowded around to hear him in a house is left unsaid. Jesus does teach a lot of parables warning hearers of the consequences of not believing the gospel but the content of that gospel, the detail of what they must believe, is never stated. About the only teaching Mark’s Jesus is said to have delivered is little more than “Keep the commandments”.
(my bold)
http://vridar.org/category/book-reviews ... r-of-paul/

When Mark writes:
The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.
(Mark 1:22)
Though Mark fails to tell us to why the teaching of Jesus was amazing and surprising (=unexpected, =unlikely). Marcion tells us. Jesus's marcionite teaching was amazing because it was about a new stranger God, and no non-Marcionite theologian has produced a better candidate.


3)

Mark's incipit starts soon with John the Baptist to link Jesus's gospel with the scriptures. Mark fails to tell us why all that suspect emphasis on fulfillment of scriptures. Marcion tells us. He was rejecting any link with the Jewish scriptures and Mark didn't like it.


I will continue...
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
iskander
Posts: 2091
Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 12:38 pm

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by iskander »

Marcion is recycling.( aka regurgitating) :D
PS: I just noticed this jewel in your post


"So Neil in his review of Dykstra:

"Dykstra introduces his argument by pointing out how curiously uninterested the author of the Gospel of Mark is in the contents of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus is said to teach with authority and crowds are said to be impressed with his teachings but exactly what he taught in the synagogues or to those who crowded around to hear him in a house is left unsaid. Jesus does teach a lot of parables warning hearers of the consequences of not believing the gospel but the content of that gospel, the detail of what they must believe, is never stated. About the only teaching Mark’s Jesus is said to have delivered is little more than “Keep the commandments”."


...About the only teaching Mark’s Jesus is said to have delivered is little more than “Keep the commandments”."



That is such a thing to say!!
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »

Another argument pro Mcn and against Mark priority:

4) I should thank the extraordinary book I'm reading of Professor Avalos, The Bad Jesus, to find this other evidence of genuine Marcionite influence on Mark.

So Mark 14:3-9 :
3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she broke the box and poured it on His head.
4 And there were some who were indignant within themselves and said, “Why was this ointment wasted?
5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor.” And they murmured against her.
6 And Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on Me.
7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good; but Me ye have not always.
8 She hath done what she could; she hath come beforehand to anoint My body for burial.
9 Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of as a memorial of her.”
THe verses of Luke 7:36-38 and Luke 7:44-48 are attested in Mcn (docet Roth's reconstruction) :
36 And one of the Pharisees desired Him that He would eat with him. And He went into the Pharisee’s house and sat down to meat.
37 And behold, a woman in the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,
38 and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and began to wash His feet with tears and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed His feet and anointed them with the ointment.
A premise: note that the theology of Marcion doen't assume the salvation of this world as a primary goal of Jesus. In this sense, Marcion is ''buddhist'' (when it happened a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, it seems that more helps were given by Christians but less from Buddhists).

So Avalos:
Allen Verhey does offer a more elaborate defense of Jesus' statement: 'For you Always have the poor with you''.
....
To show how the presence of the poor 'Condemned the Whole community', Verhey points to Jesus' allusion to Deuteronomy: 'For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your Brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land' (Deut. 15.11). Vehrey links that verse to this conditional statement earlier in the chapter:

(Deut. 15.4-5)

...
Verhey's defense of Jesus relies on his poor exegesis of Deuteronomy 15. ....
Indeed, even if the presence of poverty in Israel signals a judgment by God, the continued presence of that judgment does not remove the obligation to help the poor as long as the poor remain in the land. The whole lesson of Deuteronomy 15 is that a continued presence of the poor demands a continued assistance to them.
However, Jesus does not acknowledge any continuing assistance at all in his logion. Jesus' truncated quotation amount to a distortion of the lesson of Deut. 15.11. If Jesus had included the rest of the verse, it would be clear that he was in violation of it. The verse demanded continued assistance to the poor, and he denied assistance to the poor. Note that Deut. 15.11 does not say, as Jesus implies, that one can deny help to the poor because one will not always be around. But that is precisely how Jesus justifies his denial of helping the poor when he says 'you will not Always have me'. Neither Verhey nor any other major New testament ethicist critically examines or interrogates Jesus'own exegesis of Deuteronomy 15 to see if it is sound.
...
A case can also be made that Jesus is not calling attention to Israel's judgment for having poverty. Nothing in the text indicates such a reading. On the contrary, Jesus gives two explicit reasons for why the needs of the poor should be denied in this instance:

A. Whenever you will, you can do good to them;
B. but you will not Always have me.

The contrast Jesus makes is clear here, and it has nothing to do with exposing the presence of the poor as a judgment. Because of the limited time Jesus has, resources should go to his body instead of to the poor. Once you compare an individual poor person who is denied assistance to Jesus who wishes his corpse to smell good (the proper symmetry is comparing an individual to an individual, not Jesus to a class of people), then the moral absurdity of Jesus' request becomes more pointed.
(The Uneconomic Jesus as Enemy of the Poor, in The Bad Jesus, p. 205-207)

Avalos signals a clear contrast between Deuteronomy 15 and the request of Jesus to help him instead of the poor. For Jesus, his brief fleeting presence in this world is more precious than the whole existence of the world (before and after him).
Though Mark fails to tell us why this contrast in his Gospel.
Marcion tells us. The presence of Jesus is so precious (in this world of darkness) that alone it is able to sanctify even the most ignoble act (i.e.: not to give aid to the poor). Note that in Mcn the body of Jesus sanctified the prostitute who anoints the feet. Marco has turned the gesture into a messianic function (Jesus is the Messiah foretold in the Scriptures why not his feet but his head was anointed) but he has preserved the spirit of the antithesis between old and new (contradicting Deuteronomy 15). Thus betraying at least influence from Marcion.

In Mark 14:3-9 Jesus is contradicting deliberately Deuteronomy 15.11, by deniyng aid to the poor. The point of Mark is that even a immoral act as denying aid to the poor is made ''moral'' if prescribed directly from the Jewish Messiah Jesus.

In Marcion's Gospel, instead, even a immoral woman as a prostitute becomes worthy of perfuming Jesus. The point of Marcion is that the love by his Alien God overcomes the same Torah.

It's curious that, in Mark, Jesus is anointed on the head (and not on the feet, as in Marcion's Gospel). Is even the unction of feet (rather than his head) a marcionite antithetis? Usually, a Christ (Messiah) is anointed <i>on the head</i>.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
Posts: 2110
Joined: Sat Nov 16, 2013 2:19 pm
Location: Leipzig, Germany
Contact:

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Giuseppe wrote:4) I should thank the extraordinary book I'm reading of Professor Avalos, The Bad Jesus,

So Mark 14:3-9 :
3 And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as He sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she broke the box and poured it on His head.
4 And there were some who were indignant within themselves and said, “Why was this ointment wasted?
5 For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor.” And they murmured against her.
6 And Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on Me.
7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good; but Me ye have not always.
8 She hath done what she could; she hath come beforehand to anoint My body for burial.
9 Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of as a memorial of her.”
So Avalos:
Allen Verhey does offer a more elaborate defense of Jesus' statement: 'For you Always have the poor with you''.
....
To show how the presence of the poor 'Condemned the Whole community', Verhey points to Jesus' allusion to Deuteronomy: 'For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your Brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land' (Deut. 15.11). Vehrey links that verse to this conditional statement earlier in the chapter:

(Deut. 15.4-5)

...
Verhey's defense of Jesus relies on his poor exegesis of Deuteronomy 15. ....
Indeed, even if the presence of poverty in Israel signals a judgment by God, the continued presence of that judgment does not remove the obligation to help the poor as long as the poor remain in the land. The whole lesson of Deuteronomy 15 is that a continued presence of the poor demands a continued assistance to them.
However, Jesus does not acknowledge any continuing assistance at all in his logion. Jesus' truncated quotation amount to a distortion of the lesson of Deut. 15.11. If Jesus had included the rest of the verse, it would be clear that he was in violation of it. The verse demanded continued assistance to the poor, and he denied assistance to the poor. Note that Deut. 15.11 does not say, as Jesus implies, that one can deny help to the poor because one will not always be around. But that is precisely how Jesus justifies his denial of helping the poor when he says 'you will not Always have me'. Neither Verhey nor any other major New testament ethicist critically examines or interrogates Jesus'own exegesis of Deuteronomy 15 to see if it is sound.
...
A case can also be made that Jesus is not calling attention to Israel's judgment for having poverty. Nothing in the text indicates such a reading. On the contrary, Jesus gives two explicit reasons for why the needs of the poor should be denied in this instance:

A. Whenever you will, you can do good to them;
B. but you will not Always have me.

The contrast Jesus makes is clear here, and it has nothing to do with exposing the presence of the poor as a judgment. Because of the limited time Jesus has, resources should go to his body instead of to the poor. Once you compare an individual poor person who is denied assistance to Jesus who wishes his corpse to smell good (the proper symmetry is comparing an individual to an individual, not Jesus to a class of people), then the moral absurdity of Jesus' request becomes more pointed.
(The Uneconomic Jesus as Enemy of the Poor, in The Bad Jesus, p. 205-207)

Avalos signals a clear contrast between Deuteronomy 15 and the request of Jesus to help him instead of the poor.
An excellent point from Avalos. Clearly, (the Markan) Jesus was the bitterst enemy of the poor.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »

Another strong argument pro Mcn and against Mark priority:

5)

Mark 5:1-20:
Jesus and his disciples crossed Lake Galilee and came to shore near the town of Gerasa. When he was getting out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit quickly ran to him from the graveyard where he had been living. No one was able to tie the man up anymore, not even with a chain. He had often been put in chains and leg irons, but he broke the chains and smashed the leg irons. No one could control him. Night and day he was in the graveyard or on the hills, yelling and cutting himself with stones.

When the man saw Jesus in the distance, he ran up to him and knelt down. He shouted, “Jesus, Son of God in heaven, what do you want with me? Promise me in God’s name that you won’t torture me!” The man said this because Jesus had already told the evil spirit to come out of him.

Jesus asked, “What is your name?”

The man answered, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” He then begged Jesus not to send them away.

Over on the hillside a large herd of pigs was feeding. So the evil spirits begged Jesus, “Send us into those pigs! Let us go into them.” Jesus let them go, and they went out of the man and into the pigs. The whole herd of about two thousand pigs rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

The men taking care of the pigs ran to the town and the farms to spread the news. Then the people came out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had once been full of demons. He was sitting there with his clothes on and in his right mind, and they were terrified.

Everyone who had seen what had happened told about the man and the pigs. Then the people started begging Jesus to leave their part of the country.

When Jesus was getting into the boat, the man begged to go with him. But Jesus would not let him. Instead, he said, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how good he has been to you.”

The man went away into the region near the ten cities known as Decapolis and began telling everyone how much Jesus had done for him. Everyone who heard what had happened was amazed.
Lord of Sabaoth = Lord of Hosts ----> Legion = Sabaoth.

Read Matthew 26:52-53:
Those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword, or do you think that I cannot appeal to My father [i.e., the god of Jews], and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?

(i.e., YHWH, who commands legions of angels; this name was sometimes translated in more archaic language as The Lord of Hosts).

Question: why do the demons beg Jesus to go into the pigs? Because the pig is the image of their god (or the image of a humanity made ''in image'' of their god), in Pagan (Plutarch, Symposiacs, Book IV, Question 5) and Gnostic tradition. Epiphanius tells several times (Haer. xxv. 2, xxvi. 10, xl. 5, xlv. 1) that, besides the Gnostics who gave the highest place to Ialdabaoth, there were others who gave that place to Sabaoth, and who identified him with the God of the Jews. Some of them ascribed to Sabaoth the form of an ass or a swine (Epiph. xxvi. 10), accounting thus for the Jewish prohibition of the use of swine's flesh.


Luke 8:38-39 (not attested in Mcn according to Roth, but I suspect it was):

Now the man out of whom the devils had departed besought Him that he might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying,

“Return to thine own house, and show what great things God [of the Jews] hath done unto thee.” And he went his way, and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done unto him.
Jesus lied to Gerasene to hide his true identity (the real origin of the markan Messianic Secret that represents the marcionite influence on Mark). Despite his lie, an antithesis is raised: instead of proclaiming the power of the god of the Jews, the man preaches the power of Jesus (the son of a different god). Instead of going to his home and family, the man preaches in all the city.
Mark realizes that an antithesis is found in this point but he doesn't remove it: only, he casts it in a proto-catholic antithesis, by changing the lukan ''whole city'' in ''the region near the ten cities known as Decapolis'' (so that he remarks the gentile character of the people who listen the 'amazing' news by the Gerasene, while in the original Mcn the audience was only the Jewish people of Gerasa). So in Mark the effect is that Jesus is the God of Jews for gentiles. While in Mcn the original meaning is that Jesus is a different god from the god of Jews (hence the fear of the Jewish Gerasenes, otherwise inexplicable in Mark).

NOTE: The Gerasene man is not the God of Jews (just as Polyphemus is not Poseidon in Homer).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »


καλόν ἐστιν ἡμᾶς ὧδε εἶναι

Mark 9:5:
"Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters--one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.'"

Kalos means beautiful but also good.

Marcion adored the Good God.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »

The disciples told Jesus that the crowds thought he was one of the OT prophets. Jesus refuted that hypothesis by appearing together with them.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: Marcion versus Mark: who is the first?

Post by Giuseppe »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 11:03 am The disciples told Jesus that the crowds thought he was one of the OT prophets. Jesus refuted that hypothesis by appearing together with them.
I wonder if in Mark we have a pattern where the denial of this kind occurs again and again: Jesus didn't predict the destruction of the temple, Jesus was not Elijah redivivus, Jesus was not John redivivus, Jesus was not the davidic Christ.

Is that pattern a mere literary pattern? It seems that Mark raises the problem and then it is himself to give the solution of the problem. But was that problem found out the gospel of Mark? Or was it a false problem? In this latter case, only Marcion can be author of Mark, because it means that only he invented the hearsay on Jesus=Elijah to deny it as antithesis, only some row after.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Post Reply