Secret Alias wrote:I understand that you are mentally retarded and empathize/sympathize with how difficult this must be. But don't you see a qualitative difference in the anti-Jewish hostility between the pagan writers and what you have managed to uncover with respect to Marcion? For God's sake, you just have some modern writer basically fumbling in the dark (as we all are). In short - you can't find evidence of Marcionite 'hatred' of the 'Jewish god' or the Jews whereas I can find dozens of statements and proofs that the Marcionites must have stood relatively close to the two powers tradition that existed within Judaism. I don't say this to try to convince you to see beyond your own mental retardation. You can't possibly. It is like a blind person getting beyond his blindness. I say this for some who might be affected by your repetition of typical nonsense written about the Marcionites.
Stephen, take your lithium. You know you're angry when you don;t eat or take your meds.
Fundamentally you have the entire equation of heretical thought on God backwards. You have accepted, much as Harnack did, that the Heretics, Marcionites included, worship some different God. But this is not the case.
An easier explanation, which greatly reduces the distance between the proto-orthodox and the heretical views is to understand the difference as that of the properties ascribed to the High God, the Perfect God, the True God, the Father of Christ. The all worshiped that God, and accepted him as the father of Christ. Where they split was on the ascription of "secondary" properties upon him. Did he organize matter or was that done by a one of his high angels? Did he write/inspire the Jewish scriptures, or was that one of his High angels?
The properties of Christ, whether the Apellean borrowing of elements to form substance as he descends through the various heavens (or prior even having substance), or the seed is passed by way of Holy Ghost through a virgin, or whether naturally born, are secondary. They are necessary to explain the (every changing) accepted texts and maintain the positions (albeit bastardized by polemics and stretched to absurdity) they held regarding the nature of God.
It is very easy to explain each position as sequentially within Christianity without appeal to Jewish origins. (Which is not to say there are not any.) There is no need for some obscure Jewish debate to explain the development. No need for mistranslated words from some eastern language.
But this concept that a new God was introduced is the story line we have all had wrong for centuries. Perhaps by the late 4th or 5th century that was the common opinion, but that is a backward projection, accepting the polemics of the Church fathers as accurate about the origins of the theological development of their rival sects.
The two power tradition is very likely a parallel development. It's unlikely Christianity grew out of two competing traditions in place. It is far more likely it developed from a single tradition family.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
