Secret Alias wrote:
If we are having a discussion, rather than attempt to posture the fact that you don't accept the evidence for a historical Marcion (something the Church Fathers argue for), it is difficult in my mind to reconcile this position with a repeated pattern in this forum of you 'reconstructing' the Marcionite canon from these unreliable sources? Why do on the one hand suppose that we can know what the Marcionite canon looked like --down to the dots on the page based on 'unreliable sources'-- while rejecting the historical Marcion derived from these same sources?
My position is that the material is unreliable for reconstructing ANYTHING but the most basic understanding of Marcion, the Marcionite tradition, and his/its canon. I think that is a more reasonable position, based on our agreement the material reporting our information --about Marcion, the Marcionite tradition, and his/its canon-- is unreliable.
I think that's a reasonable position. One could qualify the reconstructed Marcion, or the the reconstructed Marcionite texts, as that:-
- ie. 'recontstructed-Marcion' and 'reconstructed-Marcionite canon'
I presume when you say "something the Church Fathers argue for" you mean they argue
for a historical Marcion, rather than [some] arguing they "don't accept the evidence for a historical Marcion".
Secret Alias wrote:
What about Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius, and the rest of these losers, makes reconstructing the canon 'reliable', but information about Marcion 'unreliable'? Seems very silly and arbitrary distinction to me.
I agree regarding Irenaeus and Tertullian being unreliable, which is why I posted this:-
BOOK I
1. Nothing I have previously written against Marcion is any longer my concern. I am embarking upon a new work to replace an old one. My first edition, too hurriedly produced, I afterwards withdrew, substituting a fuller treatment. This also, before enough copies had been made, was stolen from me by a person, at that time a Christian but afterwards an apostate, who chanced to have copied out some extracts very incorrectly, and shewed them to a group of people. Hence the need for correction. The opportunity provided by this revision has moved me to make some additions. Thus this written work, a third succeeding a second, and instead of third from now on the first, needs to begin by reporting the demise of the work it supersedes, so that no one may be perplexed if in one place or another he comes across varying forms of it.
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/evan ... k1_eng.htm
- Tertuallian^ seems besotted with Marcion.
Interestingly, there is scant reliable evidence about Tertullian and his life: most history about him comes from passing references writings attributed to him.
The chronology of
[Tertullian's
] writings is difficult to fix with certainty. It is in part determined by the Montanistic views that are set forth in some of them, by the author's
[supposed
] own allusions to this writing, or that, as
[supposedly
] antedating others (cf. Harnack,
Litteratur ii.260–262), and by definite historic data (e.g., the reference to the death of Septimius Severus,
Ad Scapulam, iv) ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertullia ... d_contents
As Epiphanius (of Salamis) is mid- to late- 4th century, he is likely to be more at the heart of a more concrete early-Christianity(?) Although with Epiphanius meaning "clearly manifested", someone could have been having a lend of everyone. And it is interesting that Epiphanius's
Panarion is, like the major works of Irenaeus and Tertullian, obsessed with supposedly past heresies (as does at least one other work of Epiphanius: the
Ancoratus, which argues against Arianism and the 'teachings' of Origen).
.
