Allow me one derogatory statement. How can I be an apologist(s) for Marcion when all the Marcionophiles accuse me of heresy? No I am not an apologists for Marcion. My interest in Marcion is twofold:You are an apologists for Marcion, I got that.
1. I am fascinated by the development of early Christianity and as Marcionism seems to have had 'the earliest canon' it is important to study Marcionism or Marcion
2. I don't think that most scholars understand or nuance the early Patristic reports about Marcion. They assume that because Judaism was monotheist or monarchian that the attack against Marcion can be read in a straightforward manner. In other words, 'Marcion hated the god of the Jews.' But that's not what the Church Fathers say for the most part. It's just a way of 'making sense' of the material viz. it is a product of the limited intellect or limited depth of knowledge of most scholars.
So let's move on:
Ok I am going to lose it here. Why do ask such a stupid question? What is MY SOURCE for what Marcion considered normative? I don't know what to do with your question. The question isn't what did Marcion consider - i.e. it's not about Marcion - it's about Judaism. What evidence do we have for what Judaism was in the second century or even the first century for that matter? We know that from the earliest Samaritan sources and reports about a second god or angel, we know from the earliest Jewish commentary on Exodus, we know from a plain reading (= R Ishmael) of the original text of Exodus, we know from a plain understanding of the use of names (viz. Elohim and Yahweh) and the earliest Jewish account of how those names were used (Philo) that the religion of the Pentateuch had at least two gods. In other words, all the strongest evidence supports a binary godhead.But what is your source for what Marcion considered normative Judaism before the war?
The fact that the surviving tradition cites sources favorable to its position that there is only one god of Israel does not dispute this POV. We should expect that if there was a Judaism survived down to our times as a ritualized worship of homosexuality for instance that it would cite interpretations supporting that position. For instance if the Donmeh in Izmir were the only Jews left on the planet owing to some massive successful extermination of Jews we could simply start from the Donmeh and project their rather idiosyncratic beliefs back on to the Jews of the Common Era. As silly as this argument might seem it is amazing how modern Judaism with its idiosyncratic behavior (most notably the sanctity of the temple, gemara etc) dominates the picture of how 'life must have been like' for Jews or what Jewish culture must have been like in the Common Era.
To this end we have to start not with what the neo-rabbinic tradition TELLS US Judaism was like or what Judaism is but rather what the Pentateuch and only the Pentateuch tells us what Judaism is, was and always should be - and that is an ancient veneration of two gods mostly closely paralleled in the Persian religion at the time of the writing of the Pentateuch viz. Mitra and Ahura Mazda.
As I understand it the schema was one god residing in the highest heavens and only being heard as a voice and another god walking and behaving like an anthropomorphic entity 'in whose image and likeness' Adam was formed and who was seen by the ancient Israelites on Sinai. This is the obvious and only starting point for understanding the Pentateuch. There can be no real debate about this other than for the purpose of aligning research along post-Common Era 'orthodoxies' for the sake of preserving their sanctity and authority and moreover denying the obvious - viz. that these orthodoxies were the result of Imperial efforts to bring all religions in line with monarchianism in the late second and early third centuries as demonstrated by Brent in his exhaustive (and mostly ignored) research.
So the only way of interpreting the Shema is that 'Yahweh' and 'Elohim' are different names describing the same underlying monotheistic divinity? How do you reconcile that with our earliest Jewish exegete being Philo of Alexandria? Was he just too stupid to see the self-evident nature of what your point or is it the other way around?As far as my sources, I understand Christians and Jews before the war were still in agreement with Deuteronomy 6:4 and Mark 12:29.
