Marcion Isn't a Slam Dunk for Mythicists

[Secret Alias]

But getting back to the OP the surprising lack of references in Book 4 of AM to explicit "Jesus" passages in the gospel is hard to explain. Christ comes down from heaven at the beginning of the Marcionite gospel. But isn't that what also happens in the synoptic baptism narratives?

[Secret Alias]

And i think the vestige of the original discussion of a supernatural baptism narrative might still be found in AM Book 4. Notice the citation of what might have been εἴδει in the original Greek text

[Secret Alias]

And i think the vestige of the original discussion of a supernatural baptism narrative might still be found in AM Book 4. Notice the citation of what might have been εἴδει in the original Greek text. In Latin we read immediately after Book 4's retelling of the descent of Christ from heaven to Galilee

Next however, admitting that he came down, I demand to know the rest of the order of that descent. It is no matter if somewhere the word 'appeared' is used. 'Appear' suggests a sudden and unexpected sight, <by one> who at some instant has cast his eyes on a thing which has at that instant appeared. To have come down, however—when that takes place the fact is in view and comes beneath the eye: it also puts the event into sequence, and enforces the inquiry in what sort of aspect, in what sort of array, with how much speed or moderation, as also at what time of day, or of night, he came down: and besides that, who saw him coming down, who reported it, and who gave assurance of a fact not easily credible even to him who gives assurance. (4.7)

You don't how long I struggled to find the word "appeared" or appearance in Luke chapter 4. The mention of Jesus "going down" to Capernaum in Luke has no follow up mention of "appearance." But the descent of the dove in the baptism narrative does "upon Him in bodily appearance like a dove."

[Secret Alias]

Roth wrestles (unsuccessfully) with "appearance" as part of the description of Christ's descent in the gospel https://books.google.com/books?id=hNYuB ... an&f=false

[Giuseppe]

If you are right about Marcion (and I doubt strongly about the fact that you are right about Marcion), then the accusation of pure docetism by the proto-catholics against marcionites is a false accusation, as when a modern academic is accused (by the gilda) to be ''mythicist'' only in virtue of the his show of excessive skepticism about the credibility of the Gospels.

If you are right, then there were no pure docetists among the early Christians.

This would seem non-sense. Isn't it?

[Giuseppe]

Ireneus seems to confirm the presence of Christians who assumed a Jesus pure spirit (and not only a Christ pure spirit):

3. But, according to these men, neither was the Word made flesh, nor Christ, nor the Saviour (Soter), who was produced from [the joint contributions of] all [the Æons]. For they will have it, that the Word and Christ never came into this world; that the Saviour, too, never became incarnate, nor suffered, but that He descended like a dove upon the dispensational Jesus; and that, as soon as He had declared the unknown Father, He did again ascend into the Pleroma. Some, however, make the assertion, that this dispensational Jesus did become incarnate, and suffered, whom they represent as having passed through Mary just as water through a tube; but others allege him to be the Son of the Demiurge, upon whom the dispensational Jesus descended; while others, again, say that Jesus was born from Joseph and Mary, and that the Christ from above descended upon him, being without flesh, and impassible. But according to the opinion of no one of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103311.htm

[Giuseppe]

If the descending spirit is named 'Jesus' by some heretics and not 'Christ', then it becomes more plausible that the same thing happens in the incipit of Mcn: the spiritual ''Jesus Christ'' (and not only ''Christ'') descended in Capernaum, ''the place of the Paraclete'' (itself a spiritual being).

[Secret Alias]

As many of you may be aware, Criddle and I have advocated reading Adversus Marcionem as a vestige of an original treatise written by Justin Martyr or someone in his circle as something of a commentary on a gospel harmony (I hope Andrew does not think I am misrepresenting his understanding as I move forward). This 'harmony gospel commentary' was later changed and transformed into an an important Luke-based treatise arguing for Marcion's gospel being a corruption of the canonical gospel of Luke. This was not the original position or understanding of Justin Martyr's commentary.

I think it is highly likely that this 'secondary treatise' (= the Marcion corrupted Luke text) was written by Irenaeus, the first witness for the existence of Luke. Justin knew nothing about Luke. Irenaeus or the editor of the secondary treatise basically rearranged the original order of Justin's commentary to conform to the order of the newly introduced Luke. This might explain why, in 4.7 'Capernaum' is specifically introduced as the place Christ descended when he came from heaven. I see strong evidence or at least evidence that Justin's commentary understood Christ's descent to have been part of the baptism of John narrative which is now completely wanting in our Adversus Marcionem (i.e. there is no explicit allusion to the baptism of Jesus by John).

Here is the evidence. Roth as I noted above struggles with Tertullian's claim that the word 'appearance' or 'appeared' was part of the Marcionite gospel's account of the descent of Jesus. If the Marcionite text really was an adaptation of Luke we would have to imagine some sort of mix between material found in Luke chapter 3 and chapter 4:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar ... he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he taught the people.

This is how people always interpreted or 'made sense' of the commentary of Justin reshaped by Irenaeus and loosely translated into Latin by Tertullian in our Adversus Marcionem Book 4.

Yet the word 'appearance' or 'appeared' isn't in any of the material from Luke. Clearly the Marcionites connected this word with the underlying claim that Christ wasn't of the flesh; that he was a spiritual shape-shifter who at once could be a dove and then take the appearance of one man and then another. It wasn't a small deal. Let's revisit the passage in Adv Marc 4 again:

Next however, admitting that he came down, I demand to know the rest of the order of that descent. It is no matter if somewhere the word 'appeared' is used. 'Appear' suggests a sudden and unexpected sight, <by one> who at some instant has cast his eyes on a thing which has at that instant appeared [Viderit enim sicubi appamisse positum est. Apparere subitum ex inopinato sapit conspectum, qui semel impegerit oculos in id quod sine mora apparuit]. To have come down, however—when that takes place the fact is in view and comes beneath the eye: it also puts the event into sequence, and enforces the inquiry in what sort of aspect, in what sort of array, with how much speed or moderation, as also at what time of day, or of night, he came down: and besides that, who saw him coming down, who reported it, and who gave assurance of a fact not easily credible even to him who gives assurance. It is quite wrong in fact, that Romulus should have had Proculus to vouch for his ascent into heaven,3 yet that Christ should not have provided himself with a reporter of his god's descent from heaven—though that one must have gone up by the same ladder of lies by which this one came down.

True the specific allusion to baptism or the dove is not there but other details related to the opening narrative involving John are there - most notably the idea that the gospel makes reference to someone witnessing the strange 'appearance' of Jesus's descent.

Compare Origen's discussion of Celsus's Jew and his rejection of the 'appearance' of the dove in Adversus Celsum:

Let us therefore notice what he has to say by way of impugning the bodily appearance of the Holy Spirit to our Saviour in the form of a dove (ὑπὸ τοῦ σωτῆρος πνεῦμα ἅγιον εἴδει περιστερᾶς). And it is a Jew who addresses the following language to Him whom we acknowledge to be our Lord Jesus: When you were bathing, says the Jew, beside John, you say that what had the appearance of a bird (φάσμα όρνιθος) from the air alighted upon you. And then this same Jew of his, continuing his interrogations, asks, What credible witness beheld this appearance (Τίς τοῦτο εἶδεν ἀξιόχρεως μάρτυς τὸ φάσμα)? Or who heard a voice from heaven declaring you to be the Son of God? What proof is there of it, save your own assertion, and the statement of another of those individuals who have been punished along with you?

Indeed the importance of this 'apparition' was so important to the Jew's argument that Origen notes it jumped out of the natural order of the events described in the gospel:

For if he had observed a proper arrangement, he would have taken up the Gospel, and, with the view of assailing it, would. have objected to the first narrative, then passed on to the second, and so on to the others. But now, after the birth from a virgin, this Celsus, who professes to be acquainted with all our history, attacks the account of the appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove at the baptism. He then, after that, tries to throw discredit upon the prediction that our Lord was to come into the world. In the next place, he runs away to what immediately follows the narrative of the birth of Jesus— the account of the star, and of the wise men who came from the east to worship the child.

[Secret Alias]

At first glance the difference seems to be that while the gospel known to Celsus (and our canonical texts) a witness was there for the descent of Christ (= John the Baptist) however in the Marcionite gospel Christ descends from heaven with no witness. But the specific mention of Romulus and Proculus raises questions if this was added by Tertullian the Latin translator of Irenaeus. Livy - writing in Latin - only knows of Romulus's ascent into heaven and this is all Tertullian mentions. But Plutarch written in Greek knows of both a descent (like Jesus) and an ascent. The fact that Tertullian only mentions an ascent would argue for the author's familiarity with the Latin version which may indicate it wasn't part of the original narrative. Tertullian may not have recognized the connection with the baptism narrative because of Irenaeus's editing.

[Secret Alias]

It is also worth noting that De Carne Christi has a strange 'harmony-based' attack against Marcion's docetism which makes reference to the dove:

Let us examine our Lord's bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all are agreed.5 It is His flesh that is in question. Its verity and quality are the points in dispute. Did it ever exist? whence was it derived? and of what kind was it? If we succeed in demonstrating it, we shall lay down a law for our own resurrection. Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ, denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he might deny His nativity; because, of course, he was afraid that His nativity and His flesh bore mutual testimony to each other's reality, since there is no nativity without flesh, and no flesh without nativity. [3] As if indeed, under the prompting of that licence which is ever the same in all heresy, he too might not very well have either denied the nativity, although admitting the flesh,----like Apelles, who was first a disciple of his, and afterwards an apostate,----or, while admitting both the flesh and the nativity, have interpreted them in a different sense, as did Valentinus, who resembled Apelles both in his discipleship and desertion of Marcion. [4] At all events, he who represented the flesh of Christ to be imaginary was equally able to pass off His nativity as a phantom; so that the virgin's conception, and pregnancy, and child-bearing, and then the whole course6 of her infant too, would have to be regarded as putative.7 These facts pertaining to the nativity of Christ would escape the notice of the same eyes and the same senses as failed to grasp the full idea8 of His flesh.

Chapter II. ----Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ's Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy.

[1] Clearly enough is the nativity announced by Gabriel.9 But what has he to do with the Creator's angel?10 The conception in the virgin's womb is also set plainly before us. But what concern has he with the Creator's prophet, Isaiah?11 He12 will not brook delay, since suddenly (without any prophetic announcement) did he bring down Christ from heaven.13 "Away," says he, "with that eternal plaguey taxing of Caesar, and the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling-clothes, and the hard stable.14 We do not care a jot for15 that multitude of the heavenly host which praised their Lord at night.16 Let the shepherds take better care of their flock,17 and let the wise men spare their legs so long a journey;18 let them keep their gold to themselves.19 [2] Let Herod, too, mend his manners, so that Jeremy may not glory over him.20 Spare also the babe from circumcision, that he may escape the pain thereof; nor let him be brought into the temple, lest he burden his parents with the expense of the offering;21 nor let him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at the point of death.22 Let that old woman also hold her tongue, lest she should bewitch the child."23 After such a fashion as this, I suppose you have had, O Marcion, the hardihood of blotting out the original records (of the history) of Christ, that His flesh may lose the proofs of its reality. [3] But, prithee, on what grounds (do you do this)? Show me your authority. If you are a prophet, foretell us a thing; if you are an apostle, open your message in public; if a follower of apostles,24 side with apostles in thought; if you are only a (private) Christian, believe what has been handed down to us: if, however, you are nothing of all this, then (as I have the best reason to say) cease to live.25 [4] For indeed you are already dead, since you are no Christian, because you do not believe that which by being believed makes men Christian,----nay, you are the more dead, the more you are not a Christian; having fallen away, after you had been one, by rejecting26 what you formerly believed, even as you yourself acknowledge in a certain letter of yours, and as your followers do not deny, whilst our (brethren) can prove it.27 [5] Rejecting, therefore, what you once believed, you have completed the act of rejection, by now no longer believing: the fact, however, of your having ceased to believe has not made your rejection of the faith right and proper; nay, rather,28 by your act of rejection you prove that what you believed previous to the said act was of a different character.29 What you believed to be of a different character, had been handed down just as you believed it. Now30 that which had been handed down was true, inasmuch as it had been transmitted by those whose duty it was to hand it down. Therefore, when rejecting that which had been handed down, you rejected that which was true. You had no authority for what you did. [6] However, we have already in another treatise availed ourselves more fully of these prescriptive rules against all heresies. Our repetition of them hereafter that large (treatise) is superfluous,31 when we ask the reason why you have formed the opinion that Christ was not born.

Chapter III. ----Christ's Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ's Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even on Marcion's Principles.

[1] Since32 you think that this lay within the competency of your own arbitrary choice, you must needs have supposed that being born33 was either impossible for God, or unbecoming to Him. With God, however, nothing is impossible but what He does not will. Let us consider, then, whether He willed to be born (for if He had the will, He also had the power, and was born). I put the argument very briefly. If God had willed not to be born, it matters not why, He would not have presented Himself in the likeness of man. Now who, when he sees a man, would deny that he had been born? What God therefore willed not to be, He would in no wise have willed the seeming to be. [2] When a thing is distasteful, the very notion34 of it is scouted; because it makes no difference whether a thing exist or do not exist, if, when it does not exist, it is yet assumed to exist. It is of course of the greatest importance that there should be nothing false (or pretended) attributed to that which really does not exist.35 But, say you, His own consciousness (of the truth of His nature) was enough for Him. If any supposed that He had been born, because they saw Him as a man, that was their concern.36 [3] Yet with how much more dignity and consistency would He have sustained the human character on the supposition that He was truly born; for if He were not born, He could not have undertaken the said character without injury to that consciousness of His which you on your side attribute to His confidence of being able to sustain, although not born, the character of having been born even against! His own consciousness!37 Why, I want to know,38 was it of so much importance, that Christ should, when perfectly aware what He really was, exhibit Himself as being that which He was not? [4] You cannot express any apprehension that,39 if He had been born and truly clothed Himself with man's nature, He would have ceased to be God, losing what He was, while becoming what He was not. For God is in no danger of losing His own state and condition. But, say you, I deny that God was truly changed to man in such wise as to be born and endued with a body of flesh, on this ground, that a being who is without end is also of necessity incapable of change. [5] For being changed into something else puts an end to the former state. Change, therefore, is not possible to a Being who cannot come to an end. Without doubt, the nature of things which are subject to change is regulated by this law, that they have no permanence in the state which is undergoing change in them, and that they come to an end from thus wanting permanence, whilst they lose that in the process of change which they previously were. But nothing is equal with God; His nature is different40 from the condition of all things. If, then, the things which differ from God, and from which God differs, lose what existence they had whilst they are undergoing change, wherein will consist the difference of the Divine Being from all other things except in His possessing the contrary faculty of theirs,----in other words, that God can be changed into all conditions, and yet continue just as He is? [6] On any other supposition, He would be on the, same level with those things which, when changed, lose the existence they had before; whose equal, of course, He is not in any other respect, as He certainly is not in the changeful issues41 of their nature. You have sometimes read and believed that the Creator's angels have been changed into human form, and have even borne about so veritable a body, that Abraham even washed their feet,42 and Lot was rescued from the Sodomites by their hands;43 an angel, moreover, wrestled with a man so strenuously with his body, that the latter desired to be let loose, so tightly was he held.44 [7] Has it, then, been permitted to angels, which are inferior to God, after they have been changed into human bodily form,45 nevertheless to remain angels? and will you deprive God, their superior, of this faculty, as if Christ could not continue to be God, after His real assumption of the nature of man? Or else, did those angels appear as phantoms of flesh? You will not, however, have the courage to say this; for if it be so held in your belief, that the Creator's angels are in the same condition as Christ, then Christ will belong to the same God as those angels do, who are like Christ in their condition. [8] If you had not purposely rejected in some instances, and corrupter in others, the Scriptures which are opposed to your opinion, you would have been confuted in this matter by the Gospel of John, when it declares that the Spirit descended in the body (corpore) of a dove, and sat upon the Lord.47 When the said Spirit was in this condition, He was as truly a dove as He was also a spirit; nor did He destroy His own proper substance by the assumption of an extraneous substance. But you ask what becomes of the dove's body, after the return of the Spirit back to heaven, and similarly in the case of the angels. Their withdrawal was effected in the same manner as their appearance had been. If you had seen how their production out of nothing had been effected, you would have known also the process of their return to nothing. If the initial step was out of sight, so was also the final one. Still there was solidity in their bodily substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible.What is written cannot but have been.

Chapter IV. ----God's Honour in the Incarnation of His Son Vindicated. Marcion's Disparagement of Human Flesh Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has Cleansed the Flesh. The Foolishness of God is Most Wise.

[1] Since, therefore, you do not reject the assumption of a body48 as impossible or as hazardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and censure it as unworthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim49 against the uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine: months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges50 from day to day, heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail51 which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred52 in respect of (the mystery of) nature. [2] Of course you are horrified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb;53 you likewise, of course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing,54 smiled on with nurse's fawns. This reverend course of nature,55 you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody? Yourself, of course, you had no love of, when you departed from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind,56 if you are not on good terms with yourself, or even if you were born in a way different from other people. [3] Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mother's womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurse's simpers.57 For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake "He humbled Himself even unto death----the death of the cross."58 He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creator's Son, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. [4] Either take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed----since it is these very conditions59 which constitute the man whom God has redeemed. And are you for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, us unworthy of Him who certainly would not have redeemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven;60 our flesh He restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain; when blind, He rekindles its light; when palsied, He renews its strength; when possessed with devils, He exorcises it; when dead, He reanimates it,----then shall we blush to own it? [5] If, to be sure,61 He had chosen to be born of a mere animal, and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have instantly met Him with this demurrer: "This is disgraceful for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish." For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But, Marcion, consider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased it: "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise."62 [6] Now what are those foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things certainly are not "foolish." Inquire again, then, of what things he spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so "foolish" as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too, who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature? [7] But some one may say, "These are not the foolish things; they must be other things which God has chosen to confound the wisdom of the world." And yet, according to the world's wisdom, it is more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.

It would seem that the author's appeal to John and the subsequent discussion would make clear that (1) the Marcionites had the 'dove-like' descent of Christ that (2) the Marcionite used this to argue on behalf of a docetic Christ. Not sure where Jesus fits into all of this.