And striking him, they said Prophesy; who is it that smote thee?
MARCION, 19.51.
while in Mark we have:
Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took him and beat him.
(Mark 14:65)
Note how much embarrassing theology (for a judaizer) is eclipsed by the simple his addition of ''they blindfolded him".
In Marcion the irony of "who is that smote thee?'' is that none is really striking him, him not having a body.
By blindfolding Jesus, the reader is secured that Jesus is really persecuted by the guards, so the sarcastic question is end to itself and doesn't appeal to the docetism.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
To be sure, Charles B. Waite (a proponent, earlier than Couchoud, of the Marcionite priority) argued for another reason to consider the 'blindfolding' a Judaizing interpolation of Mcn:
MARCION, 19.51.
And striking him, they said Prophesy; who is it that smote thee?
LUKE, 22. 64.
And when they had blindfolded him, they struck him on the face; and asked him, saying: Prophesy, who is it that smote thee?
The account in Marcion, besides being shorter, is the more natural. Being struck from behind, or by a stranger, Jesus was called upon to tell who struck him. It was an impulsive action. But the author of Luke has the Jews deliberately blindfold Jesus, before striking him.
Frankly, I find my reason more convincing: the Jews deliberately blindfold Jesus, before striking him, because otherwise the question "who is it that smote thee?" could sound (and probably it did) as an implicit denial of a real striking.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
If they blindfolded him - and that actually was in the original gospel - then it would preclude the idea of Jesus being a spirit or a phantom. The fact that Tertullian doesn't mention this to me at least implies (a) it wasn't in the early gospel or (b) the heretics didn't say that Jesus was a phantom or (c) the debate at the core of Against Marcion wasn't about whether or not Jesus was a phantom. Perhaps the fact that the crucified man can be blindfolded and beaten was taken to mean the substitution of Christ for Jesus or vice versa has already taken place in the narrative.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2018 8:38 am
If they blindfolded him - and that actually was in the original gospel - then it would preclude the idea of Jesus being a spirit or a phantom. The fact that Tertullian doesn't mention this to me at least implies (a) it wasn't in the early gospel or (b) the heretics didn't say that Jesus was a phantom or (c) the debate at the core of Against Marcion wasn't about whether or not Jesus was a phantom. Perhaps the fact that the crucified man can be blindfolded and beaten was taken to mean the substitution of Christ for Jesus or vice versa has already taken place in the narrative.
Obviously I read, in the place of the your post, another post and it reads: 'I want to be persuaded that the Earliest Gospel was our Mark and/or that in the Earliest Gospel there was a separationist christology and not a docetic Christology'.
Can you make it at least clear?
I make clear at least my wishes of how the Earliest Gospel could be, so the reader can know better where I would like to go.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
And here is another point where I willingly depart from Secret Alias: he thinks that Tertullian (or the his source) was so near to the real time of writing of the gospels that possible traces of old polemics between Judaizers and anti-YHWH could emerge on their face only in the works of Tertullian & co.
As if Tertullian (and/or who for him) could observe the interpolator during his forgery and realize, interpolation after interpolation, what he was ''correcting'' of previous sources.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
No. There is a thing called 'source criticism.' I happen to know that when texts are preserved in the name of Church Father X they often come from an earlier period (let's say Church Father Y). Tertullian's Against the Valentinians clearly comes from something written originally by Irenaeus. I don't see why this is controversial.
Your questions are always things on a massive scale which can't be answered with any reasonable degree of certainty. I ask little questions. Little questions like - what is Against Marcion? My answer, it was a text originally written by someone else in Greek, perhaps a text through more than one hand as the introduction to Against Marcion admits. Again, how is any of this controversial? These are all things that you miss when you engage in your prophetic brand of scholarship. You miss things like 'things that the author says' because you are too busy reading into what he wrote or things which scholars have said about the author and his text. Why not start by reading the book as a book and hearing what it says? Oh but that gets in the way of being a prophet for mythicism.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2018 9:36 am
No. There is a thing called 'source criticism.' I happen to know that when texts are preserved in the name of Church Father X they often come from an earlier period (let's say Church Father Y). Tertullian's Against the Valentinians clearly comes from something written originally by Irenaeus. I don't see why this is controversial.
Your questions are always things on a massive scale which can't be answered with any reasonable degree of certainty. I ask little questions. Little questions like - what is Against Marcion? My answer, it was a text originally written by someone else in Greek, perhaps a text through more than one hand as the introduction to Against Marcion admits. Again, how is any of this controversial? These are all things that you miss when you engage in your prophetic brand of scholarship.
my point is not the denial of a real preservation of older texts by a Church Father X. If there was a thing they did well, is only that: to preserve something.
I am putting in doubt their total understanding not only of the heretical positions, but also of the points of the anti-marcionite intepolators (apparently, the same of their sect). Even the interpolators had to invent ironical points, etc.
For example, the denial of Peter could be inserted in order to give a different ironical sense to
Prophesy, who is it that smote thee?
...always in order to elude the marcionite original irony of the question.
Tertullian couldn't know this. But so any modern commentary of Mark, to my knowledge, seems unaware of this my suspicion.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
If you are interested (and this gets me away from the work I am supposed to do). Against Marcion or the core text in Against Marcion spans the Book 2 to Book 4. Book 3 was inserted by a secondary editor, the editor who wrote the introduction which says that the work passed through more than one hand. That ur-text was clearly about 'the antitheses.' Marcion added the antitheses to his gospel which was a gospel like the gospel of the original author except that it added 'the antitheses.' Book 3 was added among other things to break up the original argument about the antitheses.
Evans agrees with my assertion that an editor added the introduction, Book 3 and a number of other comments. So it's not a stupid suggestion. The question is - what are the antitheses? I come to the conclusion that they are the antithetical section in the Sermon on the Mount now in Matthew. I am not alone in that suspicion. I think the manner in which Matthew 5:17 keeps coming up over and over in a text now ostensibly about Luke. Matthew 5:17 is the 'head' of the antitheses in Matthew.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
I am putting in doubt their total understanding not only of the heretical positions, but also of the points of the anti-marcionite intepolators (apparently, the same of their sect). Even the interpolators had to invent ironical points, etc.
Another problem is that I often don't understand what you are saying. I sometimes wish you would write in Italian and I could descramble the parts I don't understand with Google translate. I have no clue what you are trying to say.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
I am saying that Tertullian could know the dogmas of Marcionism only broadly. This is not ignorance or deliberate misrepresentation (of the type you prefer to theorize, that even the dualism was not a real marcionite thing but a catholic defamation of them) but it is not even complete knowledge of the work of the same Catholic interpolators as the redactors of the Marcion's Gospel (''Luke'', ''Mark'', ''Matthew'', etc).
So the episode of the denial of Jesus by Peter for three times, could be inserted to make Jesus a real prophet of the his denial, just when the guards put in discussion his being a real prophet, by asking 'who smote you?'.
But this could be made as well to neutralize the original marcionite irony of the question 'who smote you?' (putting in doubt the body of Jesus).
Could Tertullian know this war of subtle rival ironies? I doubt.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
