Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 12:14 pm
So Marcion's Gospel:
And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way,
a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
58 And Jesus said unto him,
Foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have lodging places;
but the Son of man hath not where he may lay his head.
59 And he said unto another, Follow me.
But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
60 Jesus said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead:
but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.
61 And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee;
but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
62 And Jesus said unto him,
No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back,
is fit for the kingdom of God.
Three men: three classes of people.
The first class are the
Hylics.
The "Son of Man" is Israel and the Jews adored the demiurge. Therefore they are mere bodies
without head, to mean that they are purely materialistic people. The reference is to the Zealots who follow the victorious Jewish Messiah irrationally.
The second class are the
psychici: they believe in a dying Messiah (differently from the first class) but they think that they will risen "in the flesh". Hence their attention for the corpse of their parents.
The third class are the
pneumatics: they believe in a dying Messiah (differently from the first class), they don't believe in the resurrection of the flesh (differently from the second class) but the world may still corrupt their pneuma.
I have to say that you, apparently following the example of some Gnostic speculations, have a very fertile imagination.
Have you considered that vs 58 might be an allusion to a speech attributed to Tiberius Gracchus? I had become aware of it through reading a book by the communist historian Karl Kautsky. I also found a 19th century philologist who had also noted this parallel (forget name off the top of my head).
A while ago I looked up a quote attributed to Tiberius Gracchus in Plutarch's
Life of Tiberius Gracchus 9.4-5, and give it here, along with the NT gospel passages which uses similar phraseology:
Plutarch, Life of Tiberius Gracchus 9.5 |
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. |
| Greek |
English |
| [4] ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν ἐπέραινον |
[4] But they accomplished nothing; |
| ὁ γὰρ Τιβέριος πρὸς καλὴν ὑπόθεσιν καὶ δικαίαν ἀγωνιζόμενος λόγῳ καὶ φαυλότερα κοσμῆσαι δυναμένῳ πράγματα δεινὸς ἦν καὶ ἄμαχος, |
for Tiberius [Gracchus], striving to support a measure which was honourable and just with an eloquence that would have adorned even a meaner cause, |
| ὁπότε τοῦ δήμου τῷ βήματι περικεχυμένου καταστὰς λέγοι περὶ τῶν πενήτων, |
was formidable and invincible, whenever, with the people crowding around the rostra, he took his stand there and pleaded for the poor. |
| ὡς τὰ μὲν θηρία τὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν νεμόμενα καὶ φωλεὸν ἔχει καὶ κοιταῖόν ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἑκάστῳ |
'The wild beasts that roam over Italy,' he would say, 'have every one of them a cave or lair |
| [5] καὶ καταδύσεις,1 τοῖς δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἰταλίας μαχομένοις καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσιν ἀέρος καὶ φωτός, |
[5] to lurk in; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light, |
| ἄλλου δὲ οὐδενὸς μέτεστιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἄοικοι καὶ ἀνίδρυτοι μετὰ τέκνων πλανῶνται καὶ γυναικῶν, |
indeed, but nothing else; houseless and homeless they wander about with their wives and children. |
| οἱ δὲ αὐτοκράτορες ψεύδονται τοὺς στρατιώτας ἐν ταῖς μάχαις παρακαλοῦντες ὑπὲρ τάφων καὶ ἱερῶν ἀμύνεσθαι τοὺς πολεμίους: |
And it is with lying lips that their imperators exhort the soldiers in their battles to defend sepulchres and shrines from the enemy; |
| οὐδενὶ γάρ ἐστιν οὐ βωμὸς πατρῷος, |
for not a man of them has an hereditary altar, |
| οὐκ ἠρίον προγονικὸν τῶν τοσούτων Ῥωμαίων, |
not one of all these many Romans [has] an ancestral tomb, |
| ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἀλλοτρίας τρυφῆς καὶ πλούτου πολεμοῦσι καὶ ἀποθνῄσκουσι, |
but they fight and die to support others in wealth and luxury, |
| κύριοι τῆς οἰκουμένης εἶναι λεγόμενοι, |
and though they are styled masters of the world, |
| μίαν δὲ βῶλον ἰδίαν οὐκ ἔχοντες. |
they have not a single clod of earth that is their own.' |
| 1 καταδύσεις Bekker and many other editors have κατάδυσις, after Stephanus and Reiske. |
Both variant words means exactly the same thing |
And the NT passages:
Luke 9:58 & Matt 8:20 |
Luke 9:58 & Matt. 8:20 |
| καὶ εἶπεν [Matt 8:20 λέγει] αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· |
And Jesus said to him, |
| αἱ ἀλώπεκες φωλεοὺς ἔχουσιν |
"Foxes have holes, |
| καὶ τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ κατασκηνώσεις, |
and birds of the air [lit. heaven] have nests; |
| ὁ δὲ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἔχει ποῦ τὴν κεφαλὴν κλίνῃ. |
but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." |
The NT passages, almost identical in Luke & Matt., substitute "and birds of the heaven (sg.) have nests (that is, places to live)" for "... or lair to lurk in (or duck into, bow ones head inside)."
Plutarch has Tiberius G. say a lot about the soldiers getting free air and light, which could be interpreted as meaning they are living like birds, yet the corresponding passage in Matt. & Luke says "birds of the heaven (sg.)," and not birds of the air.
While Plutarch has T. G. speak of "lairs to lurk in" he ends the passage by saying that instead of caves and lairs to lurk (rest) in he says that the Roman foot soldiers do not even get a clump of dirt. Perhaps the suggestion is being made that they sleep on the ground, but I am not sure of that.
Tiberius' speech sounds a little like the one in Damascus Document, 9.19b:
Concerning them has God said: 'Their wine shall pro the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps' [Deut 32.33]. The 'wine' in question is their conduct; the 'serpents' are the kings of the nations; and the 'venom [Heb. ro'sh] of asps' is the chief [Heb. ro'sh] of the Grecian kings who will come to wreak vengeance upon them.
21 Those that have been 'builders of the rickety wall' and 'daubers of veneer upon it' (34) have never considered all this, because the man who walks in wind, who raises whirlwinds, who spouts lies — the kind of man against all of whose ilk God's wrath has always been kindled — has kept spouting at them.
Since we know that talk like that (Tiberius' speech against rich rulers who secure their wealth at through the labor of the Roman legions - almost all of the rank & file were Peregrini, or estate-less citizens - but give the legionaries nothing back but "fresh air and sunshine") has to resonate with some Judeans who want to get rid of the rich overlords and give something back to the landless peasants who make up 95% of the Judean people.
Jesus is involved in politics here. But, alas, it does not say anything to those who want Jesus to be 100% mythical, or to those to whom Jesus is a real-life sacred being, so it will be ignored.
DCH
