Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

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rgprice
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by rgprice »

From what I see of it, "son of Man" just got incorporated because the author of Mark was using Daniel and other scriptures to build his narrative. Whoever wrote Mark is the one that introduced "son of Man" into the lexicon of Jesus worship via the literary references. The other Gospel writes just copied from Mark. This wasn't a term what was in use in any community prior to it's introduction by "Mark".
Secret Alias
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Secret Alias »

Right but canonical Mark isn't the earliest gospel. It's the earliest of the canonical gospels but not the first gospel. The Marcionites evidently believed that their apostle - 'Paul' for lack of a better name - authored 'his (my) gospel' and the orthodox invented a story that 'his (my) gospel' was written or dictated by him to Luke. Beyond that we don't know much. Mark is the earliest canonical gospel but the earliest tradition about gospel writing (remember no ancient authority identifies Mark as the first evangelist) held that the Marcionite apostle - called Paul by early orthodox wrote the first gospel and was the only 'apostle.' Where those two lines intersect is anyone's guess. I tend to see some overlap in the Prescription Against the Heresies reference to a Pauline 'secret' gospel (repeatedly) and a secret gospel secretly held to be written by Mark. Tertullian's (or his sources) 'hang up' about the Marcionite gospel not attributing the text to a human author is also overlap. But it's still very murky for some to see the underlying connections here.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Stuart
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Stuart »

Mr. Huller,

I have a question. Where is this exegesis of Daniel by Marcion in Dialogue Adamantius?

The only reference I find by a Marcionite champion is 1.25 were Megethius quotes Daniel 2:34-35 from the LXX (Pretty's English translation):
Daniel says, "I saw, and behold, a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the image and made it like a cloud of dust, and it was blown away by the wind." The same stone was the Kingdom of God, appearing in glory, and the statue was the kingdom on earth. It is proven, then through the Law, and the Prophets, that Christ has not yet come, for if He had there would not be another kingdom on earth, as Daniel declared. That all the kingdoms do exist shows that the Christ announced through the Law and Prophets has not yet arrived.

Megethius ties this to a previous statement about the Psalms also showing the Christ of the Creator had not yet come. References by the Catholic champion Adamantius are Catholic, making them almost completely worthless in evaluating the Marcionite position. I find no reference to reverence of Daniel, no reference to his supposed eunuch state, nothing at all along the lines you claim is a Marcionite position.

You have a habit of mixing the Catholic retorts with the comments of the Marcionite Champion and from that invent a new interpretation of your own based more on your eclectic inferences than reality. This is a prime example. (You also distort my position to one unrecognizable by me, such that I am perplexed. And worse you assign motive that does not exists, but reads quite sinister.)


If you want the full context of the passage you should examine the statements of Megethius ALONE in this section, recognizing that the composition of DA was using a source then placing a response to that source via an artificial dialogue. Here is the full context:
D.A. 1.23 [817d]
Megethius: I will prove from the Scriptures that there is one God who is the father of Christ, and another who is the Demiurge. The Demiurge was known to Adam and his contemporaries – this is made clear from the Scriptures. But the Father of Christ is unknown, just as Christ himself declared when he said of him, “No one knows the Father, except the Son, neither does anyone know the son, except the Father.” (Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:22 note ἔγνω instead of ἐπιγινώσκει -- Compare to the pseudo Clementine Recognitions Book 2, Chapter XLVIII and Homilies Book 17, chapter IV )

D.A. 1.23 [817e]
Megethius: (referring to the Demiurge being known by Adam) What then does Ezekiel mean by saying, "I was known to your fathers in the wilderness?" (Ezekiel 20:5 wide variations from LXX)

D.A. 1.24 [818b-c]
Megethius: The proof that Christ is not the son of the Just God is very clear to me: The Christ of the law has not yet come. If he had what David announced regarding Him would be coming to fulfillment: "Why were nations insolent, and why did peoples think vain thoughts? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ." (Psalms 2:1-2 LXX) Again, "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance." (Psalms 2:8 LXX) And following: "Thou wilt shepherd them with an iron rod." (Psalms 2:9 LXX) This proves that the Christ who has come is someone else, for neither kings nor rulers were against Him, nor were Gentiles ruled with an iron rod.

D.A. 1.25 [818d-e]
Megethius: Daniel says, “I saw, and behold, a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands: and it struck the image and made it like a cloud of dust, and it was blown away by the wind.” (Daniel 2:34-35) The stone was the Kingdom of God, appearing in glory, and the statue was the kingdom of the earth. It is proven, then, through the Law and the Prophets, that Christ has not yet come, for if He had there would not be another kingdom on earth, as Daniel declared. That all the kingdoms do exist shows that the Christ announced through the Law and the Prophets has not yet arrived.

D.A. 1.26 [819c]
Megethius: I will offer you exact proof that the Christ of the Law and the Prophets belonged to another: John did not recognize him (for it would be impossible for the Prophet of the [God] from Creation to be ignorant of his own Christ): “Now when he had heard in prison the works of Christ, he sent his disciples to Him, saying, ‘Are you He who is to come, or should we look for another?’” (Matthew 11:2-3, Luke 7:18-19)

D.A. 1.27 [820a]
Megethius: So we are alien to the Christ who appeared, and the Christ who has appeared to the Creator-god, that Paul says, “Christ has redeemed us.” (Galatians 3:13) It is clear then that He redeemed aliens, for no one ever redeems those who are his own: he redeems aliens, not his own.

What we see then is this passage in Daniel was one of several in an ongoing demonstration by the Marcionite Champion of why the Christ of the Creator, and this the (Jewish) Catholic Christians has not yet appeared, more or less implying that such would be the anti-Christ in his view. There is nothing of Daniel's sexuality in there at all.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Secret Alias »

Yes that's it. The Marcionite says:
It is proven, then through the Law, and the Prophets, that Christ has not yet come, for if He had there would not be another kingdom on earth, as Daniel declared.
That's without a doubt proof that a Marcionite can work with Daniel and confirm his theology through Daniel.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Secret Alias
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Secret Alias »

You shouldn't (and can't) look at 'things attributed to Megethius' alone because that would imply that the text is a verbatim recording of something which it is not. It's a made up dialogue - perhaps related to an actual historical situation - but that's very unlikely. It's a made up dialogue. The grey areas - i.e. where Adamantius says X and Megethius goes along with X - can be used to determine what a Marcionite would go along with and what Marcionism was comfortable going along with. To argue otherwise pretends that there are 'good bits' of information in the text and 'bad bits' which is impossible to prove.
“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
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Secret Alias »

Figuring out Marcionism from the existing Patristic texts is more like playing horseshoes (i.e. the object is to get close without expecting accuracy) than defusing a nuclear warhead (where one wrong move leads to catastrophe). We don't even know if there was a Marcion, whether Patristic information leads back to anything more than convoluted hyperbole. It should be nothing more than a parlor game for scholars. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no such thing as 'serious study' of Marcionism. It's like 'serious' ghost-hunting or 'serious' UFO tracking or paranormal activity or telekinesis research. There's obviously something there. But does every UFO sighting lead back to a UFO? No. Nor do many of the texts from antiquity which ostensibly deal with Marcion. Against Marcion 3 is the most obvious example. It's a text that originally dealt with Jews not Marcion. There are other examples. I think that all the different heretics that appear in De Recta in Deum Fide represent a deliberately 'chopped up' account of a single dialogue between a single 'heretic' likely named Megethius and Adamantius. As time went on list of heretics came forward - each associated with one 'part' of the elephant (to borrow the parable) - and Megethius was left safely at the beginning (only to 'reappear' strangely from time to time in the text when Marcionite elements couldn't be explained in the various invented later characters who weren't Marcionites.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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MrMacSon
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by MrMacSon »

'a son of man' as used in the Jewish scriptures is more generic than the definitive article 'the Son of Man' espoused in in the NT

See http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... f=3&t=2358
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MrMacSon
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by MrMacSon »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Tue May 10, 2016 11:10 pm
In the 1st century, Saint Mark presented the duality of Son of God and Son of man in the parable of the tenants
1 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man (ἄνθρωπος - anthrōpos) planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son (υἱὸν - huion). Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
Stuart
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Stuart »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Sep 21, 2018 1:23 pm You shouldn't (and can't) look at 'things attributed to Megethius' alone because that would imply that the text is a verbatim recording of something which it is not. It's a made up dialogue - perhaps related to an actual historical situation - but that's very unlikely. It's a made up dialogue. The grey areas - i.e. where Adamantius says X and Megethius goes along with X - can be used to determine what a Marcionite would go along with and what Marcionism was comfortable going along with. To argue otherwise pretends that there are 'good bits' of information in the text and 'bad bits' which is impossible to prove.
Terrible analysis, an you have the fallacy of the moving goal post here as well. You completely mistook what I said. So to correct your logic problems, let's first get straight what I am saying.

The composition of DA is what I attempted to address. Megethius' bits are from one source document, quite possibly a Marcionte tract or a an anti-Marcionite tract which laid out the case Marcionites made for the Christ of the Catholic's having not yet come. Adamantius' bits come from another source, a rebuttal of Marcionite positions. The two were mashed together in the artificial form of a Dialogue, and modified accordingly to make them work. In addition the Author threw his own spin on it, a combination of the not so "neutral" Eutropias and adjustments to the text of Adamantius and even Megethius. He also changed the order of some arguments made by the various heretics to give the Catholic the final say (I can give an example in part 2 where Markus' arguments have been slightly reordered).

So what I am saying is the bits from Megethius are independent of the other sources. So they should be evaluated separately. This does not mean they are verbatim accurate Marcionite opinion, but they are derived from a source much closer to Mracionite opinion than the combined finished product with Adamantius and Eutropius.

The words of Eutropius and Adamantius are both secondary and superimposed upon the early Megethius material. They are thus further from the source and more distorted. You do not recognize this in your analysis, which is why it is badly flawed and just plain wrong.

*******************************************

You second problem is you wish to deny the artificiality of the dialogue by claiming that you cannot separate good bits from bad bits. (Your words not mine, as I place no value judgement upon the original sources they draw from.) Your position, similar to the badly flawed analysis you make of Tertullian's work, is not to separate the Catholic response from the Marcionite statements. You pretend that since you cannot do a 100% complete job, that a 90% job is totally inaccurate so you might as well accept the original form.

This is a bit like saying a 70% dirt 30% salt mixture should not be separated in a way where you get a 90% salt mixture because you might have lost a little salt in the filtering. You have to throw it all in the cooking cooking pot since it's not 100% pure.

That sort of absolutism is called the moving goal post fallacy. It is also a double standard. Consider your own words about being able to recover Celsus' work from Origen. If we used the same logic then such a separation is impossible because we lose a little along the way.

Me thinks your kettle has called my pot black.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
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Re: Could Christians Have Used the Title 'Son of Man' in a Way Independent of Daniel's Expectation?

Post by Secret Alias »

You realize of course that material in the latter part of the dialogue show up almost verbatim in one of Methodius right? https://books.google.com/books?id=WHLn7 ... us&f=false
“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
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