How Paul and Marcion DIFFERED about the implication of the RECENT appearance of Jesus

[Giuseppe]

Why would Marcion have euhemerized Jesus?

Couchoud advances two intriguing explanations:

The first explanation is: the knowledge of Jesus has to be recent. As such, he had to be a fully historical person. What is known recently is by definition a fact happened in the full light of the sun, in a precise point of the earth.

Marcion therefore needed to show that the apparition of Jesus was recent, and had nothing to do with what had been predicted or revealed in the old scriptures of the Jews, but was a new thing. The manifestation of Jesus was a terrestrial fact; therefore the crucifixion must also be a terrestrial event.

(Creation of Christ, p. 133)

The second explanation is: the name of Pilate was introduced the first time, in connection with Christus/Chrestus, by Tacitus.

Annales, xv. 44. Tacitus imagined some sort of seditious superstition which was put down under Tiberius and reappeared under Nero.
...
Marcion accepted enthusiastically this popular, pagan idea of Christ’s death; its simplicity appealed to him...

(ib., p. 134, my bold)

So the steps are the following:

1) Marcion preached in a first moment that the Crucifixion of Jesus was recent, hence it happened on the earth, under the eyes of all.

2) the Christian voices about this recent and terrestrial cruxifixion of Christ reached the Roman authorities in Asia, in particular Tacitus.

3) in 117 CE, Pilate gave as explanation for this “crucified Christ” the simplicistic and quasi-defamatory explanation that Christ was a seditious messianist killed by Pilate (because in the eyes of Tacitus it seemed that the Origins of the Cult dated back to the time of Pilate).

4) the connection Pilate/Crucified Christ became popular and reached Marcion, who inserted the name of Pilate in the his story, completed after the 117.


The corollary is that if Tacitus had mentioned, for example, Albinus and not Pilate, then we would have had Albinus as Roman judge of the Gospel Jesus, in the place of Pilate.

Now, the point is that in the Pauline epistles the Crucifixion of Jesus was already considered a recent fact, pace G. A. Wells. Why didn't Paul do, differently from Marcion, the implication “recent fact ----> terrestrial fact”, but he preached only a celestial crucifixion of Jesus (despite of the his being recent)?

I think that the reason is more simple than we may imagine.

According to Marcion, what was recent was the knowledge of low level of Jesus. It was necessary the entry of Paul to have a knowledge of high level of the same Jesus.

MARCION	PAUL
The Son of an Unknown God (so jealous about his anonymity until to that moment!) had started only recently, under Pilate, to be known by all the creatures of the demiurge, in public revelations (even if SOLUS PAULUS realized soundly his truest identity).	The Son of YHWH (so jealous about the anonymity of the his Son until to that moment!) had started only recently, with Peter, James and Paul himself, to be known by the only apostles of the Christ, in private revelations.

MY IMAGINATION IS WITHOUT LIMITS:

Hence I may imagine (me and not Couchoud is talking here): is there some pun of words between Pilatus and Paulus ?

Note the deliberate contrast: Pilatus was the first human being who testified the Son (in the eyes of the Pagan world, see Tacitus) according to the flesh. While Paul was the the first human being who testified the Son (in the eyes of the Pagan world, read Gal 2) according to the his truest spiritual essence.

Both the names start with “P” and have both a “L” and a “S”.

[Giuseppe]

I find particularly strong the first argument of Couchoud: the recent cruxifixion implies a terrestrial crucifixion, but only if your goal is to prove that Jesus (and his Father) was totally unknown to humanity before that recent time.

The Jewish Paul didn't have the need to prove that also the Father of Jesus was unknown: he (as any apostle before him) was satisfied only by the private knowledge/experience of the Son of YHWH. But the Father (YHWH) was already known by all the Jews, not only by the apostles of the his Son.

The force of the Couchoud's argument is that there is no a third option (tertium non datur): if you believe that the world has not known the Father and the Son before now, then you have to give necessarily an earthly proof of this ignorance of the world about the Father and the Son. You have to prove the ignorance of the world by introducing the first meeting - in absolute terms - between the world - this world - and the alien Son.

Modern ufologists do it all the time: they invent “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” with a precise dual goal:

1) on one side, to show that the (assumed) purity of the Alien is contaminated by the contact with the world (assumed as an inferior world for them)

2) and on the other side, to show that the (assumed) inferiority/ignorance of the people is purified by the acquisition of new knowledge and experience (about the alien).


The question of Pilate, “Quid est Veritas?”, is 100% pure marcionism insofar it reveals the first human reaction before the alien Deity.

The conclusion, carried to his extreme logical consequences, is that there was no substantial difference between what Marcion did and what the modern ufologists do all the time.



The euhemerization as ancient ufology.

[Giuseppe]

The force of the need: just as the ufologists have to invent a first meeting between the alien and the humanity (in virtue of the definition of alien), so Marcion had to invent a first meeting between the alien and the humanity (in virtue of the definition of alien).

Hence Marcion and only Marcion could be the first Euhemerizer. Only he was famous to proclaim the absolute foreignness of the alien with the world.


Gnostic Christians, insofar they proclaimed their inner possession of a spark of the divine pneuma, hadn't the same need of Marcion to formalize the first meeting with the alien by writing the first gospel.

The Judaizers, insofar they were followers of the Pillars, were already satisfied by their private revelations of the Son of a already known God. They didn't need to have the same revelations of the Pillars, once they adored Jesus as son of YHWH.

[Giuseppe]

Not only the claimed foreignness of the marcionite god required an official first (in absolute terms) "historical" contact with the world of the demiurge.

Also the claimed absolute goodness of the marcionite god required a "proof" of the will of this Alien God to be known by the creatures of the demiurge: Marcion gave that "proof" by simply inventing it (i.e. the first gospel).

If the Marcion's god didn't reveal his Son in the "History" (i.e. in a "public" record), then:

1) how could the Christians know about the his existence?

2) how could the Christians know that this God was really Good?

Note that Paul and the Christians before Marcion didn't have these needs, since:

1) the creator was already known by the people, even by the pagans;

2) the creator had to show his anger against the not-Christians, not his love (the latter being reserved only for who "saw" the ghost Jesus).

[MrMacSon]

Why would Marcion have euhemerized Jesus?

Couchoud advances two intriguing explanations:

The first explanation is: the knowledge of Jesus has to be recent. As such, he had to be a fully historical person. What is known recently is by definition a fact happened in the full light of the sun, in a precise point of the earth.

Marcion therefore needed to show that the apparition of Jesus was recent, and had nothing to do with what had been predicted or revealed in the old scriptures of the Jews, but was a new thing. The manifestation of Jesus was a terrestrial fact; therefore the crucifixion must also be a terrestrial event.

(Creation of Christ, p. 133)

The second explanation is: the name of Pilate was introduced the first time, in connection with Christus/Chrestus, by Tacitus.

Annales, xv. 44. Tacitus imagined some sort of seditious superstition which was put down under Tiberius and reappeared under Nero.
...
Marcion accepted enthusiastically this popular, pagan idea of Christ’s death; its simplicity appealed to him...

(ib., p. 134, my bold)

So the steps are the following:

1. Marcion [wrote] in a first moment that the Crucifixion of Jesus was recent, hence it happened on the earth, under the eyes of all.
2. the Christian voices about this recent and terrestrial cruxifixion of Christ reached the Roman authorities in Asia, in particular Tacitus.
3. in 117 CE, Pilate [provides an] explanation for this “crucified Christ” the simplicistic and quasi-defamatory explanation that Christ was a seditious messianist killed by Pilate (because in the eyes of Tacitus it seemed that the Origins of the Cult dated back to the time of Pilate).
4. the connection Pilate/Crucified Christ became popular and reached Marcion, who inserted the name of Pilate in the his story, completed after the 117.

The corollary is that if Tacitus had mentioned, for example, Albinus and not Pilate, then we would have had Albinus as Roman judge of the Gospel Jesus, in the place of Pilate.

< . . snip . . >
.

I think Pilate and other verified people are likely to have been used in the process of euhemerising and developing the Jesus character of the gospels, but I don't think Tacitus' Annals 15.44 is likely to have contributed directly to that. Firstly, there is no indication that Annals 15.44 was known in the 2nd or 3rd centuries; secondly, it could well be a later edited forgery; and thirdly, Tacitus does not refer to Pilate elsewhere where he talks about the times he was prefect/procurator (Annals books IV to VI).


[edited] David Trobisch says the author of Luke filled in Marcion's Gospel by adding selected information from Josephus' texts, which were popular at the time (as they still are), especially at the start of G.Luke; thus placing the story in the times of Pilate and Tiberius.

The start of Marcion's Gospel -

In the 15th yr of the reign of Tiberius, Jesus went down to Capernaum a city in Galilee and was teaching them on the Sabbath and they were astounded at his teaching because he spoke with authority ...

Luke 3:1-3 (NIV) -

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

(see https://youtu.be/NmDC-bVnO_o)


The introduction of Pilate and Co into Marcion's more basic Gospel by Luke's author to develop the Gospel according to Luke may have been what prompted the apocryphal Acts of Pilate and the Gospel of Peter etc., see http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/actspilate.html

Hence I may imagine (me and not Couchoud is talking here): is there some pun of words between Pilatus and Paulus ?

Note the deliberate contrast: Pilatus was the first human being who testified the Son (in the eyes of the Pagan world, see Tacitus) according to the flesh. While Paul was the the first human being who testified the Son (in the eyes of the Pagan world, read Gal 2) according to the his truest spiritual essence.

Both the names start with “P” and have both a “L” and a “S”.

Certainly Pontius Pilate's full name is said to have been, in Latin, Marcus Pontius Pilatus

1. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pontius-Pilate
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate

(and Pilum = a spear/javelin commonly used by the Roman army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilum)