The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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MrMacSon
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Post by MrMacSon »

Jason BeDuhn had something brief to say about Papias and oral traditions in "The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon", 2013, -

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“Early in the second century Papias felt free to criticise the sequence of the Gospel of Mark, and to prefer oral traditions to written ones generally.8[p.26, in Chapter 2, titled ‘Marcion’s New Testament’]

n.8, p. 332 “Annand point[ed] out that Papias’ remarks about the literary work of Mark and Matthew are critical, and serve to indicate the need for Papias’ own exposition. This means that Papias does not regard their work as scripture but something to be improved upon, and that he saw himself as belonging to an age where novel constructions of “the Gospel” had no onus attached to them (Annand, “Papias and the Four Gospels,” Scottish Journal of Theology 9,1 (1956), 46-62; specifically 54, 57). Tatian was clearly of the same frame of mind in the late second century …”
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edited^ - added previously inadvertently omitted 'their work as'.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:45 pm Vinzent portrays Papias as anti-Marcionite in Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, 2014, so perhaps Papias was facilitating 'the competition' -

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[Papias] reports that the Twelve had 'to make up for the traitor Judas', a story known from Acts which indirectly excludes Paul from being an Apostle.65

Papias not mentioning Paul, who is to Marcion the authority and the sole Apostle,66 his insistence upon a distance between the Lord and any author of written accounts, and his avoidance of using Marcion's newly created catchwords (Gospel, Old and New Testament), all contribute to an anti-Marcionite profile.67

... Papias displays further anti-Marcionite features. Irenaeus report[ed] that Papias refer[red] to a Lord's saying that interprets Gen. 27:28f. with reference to Gen 49:12,68 and hence interpret[ed] the Dominical Oracles on the basis of the Jewish Torah.


Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, 2014, p.13.


65 According to Euseb. Hist. eccl. III 39,10; see Acts 1:17-25.

66 ... to...the ship-owner and mariner Marcion, the term apostle had another connotation, as it derives from the ship trade where it can mean 'ship', 'expedition', 'passport', and 'deliver note', see W. Schmithals, Apostelamt (1961), 85.

67 See Papias Hier., Frg. 4. 7 (... cum se in praefatione adserat non varias opinones sequi, sed apostolos habere auctores) (100, 12: 106 Hübner/Kürzinger/Siegert).

68 See Iren. Adv. Haer. V 33,3-4.
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I am prepared to dispute each and every one of these arguments for Papias reacting against Marcion:
  1. The story from Acts about Judas is not from Papias; it is, as Eusebius states, from Acts.
  2. It is not certain that Papias does not mention Paul. There is an Armenian translation of Andrew of Caesarea which includes a bit attributed to Papias which reads, "Yet Christ came, and the law, which was impossible for anyone else, he fulfilled in his body, according to the apostle," in which "the apostle" probably has to be Paul. I am prepared to concede that this Papian reference is not at all solid (and is rejected by several scholars), yet even if we could be assured that Papias never mentioned Paul, or even that he did not admire Paul, I suspect that the cause might well have been a deep and early split between Johannine and Pauline Christianity in Asia Minor, with Marcionism arising out of the Pauline side of things.
  3. Papias' "insistence upon a distance between the Lord and any author of written accounts" is just a jiggy way of saying that the Lord himself did not write anything, and one does not have to be responding to Marcion to hold such a view. If the texts to hand are attributed to Matthew and to Mark, then what else is Papias to say?
  4. Papias' "avoidance of using Marcion's newly created catchwords" is (obviously) just as easily explained by his predating Marcion.
  5. The necessary assumption behind Papias' interpretation of a dominical saying by the Jewish scriptures being a maneuver against Marcion is that Christianity began as a rejection of the Jewish scriptures, continued in that mode at least until Marcion, and only later began to appreciate those scriptures and take them on board. I roundly reject that assumption as just plain wrong, for literally dozens of reasons (too many and too detailed to go into here and now).
I myself suspect that this kind of "big bang" thinking is unlikely to get an accurate read on the origins of Christianity. Marcion does not secretly lie under every stone in the pavement of the early church. Nor does Paul. Nor does Mark. Nor does Matthew or Peter or John the baptist.
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Giuseppe
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 11:18 am.
[*]The necessary assumption behind Papias' interpretation of a dominical saying by the Jewish scriptures being a maneuver against Marcion is that Christianity began as a rejection of the Jewish scriptures, continued in that mode at least until Marcion, and only later began to appreciate those scriptures and take them on board. I roundly reject that assumption as just plain wrong, for literally dozens of reasons
that is a fallacy of false dichotomy. Vinzent himself subscribes to Jewish origins of Christianity (even if for him Marcion was enemy of YHWH). To see the fallacy from another POV, can you point out at least a case where we have sure evidence that a dominical saying by the Jewish scriptures was used as a maneuver against Marcion? I think that the answer is yes (for Ben himself) and that we should value case after case, when the reference to scriptures is made per se (so: preceding probably Marcion), and when a reference to scriptures is made for polemical (anti-Marcionite) reasons. In the first case we would have genuine Jewish-Christians. In the second case we would have proto-Catholics masking themselves as Jewish-Christians.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:31 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 11:18 am.
[*]The necessary assumption behind Papias' interpretation of a dominical saying by the Jewish scriptures being a maneuver against Marcion is that Christianity began as a rejection of the Jewish scriptures, continued in that mode at least until Marcion, and only later began to appreciate those scriptures and take them on board. I roundly reject that assumption as just plain wrong, for literally dozens of reasons
that is a fallacy of false dichotomy.
:lol: Nonsense.
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Giuseppe
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

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So according to Ben, when Tertullian quotes Scriptures in the book Contra Marcionem, he does so for a genuine love for scriptures and for Judaism and not to confute Marcion. Really?
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

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Giuseppe wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:48 pm So according to Ben, when Tertullian quotes Scriptures in the book Contra Marcionem, he does so for a genuine love for scriptures and for Judaism and not to confute Marcion. Really?
No. You are being deliberately obtuse, and I am not going to waste my time on you.
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Giuseppe
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

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As you like. At any case, I point out here that Vinzent thinks that who preceded Marcion were Jewish Christians.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Dec 14, 2018 12:52 pm As you like. At any case, I point out here that Vinzent thinks that who preceded Marcion were Jewish Christians.
Then that is your answer. If Christians who used the scriptures both predated and postdated Marcion, then obviously the use of the scriptures cannot be used to date Christians with respect to Marcion. There is no logical escape from this bind as it stands. One would have to dig deeper and find patterns peculiar to those who postdated Marcion and then compare those patterns to Papias' use of Genesis. Perhaps someone has done this. But it has not been done on this thread, which is what I am responding to.
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Giuseppe
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

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I think that Vinzent has detected as probable feature of an anti-marcionite pattern (occurring again and again in writers after Marcion) the appeal to Apostolic Succession and/or oral tradition (in addition to use of scriptures).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The drawbacks of overlooking oral tradition as an option.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

The logic of including Papias' disuse of Marcionite terminology on a list of arguments for Papias postdating Marcion is also specious in the most elementary sense. Papias' use of provably Marcionite terminology would place Papias after Marcion; so how in the name of the seven heavens does his disuse of provably Marcionite terminology even remotely help to place Papias after Marcion? Rather, it is something to be explained; but even to explain it does nothing to convert it into a positive argument for Papias postdating Marcion; at best, the negative argument is neutralized, and no more.

The entire list seems designed to pose a cumulative argument, with each separate observation contributing a small amount to the overall case; but cumulative arguments work only if their separate bits each contribute more than zero to that case.
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