Where the best evidence of docetism in the Marcion's Gospel?

[Giuseppe]

Obviously in the fugue from the people of Capernaum ''through them''.

But apart that episode, and this, just the marcionite Eucharist is the best show of docetism:

Jesus allegorizes the his missing body by a loaf, and the his missing blood by a cup (it is not specified of what, but we know already that the water was in it, and not the proto-catholic wine).

Judas betrayes Jesus not only in virtue of the his name but also because he is the apostle who dips bread in this manner:

“It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me

(Mark 14:20)

the bread is allegory of the missing body of Jesus. BY dipping it into the bowl, Judas believes that the body of Jesus is real.

Hence, he is victim of wrong views about Jesus.

[Giuseppe]

Better interpretation:

By dipping it into the bow with Jesus, Judas believes that:

1) the bread od Jesus is real, and/or

2) the death of the (presumed) real body of Jesus (allegorized by the shared dipping of a bread in the bowl with Jesus) has an expiatory value, since also the bread of Judas (=his body) is going to be put in the bowl (=to share the same death of Jesus).

So Judas is the disciple who represents the Jewish-Christianity centered on the idea of the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus by the his own blood and his own body.

[Secret Alias]

Passing through the crowd and then likely flying away

[Stuart]

Giuseppe,

You are working with the wrong premise for the origin of the Marcionite gospel and it's focus, and I also think to a lesser extent it is an error in Vinzent's work as well (although he does not carry it so far). This premise is that Marcionite literary priority means Marcionite theological priority. But this is not the case.

The Marcionite gospel was developed from a prototype gospel, a variant form known by Mark. Matthew built off a different variant form of the prototype gospel. There is no record or evidence that any of the prototype forms were ever published beyond the confines of the pre-evangelic Christian communities. Marcionite priority comes from publishing the first version and using it for evangelism.

A second point about Marcionite priority, is that the sect does not enjoy theological priority. When evangelism, and specifically Marcionite ("Pauline mission") erupted there was already great diversity in Christianity, i.e., many sects had already formed with distinct theology. Scholars with not the faintest concern about Marcionism discuss this in terms of primitive so-called Jesus Communities, with naive "pre-Gnostic" opinions. In my view these communities are a scholarly invention that preserves the traditional myth of a unified virgin church. I think we can dispense with those and just admit up front that when evangelism took off in the 2nd century, sectarian diversity drove the NT literature. Marcionites were just one of the sects present. But they were the ones who took the "prototype gospel" literature and transformed it into an evangelical tool, the Gospel.

All the Gospels were written as correctives to the narrative they inherited, the Marcionite was no different except that it was a corrective to the story it built upon in the prototype. I have attempted to show that Luke 7:18-28 (albeit the form we have today has been modified by the later Luke author/redactor, and some verses in that section correspond much more closely to Matthew's version) was derived from a prototype Gospel baptism account largely similar to what we find in Mark 1:2, 4-11, 14. It was in this respect a "correction" of the account inherited.

In a similar way the entire Marcionite Gospel was a corrective of the issues of the day, which was not yet a debate over the corporeal body of Christ, rather a debate over the source of his authority, and a claim to the evangelical authority (hence the post tomb scenes to show a resurrection had taken place).

The debate over the corporeality of Jesus did not come into the fore until after the 2nd evangelical gospel, i.e., Matthew, became the basis of the counter ("Petrine") mission. At this point the Marcionite gospel was already published and well known, so the Marcionites argued about interpretation of their gospel rather than write another corrective (no doubt pious Marcionite scribes made some textual adjustments to help).

The corrective to Matthew's sect came from another sect, which was also not Marcionite, which wrote John (the author was also correcting some of the Marcionite positions). Luke corrected all the other gospels before it. Basically what I am saying is a gospel can only correct the points from a prior source in order to fit the needs of the sect using it. Arguments developed after it's writing can only be dealt with textually by pious scribes making minor adjustments, probably initially in the margins.

For the Marcionite author, he wrote before the debate over the corporeal or spiritual nature of Jesus was front and center. It was a debate that lasted for a long time, and can be seen in the WNI of John and Luke, as well as the Thomas layer in John. This was not a debating point at the moment that Marcionite (Pauline) evangelism erupted, and probably not in the Matthew (Petrine) counter evangelism. This is why it was not emphasized in the Marcionite gospel. Passages could be read that way, such as Luke 4:30 (similarly the walking on water, especially in John; very Buddha like).

It is probably a rather late argument that Jesus was fully human. Many myths in antiquity speak of passable saints and Gods, who are so spiritual they can at one moment be as solid a steel and the next as non graspable as a cloud, visible one moment and invisible the next, anonymous one moment and identifiable the next. It is very strange in that context to consider the concept of a God-man lacking these properties, as became the orthodox position. This difference from pattern, of a fully human body normally conceived Jesus, suggests it grew out of polemic argument, and was not part of the original evangelical debate. Matthew argues Jesus is from the seed of David, and yet he is so light he can walk on water. He is corporeal when he wants to be, and not when he wants. We today are conditioned to see the non-corporeal Jesus as an invention, rather than the other way around.

[Giuseppe]

Giuseppe,

You are working with the wrong premise for the origin of the Marcionite gospel and it's focus, and I also think to a lesser extent it is an error in Vinzent's work as well (although he does not carry it so far). This premise is that Marcionite literary priority means Marcionite theological priority. But this is not the case.

The Marcionite gospel was developed from a prototype gospel...

Stuart, I don't think that the the my premise is that a theology is born only when the his relative Gospel story is written. Marcion could be a Docetist (and a hater of the demiurge) even before he wrote the his Gospel (under the hypothesis that he wrote the first gospel).

I think that it is highly probable that the Gospels are the mere effect, and not the cause, of the previous different theologies and the entire original packet of the revelations, dreams, visions, hallucinations, etc.

An analogy for the Gospels may be the political propaganda. Before you have political posters on the walls and streets, especially during the time of political elections, the various parties (behind this or that political poster) are already formed.

The first gospel gave simply the simplest logo for the Christian theologies: (the mere illusion of) a historical Jesus.


So what I am inquiring is about who precisely introduced the first time this logo, after the birth of the variour rival theologies and sects.

Therefore, Stuart, when you say that a Gospel was already written before Marcion's Gospel, your basic premise is that someone (probably a Jewish-Christian writer) invented the Gospel Jesus as the logo for the his Jewish-Christian theology. But then you should explain what was the need, for this Jewish-Christian, of inventing the idea of an earthly life for the deity named Jesus.

Frankly, my current view at moment is that Marcion is a better candidate for the introduction of the idea of a Jesus who lived on the earth, etc.

The first propagandist of a Gospel (or 'popularizer', to use your term), was probably also the first Euhemerizer.

Which are the your reasons, Stuart, to imagine an euhemerizer preceding Marcion ?

[perseusomega9]

Some jew who tried to explain why they lost to Rome and their idea of a conquering messiah didn't come

[Giuseppe]

Some jew who tried to explain why they lost to Rome and their idea of a conquering messiah didn't come

Ok, I know that line of inquiry and I like it as the more probable alternative in the place of the 'Marcionite priority'. But it doesn't justice fully for the clues of theological conflict sown in the Gospels (I mean: in the DNA of the Gospels, since for me the Gospel midrash is not a sane midrash - a mere expression of love for scriptures per se - but a useful tool to judaize Jesus and confute Marcion).

[perseusomega9]

It's hard to pick a basal species and draw a direct line of descent. Try viewing using modern cladistics. Let's just all assume the Orthodox model is laughable.

[Stuart]

Giuseppe,

You are working with the wrong premise for the origin of the Marcionite gospel and it's focus, and I also think to a lesser extent it is an error in Vinzent's work as well (although he does not carry it so far). This premise is that Marcionite literary priority means Marcionite theological priority. But this is not the case.

The Marcionite gospel was developed from a prototype gospel...

...

So what I am inquiring is about who precisely introduced the first time this logo, after the birth of the variour (sic) rival theologies and sects.

Therefore, Stuart, when you say that a Gospel was already written before Marcion's Gospel, your basic premise is that someone (probably a Jewish-Christian writer) invented the Gospel Jesus as the logo for the his Jewish-Christian theology. But then you should explain what was the need, for this Jewish-Christian, of inventing the idea of an earthly life for the deity named Jesus.
...

Your reading comprehension is off here on what I am saying, as if you did not grasp my digression on the subject. I will attempt to address the two points above.

First, in my digression I make it clear that what is referred to in scholarship as a "prototype gospel" is not a gospel. Let me repeat that: a prototype gospel is not a gospel.

What do I mean? A gospel, as I explained, came into existence to evangelize, to preach. The prototype(s) were shorter than any of the gospels we have today (Mark, which in my model is built on two prototypes was easily a third larger than either of those prototypes). They were a literature which was developed and used for a different purpose than evangelism. Let that sink in for a minute.

What do we know and what can we infer about these prototypes? And we need to ask that question before looking for who wrote them. First we are delving into the prehistoric era of Christianity - and I mean that literally, as history begins with writings; before evangelism there were no Christian writings, no Churches, no Church Fathers.

Christianity was incubating, most likely in isolated and intensely devotional communities; they had to be as you needed devoted missionaries for evangelism to happen. Were Christianity developed among common folk, as the gospels would have you believe, it would have lacked the shock troops necessary for evangelism. A monastic community seems more likely to be the incubation and birth place for Christianity and Christian Evangelism. This would have been an environment sufficiently isolated to allow a new philosophy/religion to develop, intense enough in devotion to create missionaries, and trained and educated enough to produce the literature.

Understanding the above we can now make some inferences about the prototypes. These developed within these communities. They circulated from one community to another, as they all knew the story. Variant versions developed in different communities - just as different communities had different leaders and developed distinct theologies which became distinct sects with distinct teachings.

The prototype must have had a function which all these communities found useful, or else it would have died out. Evangelism -- not just recruitment of monks and nuns for the communities -- was something that was yet to happen. So what were these prototype "gospels" used for, why did they proliferate within these communities? My best guess is the prototype gospel was a play acted out by the monks and nuns. Religious teaching often took the form of a play in ancient Greek culture, and these communities were Greek (they may have started out life as Greek speaking Jews in diaspora, but by the time Christianity erupted the genetic makeup of the community was almost certainly overwhelmingly if not entirely Gentile).

So what of the theology? The theology was even blander than Mark. None of the polemic sectarian material of the Marcionite Gospel nor of Matthew, John and Luke was present. It's core story was acceptable to all the sects. Hardly a single direct LXX quote was to be found. The proof text was not part of it. We know this because the gospels of Mark and Marcion almost completely lack these. But then again it was a play, not an exegetical reading (which the community undoubtedly did with the LXX "Scriptures").

When the Marcionite writer took his prototype "L" and built his gospel on top of it, he expanded it greatly, easily doubling the number of words and adding many stories of his own. Matthew built upon prototype "M" and also drew from the Marcionite gospel as well as adding his own material and an extensive set of LXX proofs, a new invention for the gospel. The prototype backbone makes up an even smaller portion of Matthew. So when you ask what the prototype author's theology was, first you have to strip away all the Lukan and Marcionite material from Luke to find "L", and then you have to strip away all the Matthew and borrowed Marcionite material from Matthew to find M (note helps to work with Mark in both cases to find the common parts). Only after you have done that can you examine what is left and ponder what the prototype author thought.

But I think it's even more complicated than what I presented in the paragraph above. As I noted Christianity incubated in these communities for likely many generations, and the prototype could be more than a few generations old when it was first used as the backbone of a gospel. What is more this prototype, as a play, was not sacred and was subject to adjustments and so accumulated material from many sources and many hands. We can see this in the fusion of the feedings of the 4000 and the 5000 in "M" (common to Mathew and Mark) complete with a summary commenting on the two stories. This says enough time and distance occurred for the feeding story to branch into a 4000 in one locale and 5000 in another, and then some time in the future merged back together and then edited by a single hand to fuse into one story look with a summary. This suggests we are looking at a time frame of over a generation just for that element to be completed and stable in the prototype, and at least three hands (note Matthew and Mark differ in language slightly for that section, suggesting they had variant versions of M, with Mathew's source being perhaps more primitive -- this does not mean Matthew is older, just that his copy of M is older than the copy Mark found).

To summarize, you have multiple hands and a couple of generations if not more for the prototype gospel material to accumulate. The theology is for the most part bland (more bland than Mark), acceptable for the most part by all the Christian sects, devoid of sectarian additions (I have not identified any) . John the Baptist and the calling of the fishermen may be relatively late elements.

[Giuseppe]

First, in my digression I make it clear that what is referred to in scholarship as a "prototype gospel" is not a gospel. Let me repeat that: a prototype gospel is not a gospel.

What do I mean? A gospel, as I explained, came into existence to evangelize, to preach. The prototype(s) were shorter than any of the gospels we have today

Stuart, for sake of clarity, I would call "Gospel" any Jesus story ("proto" or not) where, for the first time, Jesus is made crucified by earthly authorities (Herod, or Pilate, or "the Jews"). So your limit is that you are not able to say WHY someone had to invent a story of this kind.

I assume the existence of an early Christianity where there was no Jesus earthly story. Not even one. Since Jesus was believed crucified in heaven, not on the earth.