Was the Acts's Paul modeled on Marcion's life, too?

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Giuseppe
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Was the Acts's Paul modeled on Marcion's life, too?

Post by Giuseppe »

I think especially about the last Paul's voyage towards Rome. He goes to Rome to be judged by Nero. Also Marcion went to Rome to make his gospel judged by the Judaizers in Rome. Acts would be silent about the Paul's fate in Rome to avoid that the similarity with Marcion's fate in Rome was too much evident.

Marcion was rejected by the Romans because he hated the creator.

Paul was killed by Nero, hence revealing (not so) implicitly that the Judaizers's accusations against him were right.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Was the Acts's Paul modeled on Marcion's life, too?

Post by Giuseppe »

Note also the position of Tarsus: it is the anti-Sinope.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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arnoldo
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Re: Was the Acts's Paul modeled on Marcion's life, too?

Post by arnoldo »

It seems more likely that Peregrinus was modeled after Marcion (or one of his followers). Detering writes;
For centuries, as long as the Marcionite Church existed, and in all languages spoken by Marcionites, ‘the Stranger’, or ‘the Good Stranger’, remained the true name of their God. On the other hand, from their God’s point of view human beings remained ‘strangers’ as well. That they nevertheless had come to-gether and that these strangers had become God’s children, was the great mystery preached by this relig-ion. ... This ‘strangeness’ of the relationship between the one and only God and the world (and conse-quently between religion and all human being and acting), combined with the ‘Goodness’, is the core of Marcion’s religion and world view. I don’t know of any evidence that, in the entire history of religion prior to him, anyone had taught anything similar.] 14Though in the meantime HARNACK’s interpretation is no longer universally ac-cepted and, as against the assertion that the concept of 'strangeness' was exclsuively and specifically Marcion's, quite a few Gnostic parallels could easily be given15, one cannot overlook the fact that in all of 2nd century Christianity −there weren’t any fixed bounda-ries between orthodox and heretic then− no other theologian but Marcion gave the term such a central position in his doctrine. So this notion in itself obviously might have been considered by contemporaries as quite sufficient to describe the special character of Marcion’s doctrine. Should one now - and this is the question to which all of the foregoing has been in-tended to lead - consider this to be a strange coincidence? Approximately at the same time when Marcion was preaching his doctrine of Peregrinus, the Stranger God, throughout the Mediterranean area, and when in the Syrian region this doctrine had ob-viously already spread widely, a Christian itinerant preacher who was roaming about at exactly that time in exactly that same part of the ecumene bore the name of Peregrinus? I can’t believe anybody will seriously think so. Actually, the conclusion is very clear and hardly anyone will dispute it: Lucian’s Peregrinus Proteus is a Marcionite Christian, who not only fostered his Marcionite faith in the existence of the „Good” i.e. the „Stranger God” (set apart from the evil Demiurge) in his heart, but also testified to it by his name.
http://radikalkritik.de/wp-content/uplo ... ucians.pdf

klewis
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Re: Was the Acts's Paul modeled on Marcion's life, too?

Post by klewis »

To carry this idea a bit further, if we walk through the parallels we could construct a plausible succession in which Marcion was the final leader.

Luke and Acts form a simple parallel in which Jesus replaces John the Baptist early on just as Paul replaces Peter early on. The journey of Jesus in Luke was the journey to Jerusalem for his judgment. In Acts, the journey of Paul was from Jerusalem and the journey to Rome was where he met his judgment. Obviously, Acts ended without completing the story. So a third volume must have been planned, or completed, showing another transition, another journey. Was it Titus and 1 & 2 Timothy? From the standpoint of the post that launched this thread, one can argue that there was another set of leaders changing and the ultimate leader was Marcion. The parallel would go from Rome to the world At this point it would be highly speculative but the timing would be about right for a transition from Paul to someone, like Jesus to Peter, and finally to Marcion, like Peter to Paul. In this way, Marcion's life could have been injected into Acts while blending it with Mark and 'Q' to form Luke-Acts.
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