Marcion's Gospel

[Secret Alias]

I've just laid out what Against Marcion is -

Again, the claim is that:

1. Marcion knew all four texts of the 'ideal' gospel
2. he chose one and rejected the others
3. he had a plan to make the gospel conform to his 'antitheses' by erasing material
4. Tertullian says that he knew all the deletions made by Marcion
5. he decides not to publish them but instead focuses on another project
6. Tertullian allegedly knew the remaining passages from Luke which Marcion didn't erase
6. he developed Book Four from those passages writing a continuous narrative in the order of Luke to disprove the antitheses
7. he says Marcion affixed the antitheses in the front of something (a codex?)
8. Tertullian doesn't tell us what the antitheses are or quote from them
9. he chooses instead to write a book from the remaining portions of Luke in order to disprove Marcion's antitheses

Do you finally get it? Do I have to go through it again a hundred times to get around what you want to be true. Again:

TERTULLIAN WROTE A BOOK WHICH DISPROVED MARCION'S ANTITHESES FROM THE PARTS OF LUKE MARCION RETAINED

BECAUSE

MARCION STOLE LUKE AND FALSIFIED PASSAGES IN ORDER TO MAKE A GOSPEL TO SUPPORT HIS ANTITHESES.

If it doesn't make sense you can't just switch to another understanding. That's cheating. This is what Tertullian says he is doing for Book Four. Nothing else.

He isn't compiling a list of corruptions of Luke by Marcion
He isn't citing material from Marcion's gospel nor does he explicitly say he has Marcion's gospel in front of him while writing Book 4.

TERTULLIAN WROTE A BOOK WHICH DISPROVED MARCION'S ANTITHESES FROM THE PARTS OF LUKE MARCION RETAINED

BECAUSE

MARCION STOLE LUKE AND FALSIFIED PASSAGES IN ORDER TO MAKE A GOSPEL TO SUPPORT HIS ANTITHESES.

[Stuart]

What was it?

Due to time constraints it's not much of OP, but I want to take a fresh look at the subject and am all ears and keeping an open mind.

We have to define "Marcion's Gospel" and possibly Marcion.

What we have is a sect that arose in the 2nd century, which we have early 3rd to mid-5th century witnesses. They testify to an abbreviated and almost certainly earlier form of the Gospel Luke that this sect preserved and used. For the most part the attested Gospel contents are aligned fairly well with the sects theology, as is their abbreviated and also almost certainly earlier form of Paul. This is pretty much dead certain -- mind you Stephen Huller (aka Secret Alias) argues ferociously that it's not the case, that it's some other Gospel (I lost track of which Gospel he proposes),

I accept that these forms are probably 95% earlier than the accepted text, with maybe 5% additional or modified sectarian material. (% are an unscientific guesstimate of mine, nothing I'd mortgage the house over, but ball park accurate). My conclusion from the witness evidence and examination of the text (it's vocabulary, it's theological bent) is that the books the sect preserved were not wholly a product of the sect, and in fact were from many sects, rather they were the state of the text which the leaders of the sect "froze" canon and broke from the main church. They probably represent (for the most part) a form from a bit before, perhaps even a generation before, the sect split off.

Now this is where things get tricky, and where the definition of "Mark" or "little Mark" (i.e., Marcion) becomes almost wordplay. Modern scholarship believes that Mark was the first evangelist (that is the one who put Gospel stories to ink and papyri). The Marcionites believed the same, only calling him Marcion (hard C) and ascribed the Gospel they preserved as his. The Church from the 3rd century onward has always held the "Apostles" came first, that is John and Matthew (from the twelve), then the Disciples of the Apostles Luke and Mark (from the seventy). These are legends. Literary analysis of the Gospel has not reached any definitive conclusion and is mired in a political debate over competing hypotheses to explain order. IMO my own father, the right reverend, had it somewhat right, when he said the Gospels all knew each other and copied bits from each other -- such that it's nearly impossible to untangle (at least from a purely literary analysis standpoint). Even so the Marcionite Gospel form appears to be more primitive, but still somewhere in the interactive process that formed the Synoptic Gospels. It is not a first, nor a last, rather a data point along the way.

Was Marcion himself a Marcionite? This seems an odd question, but it's not. The answer is probably not. If one is inclined to believe the legends passed down concerning him (and all pick and choose elements and interpretations of elements of the legend to believe) then he may have inspired the sect that took his name. But if you are like me, and regard all the legends of all the saints as story telling grabbing bits and pieces from other popular figures and fables, then they cannot be trusted. Marcion may be as much a figure of literary invention as Harry Potter.

Robert M. Price believes Marcion existed as a person and buys some parts of the legend. He sees Galatians chapters 3-6 (mostly, although interpolated later) as possibly Marcion's creation. He also sees part of Romans as his (I would have to look up the specifics to say exactly which parts). But the Gospels he sees as long postmortem for Marcion, ditto most of Paul. In fact he doesn't think Marcion's actual theology was the same as the Marcionites, but he does think it was not too distant from them either. Were there an actual early Apostle named Mark/Marcion I would tend to agree on both counts. To summarize Price sees Marcion as a "first Catholic" attempting to tame the early charismatic elements of the church, trying to bring order and system to the chaos; he only became a heretic after others took Catholicism further.

Note, Price has a very different opinion on the origin of Christianity than I. In some sense he is more traditional in seeing Christianity as spreading via Jewish diaspora community and only breaking with Judaism well into the evangelical movement. My view is the split with Judaism occurred earlier than evangelism, almost by accident due to the ethnic replacement of Jews with non-Jews in the Monastic Communities such as those described by Philo existing in the Diaspora of the 1st century and already ancient and wide spread. That is neither here nor there for this discussion.

The main points where Price and I coincide is an agreement that the early communities formed churches and when the churches existed for some time, they started to want to assert themselves as more important than their neighbors. So patron saints and relics (by no means were such things restricted to Christianity and Judaism, they were a feature of the Pagan religions as well) became a way of distinguishing from each other. Legendary figures, who may have been no more than a name (Paul, John, Mark, Peter, etc) but around whom stories built up. The need for liturgical literature led to the creation of the new testament, scrap by scrap. But today separating legend from myth is difficult.

This circles us back to the question of Marcion's Gospel. If you believe Price then Marcion's Gospel was "oral" and not materially different from the charismatic preachers wandering the countryside giving their visions, prophecies and tongues. But if you are speaking the Gospel of the Marcionite Sect, a group which may or may not have actually been Marcion's founding (I think not, simply they took the name of the early Apostle), then the Patristic evidence overwhelmingly points to an early version of Luke, frozen at the halfway point of it's final development, and probably earlier than all the Gospels in the forms that came down to us.

[Giuseppe]

Very thanks Stuart for this resume of interesting views.

[Secret Alias]

I don't know why 'speculation' takes precedence over what the text actually says. Can we at least acknowledge that this:

TERTULLIAN WROTE A BOOK WHICH DISPROVED MARCION'S ANTITHESES FROM THE PARTS OF LUKE MARCION RETAINED

BECAUSE

MARCION STOLE LUKE AND FALSIFIED PASSAGES IN ORDER TO MAKE A GOSPEL TO SUPPORT HIS ANTITHESES.

is what the text actually says, what it actually is? For over two centuries we've wasted time as scholars make the text say things it doesn't say and answer questions it can't answer. Let me try one more time:

1. there are two texts - the gospel and the antitheses let's call them (a) and (b)
2. the gospel is further divided into Luke - let's call it (a1) - Marcion's gospel (a2) and what's left over when you subtract (a2) from (a1) let's call that (a3)
3. the exercise at the heart of Against Marcion is to take (a3) and use it to disprove (b)

Without getting into whether or not the author actually had (a2) i.e. the Marcionite gospel or whether or not (3) could have been obtained by merely guessing at (a3) because the author was a theologian rather than someone interested in science, how the hell do we get at all the nonsense Stuart is talking about from (a3)? If Tertullian or his source is even telling the truth, Against Marcion isn't promising us 'Marcion's gospel.' For the thousandth time it is only dealing with a rough approximation - even if if we assume the author is telling us the truth i.e. that he has Marcion's gospel and he has spent the time 'subtracting' the erasures from Luke. He's still only dealing with Luke. Then when you look at the actual treatise (which I have been doing in another thread you end up with this:

1. 7.1 Luke 3.1 T doesn't mention M erasing anything before 3.1. No mention of erasing
2. 7.2 non-Lukan passage which references Jesus appeared (ἐφάνη) somewhere. T acknowledges the word appears in the gospel. Not in Luke
3. 7.3 T denies the Marcionite gospel portrait of a heavenly descent and references Mt 4:14 - 15
4. 7.4 T accuses M of erasing Mt 5:17.
5. 7.5 T says "[s]ee how he enters into the synagogue" Luke doesn't have Jesus enter the synagogue. T is following Mark 1.21 "They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law." The whole section is rooted in Mark but transitions to Luke.
6. 7.5 T speaks of "from heaven straight to the synagogue. As the adage runs: "The business on which we are come, do at once."" which seems to outline the M gospel.
7. 7.6 T accuses M of erasing more from Matthew - Mt 15:24, 26
8. 7.7 The material which preceded Luke 3:1 is referenced (And yet how could He have been admitted into the synagogue----one so abruptly appearing, so unknown; one, of whom no one had as yet been apprised of His tribe, His nation, His family, and lastly, His enrolment in the census of Augustus----that most faithful witness of the Lord's nativity, kept in the archives of Rome).

THIS IS THE POINT THE NARRATIVE BEGINS THE ADAPTATION TOWARD LUKE AWAY FROM THE DIATESSARON-TYPE GOSPEL

the transition occurs from non-Luke to Luke at this point. Remember Luke 4.14 - 30 is about the Nazareth synagogue. But if you follow the logic of Against Marcion 4 Jesus comes "from heaven straight to the synagogue" - that is Capernaum.

9. 7.7 Against Marcion is originally quoting Mark but it transitions to Luke "even if there were unlimited access to the synagogue, there was no permission to teach, except for one excellently well known, and tried, and approved, and already either for this occasion or by commendation from elsewhere invested with that function. 'But they were all astonished at his doctrine.' Quite so. Because, it says, his word was with power, not because his teaching was directed against the law and the prophets."
10. 7.8 Notice that throughout the section T is asking his readership to decide which reading of the commonly held gospel makes more sense. "It follows that he must either be acknowledged to belong to him in accordance with whom his teaching was given, or else judged a turn-coat if his teaching was in accordance with him whom he had come to oppose. On the same occasion the spirit of the demon cries out, What have we to do with thee, Jesus? Thou art come to destroy us. I know who thou art, the Holy One of God. Here I shall not discuss whether even this appellation was at all appropriate to one who had no right even to the name of Christ unless he belonged to the Creator."
11. 7.8 Against Marcion leaves the Diatessaron-gospel to become a commentary on Luke. In the Diatessaron-gospel (Baarda Flying Jesus) the crowd attacks Jesus after the speech in the synagogue and in their attempt to push him over the precipice and instead go over the edge themselves when they pass through his body or he flies away. Notice what Against Marcion says next "Otherwise they would not have been astonished but horrified; would not have marvelled at, but immediately shrunk from, a destroyer of the law and the prophets—and above all else the preacher of a different god, because he could not have given teaching contrary to the law and the prophets, and, by that token, contrary to the Creator, without some previous profession of belief in an alien and hostile deity. As then the scripture gives no indication of this kind, but only that the power and authority of his speech were a matter of wonder, it more readily indicates that his teaching was in accordance with the Creator, since it does not deny that, than that it was opposed to the Creator, since it has not said so."
12. 7.9 "I have fully discussed his titles in another place." It is important to note that this discussion appears in Book Three III. 12; Christ, III. 15; Jesus, III. 16. Book Three begins being rooted in the same synagogue scene we are dealing with in Book Four. "Proper order required that father
should tell of son's existence before son told of father's, and father bear witness to son before son bore witness to father. Secondly, besides this matter of sonship, he was an emissary. The sender's acknowledgement ought to have come first, in commendation of the one who was sent. No one who comes by another's authority lays claim to it for himself, on his own bare statement, but looks for his credentials to the authority itself, headed by the style and title of the person who grants the authority ... There was no need, you say, for such an ordering of events, seeing that he would immediately by the evidence of miracles prove himself in actual fact both son and emissary, and the Christ of God. My answer will be that this form of proof by itself could never have provided satisfactory testimony to him, and in fact he himself subsequently discounted it. (III:2, 3)
13. 7.11 "For he began by asking, What have we to do with thee, Jesus?, not as though addressing a stranger, but as one whose concern the Creator's spirits are. For his words were not, What hast thou to do with us?, but, What have we to do with thee?, in sorrow for himself and in regret at his own case: and as he now sees what this is he adds, Thou art come to destroy us. To that extent he had recognized Jesus as the Son of the judge, the avenger, and <if I may say so> the severe God, not of that perfectly good god who knows nothing of destruction and punishment.
14. 7.13 "With what purpose have I begun with this episode? To show you that Jesus was acknowledged by the demon, and affirmed by
himself, to belong to none other than the Creator. But still, you object, Jesus rebuked him. Of course he did: he was an embarrassment: even in that acknowledgement he was impertinent, and submissive in the wrong way, giving the impression that it would be the sum total of Christ's glory to have come for the destruction of demons and not rather for the salvation of men: for it was he who would have his disciples rejoice not because the spirits were subject to them but because of their election to salvation." It is curious that T should ask - why did I start with this narrative? The common assumption is that it is because the Marcionite gospel begins here. But clearly that can't be the reason. It must have been because he thinks it helps his argument

And I haven't even gotten out of chapter 7! Does anyone dispute my summary here? So how the hell does what we see here have anything to do with what the author promises at the outset - i.e. (a2) - (a1) = (a3). Don't sensible readers see what a colossal joke a hundred years of Marcion studies have been! They should strip away the PhD's from the charlatans who wasted their time on a project with no sense of the actual text they were dealing with.

Again:

i) Tertullian doesn't even mention so much as a 'deletion' from Luke or if he alludes to something missing it is casual even sarcastic like the reference to the lack of genealogy or reference to the census.
ii) if there is a mention of deletion it is inevitably something from Matthew which is mentioned

It is almost a waste of time to spend so much of one's life pointing out what a waste of time the study of Marcion is. But that will be my ultimate legacy in academy. And the same people say that Secret Mark should be studied. What about this nonsense! At least we have an actual reference to that gospel. This is sheer nonsense. Incomprehensible nonsense.

[John2]

Since I'm not able to follow anything Stephan is saying about Marcion (which is not intended to prevent him from saying anything), I'm taking a closer look at books I've only skimmed through before due to not being very interested in Marcion (Lieu, Tyson, Roth) and the primary sources (Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Epiphanius). Off the bat, I think Justin (in tandem with Hegesippus, though he doesn't say much in the excerpts we have) is obviously the best place to start, since he (and Hegesippus) was Marcion's contemporary.

And while I don't get the impression that he was familiar with any of Marcion's writings and he doesn't say anything about Marcion using a version of Luke, he was at least in a position to have heard some things about Marcion, and what he says about him gives me the impression that if Marcion did use a gospel, it could not have been one that was anything like the ones we have now, nor do I think it could have been an original gospel.

And since this is my thread, for my reference here is what Justin says about Marcion (which I will follow up on later).

First Apology 26 and 58:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds — the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh — we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.

And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.

[Secret Alias]

Why dont you start by actually reading Tertullian's book with the eye to figuring out what his methodology is?

[Secret Alias]

Only the first 7 chapters are needed. That's where the methodology is established. Scholars write to be (mis)taken as brilliant.

[John2]

I have a huge problem accepting the idea that NT writings were "Judaized" in order to counter Marcion. I think that would entail too many things that just seem unlikely to me, such as Papias' gospels of Mark and Matthew not pre-dating Marcion and not being (more or less) the Mark and Matthew(s) we have now. As I noted upthread, I'm persuaded by Matthews that Papias wrote c. 100 CE, and I have seen no evidence from Papias or anyone who cites him that he was aware of Marcion.

And I have the impression from what Papias says and what is said about him that his version of Christianity was Nazarene-like. He at least says that it was based on people who were acquainted with the earliest Christians, and in my view (and according to the NT itself), those people were Nazarene Christians, and according to the NT and patristic sources, Nazarene Christianity was pro-Torah and believed in the OT God, unlike Marcion. And I have a hard time thinking that NT writings were written (or altered) just to counter Marcion, particularly when at least some of them (Mark, Matthew, 1 John, 1 Peter) appear to have been written before I think Marcion was on the scene (i.e., they were used by or known to Papias).

And since Papias and Nazarene Christians are opposed in patristic sources, I have a hard time thinking orthodox Christians had anything to do with "Judaizing" the NT. I think the simpler explanation is that at some point after Papias Marcion came along and denied "that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son" and preached "another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son," like Justin says, and that this entailed altering the NT, like later patristic sources say.

[John2]

Why dont you start by actually reading Tertullian's book with the eye to figuring out what his methodology is?

One thing at time. I think Justin takes precedence because he was Marcion's contemporary.

[Secret Alias]

So not reading Tertullian won't effect your ability to participate in a discussion about Marcion? Have you even read the first 5 chapters of Book 4 of Against Marcion?