Writers who reference Paul's letters before Marcion?

[rgprice]

We know that Marcion put out his collection of Paul's letters around 144. What evidence is there of other writers referencing any of the individual letters prior to this?

I consider the Gospel of Mark to be the first witness to the collection of Paul's letters. But what other works are known to reference Paul's letters? 1 Clement? Barnabas? Anything else?

[Ben C. Smith]

We know that Marcion put out his collection of Paul's letters around 144. What evidence is there of other writers referencing any of the individual letters prior to this?

I consider the Gospel of Mark to be the first witness to the collection of Paul's letters. But what other works are known to reference Paul's letters? 1 Clement? Barnabas? Anything else?

The main trouble is not in coming up with the list. The main trouble is in being sure that the texts on that list predate Marcion.

1 Clement, 2 Peter, Polycarp, Acts, and Ignatius mention Paul by name. A debated fragment of Papias does not name him as Paul, but refers to him (in context it is clearly Paul) as "the apostle." 1 Peter and James, I am convinced, react to Paul, and both the Shepherd and the epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus have been argued to use Paul, as well. I have a hypothesis (still being tested) that Revelation deliberately excludes Paul as an apostle.

[rgprice]

That's about what I thought. For that matter, what early material doesn't reference Paul? :p

Yeah, that's about the list I had as well. 1 Clement mentions Paul, but has anyone pointed to quotes from Paul's letters in 1 Clem?

What I'm really trying to get at is, who we can point to, who was clearly not a Marcionite, but who also referenced Paul? More specifically, who also referenced Paul's letters favorably?

[Ben C. Smith]

Yeah, that's about the list I had as well. 1 Clement mentions Paul, but has anyone pointed to quotes from Paul's letters in 1 Clem?

It is more of an allusion than a quote, but 1 Clement clearly references 1 Corinthians.

[Bernard Muller]

We know that Marcion put out his collection of Paul's letters around 144. What evidence is there of other writers referencing any of the individual letters prior to this?

I consider the Gospel of Mark to be the first witness to the collection of Paul's letters. But what other works are known to reference Paul's letters? 1 Clement? Barnabas? Anything else?

1 Clement. At about the same time than Marcion: the Naassenes & Basilides, named Paul and quoted at least one of his epistles.
"Ignatius" in 'to the ephesians' does not quote Paul's epitle(s) but indicated Paul wrote several letters.
Polycarp indicated Paul wrote one letter to the Philippians.

I consider the Gospel of Mark to be the first witness to the collection of Paul's letters.

What is your evidence for that?

Cordially, Bernard

[Secret Alias]

1 Clement is unusual in that there are many allusions that sound Pauline but none that are exact. It reminds me of Justin's references to Paul. Something strange going on. I used to have a list of Clement allusions to Paul back in the days before computers. It was typed by Daniel Mahar and mailed to me. Dust in the wind.

[rgprice]

This brings up another question. If Marcion was the first to come out with a collection of Paul's letters, and we barely hear anything about Paul's letters from the proto-orthodox prior to Marcion, then how did Marcion's opponents come up with opposing Pauline letters? Tertullian is presumably the first person to provide an analysis of Marcion's Pauline letters. But Tertullian was writing in 207, about 60 years after the publican of Marcion's collection.

So, if Marcion was the first to come out with a collection, then exactly where did his opponents get their collection from? How is it that they ended up with exactly the same letters, plus 3 more anti-Marcionite forgeries (the Pastorals)?

What letters was Tertullian working from? Where did he get them from? Are we to believe that the proto-orthodox had these letters all along, and then, after Marcion came out with his, then they decided to make use of their collection? This seems quite far fetched.

In the books I'm reading now, they propose that Marcion didn't edit or manipulate his letters, nor did the proto-orthodox, they just happen to have been two divergent collections. I find this hard to believe, given that they contain essentially the exact same letters. If the collections were divergent I'd except there to be actually different letters as well. That they don't contain fundamentally different letters implies that if it is true that there was some different collection held by the proto-orthodox it must have come from a common source shared by the Marcionite collection. But that seems suspect, because they showed very little interest in Paul prior to Marcion.

It's still all very fishy...

[Secret Alias]

how did Marcion's opponents come up with opposing Pauline letters?

Remember when the Republicans opposed Obamacare?

Then they said they were going to remove it and replace it with something beautiful.

Sort of like the orthodox attitude towards Paul. Nietzsche once said the best way to attack something was coming up with a bad argument for it.

[Ben C. Smith]

This brings up another question. If Marcion was the first to come out with a collection of Paul's letters, and we barely hear anything about Paul's letters from the proto-orthodox prior to Marcion, then how did Marcion's opponents come up with opposing Pauline letters?

Marcion was (probably) not the first to publish a collection of Paul's letters. Refer to David Trobisch and Harry Gamble.

[rgprice]

Marcion was (probably) not the first to publish a collection of Paul's letters. Refer to David Trobisch and Harry Gamble.

Yeah, I've read Trobisch's work on the Pauline letter collection, but he doesn't seem to address Marcion that well, unless I missed something.

Another thing is, wasn't there some issue with 2 Corinthians? Didn't Marcion have to come up with his own version of 2 Cor or something? Its also odd that the Marcionite version of 2 Cor has almost no differences from the orthodox version of 2 Cor.

According to Trobisch, there was a 4 letter collection to start. Then the rest built on that. But, I don't find that works well with the Marcionite evidence. For one thing, he builds a lot on the order of the books, but Marcion's books were in an entirely different order.

I don't necessarily disagree with Trobisch, I just wish he would have done a better job addressing Marcion.

But, what else I find fascinating is that all of the parallels to Paul I've identified in Mark are to the following letters: 1 Cor, Gal, Romans, 1 Thess, Philippians. I've looked for others to other letters. I used to think there was one to 2 Cor, but I've decided that was really weak and there is a better explanation for that passage.