'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Giuseppe
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Giuseppe »

MrMacSon wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:53 am
Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:44 am
2) the word "Father" appears in "Bar-Abbas".

Hence my question is justified.
.
bar abba means 'son of the father,' not 'Father'
'Father' appears in the expression 'son of the father'.
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Ken Olson
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Ken Olson »

MrMacSon wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:01 pm Markus Vinzent, Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel (Mcn). The Example of the Lord’s Prayer’, in Jan Heilmann, Matthias Klinghardt (eds), Das Neue Testament und sein Text im 2. Jahrhundert, TANZ 61 (Tübingen, 2018); pp.183-222.

https://www.academia.edu/45436831/Metho ... rds_Prayer

There's quite a lot in this article including a lot of history of Marcion studies in the first 10 pages.
MrMacSon

Thanks for posting this. I haven't been able to get my hands on Markus Vinzent's Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014) or Matthias Klinghardt's The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels v. 1. (The English translation is supposed to have been published December 31, 2020. I don't know if it is really available; I don't know anyone who has actually seen it). Neither book is available in libraries in my area and their purchase price is a bit steep. I've been able to glean some of their positions from their shorter articles and from book reviews, but that sort of thing never does justice to the actual arguments put forward in monographs.

I was a bit disappointed that Vinzent does not actually provide an argument, even in a brief recap, for his and Klinghardt's theory that Marcion is the oldest gospel and all the canonical gospels are dependent on it. His methodological point appears to be that if we do presuppose this, and that all the later variants in the (canonical) gospel tradition are potentially witnesses to the text of Marcion, then we may well reconstruct Marcion's Lord's Prayer differently than if we do not presuppose this. That seems trivially true. The question hinges on the likelihood of the presupposition.

He also argues that the introduction to the Lord's Prayer in Marcion shows that the Marcionite version of the Prayer was intended to be read as a response to, and in contrast to, the prayers of John the Baptist. Were you persuaded by Vinzent's argument? (I'm dubious, but I still need to check it against the text of Tertullian).

Best,

Ken
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by MrMacSon »

Ken Olson wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:38 am Thanks for posting this. I haven't been able to get my hands on Markus Vinzent's Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014) or Matthias Klinghardt's The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels v. 1. (The English translation is supposed to have been published December 31, 2020. I don't know if it is really available; I don't know anyone who has actually seen it). Neither book is available in libraries in my area and their purchase price is a bit steep. I've been able to glean some of their positions from their shorter articles and from book reviews, but that sort of thing never does justice to the actual arguments put forward in monographs.

I was a bit disappointed that Vinzent does not actually provide an argument, even in a brief recap, for his and Klinghardt's theory that Marcion is the oldest gospel and all the canonical gospels are dependent on it. His methodological point appears to be that if we do presuppose this, and that all the later variants in the (canonical) gospel tradition are potentially witnesses to the text of Marcion ...

Hi Ken, it's a pity libraries around you don't at least have Vinzent's Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels 2014. How about Jason Beduhn's 2013 The First New Testament: Marcion's Scriptural Canon ?

I've been able to read bits of it in a local library and it's certainly quite comprehensive, even forensic.

Vinzent thinks Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written in response to Marcion's first draft, and Marcion's release of his second edition, along with his the Antitheses and Paul’s letters, was a response to those Gospels (Klinghardt thinks there was a final redactor which, given Vinzent's findings about Papias' comments about John, might make John that redactor).

Vinzent touches on
  • reflections or shadows of Papias in Eusebius and in things like the Prologue to the Gospel of John which suggests John and Marcion were contemporaries (Vinzent discusses Papias and the Prologues over several pages)
  • various commentaries that a/the John was central to collation of the Synoptic Gospels such as Eusebius' Hist. eccl. III 24,5-17 and the Acti Timothei, albeit 4th century, which claims John received and named all three Synoptic Gospels (naming his own would have been easy, of course);
    • the 4th century Acti Timothei refer to
      1. “disciples of the Lord not knowing how to put in order certain papyri which were written in different languages and put together in random fashion,”
      2. to followers of said disciples bringing the papyri to “John the renowned theologian in Ephesus,”
      3. and says John “examined them thoroughly and taking his cue from them, after he had put in order the three gospel narratives and entitled them Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke, assigning their proper titles to the gospels, he himself theologized upon the things they had not narrated … filling up also the gaps they had left, in the accounts of the miracles especially, and then he set up his own name to this compilation or gospel” [from the translation given by JH Crehan, ‘Gospel, (1959), 5].
  • Justin Martyr's comments on Marcion (preserved in Irenaeus and Tertullian) which reflect "two teachers engaged with each other in a theological debate, not necessarily in an open confrontation,"
  • Aspects of Irenaeus commentary, eg. -

    "Interestingly, throughout the entire book IV of his Against the Heresies, where [Irenaeus] devotes intense discussion to Marcion on the basis of [an] anonymous Presbyter, there is not a single indication that Marcion had corrupted the scriptures. Instead, following the Presbyter, he takes Marcion as one witness among others with regard to the tradition of the Lord's sayings, with the discussion centering around the correct interpretation of these sayings even in the context of some textcritical arguments."

Vinzent notes Irenaeus criticism of Marcion for “having ’mutilated’ or ‘circumcised’ the Scriptures (which, for Irenaeus at least, had been primarily an anti-Valentinian argument(?)) -

"Adapted to his secondary target, Marcion, it suited this opponent as well, especially as Marcion himself had accused Irenaeus' 'authorities' (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) of having judaized his Gospel. The myth of Marcion, [as] the circumciser of scriptures, was born [not] as an argument ad hominem but as a transferred one. Like the Valentinian's, who were judged against the beautifully crafted image, Irenaeus benchmarks Marcion against...an ‘inherited, complete set of the holy scriptures’, by which, among others, he meant the fourfold gospel, speaking of ‘the unfound preservation of the scriptures coming down to us with 'a complete collection' allowing for neither addition abstraction nor subtraction’ [as per Adv. Haer. IV 33,8]."

Further on

. in one sense, Irenaeus is a thorough follower of Marcion - by calling the gospel that is handed down in written form ‘the ground and pillar of our faith’, but he parts company from the master by insisting on the plurality of ‘Scriptures’.


Vinzent notes Irenaeus intermingles criticism of Marcion with amicable notes and, at one point, even a prayer for return and reconciliation:

‘We pray for these things on their behalf, loving them better than they seem to love themselves. For our love, inasmuch as it is true, is salutary to them, if they will but receive it’ [Adv Haers. III 25,7]


Vinzent notes, "Book IV opens with the same hope and effort for the [Valentinian] heretics’ return," and key comments by Tertullian, Marcion's most scathing critic [the details of which I don't presently have to hand] gives further key clues for Vinzent's proposal that all these gospel authors were contemporaries.


Vinzent's 2016 book, ' Tertullian's Preface to Marcion's Gospel ' is also comprehensive, covering Prefaces such as De preascriptione haereticoum, not just to Adversus Marcionem but to De resurrectione carnis and to De carne Christi; and provides

"a glimpse of what, despite all the rhetorical clouding of Tertullian, might have provoked Marcion in the first place to publish his own preface to his Gospel, the 'Antitheses', together with this Gospel-text and the ten Pauline letters as his New Testament ... We will discover that, astonishingly, there was closer intellectual proximity between the two interlocutors than the battle on the surface would intimate" ...

Once one notices that Tertullian was particularly keen not only to provide prefaces to his own works, but also to reference, value and evaluate the prefaces of other writers, notably Marcion's Antitheses, Irenaeus’ prefaces to his Adversus Haereses, and the preface to the pastoral letters, which he regard[ed] as genuinely Pauline, the relationship not only between so called hypertexts and hypotexts, but also that between hypertexts themselves, comes to the fore.


Vinzent concludes in Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels that

1. Marcion’s gospel was not produced in one go, but in two stages, first as a draft that found its way to the public, and second as published version (with the Antitheses and Paul’s letters attached)

2. that the gospel writing of our synoptic and John happened almost simultaneously with Marcion’s

Ken Olson wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:38 am He also argues that the introduction to the Lord's Prayer in Marcion shows that the Marcionite version of the Prayer was intended to be read as a response to, and in contrast to, the prayers of John the Baptist. Were you persuaded by Vinzent's argument? (I'm dubious, but I still need to check it against the text of Tertullian).
I was intrigued Vinzent leaned towards Tertullian's text for his reconstruction, & concluded Marcion's Lord's Prayer was essentially anti-John.

.
Last edited by MrMacSon on Tue Nov 16, 2021 1:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:43 pm
  • Vinzent notes the 4th century Acti Timothei refer to (i)

    “disciples of the Lord not knowing how to put in order certain papyri which were written in different languages and put together in random fashion,”

    (ii) to followers of said disciples bringing the papyri to “John the renowned theologian in Ephesus,” and John

    (iii) “examined them thoroughly and taking his cue from them, after he had put in order the three gospel narratives and entitled them Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke, assigning their proper titles to the gospels, he himself theologized upon the things they had not narrated … filling up also the gaps they had left, in the accounts of the miracles especially, and then he set up his own name to this compilation or gospel” [from the translation given by JH Crehan, ‘Gospel, (1959), 5].

Vinzent concludes

2. that the gospel writing of our synoptic and John happened almost simultaneously with Marcion’s

Surely a late, pious legend having to do with the college of apostles would shed little light on the historical circumstances of the composition of the gospels, right?
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
rgprice
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by rgprice »

#1) I don't think Marcion's Gospel was first.

I am quite confident that Mark was first. However, I do agree that almost all other Gospels descend from Marcion's, most Gospels used at least a combination of Mark and Marcion.

When you compare Marcion to Mark, though, it's quite clear what went on. Mark has essentially no teaching whatsoever. In mark Jesus is an opaque herald of the end times, he isn't an instructor. He doesn't even really advocate for any new way of life.

It was Marcion's Gospel (I hate calling it that because it was presumably not created by or for Marcion, it was rather the Gospel that he used) that Jesus was turned into a teacher.

Now, in my view, the "teachings" that were introduced in Marcion's Gospel, including the Lord's Prayer, share a lot of qualities with Colossians and Ephesians. And to me this makes even further sense, because I see mark as having been written based on the authentic letters of Paul, while Marcion's Gospel introduces the material from Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. The Lord's Payers looks a lot like the material from Colossians.

I see Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans as really also far more instructional than Paul's authentic letters as well. I think Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans were produced within a Pauline community (Ephesus) and were moving beyond Paul's original push to convert Gentiles prior to the End Times, and were instead establishing a real community and setting up a framework for life within the realized kingdom of God, which they viewed as having been established. Paul's original writings were much less about how to "live your life as a Christian." They were about laying out Paul's theory of salvation and setting up the expectation of the coming of the Lord. Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans are about how to establish a Christian community and live "as Christians". And we see this same shift in mindset between the Gospel of Mark and Marcion's Gospel. The Gospel of Mark, like Paul, is about the eminent coming of the End and simply recognizing that this is happening. Marcion's Gospel, and consequently Matthew and Luke, is about how to be a Christian and live in Christ's Kingdom.

In my mind there is a direct relationship between these distinctions in the Gospels and the distinctions between Paul's authentic letters and Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. Mark was produced by someone following Paul's authentic letters, and Marcion's Gospel was produced in the community that created Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. The Sermon on the Plain is modeled on Colossians IMO, and likely comes form someone who had heard Pauline sermons read aloud to congregations, as Colossians instructs its readers to do.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Giuseppe »

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:35 am Done. My question is expecting approval before to be published.
strangely, my question is published but still without an answer.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by MrMacSon »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:10 am
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:43 pm
  • Vinzent notes the 4th century Acti Timothei refer to (i)

    “disciples of the Lord not knowing how to put in order certain papyri which were written in different languages and put together in random fashion,”

    (ii) to followers of said disciples bringing the papyri to “John the renowned theologian in Ephesus,” and John

    (iii) “examined them thoroughly and taking his cue from them, after he had put in order the three gospel narratives and entitled them Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke, assigning their proper titles to the gospels, he himself theologized upon the things they had not narrated … filling up also the gaps they had left, in the accounts of the miracles especially, and then he set up his own name to this compilation or gospel” [from the translation given by JH Crehan, ‘Gospel, (1959), 5].

Vinzent concludes

2. that the gospel writing of our synoptic and John happened almost simultaneously with Marcion’s

Surely a late, pious legend having to do with the college of apostles would shed little light on the historical circumstances of the composition of the gospels, right?
What you have quoted is an indented subsection of this (underlining added here) -
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 10:43 pm
Vinzent's findings about Papias' comments about John...

Vinzent touches on reflections or shadows of,
  • Papias in Eusebius and in things like the Prologue to the Gospel of John which suggests John and Marcion were contemporaries (Vinzent discusses Papias and the Prologues over several pages)
  • various commentaries that a/the John was central to collation of the Synoptic Gospels such as Eusebius Hist. eccl. III 24,5-17 and the Acti Timothei, albeit 4th century, which even claims John received and named all three Synoptic Gospels (naming his own would have been easy, of course) ...
    .
What you quoted is a cherry-picked part of my cherry-picked notes about the non-Tertullian references in the first section of Vinzent's book (notes made from photo's I took of some pages some yrs ago): I was seeking to show he considered a wide range of corresponding information.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Unpick the cherries for me, then, if you would. What is the relevance of the Acts of Timothy to the formation of the gospel texts? (I can see Vinzent's point about Papias, for example, in the Johannine Prologue: if the Johannine Prologue accurately reflects Papias, then it is supremely relevant because of Papias' presumed very early date. But I am so far failing to see any similar potential point about the Acts of Timothy.)
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by MrMacSon »

rgprice wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:59 am ... Marcion's Gospel (I hate calling it that because it was presumably not created by or for Marcion, it was rather the Gospel that he used) ...
I think Matthias Klinghardt and Jason BeDuhn, at least, would agree with you (perhaps RJ Hoffmann, too). Who wrote the gospel attributed to Marcion seems to be up for debate.

rgprice wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 5:59 am
#1) I don't think Marcion's Gospel was first.

I am quite confident that Mark was first. However, I do agree that almost all other Gospels descend from Marcion's, most Gospels used at least a combination of Mark and Marcion.

When you compare Marcion to Mark, though, it's quite clear what went on. Mark has essentially no teaching whatsoever. In Mark Jesus is an opaque herald of the end times, he isn't an instructor. He doesn't even really advocate for any new way of life.

It was Marcion's Gospel ... that Jesus was turned into a teacher.

Now, in my view, the "teachings" that were introduced in Marcion's Gospel, including the Lord's Prayer, share a lot of qualities with Colossians and Ephesians. And to me this makes even further sense, because I see mark as having been written based on the authentic letters of Paul, while Marcion's Gospel introduces the material from Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. The Lord's Payers looks a lot like the material from Colossians.

I see Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans as really also far more instructional than Paul's authentic letters as well. I think Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans were produced within a Pauline community (Ephesus) and were moving beyond Paul's original push to convert Gentiles prior to the End Times, and were instead establishing a real community and setting up a framework for life within the realized kingdom of God, which they viewed as having been established. Paul's original writings were much less about how to "live your life as a Christian." They were about laying out Paul's theory of salvation and setting up the expectation of the coming of the Lord. Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans are about how to establish a Christian community and live "as Christians". And we see this same shift in mindset between the Gospel of Mark and Marcion's Gospel. The Gospel of Mark, like Paul, is about the eminent coming of the End and simply recognizing that this is happening. Marcion's Gospel, and consequently Matthew and Luke, is about how to be a Christian and live in Christ's Kingdom.

In my mind there is a direct relationship between these distinctions in the Gospels and the distinctions between Paul's authentic letters and Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. Mark was produced by someone following Paul's authentic letters, and Marcion's Gospel was produced in the community that created Colossians and Ephesians/Laodiceans. The Sermon on the Plain is modelled on Colossians IMO, and likely comes form someone who had heard Pauline sermons read aloud to congregations, as Colossians instructs its readers to do.
.
I'm nowhere as knowledgeable as you or others on this, but those broad proposals look interesting and noteworthy, and it would seem this is the sort of investigation discussion that should be done in the fields of (i) early Christian and (ii) Biblical studies (and perhaps in specific sub- or related fields such as 'intertextuality').

It would be interesting if someone looked at propositions and ideas around the role and formation of 'Marcion's Gosepltext' and Thomas L Brodie's concept of an initial 'Proto-Luke' in The Birthing of the New Testament, 2004 - I cannot see reference at all to Marcion in that book: 'Marcion' certainly does not appear in the index. Brodie bases his Proto-Luke on (i) the Elijah-Elisha Narrative in 1-2 Kings; (ii) Judges; and (iii) Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah; and says it containing narratives about John, Jesus, Stephen, Saul, and eventually Peter and Paul. In introducing his Proto-Luke, however, he talks about 1 Corinthians using Deuteronomy and Luke using 1 Corinthians, yet says "Proto-Luke reversed and reshaped the account of abuses at supper (1Cor. 11.16-34) to form one component for the account of Jesus' last supper (Lk. 22.14-30)." [Birthing, p.139]

Brodie lays out what is essentially Klinghardt's [hypo]thesis for the development of the canonical Gospels, with Brodie's Proto-Luke where Klinghardt has Marcion, or vice versa -

.
... Once Proto-Luke is in place, it is easier to trace the development of the gospels, beginning with Mark. The development is as follows:
  • Mark has its own special sources, genre, and theology, but much of it relies heavily on Proto-Luke and on Proto-Luke’s sources, including the Elijah- Elisha narrative.
  • Matthew then used Mark, but he also reached back to Proto-Luke, refashioning Proto-Luke to its own purposes. Matthew also used his own sources, making particularly use of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, with its many discourses, provided a model for a new form of gospel.
  • John in turn used Matthew. Matthews discourses provided John with a partial model; And John also used Matthew's sources, including Mark and Proto-Luke.
  • Finally, canonical Luke-Acts expanded Proto-Luke in a way that developed and synthesised Mark, Matthew, and John. This new synthesis distilled the Sermon on the Mount into the Sermon on the Plain - a transformation that seems strange in the context of modern historical method, but which fits well into the writing practises of antiquity.
Brodie, 2004, The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New testament Writings; p.93.

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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Giuseppe »

Prof Gianotto said that, according to Klinghardt, If one concedes already that Mcn precedes Luke, i.e. the Parable of Wineskins is marcionite, then accordingly he/she has to concede that Mcn precedes Mark, too.
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