The start of the Jesus story

[Jax]

Whenever anyone starts out with "Of course" on this subject I know that their premise is probably flawed.

Of course it is.

[Bernard Muller]

to robert j,
So what is your evidence about Marcion NOT dealing with a composite 2 Corinthians?

None of the citations that you have provided support your claims highlighted above that Marcion used the composite form of 2 Corinthians.

Again my reminder:
Epiphanius, Panarion, according to https://gnosis.study/library/%D0%9A%D1% ... -46%29.pdf
page 315

This is Marcion’s corrupt compilation, containing a version and
form of the Gospel according to Luke, and an incomplete one of the
apostle Paul—not of all his epistles (10) but simply of Romans, Ephesians,
Colossians, Laodiceans, Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, First and
Second Thessalonians, Philemon and Philippians.

What more do you want?

Cordially, Bernard

[Jax]

Holy men and deities were expected to have "super powers" in antiquity. This is why both Jesus and Vespasian are said to have healed a blind man with their spittle, for example, and I call things like that ancient "special effects."

Well, I don't see the "special effects" of Jesus and Paul in the writings of Suetonius. Stories that Vespasian healed people in Suetonius "Lives of the Twelves Caesars" must have predated stories of the "special effects" of Jesus and Paul.

It doesn't seem that way to me, given that Paul and 1 Peter say that the resurrected Jesus had a spiritual body and the gospels present him as having a physical body.

In the Gospels, Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin or was walking on water long before he was crucified. A physical body cannot walk on water for miles.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead: What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.

Galatians 4:4

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

NT Jesus was both God and man.

If the NT letters come after the gospels, why don't they likewise say that the resurrected Jesus had a physical body?

If the resurrected Jesus did not have a physical body why did they say over 500 people and Paul saw him after he was raised from the dead?

No NT Epistle states where the resurrected Jesus appeared to his followers. All the hundreds of Epistles, in and out the NT, hardly have any details of Jesus and his post-resurrection appearances.

Right, which is why I think those details came later.

That is precisely why your reasoning is flawed. If NT Paul claimed NT Jesus lived and died then stories of NT Jesus must predate the writings of the Epistles.

1. NT Jesus was said to be God's son and made of a woman before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

2. NT Jesus had apostles before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

3. NT Jesus was crucified before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

4. NT Jesus resurrected and appeared to the twelve before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

5. Believers in NT Jesus were persecuted by NT Paul before he wrote his Epistles.

6. NT Paul preached the same Gospel of Jesus as those he persecuted before he wrote his Epistles.

7. There were Pillars of the Church before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

8. NT Paul was the LAST to see the resurrected Jesus before he wrote his Epistles.

9. NT Jesus carried out the ritual of the Eucharist before NT Paul wrote his Epistles.

10. NT Jesus stories were known to NT Paul before he wrote his Epistles.

The Gospels, stories of Jesus, predate the writing of Epistles by NT Paul.

I feel that your premise doesn't account for later additions to the letters of Paul and that you are treating the letters as if they were the unnaturally long letters that we have today.

[Jax]

to robert j,
So what is your evidence about Marcion NOT dealing with a composite 2 Corinthians?

None of the citations that you have provided support your claims highlighted above that Marcion used the composite form of 2 Corinthians.

Again my reminder:
Epiphanius, Panarion, according to https://gnosis.study/library/%D0%9A%D1% ... -46%29.pdf
page 315

This is Marcion’s corrupt compilation, containing a version and
form of the Gospel according to Luke, and an incomplete one of the
apostle Paul—not of all his epistles (10) but simply of Romans, Ephesians,
Colossians, Laodiceans, Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, First and
Second Thessalonians, Philemon and Philippians.

What more do you want?

Cordially, Bernard

Except that that is 11 letters not 10 which is what was said that Marcion had.

[robert j]

to robert j,
So what is your evidence about Marcion NOT dealing with a composite 2 Corinthians?

I suspect that there is not adequate evidence to determine either way. Perhaps you forgot what I wrote to you yesterday ---

None of the citations that you have provided support your claims highlighted above that Marcion used the composite form of 2 Corinthians. I'm not sure if he did, or didn't, I'm just interested in relevant information.

What more do you want?

Intellectual honesty.

[Jax]

to robert j,
So what is your evidence about Marcion NOT dealing with a composite 2 Corinthians?

I suspect that there is not adequate evidence to determine either way. Perhaps you forgot what I wrote to you yesterday ---

None of the citations that you have provided support your claims highlighted above that Marcion used the composite form of 2 Corinthians. I'm not sure if he did, or didn't, I'm just interested in relevant information.

What more do you want?

Intellectual honesty.

It would seem that Marcion had Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1837

[Bernard Muller]

to Jax,

Except that that is 11 letters not 10 which is what was said that Marcion had.

Outside the Pastorals, Paul issued 10 epistles. That what Epiphanius likely meant.
What about Laodiceans?
Epiphanius wrote about it:
From https://gnosis.study/library/%D0%9A%D1% ... -46%29.pdf

page 311

Here are what he calls Epistles: 1. Galatians. 2. Corinthians. 3. Second Corinthians. 4. Romans. 5. Thessalonians. 6. Second Thessalonians.
7. Ephesians. 8. Colossians. 9. Philemon. 10. Philippians. He also has parts
of the so-called Epistle to the Laodiceans.

page 312

< From the Epistle > to the Laodiceans, number eleven < in Marcion’s
canon >.
1(< 40 >). “(There is) one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all.”1

page 361

Marcion did not see fit to quote this testimony from Ephesians but from
Laodiceans, which is not in the Apostle.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

In what follows, I will write of Marcion doing X or Y, but please mentally replace that shorthand with Marcion doing X or Y according to our patristic sources as interpreted by the usual scholars of Marcion's texts. I do not want to keep having to write the full evidentiary chain out in full:

• Marcion does not deal explicitly with noncomposite Corinthian epistles, by which I mean that his canon has exactly two Corinthian epistles, and the Marcionite material in each one cuts across a lot of our modern partition theories. For example, with respect to 2 Corinthians, Tertullian deals with Marcionite material both from chapters 1-7 and from chapters 11-13 of that epistle. Thus, if chapters 10-13 were originally a separate epistle from chapters 1-7, as is often thought, then Marcion did not know about it, and he treated them all as a single epistle. Likewise, with respect to 1 Corinthians, material from all chapters except for chapter 16 and possibly also chapter 13 are attested as belonging to the epistle which Marcion agreed was the first to the Corinthians.
• 2 Cor 7.2-11.1 is not attested at all for Marcion, meaning that, if chapters 8 and 9 of that epistle were originally separate epistles, as if often thought, we have no evidence that Marcion's version of 2 Corinthians included them. In fact, as BeDuhn points out, we have no evidence that Tertullian himself knew chapters 8 and 9 as part of his own copy of 2 Corinthians. Tertullian "shows a conspicuous void here, with no quotations or allusions to anything between 7.10... and 10.2..." (BeDuhn, page 293).

[Bernard Muller]

to Jax,

Whenever anyone starts out with "Of course" on this subject I know that their premise is probably flawed.

So now my "of course" becomes evidence my premise is problably flawed. Don't you have better evidence?

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

to Robert j,
I have another one for you:
Epiphanius wrote, according to:https://gnosis.study/library/%D0%9A%D1% ... -46%29.pdf

page 311

Here are what he calls Epistles: 1. Galatians. 2. Corinthians. 3. Second Corinthians. 4. Romans. 5. Thessalonians. 6. Second Thessalonians.
7. Ephesians. 8. Colossians. 9. Philemon. 10. Philippians. He also has parts
of the so-called Epistle to the Laodiceans.

Cordially, Bernard