Marcion versus Mark: who comes first?

[neilgodfrey]

Could it be that the (so called) Gospel of Mark is either:

1) An early version of the (so called) Gospel of Marcion.

This view, argued in past by Hermann Raschke (of which I have read partially the book), is crank, sic et simpliciter. It is too much evident that "Mark" (author) adores YHWH as supreme god. Nowhere in this Gospel there is a reference to an alien god.

A tad harsh, I think. I've been reading Raschke's case for the Gospel of Mark originally being the Marcionite gospel and it seems quite reasonable to me. Where do you see the YHWH adoration in Mark?

[Giuseppe]

Where do you see the YHWH adoration in Mark?

Read my:

Dogs remain dogs (in Mark).

In addition, the Raschke's explanation of "John the Baptist" (Ion as Ionian, i.e. Greek hence Gentile) appears to me too much convoluted to avoid the pure and simple fact that Marcion hated John the Baptist as icon of the Judaizers.

Conclusion: Raschke is a harmonizer.

[rgprice]

A tad harsh, I think. I've been reading Raschke's case for the Gospel of Mark originally being the Marcionite gospel and it seems quite reasonable to me. Where do you see the YHWH adoration in Mark?

Any chance you could summarize?

I still view Mark as coming before Marcion and not really having any interaction with Marcionism. The ting I can't get over would be the idea that Mark would be derivative of another comparable Gospel. I could see Mark as being derivative of something like Vision of Isaiah, but too many aspects of Mark are too clever and too well crafted to have been derived from another work.

For example, I see no way that the Cleansing of the Temple in Mark could be derived from a cleansing of the Temple in Marcion, assuming that the scene in Marcion resembled that in Luke.

But as for Mark being "Marcionite", I think this may be possible, but not in its canonical form. However, why would a Marcionite Gospel be so involved in the Jewish scriptures, as Mark clearly is? It could only be "Marcionite" in the sense that it was used by Marcion, but it wasn't actually written by Marcion or anyone with Marcion's ideas.

[schillingklaus]

Mark's is a late patchwork using various pre-canonical gospels, at least one similar to Matthew's and another one more similar to Luke's. This is already evident from Mark's insane mixture of incompatible midrash in the same pericope.

It does not matter muchy whether Mark's or so-called Marcion's is earlier as both are fabricated and mutilated beyond recognition.

[Giuseppe]

Prima facie what appears potentially "heretical" in Mark is only the Messianic Secret, that can be interpreted as meaning anything about the true identity of Jesus.

For example,

• Paul-Louis Couchoud saw in the Messianic Secret a Judaizing expedient to make Jesus not the explicit proclaimer of a new message, contra Marcion.

• Roger Parvus, at contrary, interprets the same Messianic Secret as a Simonian expedient to mask the "heresy" (Jesus == Simon Magus).

Frankly, if the original goal was something of different from the anti-Vespasian (and anti-Revelation) propaganda, then the original author appears to have made a very poor product in order to vehicle a such different message.

Is not "propaganda" by definition something that can be understood easily by the greatest number of people?

[Giuseppe]

Reading Raschke's commentary about the Syro-phoenician woman, I see that he resembles strongly the way Markus Vinzent interprets proto-Luke as a Marcionite Gospel: he concedes a midrash from Jewish scriptures, but only to raise an antithesis between Jesus and his presumed 'type' in the OT.

So, if Jesus heals the woman's daughter in the way Elijah healed the woman's children, then the point is that Jesus is "better" than Elijah, "therefore" Jesus is "against" Elijah (and the Judaism).

Noteworthy is the antithetical character of this piece to the Old Testament one. In the Old Testament the needy Elijah comes to the Gentile woman, in the New Testament the help-seeking Gentile woman comes to Jesus - and for this reason alone a house is necessary, in which Jesus keeps himself hidden, so that the Gentile woman appears all the more clearly as a seeker - there Elijah asks, here the woman; there Elijah heals by strong direct touch, here Jesus by a word from a distance. One is reminded of the antitheses of Markion.

(p. 207)

As form of polemic against Judaism, one would expect a more explicit attack than this.
Insofar we expect from one as 'Marcion' a more aggressive attack to Judaism, then is not a better way than Raschke's view to talk more simply about a radical paulinism in Mark, à la Volkmar, Tarazi, Dykstra, etc ?

Unless Raschke is able to show a passage in Mark where Jesus attacks explicitly the Jewish god, we are titled to skepticism about his claim that Mark is anti-demiurgist.

Aren't we?

[lsayre]

Admittedly this is speculation, but Canonical Mark might be a selectively neutered version of what might have been the earliest edition of Marcion's Gospel. The Orthodox seem to be likely suspects as to whom did the neutering.

[neilgodfrey]

Where do you see the YHWH adoration in Mark?

Read my:

Dogs remain dogs (in Mark).

In addition, the Raschke's explanation of "John the Baptist" (Ion as Ionian, i.e. Greek hence Gentile) appears to me too much convoluted to avoid the pure and simple fact that Marcion hated John the Baptist as icon of the Judaizers.

Conclusion: Raschke is a harmonizer.

Still a tad harsh, I think. Raschke's argument is far more substantive than the "Ionian-John" point and I think that pun on the name may be the weakest, and certainly a dispensible, point in his case.

I looked at just a few parts of the thesis you link at "dogs remain dogs" and was troubled by the following:

1. the author states that he will demonstrate the Jewish parameters in the Gospel of Mark but when he comes to referencing an interpretation of the dogs saying in the Syrophonecian woman incident he dismisses the interpretation on the grounds that it does not take into consideration the Jewish parameters of the saying -- that is, it looks like a case of blatant question begging. I looked in vain for references to any of the many arguments to the contrary in his thesis and the strongest point I found by way of a catch-all refutation was that the contrary was "not persuasive".

2. the author entirely bypasses the action described in that scene in Mark and focuses exclusively on the dialogue. The fact that the action demonstrates the irony and insincerity in the dialogue is absent. That's got to be a most one-eyed interpretation of a piece of literature I can imagine.

3. The thesis concludes that Jesus only heals the daughter because the mother confessed her inferior racial status. But that's a bizarre reading of the dialogue and action. Jesus healed the daughter because the mother expressed total confidence or faith in Jesus, both his obligation and willingness to do so despite (NOT "because of"] her supposed racial inferiority. The faith point, the whole point of the story, is totally missed. Raschke's point is that Jesus' action is a point by point "antithesis" of Elijah's engagement with the widow of Sarepath, and calls for us to recall Marcion's Antitheses.

I did not read the entire thesis but the bits I did read left a worried feeling in my stomach about the quality of PhD theses in the field of biblical studies.

[neilgodfrey]

A tad harsh, I think. I've been reading Raschke's case for the Gospel of Mark originally being the Marcionite gospel and it seems quite reasonable to me. Where do you see the YHWH adoration in Mark?

Any chance you could summarize?

I still view Mark as coming before Marcion and not really having any interaction with Marcionism. The ting I can't get over would be the idea that Mark would be derivative of another comparable Gospel. I could see Mark as being derivative of something like Vision of Isaiah, but too many aspects of Mark are too clever and too well crafted to have been derived from another work.

For example, I see no way that the Cleansing of the Temple in Mark could be derived from a cleansing of the Temple in Marcion, assuming that the scene in Marcion resembled that in Luke.

But as for Mark being "Marcionite", I think this may be possible, but not in its canonical form. However, why would a Marcionite Gospel be so involved in the Jewish scriptures, as Mark clearly is? It could only be "Marcionite" in the sense that it was used by Marcion, but it wasn't actually written by Marcion or anyone with Marcion's ideas.

I plan to. Will probably do a blog post about it.

As with you, it is the depth to which the Gospel of Mark is clearly grounded in Jewish scriptures that has always kept me from seriously thinking of it as originating as a Marcionite work. But Raschke kind of disarmed me somewhat by demonstrating how the awkwardness with which different OT prophecies are cobbled together in the opening verses arises from an attempt to insert the two relevant passages from Matthew into Mark's text. The echoes of OT stories throughout Mark (e.g. his "midrashic" rewriting of Elijah and Elisha narratives) are argued to be "antitheses" of (attacks on) the OT narrative and its god and his worshipers.

Mark is, as Marcion's Gospel was said to be, short, missing birth account, missing many of the speeches of Jesus -- and used by heretics. Raschke posits a simple explanation for how and why the Gospel of Luke came to be understood as the Marcionite one and why Mark came to be attached to Peter legends. I still have some big questions about his thesis but I don't think it's one to be dismissed without a fair hearing.

[neilgodfrey]

Reading Raschke's commentary about the Syro-phoenician woman, I see that he resembles strongly the way Markus Vinzent interprets proto-Luke as a Marcionite Gospel: he concedes a midrash from Jewish scriptures, but only to raise an antithesis between Jesus and his presumed 'type' in the OT.

So, if Jesus heals the woman's daughter in the way Elijah healed the woman's children, then the point is that Jesus is "better" than Elijah, "therefore" Jesus is "against" Elijah (and the Judaism).

Noteworthy is the antithetical character of this piece to the Old Testament one. In the Old Testament the needy Elijah comes to the Gentile woman, in the New Testament the help-seeking Gentile woman comes to Jesus - and for this reason alone a house is necessary, in which Jesus keeps himself hidden, so that the Gentile woman appears all the more clearly as a seeker - there Elijah asks, here the woman; there Elijah heals by strong direct touch, here Jesus by a word from a distance. One is reminded of the antitheses of Markion.

(p. 207)

As form of polemic against Judaism, one would expect a more explicit attack than this.
Insofar we expect from one as 'Marcion' a more aggressive attack to Judaism, then is not a better way than Raschke's view to talk more simply about a radical paulinism in Mark, à la Volkmar, Tarazi, Dykstra, etc ?

Unless Raschke is able to show a passage in Mark where Jesus attacks explicitly the Jewish god, we are titled to skepticism about his claim that Mark is anti-demiurgist.

Aren't we?

Ah yes -- you independently noticed the details I raised in my earlier reply.

The Gospel of Mark's polemic is most barbed against the Peter-led catholic church. Perhaps the gospel was written in response to catholic attacks on Paul, just as Paul's Galatians was written in response to attacks from those following "the Jerusalem pillars". I liked Raschke's suggestion that Matthew responded to Mark's polemic with puns on Saul-Paul's name with his "gates of hell" line that he put in Jesus' mouth.