Marcion's Gospel, Luke & Josephus

[Blood]

Stephan, do you think the Marcionites were inspired by Philo?

[Blood]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but if Marcion's Euangelion/Apostolikon had ultimate priority, could they have been conceived at roughly the same time? That would mean no independent life for the gospel and the epistles, and thus the epistles' "silence" about the gospel Jesus moot. But it wouldn't explain why Paul wasn't written into the gospel.

[Stephan Huller]

Because as Tertullian notes in Praescr the heretics say the apostle developed his "perfect" or more spiritual text from something originally associated with Peter. In the end the evidence will show that "Paul" was originally Mark and that "Marcion" = the lesser Mark (the iwn suffix + Marcus in Greek).

Originally there was a Markan tradition where the Canon reflected his thoughts to help clarify the proper interpretation of the gospel that was revealed to him by revelation. What stumps me is the origin of the name "Paul", but which is an adopted name even in the Catholic tradition. Is it a title? But what? And in what language? No clue yet.

It's not Latin. But what then?

[Blood]

This is mind-bending stuff.

So the Euangelion wasn't ur-Lukas. It was really ur-Mark, which had Lukan pericopes that were redacted by canonical/Catholic Mark?

[Stephan Huller]

No not really. Vinzent and Klinghardt and others have postulated the same. The first to suggest that Marcion = Mark was Raschke. Klinghardt has been working towards his new book for some time. Here is his thesis from 2011.

In order to reconstruct the text of Marcion’s gospel, it is not only necessary to give the patristic witnesses (Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Adamantius) a more critical and cautious assessment than Harnack did. Beyond that, the primary goal must be the solution of the one basic methodological problem that has been neglected almost completely for the last 150 years: Is Marcion’s text a re-edition of canonical Luke which was altered by the heretic for theological reasons (as most scholars believe)? Or is Luke the enlarged re-edition of an older, pre-canonical gospel that was received and used among many others by Marcion?

Understandably, the methodological requirements for a reconstruction depend completely on this basic decision. The presentation, a “Werkstattbericht” from a reconstruction, argues for the last alternative, assuming that Marcion did not “create” his gospel but simply received what was available to him: the oldest, pre-canonical gospel. The evolving model of literary dependency between Marcion’s gospel and Luke does not only contribute to a more detailed reconstruction of Marcion’s text, but also opens important methodological insights for other areas of research, such as the literary relations among the gospels and the textual history of the NT. http://oxfordpatristics.blogspot.com/20 ... cting.html

[DCHindley]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but if Marcion's Euangelion/Apostolikon had ultimate priority, could they have been conceived at roughly the same time? That would mean no independent life for the gospel and the epistles, and thus the epistles' "silence" about the gospel Jesus moot. But it wouldn't explain why Paul wasn't written into the gospel.

Blood,

Jason BeDuhn, in the introductory chapter to his book, The First New Testament, says:

Contemporaries [of Marcion] such as Ignatius, Justin, Polycarp, and Tatian still worked with malleable gospel materials; but subsequent generations of non-Marcionite Christianity [also] took up and promoted the option of preserving individual gospel texts as separate and distinct accounts, leading to the four-gospel canon found in modern New Testaments. The distinctive authorial voices preserved by this choice have both enriched and problematized the Christian memory of Jesus.

Our principal sources agree in identifying Marcion's Evangelion as a version of the same basic narrative found under the name of Luke in use among non-Marcionite Christians (only Hippolytus refers to it as a version of Mark6). The judgment of such sources is borne out by a comparison of their quotations from Marcion's gospel text to matching content in Luke. ...

Which came first, the Gospel of Luke or the Evangelion? Whether Marcion edited Luke, or made use of an unaltered proto-Luke, is one of the founding debates within modern biblical studies.17 ...

Once we step away from Tertullian's polemical context, a much more plausible scenario immediately suggests itself: that Marcion did not, in fact, do any substantial editing, but that he sanctioned the use of a gospel text already in existence in the form it was incorporated into the Marcionite canon. ...

These points of textual evidence and historical circumstance, therefore, suggest that Marcion may not have produced a definitive edition of the Evangelion after all, but rather took up a gospel already in circulation in multiple copies that had seen varying degrees of harmonization to other gospels in their transmission up to that point in time. The process of canonizing this gospel for the Marcionite community involved simply giving it a stamp of approval, acquiring copies already in circulation, and making more copies from these multiple exemplars, so that their varying degrees of harmonization passed into the Marcionite textual tradition of the Evangelion. They continued to circulate in these slightly variant forms within that community, plucked from there in different manuscripts at different times by Tertullian and Epiphanius (as well as other polemicists). ...

It appears most likely that the Evangelion was composed in the region of modern Turkey, probably in the heavily Hellenized western portion of that region, sometime in the last third of the first century, and so contemporaneously with the other narratives of Jesus that would eventually be incorporated into the larger second New Testament familiar to modern Christians. ...

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the latter point is the conclusion that the community and ideology of the Evangelion is not necessarily Marcionite, but possibly reflects a particularly early Asian "Gentile" form of Christianity not yet subject to the developments of the second and later centuries.

6. In Ref. 7.18, Hippolytus alludes to Mark and Paul as Marcion's scriptural authorities. This statement shows that Hippolytus was unaware of the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian on the subject, since both of them identify Marcion's Evangelion as a shorter version of Luke. Hippolytus seems to have viewed it as an expanded version of Mark, perhaps because it lacked the birth narratives that were distinctive to Luke, and instead began, like Mark, with Jesus' adult activities (the beginning of Marcion's Evangelion is cited in Ref. 7.19, showing that Hippolytus had in fact seen it).

17. On this subject, see [John] Knox, Marcion and the New Testament, 78-81, and the important review and clarification of these debates in [Dieter] Roth, "Marcion's Gospel and Luke."

So, he is saying that Marcion used A written gospel, one of many floating around in that time (presumably early 1st century CE), and merely because that particular written gospel was familiar to him in Pontus where he lived. It was written anonymously, as were all the others as well. The particular written gospel he used was related to, but not the same as, the one orthodox Christians later named "According to Luke." So, it was a "proto Luke," a source used by the final editor of canonical Luke. FWIW, BeDuhn does not ever say that Marcion made any attempt to adapt the text to his beliefs. For every claimed omission, he can cite similar passages where similar material was left intact.

In my mind, that means that Marcion, in his Antitheses, picked out those passages where he felt Jesus's real father was being reflected, from a mass of things that had been interpolated into the written Gospels (although he was primarily thinking of Matthew and the proto-Luke he used, as Luke had not yet been finalized).

The author of the Pseudo-Clementine literature had developed a similar system to discern true utterances of God in scriptures from later additions by the Jewish sages, based on his own pseudo-Ebionite, not Marcionite, philosophical POV. To all these ancient exegetes, IT WAS CLEAR AS FREAKIN DAY. Only idiots ands the damned would not see it pop right out of the surrounding text. Duh!

DCH

[Stephan Huller]

Here is a summary of Raschke's work from the last century:

And now arises the question, If that gospel was current as canonical in Tertullian's and Irenaeus's day, how came they to speak of Marcion's elision of the Birth Stories without noting that they are elided in Mark, to comment on the brevity of Marcion's gospel when Mark's was less than half as long as Luke's, or to denounce Marcion for leaving out much of the Lucan record of the Lord's teaching when Mark did the same? Herr Raschke argues (p. 34) that Irenaeus was so completely under the fixed idea of a mutilation of Luke that he could not see the identity of Marcion's gospel with the canonical Mark. This is a difficult conception. As a matter of fact, Irenaeus (III, xi, 8), putting his mystical thesis that the gospels must be four, neither more nor less, cites Mark as beginning in the manner of our text, and making " a compendious and cursory narrative." That is in effect what he denounces Marcion for doing. The question thus insistently arises whether the existing text of Irenaeus, a Latin translation made at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, represents what Irenaeus wrote in the second. If it does, Raschke's solution must stand, for the inconsistency of the attitude in the existing treatise is gross. That Marcion had before him a primitive compilation of miracle stories, ascribed to Mark, is quite conceivable; but our Mark is not the disorderly thing described by Papias; and apart from the passage cited there is nothing, I think, in Irenaeus to show any familiarity with our text. If he had a copy before him, how could he endorse it while denouncing Marcion? The same question arises in regard to the whole polemic of Tertullian against Marcion [John M Robertson Jesus and Judas p 226]

Herr Raschke comments, that description just fits Mark. When we come to the specific charges of mutilation, the surmise is confirmed. Epiphanius, for instance, complains that Marcion's gospel mutilates the text about Jonah, saying merely that " no sign will be given," and lacks the mention of Nineveh and the Queen of the South and Solomon. But all this applies to our gospel of Mark! As Herr Raschke puts it, Epiphanius was commenting on the text of Mark. When yet other patristic charges of mutilation against Marcion are found to impinge on Mark, and further charges of adding to Luke are likewise found applicable to Mark, the inference, Marcion's gospel = Mark, becomes so urgent that only a new body of evidence, accounting for these strange coincidences, can repel it. [ibid 229]

[Stephan Huller]

The idea that the Marcionite gospel was according to Mark is referenced in the Philosophumena (wrongly identified as Hippolytus's Refutation) Book 7 chapter 18. It is said to be a longer edition of canonical Mark, i.e. Mark with 'mystical' or things which the author associates with Pythagorean mysticism, added to it.

[Blood]

These theories don't make the situation any clearer. If "texts floating around" were transformed into the Euangelion, which included Lukan pericopes, then all arguments based on Markan Priority are moot, aren't they? Canonical Mark could then be a redaction of Luke. How could that be possible? And it still doesn't answer the burning question, why didn't Marcion include Paul in his gospel?

[Stephan Huller]

And it still doesn't answer the burning question, why didn't Marcion include Paul in his gospel?

I thought I gave you the obvious parallel. For the same reason that Mark doesn't include himself in the gospel. The parallel with a development out of 'the gospel of Peter' is here. Just as the heretics said that 'the apostle' (our 'Paul') added to a pre-existent 'gospel of Peter' our tradition (Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian etc) speak of Mark developing an original gospel of Peter and adding to it (Clement). No Mark in the gospel, no Paul in the gospel in either case. Why so? I don't know. But it is a little like saying, 'why didn't your Mom add maple syrup to her boneless ham?' Artistic creation isn't exactly formulaic or doesn't follow a set pattern. I could give you a number of 'maybes' or 'perhapses.' But the fact that both Mark and Paul are said to have added to Peter's original 'gospel' to make it 'perfect' but didn't add reference to themselves is enough I think.

For the purpose of scoffing at some ignorance in the Apostles, the heretics bring forward the point that Peter and his companions were blamed by Paul. "Something therefore," say they, "was lacking in them." They say this in order to build up that other contention of theirs, that a fuller knowledge might afterwards have come to them, such as came to Paul who blamed his predecessors [Praescript 24]

Yet they must shew from the instance adduced of Peter being blamed by Paul that another form of Gospel was introduced by Paul beside that which Peter and the rest had previously put forth. [ibid]

But although Paul was caught up as far as the third heaven, and when brought into paradise heard certain things there, yet these revelations cannot be thought to be such as would render him more qualified to teach another doctrine, since their very nature was such that they could not be communicated to any human being. But if that unknown revelation did leak out and become known to some one, and if any heresy affirms that it is a follower of that revelation, then either Paul is guilty of having betrayed his secret, or some one else must be shewn to have been subsequently caught up into paradise to whom permission was given to speak out what Paul was not allowed to whisper.

BUT, as we have said, the same madness is seen when they allow indeed that the Apostles were not ignorant of anything nor preached different doctrines, yet will have it that they did not reveal all things to all persons, but committed some things openly to all, and others secretly to a few; basing this assertion on the fact that Paul used this expression to Timothy, "O Timothy, guard the deposit"; and again, "Keep the good deposit." What was this "deposit" of so secret a nature as to be reckoned to belong to another doctrine ? [ibid]

Nor, again, can his wish that he should "commit these things to faithful men who would be fit to teach others also" be construed into a proof of there being some secret gospel. For, when he says "these things," he refers to the things of which he is writing at the moment. In reference, however, to occult subjects, he would have called them, as being absent, those things, not these things, to one who had a joint knowledge of them with himself. [Sed nec quia uoluit illum haec fidelibus hominibus demandare, qui idonei sint et alios docere, id quoque ad argumentum occulti alicuius euangelii interpretandum est. Nam cum dicit haec, de eis dicit de quibus in praesenti scribebat; de occultis autem, ut de absentibus apud conscientiam, non haec sed illa dixisset].

Compare with Clement of Alexandria's many statements about Mark's development from Peter especially:

As for Mark, then, during Peter`s stay in Rome he wrote an account of the Lord`s doings, not, however, declaring all of them, nor yet hinting at the secret ones, but selecting what he thought most useful for increasing the faith of those who were being instructed. But when Peter died a martyr, Mark came over to Alexandria, bringing both his own notes and those of Peter, from which he transferred to his former books the things suitable to whatever makes for progress toward knowledge. Thus he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected. Nevertheless, he yet did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but to the stories already written he added yet others and, moreover, brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue , lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prepared matters, neither grudgingly nor incautionously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initated into the great mysteries.