Paul's letters all derived from Marcion?

[MrMacSon]

... Trobisch and others, including Gamble, deduce the existence of Pauline collections which were ordered by descending word count:

1. The Hauptbriefe edition: just Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians.
2. The Seven Churches edition: the Hauptbriefe expanded by the addition of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 & 2 Thessalonians.
3. The Thirteen Letter edition: the Seven Churches edition expanded by letters to individuals: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.

fwiw, Wikipedia has

German scholar Ferdinand Christian Baur accepted only four of the letters bearing Paul's name as genuine, which he called the Hauptebriefe (Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Galatians). Hilgenfeld (1875) and H.J. Holtzmann (1885) accepted the seven letters listed above, adding Philemon, 1 Thessalonians, and Philippians. Few scholars have argued against this list of seven epistles, which all share common themes, emphasis, vocabulary and style. They also exhibit a uniformity of doctrine concerning the Mosaic Law, Christ, and faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorshi ... d_epistles

[Ben C. Smith]

In discussions of the Marcionite order of Pauline epistles, one will often encounter statements about the so called Catalogus Sinaiticus. Having finally decided to track it down for myself today, here is the link: https://archive.org/details/catalogueof ... 4/mode/2up. It is part of a Syriac manuscript from Sinai which lists the names of the 70 apostles and a stichometry of the Old and New Testaments under the name of Irenaeus. The first four Pauline epistles are Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Romans, in that order. Hebrews follows these, after which come Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians (twice!), and 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Then come the Pastorals and Philemon, except that 1 Timothy is missing (probably just an oversight, as the list evinces signs of corruption and scribal mishap). Interesting how the blocks corresponding to the collections I outlined above are still evident:

Galatians
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Romans
Hebrews
Colossians
Ephesians
Philippians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
2 Timothy
Titus
Philemon

Did the Syriac church really arrange this stretch of their canonical, orthodox books after the Marcionite fashion? Rather, it seems easier to suppose, with BeDuhn and Dahl and many others, that the Syriac church responsible for this arrangement was innocent of it being Marcionite in origin, a state of affairs more compatible with Marcion having adopted a previously existing order of epistles than with Marcion being the sole originator of this order of epistles.

[rgprice]

Did the Syriac church really arrange this stretch of their canonical, orthodox books after the Marcionite fashion? Rather, it seems easier to suppose, with BeDuhn and Dahl and many others, that the Syriac church responsible for this arrangement was innocent of it being Marcionite in origin, a state of affairs more compatible with Marcion having adopted a previously existing order of epistles than with Marcion being the sole originator of this order of epistles.

Firstly, the Catalogus Sinaiticus is from the fourth century, so quite late.

Secondly, that it uses a similar order doesn't necessarily say anything about dependency, because Marcion's arrangement presumably has a logic to its order, thus anyone using that logic would arrive at the same order. The logic of the Marcionite collection was apparently to arrange the letters by presumed date of authorship. Thus anyone who endeavored to arrange them by date of authorship would arrive at that order.

Clearly the Syriac church had gotten letters from the orthodox group, as they have Ephesians instead of Laodiceans. I don't know if the contents have been compared. Did they have a 14 chapter or 16 chapter version of Romans? It looks from a brief glance that they had 16 chapters, with a minor difference.

So yes, its quite possible that they used the orthodox collection, but ordered by date of assumed authorship.

[Ben C. Smith]

Did the Syriac church really arrange this stretch of their canonical, orthodox books after the Marcionite fashion? Rather, it seems easier to suppose, with BeDuhn and Dahl and many others, that the Syriac church responsible for this arrangement was innocent of it being Marcionite in origin, a state of affairs more compatible with Marcion having adopted a previously existing order of epistles than with Marcion being the sole originator of this order of epistles.

Firstly, the Catalogus Sinaiticus is from the fourth century, so quite late.

Secondly, that it uses a similar order doesn't necessarily say anything about dependency, because Marcion's arrangement presumably has a logic to its order, thus anyone using that logic would arrive at the same order. The logic of the Marcionite collection was apparently to arrange the letters by presumed date of authorship. Thus anyone who endeavored to arrange them by date of authorship would arrive at that order.

Totally false. I do not think you thought this one through.

[Secret Alias]

The ordering at the core of Epiphanius's account is different again. Not when Epiphanius manipulates the data but the origin "eyewitness " (from Basil?)

[hakeem]

It appears that most posters here don't know that Tertullian's "Against Marcion" is really from an unknown source. It is virtually impossible to determine which version of "Against Marcion" is in circulation since the very preface of the existing copy claims there are at least three versions in circulation.

Against Marcion 1

Whatever in times past we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of.

It is a new work which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. My original tract, as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller treatise.

This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the fraud of a person who was then a brother, but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it.

The necessity thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise.

This present text, therefore, of my work — which is the third as superseding the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the third — renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.

Is this the first, second or third version?

Please, tell me what did Tertullian write about Marcion before this version?

The fact is that Tertullian's "Against Marcion" was unknown by Christian writers up to at least the start of the 5th century.

Look at Eusebius' Church History.

Church History supposedly written around c 325 CE mentions 10 Christians who wrote against Marcion--not once did it claim Tertullian wrote against Marcion.

Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Dionysius, Theophilus, Philip, Modestus, Bardesanes, Rhodo and Militades all wrote against Marcion in Eusebius' "Church History". [See Church History bk 4, 5 and 6]

Look at "De Viris Illustribus" supposedly written about c 395 CE by Jerome. This writings also mentions those who wrote Against Marcion and again Tertullian is missing.

In De Viris Illustribus -- Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Theophilus, Philip, Modestus, Bardesanes and Rhodo are claimed to have written against Marcion but not Tertullian.

Jerome claimed that Tertullian became a heretic [a Montanist] who wrote Against the Church.

Jerome's DeViris Illustribus"

Of his fine oratorical genius, Tertullian, in the seven books which he wrote against the church on behalf of Montanus, satirically says that he was considered a prophet by many of us.

Jerome's DVI 40

Tertullian added to the six volumes which he wrote On ecstasy against the church a seventh, directed especially against Apollonius

Jerome's DVI 53

He[Tertullian] composed, moreover, directly against the church, volumes: On modesty, On persecution, On fasts, On monogamy, six books On ecstasy, and a seventh which he wrote Against Apollonius.

There is no corroborative evidence that Tertullian wrote against Marcion up to at least the 5th century and even worse multiple Christian writings do not support the claims about Marcion found in "Against Marcion" attributed to Tertullian.

Tertullian was a Montanist who wrote directly against the Church.

[Ben C. Smith]

The Syriac order of Pauline epistles is supported by Ephrem, who was not commenting on the Apostolicon:

Jason BeDuhn, The First New Testament, page 207, footnote on page 358:

The discovery of non-Marcionite collections of Paul with Galatians first has presented an opportunity to look into other possible reasons for the “Marcionite” order. With regard at least to the first several letters, we find the same order in a list of New Testament books preserved in a book from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, the so-called Catalogus Sinaiticus (also referred to as the Kanon Sinaiticus), as well as in the original sequence of a commentary on Paul’s letters written in the fourth century by Ephrem Syrus.* A third example comes from a set of prologues to Paul’s letters found in catholic Latin manuscripts, whose wording reveals an original order identical to the Apostolikon; for that reason, some researchers have proposed that they actually derive from the Apostolikon itself, and are referred to as the “Marcionite Prologues.” Prompted by this evidence of a wider circulation of a Galatians-first Pauline corpus, researchers have convincingly argued that such a sequence represents an attempt to arrange the letters in chronological order. Marcion’s imagined ideological motives for the sequence of the Apostolikon therefore evaporate, and it begins to appear that he simply received and transmitted an order already in place before him.

* Ephrem Syrus, Commentarii in Epistolas d. Pauli. The original order was detected by Harris, Four Lectures, 21–22, and accepted by Zahn, “Das Neue Testament Theodors von Mopsuestia,” 798–99. Harris noted a reference at the beginning of the commentary on Romans to previous discussions of Galatians and Corinthians (in that order), and at the beginning of that on Hebrews to prior discussion of Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, etc. (quum nec in epistolis scriptis ad Galatos, ad Corinthios, et ad proximos quos viderat, id fecerit, neque in epistolis ad Romanos datis, et ad caeteros quos non viderat, tale quoddam egerit; note that Ephrem’s commentary includes Hebrews and the Pastorals, as well as 3 Corinthians, but not Philemon). The possibility that Ephrem’s commentary was actually written on the Apostolikon was disproven by Frede, Altlateinische Paulus-Handschriften, 167–68, who found none of the identifying omissions of the Apostolikon in Ephrem’s commentary, even though the latter does contain several unique readings in common with the text of the Apostolikon.

[Aleph One]

D. Roth mentions a couple "recent" attempts at reconstructing Marcion's Apostolikon from available evidence in his book on the text of Marcion's gospel (2015):

In recognition of this lacuna, recent monographs arising from doctoral dissertations have focused on critically establishing Marcion’s Apostolikon and have brought much light to this “half” of Marcion’s canon.(9)

(9) Cf. especially Ulrich Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe (antf 25; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995). An attempt to reconstruct part of the pre-Marcion Pauline text was set forth in John J. Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion (cbqms 21; Washington, d.c.: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1989).

Perhaps if you have access to such works and/or speak German this will help your search (which unfortunately for me, it doesn't).

[Secret Alias]

It's all bullshit

[hakeem]

The Syriac order of Pauline epistles is supported by Ephrem, who was not commenting on the Apostolicon:

The multiple variations in the order for the Epistles only show that Christian writers had no idea when the Epistles were written and who actually wrote them.

The fact that Christian writers were inventing authors and date of writing for their own Canon must mean that they were also making false claims about the content, authorship and date of writing for supposed heretics.