Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

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Stuart
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by Stuart »

A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by hakeem »

Stuart wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:37 pm A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
What you say seems quite implausible. Why would a redactor change the phrase "kingdom of heaven" to kingdom of god in gLuke when gMatthew in the same NT Canon mentions both phrases? In fact, in gMatthew the phrase "kingdom of heaven" is found over 30 times and "kingdom of God" only about five times.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

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Stuart wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:37 pm A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
Only Matthew speaks of kingdom of the heavens, exactly like Thomas. Although Matthew does speak of kingdom of God as well, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Five times does Matthew speak of kingdom of God, making him a perfect turning point.
And no one in the entire NT ever speaks of kingdom of the heavens, not even of kingdom of heaven (singular) even though all bible translations have the latter, in their eager to let dogma prevail over literal text
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by gryan »

mlinssen wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:23 pm
Stuart wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:37 pm A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
Only Matthew speaks of kingdom of the heavens, exactly like Thomas. Although Matthew does speak of kingdom of God as well, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Five times does Matthew speak of kingdom of God, making him a perfect turning point.
And no one in the entire NT ever speaks of kingdom of the heavens, not even of kingdom of heaven (singular) even though all bible translations have the latter, in their eager to let dogma prevail over literal text
I had not known that!

I had however taken note of Paul's "third heaven" --implicitly the third of multiple "heavens"--which, arguably, might be "echoed" in Hebrews (14:4): ..."we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus..."

I would assume the community of scribes and mystics that produced GMatthew was steeped in the writings of Paul/Hebrews, but was selective in what they appropriated, since they were not in love with much of what Paul said about the law and the supposed power "made perfect weakness." Because what is that but an "infirmity" in need of a cure: "This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases (Mtt 8:17)” "Infirmity" in their view, was not something to boast about! They did, however, have compassion for the "sick," thus Matt 25--"I was sick and you cared for me."
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by Stuart »

hakeem wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 5:57 pm
Stuart wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:37 pm A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
What you say seems quite implausible. Why would a redactor change the phrase "kingdom of heaven" to kingdom of god in gLuke when gMatthew in the same NT Canon mentions both phrases? In fact, in gMatthew the phrase "kingdom of heaven" is found over 30 times and "kingdom of God" only about five times.
There are a few pieces of evidence for the Lukan redactor to have changed kingdom of heaven to kingdom of God in Luke 6:20.

The first piece of evidence is Matthew 5:3 has kingdom of heave, and it was copied from Luke 6:20, with a small expansion from "poor" to "poor in spirit" (this has significance, and I'll cover that later). The second piece of evidence is Tertullian AM 4.14.13 which quotes the Marcionite Luke 6:20 reading "kingdom of heaven." Then there is trace textual evidence of this reading found in miniscules from three different text types, f1 (118), f13 (69) and 1582 of Caeserean, 1424 of Byzantium, 157 of Alexandrian. This suggests an ancient source of the variant before text types formed, with Matthew and Marcion as witnesses. This is very strong evidence of this reading at one time being rather common.

Often copiest would likely have corrected this reading of heaven in this well known beatitude to the more common reading of God when encountering it. So over the centuries it gradually vanished from the textual record, just a few manuscripts retaining it.

As for why this might have originally read "heaven", one only needs to look at Luke 6:23 for context, where the reward of the persecuted is "great in heaven." Both rewards are thus in heaven.

It's a bit more complicated to explain the need for Luke to change the Marcionite reading. The first reason might have been theological, to make it clear that these shall inherit the kingdom of God which is preached, in order to make clear that it is not some different heaven than that of the creator which the Marcionites and many Gnostics claimed. A second more mundane possibility is that the particular Marcionite text before Luke's author already had the variant reading "kingdom of God" and he simply used that. Note, it's very clear the Marcionite texts were as full of errors as the Catholic texts, as the same hand copying process which created the same types of errors. A Marcionite scribe might well have changed it to conform to other verses --which are attested in Marcion-- to read kingdom of God. If it's the latter case then no explanation is required. But it does seem certain Matthew must have had "kingdom of heaven" in the text before him.

Now I did not want to make the argument because we have not yet come to the demonstrate that Matthew indeed copied an early version of Luke in making his Beatitudes. It's a case of not wanting to put the cart before the horse.

I am working on the next set of posts on chapter five. I don't like my blog presentation, so I will be doing it a bit differently. I am going to focus on the five pairs of OT and NT comparisons found in Matthew that trace to the Marcionite antithesis. But I need to have a set up post or two first, which I'm working on now.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

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gryan wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:55 pm
mlinssen wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:23 pm
Stuart wrote: Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:37 pm A note for completeness.

I left out my commentary on the theological difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven. I am of the opinion that the Catholic redactor of Luke changed Heaven to God. It seems quite possible Marcionite blessing had Kingdom of Heaven agreeing with the other synoptic gospels, which points to that being what the common source had. But this is not a dead certainty, open for debate, so I did not include it in my commentary above on Matthew 5:8.
Only Matthew speaks of kingdom of the heavens, exactly like Thomas. Although Matthew does speak of kingdom of God as well, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Five times does Matthew speak of kingdom of God, making him a perfect turning point.
And no one in the entire NT ever speaks of kingdom of the heavens, not even of kingdom of heaven (singular) even though all bible translations have the latter, in their eager to let dogma prevail over literal text
I had not known that!

I had however taken note of Paul's "third heaven" --implicitly the third of multiple "heavens"--which, arguably, might be "echoed" in Hebrews (14:4): ..."we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus..."

I would assume the community of scribes and mystics that produced GMatthew was steeped in the writings of Paul/Hebrews, but was selective in what they appropriated, since they were not in love with much of what Paul said about the law and the supposed power "made perfect weakness." Because what is that but an "infirmity" in need of a cure: "This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases (Mtt 8:17)” "Infirmity" in their view, was not something to boast about! They did, however, have compassion for the "sick," thus Matt 25--"I was sick and you cared for me."
The infirmity, yes. I started looking for that in Thomas at some point, when it became clear to me that he couldn't possibly have come after the NT, but all I could find was logion 14's "When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them", which was a very weak and unique example anything related to sickness.
What I didn't know then was that logion 74 got severely obscured by all translators, staring from Doresse, who was determined to see Gnosticism in everything he looked at including Thomas:

78 [74]. He said: "Lord, many are round the opening but nobody in the well!"

It turns out that they changed 2 nouns to different nouns, for the sole reason that the article preceding them is of the opposite gender

The real translation of logion 74 is

74 said he : oh slaveowner there-be many of the going-round within the(F) separation there-is-not anyone However in the(F) sickness

Many people struggle with separation yet no one considers himself to be sick - that is my interpretation.
It is the core message in Thomas and perfectly in line with non duality, and Thomas is full of hints to separation as well, with the verb "split", ⲡⲱϩ, abundantly present five times, twice in the logion of the wine and the garment: if you apply old to new, it will split, and that is exactly what happens, what we all do
Last edited by mlinssen on Sat Feb 27, 2021 1:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

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Agreed.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by mlinssen »

Stuart wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 12:05 am There are a few pieces of evidence for the Lukan redactor to have changed kingdom of heaven to kingdom of God in Luke 6:20.

The first piece of evidence is Matthew 5:3 has kingdom of heave, and it was copied from Luke 6:20, with a small expansion from "poor" to "poor in spirit" (this has significance, and I'll cover that later). The second piece of evidence is Tertullian AM 4.14.13 which quotes the Marcionite Luke 6:20 reading "kingdom of heaven." Then there is trace textual evidence of this reading found in miniscules from three different text types, f1 (118), f13 (69) and 1582 of Caeserean, 1424 of Byzantium, 157 of Alexandrian. This suggests an ancient source of the variant before text types formed, with Matthew and Marcion as witnesses. This is very strong evidence of this reading at one time being rather common.

I am working on the next set of posts on chapter five. I don't like my blog presentation, so I will be doing it a bit differently. I am going to focus on the five pairs of OT and NT comparisons found in Matthew that trace to the Marcionite antithesis. But I need to have a set up post or two first, which I'm working on now.
I wouldn't bother, Stuart, trying to argue why Luke allegedly changed one instance of "kingdom".
Observe viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Luke has 32 occurrences of "kingdom of", and 100% of those occurrences speaks of "kingdom of God".
It is futile to argue that he changed one instance of those, you'd better come up with a theological argument that explains them all
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by Stuart »

mlinssen wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 1:03 am
I wouldn't bother, Stuart, trying to argue why Luke allegedly changed one instance of "kingdom".
Observe viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7674&p=118422&hilit ... nt#p118422

Luke has 32 occurrences of "kingdom of", and 100% of those occurrences speaks of "kingdom of God".
It is futile to argue that he changed one instance of those, you'd better come up with a theological argument that explains them all
It's only the one instance. The others, which were in Marcion are attested as kingdom of God. But as I said it's minor. The textual evidence suggests 6:20 may have read "heaven" in the Marcionite text, or at least that the variant was one present in the Marcionite vorlage, and a copy with that variant was before Tertullian. t's also possible Tertullian had a "senior moment" and transferred the Matthew reading into his commentary.

But you are correct, all instances in Luke and Mark read God, and all instances in Matthew read heaven.

As I think about the above, I have to come to the conclusion that "heaven" is most probably a case where a variant reading by random chance was in the copy before Tertullian, nothing more. Some early copiest must have changed it to conform Luke 6:20 to 6:23 (Matthew doesn't exist yet, the Marcionites have not yet left).

Matthew on the other hand must have had a theological reason to use heaven. Almost certainly the prototype gospel he used as a base always had kingdom of God. So the theological reason for a change lies with Matthew's sectarianism.
Last edited by Stuart on Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

Post by mlinssen »

Stuart wrote: Sat Feb 27, 2021 1:37 am Matthew on the other hand must have had a theological reason to use heaven. Almost certainly the prototype gospel he used as a base always had kingdom of God. So the theological reason for a change lies with Matthew's sectarianism.
Agreed, and the fact that he also has 5 kingdoms of God makes him a pivotal point.
Do note that he always and only uses the plural, combined with the definite article: kingdom of the heavens

I can see and understand the dogmatic viewpoint for the Church wanting to change that into a singular heaven, but that really is not what it says in the text. It is mind boggling why Matthew would take kingdom of God and change it into kingdom of the heavens, but that (very) highly likely is what he did
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