Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posteriority?

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Ben C. Smith »

andrewcriddle wrote:Marcion was required as part of his agenda to delete the first few chapters of Luke from his gospel and disconnect it from Acts. This would automatically remove the hints of authorship which we find in canonical Luke-Acts.
That would remove the prefaces, true enough, but why not retain the name of Luke, though? From the way Tertullian writes about it, it seems that the Marcionites themselves treated the text as anonymous. He contrasts the Marcionite gospel with his own preferred gospels in this respect, which suggests that not even the title had an author attached by name. Marcion was already accusing, rightly or wrongly, the church of having forged whole passages and adding them to the gospel; what was it, do you think, about the name attached to the gospel that created a line he would not cross? What is the difference between claiming that somebody added stuff to the anonymous gospel, and that somebody added stuff, including a still anonymous preface, to the gospel of Luke?

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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by maryhelena »

DCHindley wrote:
At that point, none of the canonical gospels were considered "scripture", and a reader/hearer could feel that some facts in them could be wrong, that is, if s/he were even aware of this fact.

Consequently, the lack of the husband's name in gLuke does not prove borrowing from Josephus' Antiquities, but only that s/he may have thought the name was different than the Philip of Mark/Matthew. Alternately, the author of gLuke could have been aware of traditions in which the husband of this Herodias had a different name.

All we can say for sure is that s/he just wasn't sure it was Philip.

:goodmorning:
Sure, one can make many assumptions...

So - the writer/writers of gLuke decided that the authors of gMark and gMatthew had got their Herodian history wrong in regard to a husband of Herodias? gMark and gMatthew telling their Herodias and Philip marriage story for x number of years without anyone throwing the history book at them? Only with the arrival of Antiquities, around 93/94 c.e., could the Herodian history of gMark and gMatthew be questioned. Or, contrary, of course, the Herodian history of Josephus could be questioned...

Actually, the far more interesting question is not why did gLuke drop the mention of Philip being a husband of Herodias - but why did Josephus write that it was a daughter of Herodias that was married to Philip?

Nikos Kokkinos has questioned the Herodian history given by Josephus in Antiquities. Kokkinos gives Herodias three marriages. Herod III, Philip and Antipas. Thereby rejecting the Antiquities story about the daughter of Herodias, Salome, being married to Philip.
  • Nikos Kokkinos: The Herodian Dynasty.


    The stubborn insistence of many theologians on referring to Herod III as 'Herod-Philip' is without any value. No such person existed - he is an illusion created to account for an apparent contradiction between the Synoptic Gospels and Josephus. The reference to 'Philip' in Mark, Matthew and Luke is inevitably to Philip the Tetrarch. (page 223).

    According to Ant.18.137, Philip married Salome III. But this does not seem to be right. For him to able do that he should have stayed celibate up to the age of at least 40 - uniquely among the Herods. (Salome could not have married before c. CE 13). From other evidence we may actually deduce that Philip's wife (during the first three decades of the Christian Era) was Salome III's mother, Herodias I, who had divorced her first husband, Herod III, and later also resorted to marrying Antipas after the death of Philip. (page 237).
The facts as we have them still stand. gMark and gMatthew have Herodias married to Philip - as does material in Slavonic Josephus. Antiquities tells a different story about Herodias. gLuke chose to drop the mention of Philip in connection to Herodias. Thus allowing Antiquities to influence his 'update' of the gMark and gMatthew Herodias and Philip story: Failure to name the brother from whom Herod Antipas took Herodias....Prior to Antiquities there would be no reason for the writer/writers of gLuke to fail to follow gMark and gMatthew in their Herodian history.
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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

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Ben C. Smith wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:Marcion was required as part of his agenda to delete the first few chapters of Luke from his gospel and disconnect it from Acts. This would automatically remove the hints of authorship which we find in canonical Luke-Acts.
That would remove the prefaces, true enough, but why not retain the name of Luke, though? From the way Tertullian writes about it, it seems that the Marcionites themselves treated the text as anonymous. He contrasts the Marcionite gospel with his own preferred gospels in this respect, which suggests that not even the title had an author attached by name. Marcion was already accusing, rightly or wrongly, the church of having forged whole passages and adding them to the gospel; what was it, do you think, about the name attached to the gospel that created a line he would not cross? What is the difference between claiming that somebody added stuff to the anonymous gospel, and that somebody added stuff, including a still anonymous preface, to the gospel of Luke?

Ben.
IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.

It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.

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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Bernard Muller »

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1770&start=70#p39650
On the above, I want to add up that the version of Judas' death from Papias shows no knowledge of Matthew's version.

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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Ben C. Smith »

andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.

It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.
Ah, I see what you are saying now. So you would say that the (eventually) canonical version got named after Luke only after Marcion had adopted it as an anonymous gospel and taken his shears to it.

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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Secret Alias »

In other words he's willing to accept that Marcion more faithfully preserved the anonymous character of the text but still nevertheless altered the text substantively whereas the orthodox merely added the title. Hmmm. One would think under that scenario the prologue become more problematic (the Marcionites couldn't have thought the text was written by god/Christ). The prologue necessarily suppose the author wasn't writing anonymously either. So it can't be just the title at issue. It's the title and the prologue. It seems Andrew's making a rather desperate and unlikely defense of Lukan primacy here. You can't have it both ways. Both parties then altered the text and how do you fairly choose between them? The only reason Andrew sides with Lukan primacy is because he believes in the tradition associated with it. There's no other plausible for siding with one dirty pig (in this scenario) over the other
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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by John2 »

For me the prologue and Acts are part of the "Josephan structure" of Luke, so if Marcion removed them then he must have been unaware of this structure and therefore not the original author. This is not to say that the orthodox did not also tamper with the original text, though they appear to have retained more of it, at least.
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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Adam »

From the point of view of the priority of Luke-Acts.
Marcion was required as part of his agenda to delete the first few chapters of Luke from his gospel and disconnect it from Acts. This would automatically remove the hints of authorship which we find in canonical Luke-Acts.
Andrew Criddle
Here again I part company with my orthodox friend in this forum.
As you are aware, Andrew (even though you have refused any comment upon it),
My Thesis is that there are seven written eyewitness accounts included in (but edited and redacted later) in the four gospels.
Your point does not fit in. No eyewitness wrote about the Annunciation to Mary, the Birth of Jesus, the Temple visit, nor the genealogies. Thus by my Thesis these were added later by someone who was not an eyewitness. And everyone agrees, because at best if Luke (or whomever) contacted the Virgin Mary, still her eyewitness account (if it was directly from her) was not WRITTEN by an eyewitness.
So I oppose you on this point as well now. You take tradition over biblical evidence.
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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by andrewcriddle »

Ben C. Smith wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.

It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.
Ah, I see what you are saying now. So you would say that the (eventually) canonical version got named after Luke only after Marcion had adopted it as an anonymous gospel and taken his shears to it.

Ben.
This may be of interest reception of luke

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Re: Alternating Marcionite and synoptic priority & posterior

Post by Ben C. Smith »

andrewcriddle wrote:
Ben C. Smith wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:IMHO the original version of Luke-Acts was anonymous.

It may have been attributed to Luke on the basis of the "we" passages in Acts and the mentions of Luke in Paul's epistles.
Ah, I see what you are saying now. So you would say that the (eventually) canonical version got named after Luke only after Marcion had adopted it as an anonymous gospel and taken his shears to it.

Ben.
This may be of interest reception of luke
Thanks. I have put that book on my list to check out.
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