The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

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Giuseppe
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The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

I think that the best evidence that Marcion was the forger and not Luke is just the deliberately anti-gnostic nature of all the synoptic tradition. Marcion couldn't have never invented episodes as Barabbas, as Judas, as the Nazareth's episode, as the titulum crucis, as the carpenter's episode, the Parable of Wineskins etc. Just because all of that was deliberately designed against the Gnostics as polemical target, which fact alone means that the first Gospel, Mark, was written in a time where the Gnostic threat was really strong there out (probably, from 120 CE).

Really, to think otherwise produces more difficulties than the contrary. There was never something as a "pure Gnostic gospel" since the essential function of any Gospel episode was to attack the Gnostics.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

The same Messianic Secret was the apology, in Mark, to explain away the previous Gnostic propaganda that only the Son of an alien God can descend on the archontic territory without being recognized by the evil demons.

As the anti-Gnostic markan strategy goes: If also the Jewish Messiah is able of a such secrecy, and even in the same Judea, even in the his same hometown (!) then the Gnostics can't claim the secrecy of their Christ as the his more intimate feature in opposition to the Jewish Messiah. Even if traces of the fact that that same secrecy (worth of a robber!) was really the intimate feature of the gnostic Christ survive behind the his same parody in Mark: the robber "Bar-Abbas", Son of Father.

So there are not doubts: Jesus was euhemerized by "Mark" for anti-Gnostic reasons.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
lsayre
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by lsayre »

What if Marcion was not a gnostic?
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

lsayre wrote: Sun Jul 08, 2018 10:16 am What if Marcion was not a gnostic?
according to Bob Price, he was a proto-Catholic insofar he attempted a first form of institutionalization of the Church. And surely my suspicion about his view of YHWH as "just but not cruel judge" is a moderation of the most radical Gnostic portrait of him as cruel and crazy.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
lsayre
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by lsayre »

Perhaps the gnostics who came after him blew Marcion's conceptions (such as YHVH being "just but not cruel") right out of the water with their radical later embellishments and elaborate systems. But what the gnostics might have done later has no bearing upon Marcion.

Merely by the act of writing it (presuming of course that he did so), Marcion falsified what some believe to be a proto-Luke. All of the Gospels and letters and apocalyptic literature that were later Canonized (as well as all of the pseudo and apocryphal literature, and all of the OT as well) is fiction.
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

Curiously, the Mythicist Alvar Ellegard had already advanced the same my hypothesis to explain the Earliest Gospel:

Hoffman 1984, against the prevalent views of modern theologians, holds that Marcion propagated his 'radicalised' version of Paul before c. AD 100, and thus before the canonical Gospels, which may have been written as a reaction to Marcion. That evidently agrees well with my hypothesis.

(Jesus - One Hundred Years Before Christ, p. 305-306, n. 7, my bold)

But note the difference: I would have no need of the single individual Marcion to explain the Gospel of Mark as an anti-Gnostic allegory. I infer from the anti-Gnostic episodes in Mark that Mark was written only after that the first Gnostic preachers started to propagate their Christ son of an alien and unknown God, one different from the god of the Jews. While the man Marcion came after Mark.

Consequently, we can only place Mark in the second century CE.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
lsayre
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by lsayre »

I do believe that the Letters of Ignatius were written in response to, and to counter the threat of Marcion.
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

lsayre wrote: Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:38 am I do believe that the Letters of Ignatius were written in response to, and to counter the threat of Marcion.
What I want to say is that we should stop to talk about Marcion as if only the particular Gnostic sect of a Gnostic Christian had provoked all that answer by the Judaizers and proto-Catholics. Really, Marcion adopted in the his Gospel what previous Gospels had invented deliberately against the Gnostics (for examples, Judas or Barabbas or Nazaret or the Titulum crucis).

So the Jewish Christian Mark euhemerized Jesus when he saw that the first Gentile Gnostics were successfully de-ethnicizing Paul. This means that Mark could be written only when the gnostics were a full reality, i.e. only in the second century. So who dates GMark otherwise is strongly wrong.

Marcion was a reaction against Mark just as Mark was a reaction against the Gnostics (being the first usurpers of the legacy of the Jew Paul). It is wrong to think that Mark's target are only the jewish Pillars. The real target of Mark were the Gnostics.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun Jul 08, 2018 6:13 am As the anti-Gnostic markan strategy goes: If also the Jewish Messiah is able of a such secrecy, and even in the same Judea, even in the his same hometown (!) then the Gnostics can't claim the secrecy of their Christ as the his more intimate feature in opposition to the Jewish Messiah.
and here it is also explained why the Mark's Jesus had to be not recognized even by the his same original historical jewish Pillars: a davidic Jesus who wasn't recognized even by the his same family and disciples is the only davidic Jesus who could be able to rival against the growing Gnostic propaganda behind the de-ethnicized Paul into their same camp: the secret identity of the Son in the eyes of the ruler of this world (=the Jewish god).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: The best evidence that Marcion falsified Luke

Post by Giuseppe »

So really "Mark" (as member of the his Jewish community) wasn't really "against" the Pillars, even if the need of a Jewish Messianic Secret moved him to portray negatively the Pillars. Insofar Jesus was not recognized by the Pillars, the point is made that Jesus came among the Pillars, against the Gnostics who denied that the Son came in the his own world.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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