Hey I'm wondering if anyone knows off-hand if there is any "Special gMatt" (as in material only in gMatt, and not in gLuke or gMark) passages attested as being in Marcion's gospel? Or gMark+gMatt material (that is found in gMarcion) that is NOT in gLuke, even?
I'm trying to figure it out but the sources I'm finding tend to all get clustered-inside-out in my brain and I'm having a bit of a hard time with it. I'm hoping someone has explored this before and has a reference or info already in their possession which would sort this out for me.
BeDuhn alludes to some Matthean harmonizations in Marcion's Evangelion, but you'd probably have to read through all the notes to pick it out. I haven't done that yet.
There's lots of material from Matthew ... because the Marcionite gospel was Diatessaronic. Think of the so-called 'antitheses' i.e. the law says x but I say y. What's more Marcionite than that? It's so stupid the way scholars want to limit the Marcionite gospel to 'a version of Luke' just because a corrupt source like Tertullian says that.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias wrote:.. It's so stupid ... to limit the Marcionite gospel to 'a version of Luke' just because a corrupt source like Tertullian says that.
Could Tertuallian bee seeking to make people think that or his texts have been manipulated to give that impression?
I don't know what happened to the text. The incipit only says that this the third version of the original which passed through many hands.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Thanks for the leads. Actually I got interested in the question after reading through the Tricky New Testament Textual Issues website. I can remember hearing scholars say before that church fathers like Tertullian and Epiphanius had the unfortunate habit of working by memory when writing their anti-Marcionite works, and that many of them were more familiar with Matt than Luke, so when they address issues in Marcion's gospel they often compare it with Matt's versions of things, rather than Luke's, like they should. But the Tricky Issues site pointed out that if Marcion's is really a ur-Lukas, rather than a later redaction, the possibility is that both Matt and Luke are later, and developed from Marcion's version. Maybe also those "errors" by the heresy hunters aren't that at all, and this in an overlooked source of information that had been prematurely dismissed out of hand. That's basically the gist of it.
The whole deal would open some really interesting avenues for exploring the synoptic problem, many of which may have been under-explored compared with the more well-trodden alternatives. That's more-or-less the impetus behind by question at the beginning of this thread.
Some of the confusion Secret Alias has comes from quotations of the Antithesis rather than a gospel. The material where this overlaps with Matthew is primarily the 5th chapter of that gospel, or in what is often called Q material. These Antithesis quotes, often a OT and a NT pair, appear not in Adversus Marcionem 4th book, which is Tertullian's treatment of the Gospel, nor in Epiphanius' 42nd book of the Panarion, but primarily in the first 3 books Adversus Marcionem and the first two parts of Dialogue Adamantius (mostly out of the mouth of Megethius).
A feature of the Antithesis, as best we can recover, is its paraphrase of both Jewish scripture and Marcionite Evangelium and Apostolikon sayings. It seems to have been written almost extemporaneously from memory. We see examples such as “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” and “love your neighbor and hate your enemy” where the second clause is not found in scripture. These are paralleled with paraphrases from the Marcionite gospel, specifically Luke 6:29 and 6:27 respectively. The pairs are found in Dialogue Adamantius 1:15 and 1:12 respectively, but not in Matthew form – they are not quoted from Matthew; Matthew is not a source for the Antithesis.
The explanation for the phenomena (in my opinion) is that Matthew was written in response to the Marcionite gospel -per Markus Vinzent’s model- and it not only used the Marcionite gospel but also elements of the Antithesis, especially found in the Sermon on the Mount section, especially in the 5th chapter. The tipoff is Matthew 5:17, which evoked an angry response from Marcionites is an example of how Matthew flipped many Marcionite sayings (this objection is recorded in AM 4.9.10-15, 4.12.14, AM 4.36.6, AM 5.14.14, DA 2.15, Acta Archelai 40). If this view is correct, and I think it is, then Matthew chapter becomes an additional source for reconstructing part of the Antithesis.
The other major element of supposed use of Matthew gospel instead of Luke are the sayings in Luke 5:36-39, instead reading Matthew 9:17 and 9:16 (inverted). But this portion of Luke shows significant rework from the Marcionite original and for theological reasons. These verses also parallel Mark, part of a common gospel tradition, and what we see then is the Marcionite text maps closely to the original text and Luke, which is a rewrite of Marcion’s gospel, diverged.
The confusion with respect to seeming presence in Marcion of verses from Matthew arises from the expectation that the Marcionite text should conform always to the Lucan form, and that Luke is not significantly different, simply expanded. But this is not the case, Luke’s editorial hand extended both large (new verses) and small (changed wording). A simple example of this is found in the favorite Lucan word παραχρῆμα which replaced some instances of εὐθὺς / εὐθέως in places of double and triple tradition (compare Luke 4:39 vs Mark 1:31, Luke 8:44 & Luke 8:47 vs Mark 5:29, Luke 18:43 vs Mark 10:52, Luke 22:60 vs Mark 14:72). There is no theological impact at all, simply a stylistic preference of the Lucan editor found throughout Luke-Acts and nowhere else (excepting one independent parable in Matthew) and not at all in Marcion (as indeed is the case with nearly all instances of Lucan favorite words). And the change was no uniform, rather occasional leaving the original form in some places (see Luke 5:13, 6:49, 12:36, 12:54, 14:5, 17:7, 21:9). What this shows is the Lucan redactor not only made large additions, such as the first three chapters, but also made editorial adjustments throughout the text, sometimes of a theological nature, sometimes merely stylistic preference. The Marcionite text then most certainly is not a Diatessaron type, but rather Luke in an earlier form.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
The Marcionite text then most certainly is not a Diatessaron type, but rather Luke in an earlier form.
Nonsense. Tertullian (or rather a Latin translation of Irenaeus's reworking of a Syriac source; Irenaeus = Tertullian's source) is the basis for the corrupt Luke claims but at the same time the text of Against Marcion inevitably makes dozens of allusions to Marcionite corruptions of material not found in Luke. It's as if Irenaeus (later loosely translated by Tertullian) hurriedly 'corrected' an anti-Marcionite text written by a Diatessaron user. I am not the only one to notice this. Andrew attributes it to the use of Justin. That works just as well. My employment of the terminology of 'Diatessaron' is deliberately vague (so as not to rely on coining new terminology like 'super gospel' or loaded terminology like 'harmony'). Above all else I hate pretension.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Wed Jul 08, 2015 11:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
The manufacture of the four gospels was cleverly done. Have never been able to unravel a plausible explanation but none of the existing models explain all the anomalies in Marcionite references either. We all suck. I feel perfectly at home in my inadequacies. I just don't do as good a job bullshitting my way around short-comings of my theory. The standard tactic is to bore the audience to the point you are only left with partisans (or at least people of a like-minded paradigm).
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Academia is all about (a) knowing the accepted paradigms and (b) squeezing yourself into one of the pre-existent boxes. Not good at fitting in.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
