Picture: Marcion Arriving at Rome (According to Panarion 42,1)

[Secret Alias]

"Arriving at Rome Marcion asked for penance from the elders of the time. Since he could not get it he grew angry and taught doctrines contrary to the faith."

[billd89]

Prompt: "In 140 AD, Marcion arrived at Rome to ask forgiveness from the Elders. Since he could not get forgiveness, he grew angry, and so he taught doctrines contrary to Roman Church faith."

[DCHindley]

But that's not the story I remember.

The one I remember has Marcion making a large cash donation to the Christian congregation at Rome and at the same time he presented his Antitheses. He was asking the Roman authorities to validate his findings that the pure gospel proclaimed by Jesus had been mixed with the doctrines of men. Perhaps he WAS asking the Roman authorities to redact their scriptures to remove what he thought were Judaic corruptions of the true gospel.

In this story, the Roman bishop and his presbyters rejected Marcion's offer to fund the Roman church (which was mainly a social service agency with a large infrastructure) as they were not going to accept his recommendations. Marcion was cast out and instead founded his own rival Christian sect. Apparently he had the means to do so, operating a profitable trade fleet bringing goodies to Rome from the exotic east.

These traders, almost always freedmen of important Roman families, were big risk takers. They may start with a fleet of 10 ships and loose half or more to weather and pirates in the crossing to Rome, but what is left is almost priceless and pays off royally. The problem was that some lost their entire fleets and had to start from scratch, plus pay off the original investors. Yet, many of them managed to overcome odds. Others went bust. Where Marcion fit into this world of trade I cannot say.

In one story he was also exposed as a sexual "prevert" and had been excommunicated by his own dad, and orthodox bishop in Pontus region, so obviously a no-good-nik. If this kind of character assassination sounds a bit like how the Heresy Hunters as early as Irenaeus describe the origins of Gnostic sects and other Heresies, welcome to the "Skunk Works" of apologetic literature in all eras.

But Rome was NOT the center of the Christian universe at that time (early to mid 2nd century), probably not until Constantine's time. The reactor vessels for Christianity to develop in were centered, IMHO, at Caesarea in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt.

Even Eusebius, the bishop who came to be Constantine's "Billy Graham," was not a bishop of Rome, but Caesarea by the Sea in the Levant. He was by far the most influential Christian bishop in the empire at the time of Constantine's accession to supreme power, and his early dealings with the Christian communities. Constantine was operating in the Western empire, starting in Gaul, then moving to Africa and finally taking Rome itself, which was then the capital over all of the Roman empire. As far as I know Eusebius had never visited Rome, although he visited Byzantium for the Nicene council stuff. After consolidating power, Constantine spent most of his time in Byzantium (later Constantinople) in Asia Minor, which he designated the eastern capital of the Roman empire.

Maybe Marcion's attempt to force changes to the local edition of the Christian "gospel" (proto Luke?) of Jesus Christ and the Pauline letters (to churches) was only meant to affect the proto-orthodox of Rome, which was, again, NOT the center of the Christian theological universe but was an effective operator of social services for the poorer residents of the city. It may not have been the Mega Church of its age as portrayed by Heresy Hunters. There was not a great danger here, just a regional variation like Gospel of John was to Egypt or the Gospel of Matthew to Syria. Maybe Marcion just wanted everyone to revel in the True God's Love, or liked to contribute to charities.

Today there is a lot of money involved in "charities" and all sorts of fishy back room deals to siphon off some for the executives, and maybe Marcion sought access to this network for benefit of his own political or financial aims, or those of his patron or investors (whoever they were, no one seems to be asking about this).

DCH

[billd89]

Great, but what's with the spear-holding dwarf w/ the sausage-linked face? If we're going to accept AI reality, I want to know what it means.

[DCHindley]

I'll call it his "walking stick" that signifies he came from afar, but does not seem to know that Marcion was a shipowner. The lump underneath it would be his mutilated love child, his Antitheses is being presented to the bishop in this photo, so AI might representing his gospel & Paul collections (basically, suggesting it is a bag of cut out offal).

[Secret Alias]

Sherlock Holmes would notes bite marks on the walking stick and tell us something about the dog.

[DCHindley]

Sherlock Holmes would notes bite marks on the walking stick and tell us something about the dog.

Mebbe we are talking about staff symbolism, the kind that you find in the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck.
The key meanings of the Ace of Wands:[14]
*Birth
*Commencement
*Creativity
*Inventiveness
*New Beginnings
*References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_of_Wands_(tarot_card)

The sack of ... whatever ... is on this card:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_of_Swords
(Sorry, just could not get image to display.)

[Peter Kirby]

A bearded Greek man shoves away another man who is holding a tiny holy book, set in a brightly lit Roman town

[DCHindley]

A bearded Greek man shoves away another man who is holding a tiny holy book, set in a brightly lit Roman town

Perhaps, the smaller man finds what the larger man is holding so amazing that he is compelled to snatch hold of it (little man's left arm is reaching around the big man's side) to examine it directly.

Unfortunately, it is a KJV devotional Gideon bible (large type edition, in a leather binding with a ribbon for marking key passage) stolen no doubt by a time traveler from a hotel room in our modern times.

This surely MUST have been, somehow, transferred back in time to the ancient Roman empire by unknown wizardry. Ahhh, Satan playing his tricks ... eh?

By induction, I have concluded, almost certainly accurately (except if it is not), that the large bearded man *could* have been the time traveler himself, but not necessarily so.

If the inanimate object was successfully transferred back in time, this does not necessarily imply that the man possessing it was a time traveler too, as this may or may not be possible with a living being, especially a sentient one.

That would introduce a new issue, to wit, that big guy would not be reading the words printed inside, as he would not read English (which developed in early Medieval times), especially all that Elizabethan prose flourishes such as thees & thous?

So perhaps, based on this geometric logic (as I grasp a wax ball in my hand which I squeeze nervously), the book is a relic left in ancient Roman times by unknown processes, and both men are looking at it in amazement, wondering (in their native Greek or Latin or Syriac programmed brains) "What the heck is this!"

Then the time period can be any time when men wore tunics and sported beards, perhaps in the NW Mediterranean Ocean Balkans, or Asia Minor in Assyrian times, or parallel universe where times and places have been preprogrammed into the cosmic Wayback Machine.

Since one thing can be conceived, then there MUST be an infinite number of alternate universes with their own timelines that have the miraculous power to seamlessly interface with on another for the assistance of amateur critics and TV & movie script writers.

Cue SA.

DCH

PS: This gibberish is brought to you by the "Friday the 13th came on a Wednesday this month" free association database, a private research effort. No individual characters mentioned or alluded to in this post, including myself, are believed to have existed or currently exist on a real world/universe. It just MAY be a crazy parody of the crazy ideas and reasoning processes often floated here @ BC&H. The refreshing exceptions, though, are what we stay tuned for, so thank you Peter for hosting this forum!

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

A bearded Greek man shoves away another man who is holding a tiny holy book, set in a brightly lit Roman town

Clearly Paul and Mark