No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

[Giuseppe]

The important note 8 reads:

Le glissement de sens pourrait provenir de ce qu'en hébreu et en araméen, selon qu'on orthographie Caper avec un cof ou Kaper (ou kfar) avec un kaf, le mot peut vouloir dire: dans le premier cas “désolation” ou “expiation”, dans le second cas “bourg”.

It is not easy for me to understand Wautier's argument because he only argues with the first part of the word. Or am I missing something?

What about Nahum? If Wautiers is right, the village would have to be called "Nahum's Desolation" or "Desert of Consolation" ...

Good question. I should check the rest of the books of Wautier for an answer.

[Secret Alias]

I've said it time and time again. There is very little to say about Marcion other than:

1. he had a gospel which showed 'Jesus' to be a phantasma.
2. it was somehow 'like' the synoptic texts and at the same time compatible with Ephrem's 'harmonized' gospel (otherwise Ephrem's frequent allusions to Marcion's gospel don't make sense).
3. Irenaeus divided the world into four including the heresies and the gospel. The Marcionite gospel was connected with one of the four. But that doesn't mean anything. He needed or wanted to find 'four' to go with 'four.' There is evidence from Tertullian that Marcion was understood to have had access to the fourfold canonical 'set' but 'only' chose Luke.
4. the Church Fathers like to attack dead heretics and living 'heresies.'

In short, there is very little to take seriously here. That humanities scholarship has 'written' on the subject is just a product of (a) a dwindling number of things to write about in ancient Christianity and (b) individual scholars 'wanting to make a name for themselves' (a quote from a monk on Morton Smith expanded to scholarship in general). We don't and can't know much about Marcion or his gospel. Period.

[Secret Alias]

As an aside there is an interesting paradox in Irenaeus that (a) on the one hand Irenaeus attacks the idea of 'sects' rather than presumably there being 'one' Church but (b) the gospel is properly divided into the number four which 'just so happens' to have foreordained as the number of heresies by God so that the four gospels can disprove them. If heresies are so bad, why did God make the gospel into four to disprove them? Circular logic. Presumably humanity has the 'will' to disobey God but God going so far as to know they are going to disobey him and set the right number of 'commentaries' (gospels) at four seems to sanction their being in possession of 'individual' gospels (like Marcion) rather than the set. I swear they had heavy duty weed in antiquity. Wouldn't it have made more sense for God to have made one gospel like the one Church and then accuse the heresies of writing their own gospels. This is what the Marcionites did. So Irenaeus, seeing that the Marcionites had this one gospel, one apostle, one Church position decided, arbitrarily, to say 'that's what you (Marcion) say, the right number is four ...' But it makes God look like a mental patient.

What modern scholarship does is 'break apart' the fourfold gospel and assume (wrongly I would argue) that whoever put the gospel-in-four together did so 'honorably' and fairly from four pre-existent texts (Irenaeus never says that explicitly). It is just as tenable to argue that John (whom we should all accept was the 'editor' of the canon) acted the way he is portrayed in Papias (from whence the fictional assumption derives it's origin). John is portrayed as not only commenting but also 'arbitrating' between Mark and Matthew on their relative accuracy. If we allow for the throwing in of 'Luke' (to distinguish the Marcionite gospel from Mark) and 'John' as John's own creation to 'index' the 'wrong understanding' of all events happening within a calendar year because of Isaiah 61 where the various 'Passovers' coincide with 'chapter headings' basically you have the exact opposite of what scholars assume about the four. But I digress.

[Giuseppe]

The important note 8 reads:

Le glissement de sens pourrait provenir de ce qu'en hébreu et en araméen, selon qu'on orthographie Caper avec un cof ou Kaper (ou kfar) avec un kaf, le mot peut vouloir dire: dans le premier cas “désolation” ou “expiation”, dans le second cas “bourg”.

It is not easy for me to understand Wautier's argument because he only argues with the first part of the word. Or am I missing something?

What about Nahum? If Wautiers is right, the village would have to be called "Nahum's Desolation" or "Desert of Consolation" ...

Good question. I should check the rest of the books of Wautier for an answer.

It seems that Wautier was based on a little book by Georges Ory, where the first time the idea is appeared, about Capernaum == "place of desolation".

1968 – Préparation à la Lecture des Évangiles Synoptiques. Paris: Cahiers du Cercle Ernest Renan, no. 60. (24 pp.)

Unfortunately I have not that book. I would give up to all my books for only a third of those "Cahiers du Cercle Ernest Renan".

[Giuseppe]

Until now, I know:
Kfar Nachoum: town of Nahum.
Kaper: desolation.
Nahum: consolation.

Now, the place of provenance of the OT prophet Nahum was Elkosh:

A prophecy concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite

(Nahum 1:1)

So the "town of Nahum" is by definition "Elkosh".
"Elkosh" resembles "Elkasai", the founder of the elchasaites.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Whatever KK thinks about Capernahum, it is influenced by the heresy that Mk was the first gospel mentioning Jesus at Capernahum, denying that "Heracleon", if even a person, was potentially closer to the original plot.

It's interesting that the Valentinian Heracleon had to write a commentary on the Gospel of John. Did he no longer have your "original plot"?

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

... the OT prophet Nahum ...:

A prophecy concerning Nineveh.

Nahum's prophecy was hostile and vengeful towards the Gentiles.

[Secret Alias]

Kaper: desolation

If it's a fucking place name it's kefar = village. Like if it's "st" in front of a personal name it means "saint" rather than "street." Besides which כפר is only a VERB which means to destroy IN SYRIAC (what does that have to do with anything). In Aramaic to deny, to atone. But it's still a fucking verb.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%9B%D7%A4%D7%A8

Can't work. There is only one possible etymology:

Kefar Nahum (Hebrew)

We see this sort of name kefar something or other over and over again in the rabbinic literature. It's a no brainer.

[neilgodfrey]

Serious historians don't work that way.

Bullshit. Everyone takes for granted that Capernaum is at the beginning of the Marcionite gospel even though "Marcion" says otherwise. They prefer familiar sources (Tertullian) over ones written in languages they can't read (Syriac).

Oh my. Written with such masculine authority! I am positively swooning at your feet. But as usual, you read the first lines but find the idea of detail being too much of a task -- you missed the last line. You also missed the middle bit where I was addressing your point about historians finding and interpreting primary sources. You are too manly, too masculine, to bother to read books with big words that explain the difference between primary and secondary sources. Irenaeus is not a primary source but a secondary source and his work is not an example of the analogy which you originally made re what historians find.

But I do love your masculine tone of response. Swooonnnning here.

[Secret Alias]

It is amazing how the question of whether the Marcionite gospel begins with Capernaum and my introduction of evidence for a descent into Judea gets completely ignored. The evidence is the evidence. I happen to be VERY familiar with the primary evidence with respect to early Christianity and especially Marcionism. Whether or not I synthesize that evidence correctly is up for debate. But again:

1. 'Marcion' is said to have referenced a descent into Judea
2. Tertullian says the Marcionite gospel is like a truncated Luke which begins with a descent into Capernaum "Anno quintodecimo principatus Tiberiani proponit eum/deum descendisse in civitatem Galilaeae Capharnaum, utique de caelo creatoris, in quod de suo ante descenderat." "In the fifteenth year of Tiberius's leadership, he proposes that he/the god descended into the city of Capernaum in Galilee, of course from the creator's heaven, into which he had previously descended from his own."

Masculine, feminine, whatever. That's the evidence.