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

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

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

.
Matthias Klinghardt
Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien: Band 2 (German edition), page 539

The revelation-theological interpretation of Jesus' descent was most likely not part of *Ev (Marcions Gospel). It is not even certain that *Ev mentioned a descent from above. Whether *Ev assumed that Jesus descended from heaven or from Jerusalem or only from the Galilean hills to the Sea of Galilee therefore remains open. However, the last possibility is the most likely.

:cheers: :clap:

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Giuseppe
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Giuseppe »

"The last possibility is the most likely" as kind concession to apologists, isn't it?

Kunigunde, do you believe really that Klinghardt isn't doing here a timide concession to apologists to exorcise suspicions about a possible "hidden agenda" behind his research on Marcion ?
Giuseppe
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Giuseppe »

Remember that Klinghardt's basic assumption is that the Earliest Gospel was written NOT by Marcion, so it is natural, from a banal historicist prospective, to deny a descending "from above" in the incipit of Mcn.

But the same Klinghardt assumes that Mcn was slightly expanded by Marcion. For example, Klinghardt is sure that there was a passage in Mcn describing that John the Baptist "was scandalized" when he heard the news about Jesus's mirabilia.

Nicolotti denies the presence of a such marcionite glossa.

Matthew 11:12 is an independent witness of that embarrassment (the violent one is Marcion).

So my point is that Klinghardt and Vinzent are on the same page only when the former concedes that some passages have been edited/added by Marcion to allow marcionite theology.
Giuseppe
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Giuseppe »

Kunigunde, I consider you too much intelligent to use low titles of the kind: "No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit".

Are you aware about the high number of mythicists who have assumed a such incipit for Mcn, without never interpreting it as a banal descent from Nazaret of Galilee?

Please do all the irony you want on the proponents of Mcn's priority but not on the mythicists.
Kunigunde Kreuzerin
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

.
Klinghardt makes an accurate and scientifically correct distinction here between the reconstructed wording of GMarcion and its original meaning and later interpretations by Marcionites and Tertullian.

Ben and I once discussed the word καταβαίνω (katabainó) in John 4:47–49.
Jesus Heals an Official’s Son
46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2016 5:35 am
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:The word for „go down“ in John's story is καταβαίνω (katabainó) – descending. Maybe there could be a double meaning. Twice the royal official asks the Lord to „go down“ (4:47.49) and at the first time he gets a rebuke. I would therefore not exclude the idea that John's story is about the power of the absent Jesus (the risen Lord). In John's story the „distance“ of the healing could be interpreted as the earthly absence of the Lord above.
Interestingly, I took my translation for all of these gospel passages straight from my old synopsis, in which I do translate καταβαίνω as "descend" (my synoptic translations being intentionally literalistic and as consistent as I could make them). I manually changed that translation to post here precisely because I thought it sounded too mystical ...
The Greek word καταβαίνω (katabainó) can mean "coming down" but can also mean „descending“. It has the latter meaning, for example, in

- Mark 1:10 (… he saw the heavens tearing open and the Spirit descending as a dove upon him)
- 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (Because the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God)
- Revelation 20:1 (I saw an angel descending out of the heaven)


However, this word is not attested for Marcion's incipit, but the same word used in Luke 4:31, namely κατέρχομαι (katerchomai).

Luke 4:31
And he went down (κατῆλθεν – katēlthen) to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And He was teaching them on the Sabbaths;

κατέρχομαι (katerchomai) means usually (with few exceptions) coming down from high land to lower land or to the coast, for example in
- Luke 9:37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him.

- Acts 11:27 During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

Since Marcion's Gospel used the same word as Luke 4:31, it has the same meaning. In Luke 4:31 Jesus comes down from Nazareth to Capernaum at the Sea of Galilee.
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Ken Olson
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Ken Olson »

Giuseppe wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 6:54 am Kunigunde, I consider you too much intelligent to use low titles of the kind: "No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit".

Are you aware about the high number of mythicists who have assumed a such incipit for Mcn, without never interpreting it as a banal descent from Nazaret of Galilee?

Please do all the irony you want on the proponents of Mcn's priority but not on the mythicists.
Giusseppe,

Are you arguing that majority opinion among mythicists is evidence for what Marcion meant?

Best,

Ken
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Ken Olson
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Ken Olson »

Giuseppe wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 6:30 am "The last possibility is the most likely" as kind concession to apologists, isn't it?

Kunigunde, do you believe really that Klinghardt isn't doing here a timide concession to apologists to exorcise suspicions about a possible "hidden agenda" behind his research on Marcion ?
You think Klinghardt takes positions as a concession to apologists? Klinghardt does not seems to be particularly averse to saying things that are likely to upset conservative Christians elsewhere, why would you suppose that's what he's doing here?

Best,

Ken

PS - perhaps you should define what you mean by 'apologists'
schillingklaus
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by schillingklaus »

The descent to Capernahum (site of consolation) is to be understood metaphysically, not geographically as historians do.
Giuseppe
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Giuseppe »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 7:19 am
Are you arguing that majority opinion among mythicists is evidence for what Marcion meant?
I am saying that Kunigunde has no right to talk about a "myth of a descending in Marcion's incipit", since it is evident that it is a myth only if both the two following requisites are true as premise:
  • Jesus existed historically;
  • proto-Luke aka Mcn has been written not by Marcion but by a Christian who, with all his defects, was an adorer of YHWH as supreme god.
There are no doubts that the heresiarch Marcion interpreted 'coming down' as a descent from the heaven. So also the Valentinian Heracleon interpreted the "coming down to Capernaum" as a descent from above into lower heavens.

Only because a Catholic forger called 'Luke' made 'coming down' an earthly descent from Nazareth doesn't make ipso facto Marcion, who came before the forger called 'Luke', a proponent of an identical earthly descent from Nazareth.

The earthly reading of Luke comes AFTER the trascendent reading of Marcion.
Giuseppe
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Re: No "Descending" - The Myth About Marcion's Incipit

Post by Giuseppe »

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 7:23 am

You think Klinghardt takes positions as a concession to apologists? Klinghardt does not seems to be particularly averse to saying things that are likely to upset conservative Christians elsewhere, why would you suppose that's what he's doing here?
Because there is clearly a methodological error in action, here.
  • 1) Klinghardt claims, against Nicolotti, that Marcion introduced a glossa about John being 'scandalized' when he heard news about Jesus's mirabilia.
  • (2) So, per (1), Klinghart is open to the concrete possibility that, even if Mcn was not written by Marcion, Mcn could have been edited by Marcion himself in some points.
  • 3) Now, it is very probable that, statistically, the incipit of a gospel or of an epistle is more subjected to editing than other portions of the book. So it is very probable that, even if a Jesus existed and Mcn was not written by Marcion, the heresiarch Marcion wrote himself the incipit about a descent "from above".

Ken Olson wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 7:23 am
PS - perhaps you should define what you mean by 'apologists'
surely an apologist in my dictionary is any person who shows certainty about the existence of a town called Nazaret before 70 CE. I am sorry for Klinghardt, but he is an apologist or a friend of apologists in the passage quoted by Kunigunde.
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