A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

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Irish1975
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A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by Irish1975 »

[This thread is a comment on Jason BeDuhn’s The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon (2013), mainly the introduction to chapter 3.]

Following BeDuhn, it is commonly held that The Evangelion (attributed to Marcion) and Luke’s Gospel wer both redactions of a common, earlier proto-Gospel.

Hypothesis: someone wrote a Gospel text earlier than both The Evangelion and gLuke, which served as the basis for both latter texts.

This conjecture, which BeDuhn associates with Johann Semler, is positioned in today’s academic context as a mediating third way between (A) the discredited Patristic/Harnack thesis that Marcion shortened and mutilated the text of Luke, and (B) the radical thesis that Luke’s Gospel is nothing other than a supplemented plagiarism of The Evangelion published by Marcion.

But is this mediating theory, the “Semler Hypothesis,” a workable theory at all?

First of all, Klinghardt observes that, as with “Q,” there is no data or ancient witness for such a text. This is a serious objection, but there is not much to say about it.

A second problem is that none of the heresiologists actually describe Marcion’s activity in relation the Evangelion as a mere “collecting, compiling,” or light editing. No, they say that it was HIS GOSPEL, evangelium eius (Tertullian). But here again, there is not much to say about such a simple difference in how the ancient testimonies are interpreted.

Third, and what I want to propose here as a basic objection to the Semler Hypothesis, is the problem that it may not be useful. In particular, does the postulation of such a proto-Gospel in any way advance or clarify our understanding of the origins of either gLuke or The Evangelion, our two extant texts? Here is problem as I see it.

The most well-attested and certain attribute of The Gospel—as far as can be determined from the heresiological witnesses—is that it lacked the major introductory sections of Luke’s Gospel: birth stories of John and Jesus, baptism by John in the river Jordan, and the temptation by Satan in the wilderness. Instead, The Gospel began with a different and simpler verison of Luke 3:1ff, “In the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, [when Pilate was governing Judea,] Jesus went down to Capharnaum…”. The difference in how they begin is in some way the first and most essential difference between our two texts. A theory that cannot address and explain this difference is not much use.

Ok. But how does the postulation of a proto-Gospel shed light on the fundamental question of who wrote Luke’s introductory material (“prologue”)? There are two possibilities: either the proto-Gospel contained Luke’s introductory material, or it didn’t. If (1) the prologue belonged to this proto-Gospel, then Marcion must have done to it exactly what the heresiologists accused him of doing to Luke’s Gospel: he chopped it away. And all of the critiques of Marcion by Tertullian and others, as well as our modern objections to those critiques, would apply to this theory as well. And the Lukan claim to apostolic authenticity would be unharmed. However, if (2) the long prologue to Jesus’ appearance in Luke’s 3rd chapter was not present in this conjectured original, then Luke would have done the very thing that Klinghardt and others propose that he did to The Evangelion published by Marcion: he (or his associates, of course) expanded it with a made up a prologue. And Luke’s claim to apostolic authenticity is still very much exposed as a fraud. However, there might be some usefulness for conservatives. Since the hypothetical proto-Gospel would not be constrained by any evidence relating to it, the date could be pushed as far back into the 1st century as anyone needs to make Luke’s subsequent editing respectably early (and thus quasi-authentic).

I don’t see a meaningful alternative to these 2 possibilities. Either way, the conjecture championed by BeDuhn makes no difference, and is not useful to the study of our two extant Gospels. There is no escaping the essential question, so profoundly and passionately pursued by Klinghardt, whether Luke edited Marcion or Marcion edited Luke. It’s an either/or, with no plausible third alternative. Or so it seems to me, if the above argument is sound.

BeDuhn and Lieu and probably many others work very hard to obfuscate this essential dilemma. But it is something that the heresiologists themselves felt keenly, and articulated very clearly. Tertullian calls it the “ratio temporis,” the argument from historical priority. If Luke’s Gospel is older than Marcion’s, it is the “true” Gospel. But if Marcion’s Gospel was co-opted and expanded by Luke, then Marcion has the better claim to authenticity. Tertullian can barely articulate this latter alternative, but he does acknowledge the force of it in his convoluted and semi-honest fashion.
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by GakuseiDon »

Tertullian makes the following argument, from Book 1 and Book 4 of his "Against Marcion":

1. Marcion had written a letter where he apparently admits that he followed the orthodox faith. From this Tertullian concludes Marcion's heretic views came after Marcion had accepted orthodoxy.

2. "Emendation never precedes the fault": If (Tertullian argues) Marcion created his Antithesis as a reaction to "Judaisers" adding in passages about the Old Testament law, then it shows that the "Judaised" passages were already there.

From those points, Tertullian argues that the orthodox version of Luke was first.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an121.html

Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an124.html

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body...

I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion's Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is. Now what is to settle the point for us, except it be that principle of time, which rules that the authority lies with that which shall be found to be more ancient; and assumes as an elemental truth, that corruption (of doctrine) belongs to the side which shall be convicted of comparative lateness in its origin...

With regard, then, to the pending question, of Luke's Gospel (so far as its being the common property of ourselves and Marcion enables it to be decisive of the truth,) that portion of it which we alone receive is so much older than Marcion, that Marcion, himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of faith he contributed money to the Catholic church, which along with himself was afterwards rejected, when he fell away from our truth into his own heresy. What if the Marcionites have denied that he held the primitive faith amongst ourselves, in the face even of his own letter? What, if they do not acknowledge the letter? They, at any rate, receive his Antitheses; and more than that, they make ostentatious use of them. Proof out of these is enough for me.

For if the Gospel, said to be Luke's which is current amongst us (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form). No one censures things before they exist, when he knows not whether they will come to pass. Emendation never precedes the fault. To be sure, an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone--so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion!

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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by GakuseiDon »

Irish1975 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 5:27 pmBeDuhn and Lieu and probably many others work very hard to obfuscate this essential dilemma. But it is something that the heresiologists themselves felt keenly, and articulated very clearly. Tertullian calls it the “ratio temporis,” the argument from historical priority. If Luke’s Gospel is older than Marcion’s, it is the “true” Gospel. But if Marcion’s Gospel was co-opted and expanded by Luke, then Marcion has the better claim to authenticity. Tertullian can barely articulate this latter alternative, but he does acknowledge the force of it in his convoluted and semi-honest fashion.
Where would you put the earlier writings in all this, those ones that reference Christ being 'found' in the Old Testament? We have lots of such references, starting from Paul and continuing on to Justin Martyr. Marcion seems to have had to reject all those ones as interpolations -- is that something that is likely? If not, then it suggests that the orthodox "Old Testament" Christianity is prior to Marcion's.
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by perseusomega9 »

GakuseiDon wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 7:11 pm Tertullian makes the following argument, from Book 1 and Book 4 of his "Against Marcion":

1. Marcion had written a letter where he apparently admits that he followed the orthodox faith. From this Tertullian concludes Marcion's heretic views came after Marcion had accepted orthodoxy.

2. "Emendation never precedes the fault": If (Tertullian argues) Marcion created his Antithesis as a reaction to "Judaisers" adding in passages about the Old Testament law, then it shows that the "Judaised" passages were already there.

From those points, Tertullian argues that the orthodox version of Luke was first.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an121.html

Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an124.html

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body...

I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion's Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is. Now what is to settle the point for us, except it be that principle of time, which rules that the authority lies with that which shall be found to be more ancient; and assumes as an elemental truth, that corruption (of doctrine) belongs to the side which shall be convicted of comparative lateness in its origin...

With regard, then, to the pending question, of Luke's Gospel (so far as its being the common property of ourselves and Marcion enables it to be decisive of the truth,) that portion of it which we alone receive is so much older than Marcion, that Marcion, himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of faith he contributed money to the Catholic church, which along with himself was afterwards rejected, when he fell away from our truth into his own heresy. What if the Marcionites have denied that he held the primitive faith amongst ourselves, in the face even of his own letter? What, if they do not acknowledge the letter? They, at any rate, receive his Antitheses; and more than that, they make ostentatious use of them. Proof out of these is enough for me.

For if the Gospel, said to be Luke's which is current amongst us (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form). No one censures things before they exist, when he knows not whether they will come to pass. Emendation never precedes the fault. To be sure, an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone--so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion!

The letter part sounds like a variation of Christian's use of the death bed confession, good to know it's been going on in some form for near 2000 years.
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by rgprice »

If I understand you question correctly, the proto-Gospel idea is meant to address the material that is not in Marcion's Gospel but is a part of Luke and was not authored by the person who wrote Like 1&2.

Essentially the theory is that much of Luke 3-6 was not in Marcion and was also not added by the writer of Luke 1-2. This primarily includes the genealogy.

I think this makes sense. This postulates that there are at least 3 layers to canonical Luke. However, it is uncertain what came first, Marcion's Gospel or "proto-Luke". Did Marcion redact proto-Luke or is proto-Luke an addition to Marcion's Gospel?
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by mlinssen »

It never is a question of whether or not, the question always is: to which extent?
It is evident that Luke is Marcion redacted.
It is evident that 1-2 Luke is an addition without even a single word present in Marcion

Could Marcion have based his text on another one? Sure.
Could Luke have based his text on another one? No - although he could have borrowed bits and scraps to fill up a few lacunae, sure

Luke 4-20 is 80-20 Marcion, let's just use that guesstimate.
What comes before, and what comes after, is at least 20-80 Marcion at best if not 0-100 - and perhaps those parts qualify for having used an alternative source, but I think that they made m up as they went where they didn't agree with Mark
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by Irish1975 »

The OP will mostly only make sense for people who have read and absorbed BeDuhn's book, especially pp. 78-92.

The value of focusing on the work of the Marcion scholars is that (a) these people have a more erudite command of the ancient material than most of us do, and (b) we can hammer out our own ideas with each other more effectively if we are tracking an intelligent scholarly work. (Which is not at all to say that I agree with any contemporary scholar dogmatically, as the OP shows.)

It's just my suggestion for a more substantive conversation than the usual back-and-forth of homespun theorizing.
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by Giuseppe »

Irish1975 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 5:27 pm
But is this mediating theory, the “Semler Hypothesis,” a workable theory at all?
my two cents:

If Markus Vinzent is able to explain why an anti-demiurgist would have copied from demiurgist scriptures (=the Septuaginta), then the Semler Hypothesis has to be rejected rapidly for the following simple reason:

M. Loisy imagines a precanonical recension of Luke which Marcion must have copied. This recension is a hypothesis; the text of Marcion a reality. Why imagine an unknown text when a known text is there to explain the matter?

(Paul-Louis Couchoud, Creation of Christ, p. 443)
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by Irish1975 »

GakuseiDon wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 7:11 pm Tertullian makes the following argument, from Book 1 and Book 4 of his "Against Marcion":

1. Marcion had written a letter where he apparently admits that he followed the orthodox faith. From this Tertullian concludes Marcion's heretic views came after Marcion had accepted orthodoxy.

2. "Emendation never precedes the fault": If (Tertullian argues) Marcion created his Antithesis as a reaction to "Judaisers" adding in passages about the Old Testament law, then it shows that the "Judaised" passages were already there.

From those points, Tertullian argues that the orthodox version of Luke was first.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an121.html

Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an124.html

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body...

I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion's Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is. Now what is to settle the point for us, except it be that principle of time, which rules that the authority lies with that which shall be found to be more ancient; and assumes as an elemental truth, that corruption (of doctrine) belongs to the side which shall be convicted of comparative lateness in its origin...

With regard, then, to the pending question, of Luke's Gospel (so far as its being the common property of ourselves and Marcion enables it to be decisive of the truth,) that portion of it which we alone receive is so much older than Marcion, that Marcion, himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of faith he contributed money to the Catholic church, which along with himself was afterwards rejected, when he fell away from our truth into his own heresy. What if the Marcionites have denied that he held the primitive faith amongst ourselves, in the face even of his own letter? What, if they do not acknowledge the letter? They, at any rate, receive his Antitheses; and more than that, they make ostentatious use of them. Proof out of these is enough for me.

For if the Gospel, said to be Luke's which is current amongst us (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form). No one censures things before they exist, when he knows not whether they will come to pass. Emendation never precedes the fault. To be sure, an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone--so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion!

The second and longer citation from Book 4 substantiates the Patristic hypothesis in Tertullian's own words, so thanks for that.

The allegation based on a supposed letter is obviously vitiated by Tertullian's failure to cite its contents; or, more importantly, his failure to cite the contents of the Antitheses that he makes such a fuss about. This is standard procedure for heresiology: to make claims about what a heretic thought, said, or did, with only highly selective if not distorted evidence. Tertullian gives us what little evidence we can accept from him in spite of his beliefs and assumptions, and not in accordance with them.

Did the Marcionites he knew claim that Marcion had once been in communion with the catholics? Much in every way. Originally there had only been a fluctuating milieu of interconnected schools in Rome, which were neither bound together nor separated by walls of orthodoxy, creed, heresy, or "canon." All these came later. But Tertullian has no right to assume that the 'proto-orthodox' or 'catholics' with whom Marcion had been in communion were anything like Tertullian's own catholic community. On the contrary, Marcion was the central player in mid-2nd century Rome.

Tertullian believes with all his heart that the 'true' Christian revelation was passed down from the time of Tiberius, by apostles who had known Jesus. In other words, he believes the orthodox framework of the canonical Gospels plus Acts. And he assumes that Marcion could not have been working with a different model of revelatory truth altogether. Only by virtue of this assumption does Tertullian "argue" the points that you attribute to him. Which is to say that his whole case against Marcion is tainted by circular and dogmatic reasoning.

He had no right to assume or to claim without evidence that Marcion himself believed in the canonical pseudo-historical framework articulated in Acts. And not only is it a bad assumption, but our best evidence for Marcion's position--Galatians--positively refutes Tertullian's assumption. The capital assertion of the apostle in the opening of Galatians is that his (the apostle's) true Gospel was vouchsafed to him (the apostle) not kata anthropon, not "according to so-and-so," but "through a revelation (apocalypsis) of Jesus Christ." The plain meaning of this testimony (which again, appears at the head of Marcion's Apostolikon, since Galatians appears there as the first epistle) is that the story propagated by "the defenders of Judaism," of a good news about Jesus Christ handed down by human-to-human tradition, oral or written, was a "falsification." (A falsification of what? we should ask.) Certain false apostles had perverted the true Gospel, which had come to the apostle by revelation, not kata anthropon. Marcion’s model of revelation was spiritual rather than pseudo-historical.
Last edited by Irish1975 on Mon Jan 16, 2023 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A Basic Objection to BeDuhn’s “Semler Hypothesis”

Post by mlinssen »

Irish1975 wrote: Sun Jan 15, 2023 5:27 pm Hypothesis: someone wrote a Gospel text earlier than both The Evangelion and gLuke, which served as the basis for both latter texts.

This conjecture, which BeDuhn associates with Johann Semler, is positioned in today’s academic context as a mediating third way between (A) the discredited Patristic/Harnack thesis that Marcion shortened and mutilated the text of Luke, and (B) the radical thesis that Luke’s Gospel is nothing other than a supplemented plagiarism of The Evangelion published by Marcion.
Creating a swamp in between these two extremes serves only one goal indeed, identical to oral memory and layered traditions: to prolong the stalemate

But Luke being a redaction of *Ev doesn't preclude the possibility that *Ev is not the first story about "Jesus".

But yes, when it comes to the either-or question of who plagiarised whom, *Ev evidently stands at and as that source.
I've already moved way beyond that, why don't you?

Semler put forward the intriguing suggestion that the version of the gospel found in the Evangelion arose in the context of the Gentile mission, and that its relatively lesser Judaic material relative to Luke fj nds its explanation within the context of this intended audience

Once again a conclusion is wrong while the analysis is right: just pick the cherry here

Karl Reinhold Köstlin, meanwhile, revived Semler’s original thesis of the independent development of the Evangelion and Luke from a common original

I recognise that move from Thomas: whenever someone feels confident that the canonicals precede Thomas then Thomas gets labelled late, plagiarist, and so forth. Whenever they have doubt about the direction of dependence, then quickly a common origin is conjectured.
It's pathetically obvious really, and obviously pathetic

I understand that BeDuhn doesn't want to take position, and I think it would be uncalled for to do otherwise "in a first edition".
He has been quiet so far, but I hope for a remark about what lies prior to *Ev - even though that is a path that cannot remain untrodden for long
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