Markus Vinzent calls the Marcion's Jesus an 'unhistorical saviour'

[MrMacSon]

... Tertullian's profound rhetoric, and...his appeal to 'Jewish prophecy'...supposedly underpinning the Christian theology and tropes he and his peers are pushing, serve as evidence [that Tertullian was seeking to misrepresent Marcion and the relative actual histories of the Marcionite and Christian texts dear to his heart].

But, is it evidence for that? I think it is the other way around. Looking at the earliest layer of Christian writings ...

• yeah, Nah. All that [gish-gallop crap you wrote] is beside the point (which essentially was whether Tertullian was seeking to misrepresent Marcion and the relative actual histories of the Marcionite and Christian texts dear to his heart).

Thanks for the quotes from Vinzent. I don't see anything there that addresses the question ...

• You either have very poor reading or comprehension skills - +/- other compromised faculties - or you're lying and disingenuously hand-waving away things that do address 'the question'.

For posterity, this is what you're dismissing:

Vinzent sees

"a glimpse of what, despite all the rhetorical clouding of Tertullian, might have provoked Marcion in the first place to publish his own preface to his Gospel, the 'Antitheses'; together with this Gospel-text and the ten Pauline letters as his New Testament."
.

... Vinzent warns to

"detect the twists [Tertullian] has given to the data21."

21 See E. Bosshardt, Essai sur l'originalite et la probitie de Tertullien dans son traite contre Marcion (1921), 53-7; E. Lodovci, Sull' interpretazione di alcuni test della Lettera ai Galati' (1972), 374.
.

And he cautions

So, whenever we read Tertullian we should

1. check whether the opposite of what he is trying to convey could be closer to reality ... for example, his statement that his own Gospel-text is 'the one, true and tradition Gospel' of the Apostles which was cut up and down by Marcion; while the historical truth might have been the contrary;
   .
2. notice the interference between his personal interest and the interpretation he gives of any given 'fact' ... don not mistake 'facts' for claims, as Judith Liu has now thoroughly shown; [see J. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic (2015).]
   .
3. reckon with a silencing of important facts which do not fit the author's intention - see, for example, the draft Gospel of Marcion;
   .
4. understand the ideological basis from which to Tertullian argues and the aim towards which he is driving: most importantly, for a prior existence of a or the Gospel(s) of the Apostles and their Apostolic men, and the positioning of the New Testament as linked to the Old Testament; while at his juncture he is only hoping and fighting for the acceptance of this combination as a mainstream belief;
   .
5. detect the seriousness of the underlying argument the moment he is ridiculing [his] opponent's position...for example, [Tertullian's account of] Marcion’s claim that his gospel was falsified by authors who then pseudonymously put the names of Apostles and Apostolic men to their texts.

Vinzent, Markus (2016) 'Tertullian's Preface to Marcion's Gospel' Studia Patristica Supplement 5; Lueven, Peeters.
.

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[Giuseppe]

It is worthy of note that prof Vinzent corrects prof Droge: the latter argues that Eusebius insisted that "old is better than new" against Pagans (who accused the Christianity as a new hence false religion). Really, the polemical target was also Marcion's idea of a new deity revealed only recently the 15° year of Tiberius.

[mlinssen]

Tertullian is very likely to have been re-writing history. To the point of gaslightling.

It's certainly possible, but is there evidence for such a view?

I think so: Tertullian's profound rhetoric, and, like other Ante-Nicene Patristic Fathers, his appeal to supposed Jewish prophecy about Jesus underpinning the Christian theology and tropes he and his peers are pushing, serve as evidence.

But, is it evidence for that? I think it is the other way around. Looking at the earliest layer of Christian writings, they nearly all appeal to Jewish prophecy and the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures: Epistle to the Hebrews, Ignatius, 1 Clement, Ascension of Isaiah, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus. All earlier than Tertullian, and all consistent with the views of Tertullian on the origins of Christianity, AFAICS. If there is re-writing of history, it seems to have happened before Tertullian.

Most of the analysis of Paul and the Gospels on this forum up to recently seems to have been around how Paul and the Gospels were heavily influenced by the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus didn't exist because he was created from the Hebrew Scriptures!

But now there is an earlier layer about a Jesus that wasn't created from the Hebrew Scriptures??? I think that requires some kind of explanation about where the idea of "Christ"/"Messiah" came from, if there was no Hebrew Scriptures origin (a point Tertullian makes as well)

Also some re-evaluation of Paul's letters and gMark might be nice from those who have thought that Paul and the Gospel writers were working from Hebrew Scriptures, but now think that Marcion was primary. You know who you are!

Of course we are looking through the lens of the victors here, but that doesn't make Tertullian and others wrong. Anything can be proposed, but not everything has evidence.

As I note previously:

One thing I noticed in reading Against Marcion book IV is that, after raising and briefly considering the issue of whether Marcion's gospel or Luke and other synoptic gospels, Tertullian goes into a long spiel appealing to the Jewish scriptures rather than to actual accounts about Jesus.

Yes, I know. He doesn't appeal to "newspaper reporter" accounts of Jesus. Like nearly all early Christian writers, 'finding' Jesus in the Jewish Scriptures was regarded as important.

In fact, that is evident in the whole rationale behind Marcion's belief that 'Judaisers' had inserted lots of Jewish Scripture references into Paul and Marcion's Gospel rather than inserting "actual accounts about Jesus", despite Marcion apparently believing that Jesus had a ministry on earth, interacted with his 12 disciples, etc.

Markus Vinzent notes in his 2014 book Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels that, on occasion, and not just in Against Marcion, Tertullian gives clues about what really happened. And Vinzent also noted that in his 2016 book, 'Tertullian's Preface to Marcion's Gospel', in which he dissects Tertullian's preface-commentaries about Marcion, not just to Adversus Marcionem, but also to De preascriptione haereticoum, De resurrectione carnis and to De carne Christi, that Tertullian gives away his real agenda/s [in those prefaces].

<snipped>

Thanks for the quotes from Vinzent. I don't see anything there that addresses the question, though I don't have his book so I can't comment without seeing the context or cites he uses.

Tertullian and all the FF evidently are dishonest as hell:

What gets created this way is a purely Thomasine Marcion - that misses some Thomasine material that is in Luke.
With all the FF claiming that Marcion excised material from Luke, why didn't they jump all over the green parts here?
I mean really, we know that those are in Luke although it is highly likely that they also existed in Marcion, given their Thomasine background - but these are obvious examples of Lukan material not attested to in Marcion by the FF.
Hello! Finally a real boatload of examples of material that Marcion excised from Luke - and there are no takers at all?!

So we have a demonstration of what the FF were after - why don't they point any of these out?
The only conclusion can be that these were present in Marcion, correct?
Then the conclusion must be that everything that is unattested yet present in Luke must also be present in Marcion, right?

But the real question is: there is so many Thomasine Luke here, and all of it unattested, by any of the FF.
NONE OF THIS HAS ANY HEBREW BEHIND IT OF COURSE, OR DOES IT

[mlinssen]

It is worthy of note that prof Vinzent corrects prof Droge: the latter argues that Eusebius insisted that "old is better than new" against Pagans (who accused the Christianity as a new hence false religion). Really, the polemical target was also Marcion's idea of a new deity revealed only recently the 15° year of Tiberius.

Luke 5:39 καὶ (And) οὐδεὶς (no one) πιὼν (having drunk) παλαιὸν (old wine) θέλει (desires) νέον (new); λέγει (he says) γάρ (for), ‘Ὁ (The) παλαιὸς (old) χρηστός (GOOD) ἐστιν (is).’”

I fixed Berean

Tons of MSS have 'better' here: χρηστότερος - a non existing word, where the comparative should be κρείττων instead.
So what do the bible translators do? They hide the bad grammar of the NT yet keep the intended meaning - and for the simple minded there seems nothing amiss, while for those who know their Greek this is het another manifestation of a non native who was trying out his Greek.
And that is not because he was a Judean illiterate!

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And those MSS are the same that have the typically Thomasine 'immediately', εὐθέως, that mirrors 47.3

[Giuseppe]

Tertullian was more marcionite than one can think. His late conversion to Montanism proves this fact: despite of all that apology of apostolic tradition etc, for Tertullian

Truth does not derive from bodily and physical experiences but from the Holy Spirit and is present in the spirit only. The true church, therefore, came down from heaven with Christ and the Holy Spirit and inspired the prophecy that heralds the final millennium of this material world.

(Markus Vinzent, Resetting the Origins of Christianity, p.153, my bold)