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

[Giuseppe]

The book has arrived. While unfortunately I don't see in it a complete commentary of the Evangelion ( ) , I would like to quote some remarks that have a mythicist tenor, even if made by a historicist (and Christian) scholar:

In the later Gospels, this angelic figure was supplemented with the idea of an impending apocalyptic judgement, an idea nourished by the Jewish Scriptures, against which Marcion had explicitly formulated the message of a non-judging Jesus. Or, to put it another way, without the Marcionite notion of an unhistorical saviour sent into history by an unknown God to rescue humanity from a terrible worldly history created by an inferior demiurge — the Jewish rabbi Jesus would have remained what he was from birth to death and for a long time beyond: a charismatic man who inspired people with his liberal take on the Jewish tradition (far more liberal than Rabbi Hillel, for example) and who obviously sought to win over Jews from diverse religious backgrounds.

(Resetting the Origins of Christianity, p. 332, my bold)

Note the deliberate contrast: an unhistorical saviour vs history.

A mythicist would have said:

without the Marcionite notion of an unhistorical saviour sent into history by an unknown God to rescue humanity from a terrible worldly history created by an inferior demiurge — Jesus would have remained what he was: a mythical deity working exclusively in the lower heavens.

The quote says me that the apocalypticism found in the first 'significant' action of Mark's Jesus:

14 After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 15 “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

(Mark 1:14-15)

...is expected by adorers of a judging Jesus, and therefore by anti-marcionite Christians.

The "apocalyptic prophet" reconstructed by Ehrman vanishes as a mere anti-marcionite figure.

[mlinssen]

It will take a while before Vinzent can shed a Jewish IS, apparently.
The IS of Chrestianity undoubtedly was not Judaic - but perhaps he was Hebrew. If we look at John it is plausible that a Samarian (and likely not Samaritan) background was present

But the word Jewish is utterly uncalled for either or even any way, as it conflates ethnicity with religion and blends everything into a bland blurp, stamping a useless label on it
Vinzent night as well have called him white, black, or yellow: it pushes IS into a box without function

Thanks but the way Giuseppe! I'll get it myself now, had al forgotten about it (although that wouldn't have lasted long)

[mlinssen]

More than most interesting, Vinzent works his way back from middle ages to Lawd knows where he'll end up

No spoilers please!

[mlinssen]

On Eusebius’ stage, Judaism and Greco-Roman paganism are first stylized as separate entities, threatening Christianity. As the book progresses, they become subservient to the novel Christian power and recede into the background, making room for Christian actors and authorities: the early missionary Apostles, their successors and the bishops taking over the major cities of the Empire. At this point, we may ask what shaped Eusebius’ own views before he began to create his story.

Page 117 of the Kindle

Having lived almost half my life in the United Kingdom, I have learned that thinking and writing in English is not only a matter of using different words and grammar. It also entails reflecting in a different style, with different emphasis, and examining other phenomena; even if you only want to render a sentence from your no-longer native tongue into your second non-native language, you are confronted with the obstacles of squaring different circles.

Page ix

[mlinssen]

Heresies, according to Tertullian, always emerge later than orthodoxy, which, from the outset, serves as the standard against which deviations can be discovered and measured. And even though he admits that heretics already existed at the time of the apostles, but fell away from the Church,159 he nonetheless maintains that heresies are always subsequent to and deviant from orthodoxy and for this reason have no claim to Scripture or tradition. He sees this confirmed by the fact that Scripture already warns of heresies160 and that most heresies appeared only after the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161 ce).

Uhuh

It is a very exciting journey through the Patristics really - and much like the NT, when one has gone through all the texts...

Thank goodness that Vinzent spares us from having to do so.
But postdating the "Heresies" - it's good fun

[Giuseppe]

I have just read the chapter on Gregory of Tours and Orosius, and already I see two anomalies that could be explained only by Marcionite priority:

• The paradox of Gregory who corrupted his sources but claimed the faithful preservation of his own changes (it remembers the analogous paradox of the incipit of Luke);

• The paradox of Orosius who is not able to explain, against criticisms of his time, why the creator expected so much time to make the Son descend so very late, under Pilate (it remembers the Marcionite meaning of a new deity for recent times).

[mlinssen]

Tertullian’s claim that Marcion expressly rejected the Acts of the Apostles seems more of a polemical argument than evidence of the work’s existence by the mid-second century. At the same time, the idea that Marcion claimed to have come up with his own gospel on which those attributed pseudonymously to two apostles (Matthew and John) and their two disciples (Mark and Luke) were based, is unlikely to have been invented by Tertullian. There is no reason why he should have fabricated and attributed to Marcion the notion that the four gospels were plagiarized versions of Marcion’s own gospel, which had extended and Judaized Marcion’s text and linked it back to the Jewish Scriptures

Oh my. We seem to be finally moving in the right direction

[mlinssen]

In both places, therefore, in Adversus haereses where ‘New Testament’ denotes a collection of Christian writings, it is used in reference to and rejection of Marcion and his followers. In the first instance, he mentions the gospel, as well as Paul’s letters, presents the structure of Marcion’s ‘New Testament’126 and argues against him. In the second case, the term ‘New Testament’ appears in Irenaeus’ long quote of a report by an anonymous anti-Marcionite Presbyter,127 which he explicitly declares to be an examination of ‘the doctrine of Marcion’.128 This overview shows that Irenaeus uses the word ‘Testament’ to denote a ‘certificate of inheritance/transfer’, that is, the idea of a ‘will’ or a ‘covenant’. With the exception of referring to Marcion’s collection and in imitation and rejection of him, nowhere else in his works does he ever use the term ‘New Testament’ to mean a collection of Christian writings or refer to his own collection of writings by that title.129

[Giuseppe]

Even if not the Vinzent's view, I like very much the simple fact that the prof raises the following possibility:

We can also take a different perspective — following the radical critics, those seeking the disenchantment of religion and the world — and dismiss the scriptural accounts as little more than theologically tainted illusions. Suppose the New Testament scriptures were all sectarian writings and did not differ fundamentally from the apocryphal and Gnostic texts: testifying to the belief in a mythical saviour but not reliable sources for the existence of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, the Jesus of the Gospels could be considered a character type, just the kind that appears in oral traditions the world over, through which collective experiences are refracted throught he individual and provided with a single, human inspiration. [1]

Note [1] refers to:

See on this P. J. Heather, Goths and Romans 332-489 (1991), 6; ...

I quote the page 6 from the Heather's book:

Some sections of narrative may also derive from oral tradition. We hear of King Berig, for instance, who led the Goths' migration from Scandinavia (4. 25), and of King Filimer guiding them into lands above the Black Sea (4. 28). Both are events of the distant past, and Gothic oral history seems the most likely source of these stories. Archaeological evidence also seems to suggest that the move to the Black Sea, at least, was not an organized tribal migration under a single leader, but that many smaller groups moved individually over an extended period. If so, the Getica' stories would resemble those found in modern oral traditions, where important tribal events of the past are often preserved in highly personalized form, pictured as the inspiration of one individual. In similar vein, the Getica alleges that warfare between the Goths and Gepids was caused by the greed of the Gepid king Fastida. Underlying tensions and rivalries between two great peoples have thus been simplified and personalized into the deeds of one man. This had the additional benefit of blaming the Gepids for originating a quarrel (17.97) which lasted into the sixth century, revealing, like the origin-tales, the mark of Gothic chauvinism.

(my bold)

Also the Gospel Jesus seems "simplify" and "personalize" the "underlying tensions and rivalries between" two great factions in growing christianity: gentilizers versus judaizers.

[MrMacSon]

I quote [from] page 6 from P.J. Heather's book Goths and Romans:

... Archaeological evidence also seems to suggest that the move to the Black Sea, at least, was not an organized tribal migration under a single leader, but that many smaller groups moved individually over an extended period. If so, the Getica stories would resemble those found in modern oral traditions, where important tribal events of the past are often preserved in highly personalized form, pictured as the inspiration of one individual. In similar vein, the Getica alleges that warfare between the Goths and Gepids was caused by the greed of the Gepid king Fastida. Underlying tensions and rivalries between two great peoples [were] thus simplified and personalized into the deeds of one man. This had the additional 'benefit' of blaming the Gepids for originating a quarrel (17.97) which lasted into the sixth century, revealing, like the origin-tales, the mark of Gothic chauvinism.

Also the Gospel Jesus seems [to] "simplify" and "personalize" the "underlying tensions and rivalries between" two great factions in growing Christianity: [gentiles] versus judaizers.

"pictured as the inspiration of one individual" might also mean

• "as the inspiration from one individual," or
• "inspiration from accounts about one individual."

And there were likely to have been more than two factions in growing Christianity: docetists, literalists, Valentinians, Montanists, etc.

eta
hence the names of the various sects: Valentinians, Simonians, Marcionites, Carpocratians, etc., and perhaps even Sethians