What if both Detering and Vinzent are wrong

[Giuseppe]

A radical thesis	Its criticism
Detering: Marcion wrote the core of the pauline "epistles"	Robert M. Price: there are epistles that preceded Marcion (so much is their riotous diversity, in a gentilizing sense) and were only collected by him
Vinzent: Marcion wrote the Earliest Gospel	Matthias Klinghardt: there are passages in proto-Luke (so much is their judaizing sense) that don't fit the Marcionite theology

If I agree with the Bob Price's criticism of the Detering's thesis, then coherently I have to give up to the Vinzent's thesis of a Marcionite paternity of proto-Luke.

Corollary: Marcion was merely a collector of proto-Luke + epistles.

[Giuseppe]

• Marcion was not a theologian: he didn't fabricate all the epistles:
  
  
  I differ from Detering in two respects. First, ... Marcion cannot have written all the letters ascribed to Paul, since some are Gnostic, not Marcionite, and others like Galatians 1-2 supplement his own and threaten to obscure the originals. As the old heresiologists averred, I think Marcion may have been Simon’s disciple, at least a Simonian if Marcion was not himself a companion of the Magus.
  The Pauline epistles began, most of them, as fragments by Simon (part of Romans), Marcion (the third through sixth chapters of Galatians and the basic draft of Ephesians), and Valentinian Gnostics (Colossians, parts of 1 Corinthians, at least). Some few began as Catholic documents, while nearly all were interpolated by Polycarp...
  
  (Robert M. Price, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 511-512, my bold)

• Marcion was not an author: he didn't write *Ev:
  
  
  ...Marcion conceivably brought the collection of writings with him from Pontus to Rome. This collection included the ten letters of Paul without the Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews (the development-history of which remains unclear and need not be further discussed here), it also included *Ev, the anonymous Gospel. Marcion had neither created nor edited this collection; he simply accepted it as the foundation, which was given to him, and which was used in Pontus. Not difficult to imagine is Marcion's theological profile, which (even in this pre-Roman era) contained elements of his theology that were eventually labeled heretical.
  
  (Matthias Klinghardt, The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, p. 402, my bold)

Marcion was only a collector.

[Giuseppe]

It is also true that, while Bob Price gives his own reasons — beyond if right or wrong (in my humble opinion: right) — about why Marcion couldn't have fabricated himself all the epistles,

...and the basic reason is that some portions of the epistles are too much riotously gnostic even for Marcion...

... I have not yet heard a true argument by Klinghardt et alia about why *Ev couldn't be written by Marcion. In other terms, I am only assuming that the possible reason is that the content of *Ev sounds judaizing for Klinghardt, but the dilemma is that Klinghardt does never a such assertion in all his book.

[Irish1975]

1. In these citations, Price is not saying that Marcion “was only a collector.” But rather, that Marcion might himself have written much, but not all of, the central Pauline material.

2. You are right to notice that Klinghardt has no argument for his view—which is thus only an assumption—that Marcion was essentially a curator and facilitator of other people’s writings. It is one possibility, to be sure. But the agenda of mapping the earliest Christian writings onto the 1st century exerts its tractor beam even here. What might have happened must have happened, because that’s how we preserve the credibility of New Testament Studies. Such an argument by default is not an argument at all.

3. Both Jason BeDuhn and Klinghardt—the best Marcion scholars?—have put forward this dubious theory of a conservative, passive Marcion. This makes no sense at all. Why would Marcion have been a notorious, polarizing, and influential figure at all, if all he did was promote scriptures he himself had nothing to do with composing? Or, to take BeDuhn’s view more specifically, how is it not the grossest anachronism to imagine Marcion as “creator of the Canon,” as though collecting a few texts into a codex were at all comparable to what (mostly Protestant) scholars of the past two centuries have meant by fussing over “the problem of the canon”? I don’t have time here to express my criticism of this deeply unpersuasive view of Marcion, but you get my drift. I can work up a longer thread about this matter, if anyone is interested.

[lclapshaw]

1. In these citations, Price is not saying that Marcion “was only a collector.” But rather, that Marcion might himself have written much, but not all of, the central Pauline material.

2. You are right to notice that Klinghardt has no argument for his view—which is thus only an assumption—that Marcion was essentially a curator and facilitator of other people’s writings. It is one possibility, to be sure. But the agenda of mapping the earliest Christian writings onto the 1st century exerts its tractor beam even here. What might have happened must have happened, because that’s how we preserve the credibility of New Testament Studies. Such an argument by default is not an argument at all.

3. Both Jason BeDuhn and Klinghardt—the best Marcion scholars?—have put forward this dubious theory of a conservative, passive Marcion. This makes no sense at all. Why would Marcion have been a notorious, polarizing, and influential figure at all, if all he did was promote scriptures he himself had nothing to do with composing? Or, to take BeDuhn’s view more specifically, how is it not the grossest anachronism to imagine Marcion as “creator of the Canon,” as though collecting a few texts into a codex were at all comparable to what (mostly Protestant) scholars of the past two centuries have meant by fussing over “the problem of the canon”? I don’t have time here to express my criticism of this deeply unpersuasive view of Marcion, but you get my drift. I can work up a longer thread about this matter, if anyone is interested.

Oh yes! Please do!

[Secret Alias]

For what it is worth Μαρκίων = ἀπόστολος in numerology. 1021.

[Giuseppe]

promote scriptures he himself had nothing to do with composing

my thought here is: as for the epistles, idem with the Evangelion. If you think that Marcion wrote, for example, only Galatians, and not the other epistles (which is Bob Price's view), then accordingly you have to think that only some episodes of *Ev has been interpolated by Marcion. Which makes sense to me insofar I see that only some episodes of Luke smell strongly like pure marcionism, not the others.

[GakuseiDon]

Why would Marcion have been a notorious, polarizing, and influential figure at all, if all he did was promote scriptures he himself had nothing to do with composing?

IMHO it was all about the magic, which led to fame/notoriety, which led to wealth and women. Simply, Marcion wasn't on his own. He was part of a stream of thought that people were able to tap into, since Christians had a source in heaven whom could be invoked by anyone. Released from Judaism, Christ became "Open Source". Any cosmic origin backstory became possible, and, as long as it involved angels, daemons and secret knowledge that anyone could access (not just the elite), it would appeal to the masses. Docetists, gnostics and proto-orthodox were all part of that, as independent freelance religion entrepreneurs, just as Paul was. Some contemporaries of Marcion:

Cerdo:

Cerdo (Greek: Κέρδων) was a Syrian Gnostic who was deemed a heretic by the Early Church around the time of his teaching, circa 138 AD. Cerdo started out as a follower of Simon Magus, like Basilides and Saturninus, and taught at about the same time as Valentinus and Marcion...

... Cerdo rejected the law and the prophets, and renounced the Creator, teaching that Christ was the son of the higher good deity, and that he came not in the substance of flesh but in appearance only...

Tertullian, in his work against Marcion, mentions Cerdo four times, but each time only as Marcion's predecessor.

Valentinus:

Valentinus (also spelled Valentinius; c. AD 100 – c. 180) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian.[1] He founded his school in Rome...

Valentinus had a large following... Clement of Alexandria records that his followers said that Valentinus was a follower of Theudas, and that Theudas in turn was a follower of Paul the Apostle.[12] Valentinus said that Theudas imparted to him the secret wisdom that Paul had taught privately to his inner circle...

... "he applied himself with all his might to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent."

Valentinian literature described the primal being, called Bythos, as the beginning of all things. After ages of silence and contemplation, Bythos gave rise to other beings by a process of emanation. The first series of beings, the aeons, were thirty in number, representing fifteen syzygies or pairs sexually complementary. Through the error of Sophia, one of the lowest aeons, and the ignorance of Sakla, the lower world with its subjection to matter is brought into existence.

Simon Magus:

As described by Epiphanius, in the beginning God had his first thought, his Ennoia, which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. But the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. Thereafter, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, a slave and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue his Ennoia, and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself.

Basilides

Basilides (Greek: Βασιλείδης) was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt[1] who taught from 117 to 138 AD,[* 1] and claimed to have inherited his teachings from the apostle Saint Matthias.[2][3] He was a pupil of either the Simonian teacher Menander,[4] or a supposed disciple of Peter named Glaucias.[..

His view of creation, according to the orthodox heresiologists, was likely similar to that of Valentinus, whom he rivaled, being based on a "doctrine of emanations" proceeding from an uncreated, ineffable Pleroma. Like his rival, Basilides taught that matter, and the material universe, are evil, and that the God of the Old Testament, who was responsible for creation, is a misguided archon or lesser deity.[11]

Saturninus of Antioch

Saturninus or Satornilus (active 100–120 AD) was an early Gnostic Christian from the 1st century Simonian school...

Saturninus adhered to Menander's doctrines while Basilides developed them in different ways.[1] However, while Menander called himself the messengers of God, Saturninus considered Jesus Christ the only who could receive this title, and therefore might have been the first teacher to introduce Christ in Gnosticism.[3][4] At the same time, he also introduced the notion of the God of Judaism being an evil impostor, the Platonic idea of a descended spark of life,[5] and the idea that there are different classes of men.

Menander

Menander (Greek: Μένανδρος) was a first-century CE Samaritan Gnostic and magician. He belonged to the school of the Simonians, becoming its leader after the death of his master and instructor, Simon Magus...

Menander called his part of the sect Menandrians, holding the belief that the world was made by angels...

Menander held solid to the belief that as head of the church, he was the savior and Power of God.

All of them recognised that there was a Jesus Christ who lived in Judea amongst the Jews, probably sharing many of the same set of actions and sayings though with different ideas about the nature of Jesus' body. Some had their own Gospels. Basilides apparently used a version of the Gospel of John.

[rgprice]

Why would Marcion have been a notorious, polarizing, and influential figure at all, if all he did was promote scriptures he himself had nothing to do with composing?

Likewise we can ask: Why would there have been so much opposition to Marcion and claims that he had misinterpreted a story that he wrote himself?

Clearly there had to have been a pre-existing story which had generated an existing following and impetration prior to Marcion. If Marcion were the first one to come out with a Gospel story adn promote it and no one had previously heard any such story, then how possibly could there have been claims that he had misinterpreted anything?

Why would there be such opposition?

As for his Gospel, I think its both plausible that he merely adopted an existing Gospel or that he edited his own version. But in either case, his Gospel wasn't the first. The real innovation most likely was his Antithesis, which put forward an interpretation of the Gospel/Letter collection that contradicted some existing interpretations.

It seems that putting this interpretation in writing as a preface to the Gospel+Letter collection was the innovation caused such consternation.

[Giuseppe]

this dubious theory of a conservative, passive Marcion.

A Mythicist I am eagerly following on facebook, Stolarz, agrees with this "theory of a conservative, passive Marcion", since he writes:

Consensus makes Paul an unprecedented giant. Radical critics tried to do the same with Marcion.

Why didn't he write? Because his goal was to build a network of congregations, not to write.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/103853052 ... 9859462544

This remembers me a criticism raised by someone against the hypothesis of a Paul fabricated entirely by Marcion: if Marcion is "Paul", then why there are no references at all, in the epistles, to the primal activity of Marcion: the shipping business?

The fact that Marcion is remembered everywhere as a business man makes it less probable that he was an intellectual (I follow Brodie's suggestion that the evangelists are intellectuals).