Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

Justin isn't convincing. Clement's Marcion was a Platonizing Christian just like Clement. There is also the Roman senator Marcellus who appears in the Acts of Peter and who was a historical figure and relative of Pliny. Both men were administrators in Bithynia. The Marcionite community in Harran accepted Marcellus as a leader of their community. But I still wonder whether Marcia was influential to the making of Marcionism as a heresy.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Peter Kirby »

Secret Alias wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 11:12 am But I still wonder whether Marcia was influential to the making of Marcionism as a heresy.
This could be a very important point. I just don't think it needs to be burdened with additional assumptions.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

I think there might be layers.

1. Marcellus the senator. This is a founder of Christianity maybe even Marcionite Christianity.
2. But somehow the specific heretical form of the religion was refracted through Marcia the Imperial concubine who happened to be referenced in Hegesippus and that account became the basis to Marcion's parallel visit to Rome under Anicetus.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

Marcia provides the etymological basis to the name "Marcion" because the things belonging to her or associated with her (patronage) were Μαρκιοι, Μαρκίων. It's hard to explain the origin (outside of a historical Marcion) of the name.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

In Jerome there is this notion of the first missionary to Rome of the Marcionites being a female.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Peter Kirby »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Neratius_Marcellus (ca. 50 - 130/140) would make him an old man in the second century.

There could be something to this. Marcion is described as an old man.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Peter Kirby »

He served with Titus Flavius Clemens, the one "executed, allegedly for atheism" shortly after 95, near the end of the reign of Domitian. By tradition, a Christian martyr. By scholarly tradition, possibly Jewish.

Is this something that spurred on this line of thought?
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

No. I just saw that Marcellus the senator passed on a villa to Pliny his descendent. Pliny reports on Christians in Bithynia.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Peter Kirby »

Marcellus might have eventually become intertwined with the emperor Hadrian's religious interests, from a reference in the Historia Augusta.
Birley then notes that "it may be that he came to a sad end soon afterwards, for among Hadrian's close friends... the author of the Historia Augusta lists a Marcellus, forced to suicide by the emperor."
This would make both Titus Flavius Clemens and Marcellus potential martyrs.
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Re: Enough of "Textual Criticism"! What Do People Imagine Marcionism Looked Like If You Visited Their Synagogues?

Post by Secret Alias »

I think scholars of early Christianity are too eager or not vigilant enough to try and bring this "supernatural religion" into the real world. I even think "mythicism" is guilty of this trait (i.e. to make it all about texts i.e. "oh it says here" THEREFORE).
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