Marcionite readings of the Christ Hymn?

[rgprice]

Both BeDuhn and apparently Vinzent render a significantly different version of the Christ Hymn for the Marcionite version of the Pauline letters. But I'm not sure I understand the full justification for their versions.

BeDuhn has simply:

. . . 5 [Think this about yourselves (what you think)
also about] Christos Jesus, 6 who,
although he existed in God’s form,
did not consider a seizure of equality to God,
7 but emptied himself, taking a slave’s form,
becoming in the likeness of a human being;
8 and being found in an appearance as a human being,
[he humbled himself and became] obedient as far as death,
even a death by staking.

Vinzent provides something very similar.

The canonical version is of course:

6 who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
10 so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

So both remove Phil 2:9-11. BeDuhn's notes read simply:

Phil 2.9–3.3 is unattested. The Prologue’s identification of the bearer of the letter as Epaphroditus depends upon 2.25.

That's it? Simply that this is unattested? Does Vinzent provide any greater justification? How can such an important set of passages be brushed away with so little justification? I'm not saying its wrong, just that the footnote leaves a lit to be desired here.

[vocesanticae]

In his published Concordance and the footnotes of his forthcoming edition, Vinzent works through the terms in Phil 2.9-11 and details their occurrences in pre-canonical and canonical texts. After summarizing the lexical data, he concludes, "Der Vergleich der Lexeme weist einige vorkanonisch bezeugte Begriffe auf, jedoch auch eine Reihe von ausschließlich oder bevorzugt auf der kanonischen Ebene zu findende Termini. Für den narrativen Zusammenhang ist die Passage nicht zwingend, man wird folglich die Passage der kanonischen Redaktion zuschreiben, auch wenn die Möglichkeit besteht, dass diese auf einen vorkanonischen Text zurückgegriffen hat."

In the edition, he also specifically notes that all Apostolos editors except Hilgenfeld (v10 only) considered these verses as unattested: "Hilgenfeld sieht in Epiph., ref. 65 eine Berührung mit Vers 10, doch nach Übereinstimmung aller anderen Editoren sind die Verse 9-11 unbezeugt, auch wenn Zahn und Harnack mit deren irgendgearteten Präsenz rechnen."

[Secret Alias]

Here's some more German. Niemand kennt die ganze Wahrheit. These guys don't even know if what they think they know to be true is really true.

[rgprice]

Yeah, seems very speculative.

[Irish1975]

The canonical version contains more outrageous heresy than any patristic report about Marcionism. It stands in blaring contradiction to THE cardinal point of Christian christology, i.e., INCARNATION of the Word.

• He thought better of being equal with God? What?

• He was “found in appearance as a human”? What? So like, he woke up one day and made a discovery about himself, that he was appearing to humans as a felow human? WHAAAT?

• He was able to die on a cross, despite not actually being a human, but only being found to appear as a human. How is that conceivable?

• Then we get the disturbing suggestion that this being received the name “Jesus” from the Father only after his death on the cross. How unhelpful for the orthodox cause!

• Then this Jesus takes on the sovereign majesty that had formerly been attributed by Isaiah to YHWH, the one true God of the law and prophets. But I’m not going to open that can of worms.

These reflections lead me to ask: is the canonical Pauline Corpus actually more heretical, i.e. more opposed to the orthodoxy of such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, than anything that we definitely know was specific to the Marcionite scriptures?

[rgprice]

I agree. Nothing in the hymn sounds orthodox to me, which is why I'm surprised so much is cut away by these two with so little justification.

[MrMacSon]

They wouldn’t be cutting it away. It’s just that they haven’t found attestation for it (in the Patristic accounts of Marcion).

[rgprice]

They wouldn’t be cutting it away. It’s just that they haven’t found attestation for it (in the Patristic accounts of Marcion).

Right, but in their reconstructions they don't include it, even though it is simply unattested. But they do include other stuff that is unattested on the basis that it "seems like" it would be included. Maybe the reconstruction is just overly conservative, but it seems to there is little or no justification for assuming that it wasn't a part of Marcion's material.

[Secret Alias]

Maybe the reconstruction is just bullshit.

[vocesanticae]

They wouldn’t be cutting it away. It’s just that they haven’t found attestation for it (in the Patristic accounts of Marcion).

Right, but in their reconstructions they don't include it, even though it is simply unattested. But they do include other stuff that is unattested on the basis that it "seems like" it would be included. Maybe the reconstruction is just overly conservative, but it seems to there is little or no justification for assuming that it wasn't a part of Marcion's material.

Out of concerns for respecting fair use, I didn't reproduce all of Vinzent's statistical data in the footnotes, but he meticulously accounts how the terminology in Phil 2.6-8 is wholly consistent with well-attested vocabulary elsewhere in Apostolos, and that several lexical features in Phil 2.9-11 are unattested anywhere for Apostolos (e.g., ἐξομολογέομαι), including some NT hapax legomena (ὑπερυψόω, καταχθόνιος). As Vinzent has detailed in several publications, and Bull has recently shown in his comparison of the early 3 letter Syriac recension of Ignatius' letters, early strata of NT and Apostolic Fathers lit emphasize the crucifixion, but not the resurrection, and attribute the agency of the resurrection to Jesus himself, not to the Father in a binitarian or proto-trinitarian mode. The theme of giving Jesus proskunhsis is also similarly absent from early strata, but evident in canonical/later strata. In sum, Vinzent's position on the absence of Phil 2.9-11, a position shared by BeDuhn and myself, reflects a thoughtful consideration of a wide breadth of data patterns.