Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 11:04 am
Ken Olson wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 6:20 amAndrew has already offered a reasonable answer to this question, but I would like to add that I find the question itself seems to suggest that this is an odd or perhaps counterintuitive view in need of a special defense, which I don't think it is.
No, not in those words. How about just a defense of a not-odd, not-counterintuitive view?
Ken Olson wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2024 6:20 amIt seems to me that (4) is the most straightforward interpretation of what Tertullian said about Marcion. We would need an argument for why we should not trust Tertullian in this case
Seems pretty straightforward:
(1) It's polemical.
(2) It's at best unclear whether Tertullian was in a position to know which came first.
So, yes, I don't find this enough to feel that I have a good answer on this basis.
Here's the passage from Tertullian's Against Marcion 4.4 again:
For if the Gospel, said to be Luke's which is current among us (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form).
The part that I take Tertullian to be attributing to Marcions is in bold (the yellow is the part where Tertullian attributes it to Marcion).
1) Tertullian is claiming that Marcion said in his Antitheses that the gospel which is known as The Gospel According to Luke had been interpolated by Judaizers. This would be a polemical claim made by Marcion and upheld by later Marcionites. Tertullian's claim is not necessarily a polemical one. We know that Marcionites did think that (don't we?)
2) Tertullian is arguing that since Marcion wrote that The Gospel According to Luke had been interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, this must mean he knew the Gospel According to Luke in its allegedly interpolated form.
3) Tertullian does not say that Marcion himself claimed to have removed the Judaic interpolations from Luke to arrive at the text of the Evangelion he used, but Tertullian makes the inference that that is indeed the case. But all Tertullian claims Marcion said is that he knew The Gospel According to Luke (in its interpolated form). Marcion could theoretically also have known the pre-interpolated Evangelion. Tertullian doesn't cite him as saying otherwise (but Tertullian does not think that to be the case).
So, no, I don't see the claim that Marcion knew the text of The Gospel According to Luke as polemical or obviously mistaken.
Best,
Ken