Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I do have a translation of it. It is full of poor renderings, and I am working through it with help of others. I am not a translator by profession nor do I claim that. I translated for my own benefit. Your claims that I am more than an amateur are without basis.

Stephen, character assassination is your favorite technique when you are presented with evidence or arguments you cannot refute.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 7:50 am Unless I misunderstood. Salm translates most of Detering's stuff. I thought he said he was working on something else. But the umlaut is an obvious error. Maybe he said he was a translator in the heat of battle. Who knows

Salm will probably do this one as well.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 1:41 am Stuart,

the force of the my's (and Vinzent's ?) argument (John the Baptist being introduced firstly by Marcion) is based essentially on the marcionite nature of the passage:

"...who, having heard his works, was scandalized".

How can you explain it without appeal to a marcionite intepretation?

In addition, I have noted in the past that also Josephus introduced John as ''the Baptist'' without justify why he is called 'Baptist' (the reader is left alone to derive the inference). If even Josephus could introduce a label without a reason, why not also Marcion?

I don't agree with that opinion. Vinzent does not, in my view, fully take into account the last prophet theology nor the association of John with Malachi "prophecy" as Elijah to come first. If John the Baptist was not a known commodity before the Marcionite Gospel, then why introduce him and why do so without any back story? Clearly when John appears, or rather a discussion of his disciples' practices, in Luke 5:33 the reader is presumed to already be familiar with this John. How is that possible if he is a new character introduced by the Marcionite author?

Further the passage of John asking who Jesus is, and Jesus' response and subsequent denigration of his stature are seem (to me at least) to be in response to differently held presentation of John. The reed shaking in the wind of the desert/wilderness is obviously drawn from some well known scene of John in the desert/wilderness. Unless we are inventing sources the one place we know that is the Baptism story. I suggest this tale in Luke 7:18-28 was meant to replace the Baptism tale. And his comment about about John being even more than a prophet and the one spoken of in the Malachi prophecy (Luke 7:26-27) makes it very clear he acknowledges this association, an association that only makes sense in the Baptism story. I further say this Baptism tale had to have come from the prototype Gospels underlying the Synoptics because Mark refrained almost entirely from using sectarian stories and sayings added to the underlying text. If Mark's Baptism tale didn't come from that source, where else could it have come from?

And finally under the principle of leave sleeping dogs lie, why bring up a character if unknown to the public --or at least little known your peers in the evangelical movement-- if they are used to counter your teaching? The most logical answer is the character was well known and it was necessary to refute the claim he was the one coming before Christ. I don't think Vinzent gives a credible alternative, as it's logic collapses on itself.

Stuart wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 1:30 pm
I don't agree with that opinion. Vinzent does not, in my view, fully take into account the last prophet theology nor the association of John with Malachi "prophecy" as Elijah to come first. If John the Baptist was not a known commodity before the Marcionite Gospel, then why introduce him and why do so without any back story? Clearly when John appears, or rather a discussion of his disciples' practices, in Luke 5:33 the reader is presumed to already be familiar with this John. How is that possible if he is a new character introduced by the Marcionite author?

About the reason why a Gnostic author could introduce a 'Baptizer', I have talked here.

Further the passage of John asking who Jesus is, and Jesus' response and subsequent denigration of his stature are seem (to me at least) to be in response to differently held presentation of John.

I concede this point.

The reed shaking in the wind of the desert/wilderness is obviously drawn from some well known scene of John in the desert/wilderness.

I was thinking just about this curious allusion to the “reed shaking in the wind of the desert”.

Was it based polemically on the following Markan passage (1:12)?



Just in reaction to a Jesus who was thrown (as if he was a “soccer's ball”) by the Spirit into the wilderness (a famous clue of Markan separationism) , Marcion could have called John the Baptist as a “reed shaking by the wind” (=the Spirit); the sense is: he is the fragile human figure unable to contain the Spirit, not Jesus.

But what if the relation is vice versa? Marcion introduced an ethereal/spiritual Jesus and a 'reed' John, while ''Mark'', in response to Marcion's denigration of John, made Jesus himself the 'reed shaken by the wind of the spirit'.


I am not able, at the moment, to take a decision.

Stuart wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 1:30 pm
... Vinzent does not, in my view, fully take into account the last prophet theology nor the association of John with Malachi "prophecy" as Elijah to come first ...
.

Vinzent has a little to say about that in an essay titled 'The Ascension of Isaiah as a Response to Marcion of Sinope' in The Ascension of Isaiah (Studies on Early Christian apocrypha), edited by J.N. Bemmer, I Czachesz, T Nicklas, M Pesthy and L.R. Lanzillotta, 2016, Peeters, Leuven; pp. 75-118.

He says

"Contrary to Marcion's criticism of propheticism that ended with John the Baptist, in the Ascension of Isaiah we are, indeed, faced with a revelation that takes its authority from one of the major prophets, Isaiah. He is the prophet (of course together with Jerimiah and Malachi) of the messianic birth stories in Luke and Matthew. And Isa. 40:3 (in a combined quote with Mal 3:1) is the first literary quote from a Prophet in both Luke and Mark (Luke 1:76; Mark 1:2-3), and also resonates in Matt. 11:10 par. Luke 7:27; Matt 3:3; par, Luke 3:4; John 1:23 and 3:28." [p. 80]
.

Vinzent then goes on to refer to 2 Kings a few times.

Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:50 pm

The reed shaking in the wind of the desert/wilderness is obviously drawn from some well known scene of John in the desert/wilderness.

I was thinking just about this curious allusion to the “reed shaking in the wind of the desert”.

Was it based polemically on the following Markan passage (1:12)?

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness,

Just in reaction to a Jesus who was thrown (as if he was a “soccer's ball”) by the Spirit into the wilderness (a famous clue of Markan separationism) , Marcion could have called John the Baptist as a “reed shaking by the wind” (=the Spirit); the sense is: he is the fragile human figure unable to contain the Spirit, not Jesus.

But what if the relation is vice versa? Marcion introduced an ethereal/spiritual Jesus and a 'reed' John, while ''Mark'', in response to Marcion's denigration of John, made Jesus himself the 'reed shaken by the wind of the spirit'.


I am not able, at the moment, to take a decision.

Curiously, the fact that the marcionite Jesus says, about John, what precisely he (John) gave up (by going to wilderness):


...specifies that the original Temptation Story in the wilderness referred to John the Baptist.

The marcionite Jesus is introducing John as a pious Jew who obeyed the Law of the Creator, but only to point out the great vanity of the his efforts, just as vain was his hope that Jesus was the expected Jewish Messiah.

So we can imagine 'Mark' who transferred on Jesus the original Temptation Story in the Wilderness where John, and not Jesus, was the tempted hero.

Conclusion: the marcionite Jesus was “john-nized” to make him more jewish.

To me it has long appeared more natural to interpret both the "man dressed in soft clothing" and the "reed shaking in the wind" as Herod Antipas. John is a rugged prophet in the saying, not a wimpy palace dweller like the Herods. And Herod Antipas' earliest coinage symbol appears to have been a reed: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4026.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Fri Nov 23, 2018 9:18 am To me it has long appeared more natural

I knew that different interpretation about Herod/"reed", but now I wonder if that presumed reference to Herod was someway implicit as part of what John gave up, by going to wilderness. In other terms, the original Temptation Story could have a John who was rebel in the wilderness not against Satan, but against Herod's temptations. This could have a historical nucleus, afterall, per Josephus (if Josephus passage about John is genuine). Or no.

I'm sure you can come up with anything to support your conclusion.

perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 23, 2018 10:59 am I'm sure you can come up with anything to support your conclusion.

and which is the YOUR conclusion? I am not reading nothing about your views until now. I don't know even if you are a mythicist, a historicist or a Jesus agnostic. I know only that you seem to be disturbed by the my posts. But at least I am not judaizing old de-judaizers.