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Section 3: the additional ε᾽λθε´τω σου η῾ βασιλει´α
Tertullian almost cryptically starts his reading of this passage of Mcn: ‘He had been praying in a certain place, to that higher-class father, looking up with eyes above measure presumptuous and audacious towards the heaven of that Creator by whose sternness and savagery he could easily have been struck down by lightning and hail’.
With this glamorous description, our heresiologist does not only want to ridicule Marcion’s Gospel which in its opening is not too different from Luke, he particularly stresses the intention of Marcion which he thought to have grasped. Jesus’ prayer was not a dialogue with the God of Israel, but a vision where the viewer and the viewed could hardly been distinguished and Jesus as a visionary was likened to Paul in his heavenly rapture.
As seen before, this commentary presumes that in the following address the ‘Father’ had been called a ‘Father … in heaven’, as this is the direction towards which the Lord was praying. That Tertullian calls him a ‘higher-class father’ which he in the same chapter calls Marcion’s ‘different god’ who, therefore, needed a ‘different’ prayer, proves that our rhetor had a good grasp of both text and content.
The Lord’s Prayer was meant to be an alternative prayer to that of John and it was directed to a different god than to the god of John. The novel character was not only marked by the shorter text, it was also recognisable by Marcion addressing the ‘Father’ as the Father of his community, not the Creator of this earth, but the higher God of the heavens: ‘Our Father who is in heaven’. The opening of the pericope, hence, was meant to distance Jesus from John, his disciples from those others of John (οι῾λοιποι´), this other, previously unknown god who was made public by Christ, from the one of John.
Tertullian retorts, that contrary to Marcion’s reading, one should understand this passage – and he certainly thinks like some modern scholar shave done too, as shown above– that the καθω` ςκαι` ᾽Ιωα´ννης refers to a disciple asking the Lord for teaching him a Johannine prayer to address the God of John. He concedes, however, and acknowledges, as he does in his De oratione, that the Lord’s Prayer is a new form of worship in which God is praised differently. No surprise, therefore, that Tertullian only mentions the term ‘Father to stress the familiarity with him as the God ‘who by making me and fashioning me became my begetter’.
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4 The Lord’s Prayer in Mcn
What, then, was the content of the Lord’s Prayer in Mcn? We have to start with the frame: First, Mcn had recounted the coming down of the Lord and his sudden and unexpected appearance in Capharnaum, then he introduces Jesus with his many titles: ‘the medic’ (Mcn 4:23 ᾽Ιατρο´ς ), ‘the Holy of God’ (Mcn 4:34 ο῾ α῞γιοςτου῀ θεου῀ ), the ‘Prophet’ (Mcn 4:24 προφη´της), ‘the Son of God’ (Mcn 4:41 ο῾ υι῾ο`ςτου῀ θεου῀), ‘the Christ’ (Mcn 4:41 ο῾ Χριστο´ς ), ‘the Αngelic Messenger for the kingdom of God’ (Mcn 4:43 α᾽ παγγελι σασθαιτη`νβασιλει´αντου῀ θεου῀),‘the Preacher’ (Mcn 4:44 κηρυ´σσων), ‘the Teacher’ (Mcn 5:5 διδα´σκαλος , ‘the Groom’ (Mcn 5:34 ο῾ νυµφιο´ς), somebody who prays (Mcn 6:12), one who sees, who is perfect just like his own teacher (Mcn 6:39f.), ‘the Son of Man’ (Mcn 9:18), ‘the Master of David’ (Mcn 20:41–44, not David’s son), ‘the Son’ (Mcn 9:20), the ‘beloved Son who is to be followed instead of following Mose (or the Torah) and Elija (or the Prophets) (Mcn 9:28–36).
When he is introduced as ‘the Great Prophet’(Mcn 7:16 Με´γας προφη´της), a message that has made its way everywhere into Judaea and to John the Baptist, the reaction of John is made plain: ‘When he heard of his deeds, he was scandalized’ (Mcn 7:18).
As stated before, this statement was cut out by Luke, yet John’s rejection of Jesus sets the tone for the pericopes that follow. In these, Marcion explains what kind of a Great Prophet Jesus is: The Lord is not one like John who claimed to prepare the way for the Lord (Mcn 7:27), he is not a prophet who shrinks away from sinners and women. Instead Jesus is the one who teaches and commands the powers of this earth (Mcn 8:25), who works wonders and who himself is the sole revelator (Mcn 10:22). The frame of the Lord’s Prayer, therefore, is picking up on the previous passage on John and the contrast set between John and Jesus.
The Lord’s Prayer in Mcn, therefore, develops further the newness of Jesus’ message and introduces this text as a novel prayer which in its conciseness contrasts with the long prayers attributed to John, although the antithesis relates less to the content of the prayer, but rather to its performance. It is more about the ‘how’, less about the ‘what’. While the Didache had left the question open who the hypocrites are that are criticised, Matthew was more to the point, when the hypocrites are identified with those who prefer long prayers in synagogues and streets, in order to be admired by people.
In Mcn, however, it is John and his disciples who are the targets.
This antithesis fits, as we have shown, the distinction that Marcion introduced be-tween John and Jesus, and on which he insisted in his preface (Antitheses) between ‘Christ who in the time of Tiberius was revealed by a god formerly unknown, for the salvation of all the nations, and another Christ who is destined by God the Creator to come at some time still future for the reestablishment of the Jewish kingdom’, ‘between justice and kindness, between law and gospel, be-tween Judaism and Christianity’, hence, between old and new.
The performance of the Lord’s Prayer, then, becomes the new practice of Jesus and his followers who believe in their transcendant Father of the heaven who comes onto them, purifies them, establishes his kingdom, offers his heavenly bread, removes debts and bewares from temptation. One may wonder how the performance of such a short prayer creates a contrast to John. Unfortunately, we do not know of a specific prayer of John.
And yet we find the title in Philo related to God’s creation, in Qumran (within the book of Tobit), and even in Rabbinic literature we read the ‘Father in heaven’. Tertullian explains, as shown, that Marcion understood this expression, however, to distinguish his god as the entirely transcendant, unknown god from the Creator, the God of Israel ...
Instead of an all forgiving god of Marcion, as expressed in this prayer, Luke 3:1–9 and Matth. 3:1–10 (see also Mark 1:2–6)...introduced John the Baptist who preached repentance. Purification does not come from above, as in Mcn, but is mediated by the Baptist, even to Jesus, hence we are faced in Luke and Matthew with radical corrections not only of Mcn, but of its author Marcion.
This is not the place to give a synoptic reading and interpretation of all these texts, instead, I wanted to show, how assumptions on the synoptic relation between them impacted on the qualification of the relevant source material and the subsequent use of it for the reconstruction of Mcn. Reconstructing (and interpreting) Mcn is, therefore, not primarily a matter of available sources, but rather of a methodological decision.
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