Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldliness'?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
John2
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by John2 »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:14 pm I just said Mt 5:17 wasn't there.

I'm going by what you said above, that "The antitheses (Matt 5:17f) in their original form were said to be antinomian." And I am curious how what you consider to be the "original form" of Mt. 5:17ff is antinomian.
Stuart
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Stuart »

John2 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:42 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:14 pm I just said Mt 5:17 wasn't there.

I'm going by what you said above, that "The antitheses (Matt 5:17f) in their original form were said to be antinomian." And I am curious how what you consider to be the "original form" of Mt. 5:17ff is antinomian.
Doalogue Adamantius 1.15, the Marcionite champion Markus speaking:

The Judaizers wrote this, "I did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it," but Christ did not speak this way. He says, "I did not come to fulfill the Law but to destroy it."

I agree with Stephen on this point, although we differ in that I think chapter 5 and other parts of Matthew's sermon on the mount were written in response to specific elements of the Marcionite antithesis, as well as the Marcionite gospel. Stephen holds the Marcionite gospel didn't exist but was just their exegesis of a early synoptic gospel, and also that it's form was not the pairs I believe it was. So we arrive at the same conclusion about Matthew 5:17 from very different views of the Marcionites and their text.
John2
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by John2 »

Stuart wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 8:00 pm
John2 wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:42 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 7:14 pm I just said Mt 5:17 wasn't there.

I'm going by what you said above, that "The antitheses (Matt 5:17f) in their original form were said to be antinomian." And I am curious how what you consider to be the "original form" of Mt. 5:17ff is antinomian.
Doalogue Adamantius 1.15, the Marcionite champion Markus speaking:

The Judaizers wrote this, "I did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it," but Christ did not speak this way. He says, "I did not come to fulfill the Law but to destroy it."

I agree with Stephen on this point, although we differ in that I think chapter 5 and other parts of Matthew's sermon on the mount were written in response to specific elements of the Marcionite antithesis, as well as the Marcionite gospel. Stephen holds the Marcionite gospel didn't exist but was just their exegesis of a early synoptic gospel, and also that it's form was not the pairs I believe it was. So we arrive at the same conclusion about Matthew 5:17 from very different views of the Marcionites and their text.


Where can I find the source for this? The only thing I've found is this webpage and I don't see this citation in it, but perhaps that is due to what it says in the preface, that "Some chapters have been translated in full, while others are presented as excerpts."

The preface also notes that:

... objections which have recently been made concerning Dialogues' problematic text ( i.e., J.Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul, Catholic Biblical Assoc., 1989; U. Schmid , Paul und sein Apostolos, Gruyter & Co., 1995). For whatever merits or weaknesses these recent studies might pose, no English translation to date had been done of Dialogues. It is hoped that this present endeavor, which presents excerpts of the first section, will serve to introduce English readers to this little known work. This translation may be best considered a "draft" and may be a bit clumsy in places, but it works.

http://www.marcionite-scripture.info/dialogues.htm


I think the full Greek text may be here, but I'm looking for an English translation.


http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/adamanti.pdf
Secret Alias
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

How can you look at the Matthean antitheses and not see them as a superficially altered version of an original antinomian rant? The Law is over but the editor wants to rescue the Christian respect for the Torah.
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

Heschel says Moses was being criticized not God.
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mlinssen
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by mlinssen »

Marcion had perfectly valid points, of course; Jesus has nothing to do with the prophecies in the Tanakh about the warrior-Saviour who will crush the enemies of the Judeans and give them loads of land and such

Hence why he argued that the Father of IS must be a different God, and it's a perfectly valid argument - which would destroy every "legal" base to Paul, Mark, and so on: take away the Tanakh and Jesus becomes just some awkward idiot allegedly doing miracles (which are impossible to verify and validate) and ending up with a stake up his ass - not a firm basis for a religion

Doesn't anyone see that all of it is mere politics?

The only goal that the church fathers have is to save their nascent religion - if that takes a few lies here and there then what's there to it really, it's all for the greater good: economic and political stability, general well-being of the public now that the Jewish Law has become abolished, and so on.
Judaism was great to exert power and control over the masses, it kept them checked - but after Bar Kokhba, all of it was gone and that must have been noticeable

There must have been a reason for the sudden endorsement of the crazy idea of "Jesus saves" in general.
I'm starting to think that all of it was done and dusted in a matter of a few decades, with Paul stealing Marcion in 140, Mark backing up that story in 145, and Justin following up with more Marcion (Luke) and writing Matthew himself in 150. Then the two pieces / different worlds needed to be glued together, and he did another one and it was called Acts

Think of it: a religion controlled by Romans - not only could they keep the public in check for free, but they would even make money off of it! They could never have dreamed how much that would be, really.
And like today, it was decided to set up a separate private company for it

Oh, regarding the anti Judean stuff:

c 8 BYZ and TR include βαπτισμοὺς ξεστῶν καὶ ποτηρίων· καὶ ἄλλα παρόμοια τοιαῦτα πολλὰ ποιεῖτε

So Mark 7 only says the following:

8 Ἀφέντες τὴν ἐντολὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ κρατεῖτε τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων.”c

"Having-dismissed the direction of God, you-made-strong the tradition of humans"

Last edited by mlinssen on Sat May 08, 2021 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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mlinssen
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by mlinssen »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 9:34 pm Heschel says Moses was being criticized not God.
Now you're pulling a biblical scholar defense: merely repeating what someone else said without giving your opinion on it, let alone using it to make a point.
Do you agree with Heschel then, or not? Why, how?
Etc
Stuart
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Stuart »

Clabeaux objection is strictly to part 5 of DA, but he accepts parts 1 and 2 of DA as reading from Marcionite text. He concludes (partly on order) that the text is from the Catholic bible and not the Marcionite.

I am stricter than Clabeaux, and only accept the quotes by the Marcionite champions and not those by the Catholic Champion and the Catholic, er neutral, arbitrator (he just happens to echo Catholic positions and always side with Adamantius in his decisions). My view is the comments by Megethius are derived from an earlier anti-Marcionite work and are actually covering the Antithesis, and those of Markus are from another earlier anti-Marcionite work and also concerning mostly, but not entirely the antithesis. There are some Marcionite textual readings from the bible in parts one and two, but not a huge number. There are however one or two readings in part 5 that do seem to have Marcionite origin, although the text has been adjusted also to fit a local text of the Catholic stream (that doesn't help, but it's identifiable by some late textual variants that are known to derive in the 3rd or even 4th centuries; such is the state of the text).

The quote above is from part 2, chapter 15. (Chapter numbering is kind of random, and probably more like page numbers originally). I read from my copy of Robert Pretty's English translation.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN ... peterkirby

a link to the Greek and Latin (of Rufinus, which is generally in better shape than the Greek) is found here

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/d ... mfide.html

or better here (what I use; the open library is much better):

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2329369 ... Adamantius.

specifically:
https://archive.org/details/derdialogde ... ew=theater

and the bottom lines (line 31 on the right side in Latin) are Marcus' quotes (page 88 Greek on the left, page 89 Latin on the right)
https://archive.org/details/derdialogde ... ew=theater

I like this because you can use the magnifier to see clearly. Pretty's English if from this work.
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Jax
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Jax »

Damn it Ken! Now I can't get that Police song out of my head!
Secret Alias
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

Of course you can't. It helps distract you from the futility of your fellowship.
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