What was Marcion's Gospel?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.

What was Marcion's Gospel?

Poll ended at Tue Jun 15, 2021 1:05 am

Post-Luke, Similar to Luke
4
25%
Pre-Luke, Similar to Luke
6
38%
Pre-Mark, Similar to Luke
4
25%
Proto-Mark or Similar to Mark
2
13%
Proto-Matthew or Similar to Matthew
0
No votes
Proto-Diatessaron, Similar to a Gospel Harmony
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 16

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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by Secret Alias »

There were Marcionites in Armenia.
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by mlinssen »

mlinssen wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 4:36 am
davidmartin wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 4:09 am Marcion would have no desire to be a Thomas fanboy. Marcion clearly asserted himself as proclaiming the true gospel (stand in line Marcion there's a queue). If he distributed his own gospel it would have been to further promote his agenda and separate himself from other gospels. The re-writing of it into Luke is literally the embracing of Marcionite Christians back into the fold and they can keep their favoured gospel after it's fixed, the same goes for John and Matthew. what Ireneaous does is deny any origins in these four to sectarian reasons and state it was the divine plan all along
It was his own gospel, there's nothing of Thomas in it.
In essence there's no difference in Marcion creating a gospel out of Thomas and the canonicals copying that, than Mark creating his gospel out of Thomas

Marcion is Luke, there's no rewriting at all but some adding and dropping of stuff. There was no fold to be embraced back into, if Marcion started it all.
Let me spell out it once again, I'll make a picture for you
It's a quicky, version 0.5. Got to walk the dog now, enjoy. The picture is just for fun, there's a PDF attached as well. No guarantees about the major details, help is appreciated

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The Church fathers confirm what they added to Marcion

Post by mlinssen »

I am immensely enjoying Ben's magnificent thread on Marcion with the verbatim Greek and Latin from the Churchfarters

Time and again, their main argument is
that at the very outset of His ministry, He came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them; for Marcion has erased the passage as an interpolation
1) No link to Judaism - that's their biggest beef with Marcion:
Marcion must even expunge from the Gospel, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel; " and, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs," ----in order, forsooth, that Christ may not appear to be an Israelite
Marcion's IS was "a Gentile" so to say, and indeed definitely not an "Israelite", and what Mark was all about was to undermine the story of Marcion with a very fat layer of Tanakh prophecy fulfilled, embedding Marcion's IS in a concrete footing of Messianic prophecy fulfilled

Because he doesn't link IS to the Tanakh, Marcion - with perfect logic - reasons that the Father of Thomas must be someone else than Yahweh; it isn't more complicated than that. All the difficult dances around one God creating the other and all that is just Churchianity confusion aimed at denying and distorting the perfectly reasonable theology of Marcion.
I doubt that Marcion even spent attention to the whereabouts of said Father, he likely kept just the Thomasine image

Why would he root IS in Judaism? Thousands of religions to go around with (if there were a reason to do so anyway), and Thomas is so very, very anti-Judean and -Judaic that only a fool would have IS root from that religion. Yet somehow the Crutch fathers had to defend that position, just like the gospel writers were stuck to Jesus being baptised after Mark had written that down - that (f)act simply couldn't be talked down.
Marcion doesn't present his IS in a synagogue, and I suspect all the Judaic elements to be additions: if they're not confirmed by the Church fathers, they should be removed from any Marcion restoration

The lies are hilarious and partly anachronistic:
The Christ of the Creator had to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy; whence the Jews also designate us, on that very account, Nazerenes after Him. For we are they of whom it is written, "Her Nazarites were whiter than snow; " even they who were once defiled with the stains of sin, and darkened with the clouds of ignorance. But to Christ the title Nazarene was destined to become a suitable one, from the hiding-place of His infancy, for which He went down and dwelt at Nazareth, to escape from Archelaus the son of Herod
Seriously, all of Christianity is a pile of lies from its very inception, and ironically it is the Church fathers who demonstrate that. Everything is refutation upon refutation and lie upon lie, and it is easy to distill Marcion out of what they say; it is exactly like Paul saying "I swear to Gawd I don't lie" - it's what kids do

2) Marcion also presents his IS as an entity from heaven, given the fact that they also note and frequently protest in a manner like
I cannot help drawing a conclusion respecting His bodily substance, which cannot be believed to have been a phantom, since it was capable of being touched and even violently handled, when He was seized and taken and led to the very brink of a precipice

He passed through the midst of them, that is, escaped out of their hands
I am positive that this is a confusion of the Coptic word ϩⲏⲧ , https://coptic-dictionary.org/results.c ... e&lang=any which can mean heart/mind, or be an adjective of "before" and often gets translated with "in midst" or "among", and this would point to a Coptic text where IS "went straight into their hearts" - yup, nothing to go on there and wild speculation, but the scene in Marcion must have been as simple as that: IS speaks, just somewhere, and the people are so impressed that his words go straight into their heart.
Mark takes it and does three things: link it to Judaism by having it take place in a synagogue, link it to prophecy fulfilled by having IS claim so, and proving that he is a human of flesh and bones by having the outraged people grab him and wanting to throw him off the cliff, a crazy scenery where the magical escape of "going through their midst" has always baffled me, long before I had even heard of Coptic

3) The themes of Thomas that are stressed in Marcion get justified by scripture
He was therefore the very Christ of Isaiah, the healer of our sicknesses. "Surely," says he, "He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." Now the Greeks are accustomed to use for carry a word which also signifies to take away
Lovely how obvious it becomes that the Church fathers were Romans, and how all of this is a Roman creation. Needless to say that this prophecy is not a bad fit yet needs to get twisted and turned like everything else - and they don't even bother with the real Hebrew underlying it all.
It is so very obvious that they try really hard to squeeze the IS of Marcion into their Judaic box that they're wholly unfamiliar with. And it is highly peculiar how they make cases that aren't in the texts as we know them, and neither are at the last convincing (or even close to the truth)
To liberate men, then, from evil spirits, is a cure of sickness. Accordingly, wicked spirits (just in the manner of our former example) used to go forth with a testimony, exclaiming, "Thou art the Son of God," ----of what God, is clear enough from the case itself
Apparently it wasn't their idea to have the demon expelling stuff, but they couldn't not accept that inheritance, and that is the very essence of all this copy-pasting by everyone. And again it is hilarious to see how they take the opportunity to once again stress that it really is Da Gawd himself that Marcion talks about. Yet I doubt that Marcion even mentions the word, he must have had the Father and nothing more, perfectly sticking to Thomas.
They liked the healing part and the sickness, and once again it becomes clear why logion 74 of Thomas had to be obfuscated by its Christian "translators", as it marks the vast majority of people as sick - or was that just incredible incompetence?
By saying this, He suggested to them the meaning of the fulfilled prophecy, that it was even He who by Jeremiah had foretold, "Behold, I will send many fishers; and they shall fish them," that is, men. Then at last they left their boats, and followed Him, understanding that it was He who had begun to accomplish what He had declared. It is quite another case, when he affected to choose from the college of shipmasters, intending one day to appoint the shipmaster Marcion his apostle
Has anyone ever read this hilariously preposterous pile of lies? Read the Church fathers, please do, and it becomes undeniable that they are born liars, and will do anything to try to justify their plagiarism

[EDIT BEGIN]

They even spell it out that Marcion didn't have any Scripture:

Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.17

Since the Saviour repeated the parable I have inserted it twice, so that I will not be like the tramp, Marcion, and leave any of the scriptures out.

[EDIT END]

Continued later. But it is perfectly feasible to go by these crooked liars and mark with absolute certainty what was in Marcion. Not that we can ever will get all of Marcion out in this way, and neither should we trust all of what these liars say, but all the stuff that they keep hammering on, like the above, is evidence of Marcion not having it:

A) No Tanakh footing in any way in any of Marcion
B) No stressing of IS being of flesh in Marcion

To be continued
Last edited by mlinssen on Wed May 19, 2021 5:18 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by davidmartin »

just to make sure that everyone dislikes me, about that birth narrative in Luke...
I do not see this as a simple insert job to align with the almah / virgin bearing a son, ie a prophecy box ticking exercise
No, if you look at Ephrem he creates an entire universe out of the symbology of it, it's a powerful concept and he riffed on it like Tommy Iommi
I'll bet this virgin birth idea was around before Luke ever got it's final polish
So there was a Marcion (Pauline) camp that had nothing to do with it, and some other camp that was already preaching it, so i recon the birth narrative is just a restating of this concept again in a nice and clear orthodox way. Heck Luke as a 'physician' may as well be 'midwife' reference, don't they deliver babies? "If the doctor says it, it must be true you deceived Marcionites!"
Anyway since the virgin birth idea predates Marcion its yet another occasion an earlier stream gets adopted by what came later, sort of in reverse, same as the Thomas like sayings
The ultimate freaking heresy is someone that doesn't change when people around you innovate. If you don't change then you are now the heretic and you did nothing! The suspicion of this occuring in the development of Christianity is high.
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Do Mark and Marcion have only Thomasine parables?

Post by mlinssen »

There is one thing that is very, very noteworthy about the order of texts: where Marcion has created his own Jesus parables, Mark had only one, that of the budding fig tree.
Mark has Thomas logia and parables and nothing else, and in that way it is highly unlikely that he would have copied a proto Marcion that contained more than that unless he decided that he must under all circumstances stick to Thomasine material alone

I have gone by most of Ben's fantastic Marcion Commentary now, and this is the pattern that appears:
Marcion, however, violently turns the passage to another end, and decides that both the torment and the comfort are retributions of the Creator reserved in the next life for those who have obeyed the law and the prophets; whilst he defines the heavenly bosom and harbour to belong to Christ and his own god. Our answer to this is, that the Scripture itself which dazzles his sight expressly distinguishes between Abraham's bosom, where the poor man dwells, and the infernal place of torment

'One said unto him, Good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He replied, Call not thou me good. One is good, God.' Marcion added, 'the Father,' and instead of, 'Thou knowest the commandments,' says, 'I know the commandments.' .... 52. Marcion falsified, 'He took unto him the twelve, and said, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written in the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered and killed, and the third day he shall rise again.' He falsified the whole of this.
The first paragraph is a fine example of an interpretation by the Church fathers, but it makes clear that Marcion has this passage very differently.
The second makes clear that Marcion has none of the bold part

Going through Marcion like this, until now I have found only Thomasine material in that which is different, and no Judaic material whatsoever. Only when they comment in what Marcion has does it become clear what Marcion indeed has - just mentioning passages in their works that are titled "against Marcion" in any form most certainly doesn't mean that whatever they mention appears in Marcion - on the contrary

So, so far, Mark equals Thomas equals Marcion: Luke really is Marcion plus Judaic material plus a dozen parables of his own, including the good Samaritan and rubbish like that

For those who really are interested in philology on the two very different kinds of parables in the NT, do read my "two types of parables"

https://www.academia.edu/40951733/Two_t ... ht_and_day

[EDIT]

It would seem that Marcion did not have logion 65, the Vineyard with the heir being killed:

Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.17: <Σχόλιον> <νε>. Πάλιν ἀπέκοψε τὰ περὶ τοῦ ἀμπελῶνος τοῦ ἐκδεδομένου γεωργοῖς καὶ τό «τί οὖν ἐστι τό· λίθον ὃν ἀπεδοκίμασαν οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες;» <Ἔλεγχος> <νε>. Οὐδὲν ἡμᾶς ἀδικήσει τοῦτο. κἄν τε γὰρ αὐτὸ περικόψῃ, οὐκ ἀφ' ἡμῶν ἀπέκοψεν, ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν καὶ τοὺς αὐτοῦ ἐζημίωσεν· ἱκανὸς γὰρ ὁ κατ' αὐτοῦ ἔλεγχός ἐστι διὰ πλειόνων μαρτυριῶν. / Scholion 55. Again, he excised the material about the vineyard which was let out to husbandmen, and the verse, 'What is this, then, The stone which the builders rejected?' Elenchus 55. This will do us no harm. Even if he cut it out he did not cut if off from us, but caused a loss to himself and his followers. For there is ample refutation of him by a greater number of texts.

Last edited by mlinssen on Wed May 19, 2021 3:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by mlinssen »

davidmartin wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 1:49 am just to make sure that everyone dislikes me, about that birth narrative in Luke...
I do not see this as a simple insert job to align with the almah / virgin bearing a son, ie a prophecy box ticking exercise
No, if you look at Ephrem he creates an entire universe out of the symbology of it, it's a powerful concept and he riffed on it like Tommy Iommi
I'll bet this virgin birth idea was around before Luke ever got it's final polish
So there was a Marcion (Pauline) camp that had nothing to do with it, and some other camp that was already preaching it, so i recon the birth narrative is just a restating of this concept again in a nice and clear orthodox way. Heck Luke as a 'physician' may as well be 'midwife' reference, don't they deliver babies? "If the doctor says it, it must be true you deceived Marcionites!"
Anyway since the virgin birth idea predates Marcion its yet another occasion an earlier stream gets adopted by what came later, sort of in reverse, same as the Thomas like sayings
The ultimate freaking heresy is someone that doesn't change when people around you innovate. If you don't change then you are now the heretic and you did nothing! The suspicion of this occuring in the development of Christianity is high.
You are very right here, look at Justin Martyr, and the proto evangelism of James / Jacob

viewtopic.php?p=118964#p118964

Luke only gets called physician because he has Marcion's copy of Thomas logion 31

31 said IS there-is-not Prophet being-received in his village not-usually physician make-be Heal they-who know he

Why do you think the birth story predates Marcion? Ephrem was born 300 CE
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by davidmartin »

Why do you think the birth story predates Marcion? Ephrem was born 300 CE
yeah that's true he was
i base it partly on the record Rhufinus (i think) left who writes of an ancient missive received at a pagan temple relating to Christ, as the pagans were attempting to show they too had heard of Christ. They referred back to the birth story. I recon this was normal back then. Was early Christianity able to express itself that way, sure why not, some of the apologies says the God of Christians was the same as Zeus or Apollo or whatever. But this is mega obscure so for whatever it's worth...
Mistress Pege, the great Sun has sent me to make the announcement to you, and at the same time to serve you in your giving birth—as he produces blameless offspring with you, who are becoming mother of the first of all ranks of being, bride of the single divinity with three names. And the child born without seed is called the Beginning and the End: the beginning of salvation, and the end of destruction

The females say to the males, disparaging the matter, Pege is she who was loved; for it was not Hera, was it? She espoused a carpenter.' And the males say, 'She has rightly been called Pege, we admit. But her name is Myria; for she bears in her womb, as in the sea, a vessel conveying a myriad. And if she is also Pege, let it be understood thus: This stream of water sends forth a perennial stream of spirit; it contains but a single fish, taken with the hook of divinity, and with its own flesh sustaining the whole world, while it dwells there as though in the sea. You have well said, "She has a carpenter"—but not a carpenter whom she bears from a marriage-bed. For this carpenter who is born, the child of the chief carpenter, framed by his most sagacious skill the triple-constructed celestial roof, and established by his word this dwelling with its triple habitations
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Re: Marcion didn't have Judas betray Jesus. Nor a crucifixion?

Post by mlinssen »


Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.17

He communed with the captains how he might deliver him unto them.' (a) Elenchus 60. What lunacy of Marcion's! Who 'communed' but Judas? And to do what, but to 'deliver' the Saviour?

Likewise, it would seem that Marcion didn't even have him die? Or is this the age old topic of impaling versus crucifiction?
I was arguing once with some of his disciples, some Marcionite or other, and remarking how it says in the Gospel that the Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he asked me, 'How could Satan tempt the true God, who is both greater than he and, as you say, his Lord, Jesus his Master?' (c) With God's help I received a flash of insight and answered him, 'Don’t you believe that Christ was crucified?' 'Yes,' he said, and did not deny it
Now why would this imaginary Marcion follower deny the crucifiction? The only plausible scenario is that Marcion denied it, that is to say that he didn't have any of it
The Christ of the prophets was destined, moreover, to be betrayed with a kiss, for He was the Son indeed of Him who was "honoured with the lips" by the people
The "prophecies" get rather confusing at times. Was Jesus a son of himself now? Or do they mean that Yahweh was honoured with the lips? And would that somehow logically relate to Jesus being betrayed with a kiss?
Although His raiment was, without doubt, parted among the soldiers, and partly distributed by lot, yet Marcion has erased it all (from his Gospel), for he had his eye upon the Psalm: "They parted my garments amongst them, and cast lots upon my vesture." You may as well take away the cross itself!


The fooling around with the clothing just serves to fulfil Scripture, but it is interesting to see the bold part

Dubious is the next entry:
Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.6: <ξθ>. Προσέθετο μετὰ τό «τοῦτον εὕρομεν διαστρέφοντα τὸ ἔθνος» «καὶ καταλύοντα τὸν νόμον καὶ τοὺς προφήτας». <ο>. Προσθήκη μετὰ τό «κελεύοντα φόρους μὴ δοῦναι» «καὶ ἀποστρέφοντα τὰς γυναῖκας καὶ τὰ τέκνα». / 69. After, 'We found this fellow perverting the nation,' Marcion added, 'and destroying the Law and the prophets.' 70. The addition after 'forbidding to give tribute' is 'and turning away the wives and children.'
69 reminds me of Socrates' trial, but it would seem that Marcion has put his IS on trial! Yet the addition in 70 is unlikely, although well attested to:
For falsifying something that is written, but adding something that is not, is an example of the utmost rashness, wickedness, and unsafe travel—especially in the Gospel, which is forever indestructible. (b) And the additions themselves have no place in the Gospel and contain no hidden meaning. Jesus did not turn wives or children away; he himself said, 'Honour thy father and mother,' and, 'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' (c) But even though he did say, 'Except a man leave father, and mother, and brethren, and wife, and children and the rest, he is not my disciple,' this was not to make us hate our parents. It was to prevent our being led to follow the teaching of another faith at our fathers' and mothers' command, or to behaviour contrary to the Saviour's teaching.
Now why would Marcion have said that?
Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.17: <Σχόλιον> <οα>. «Καὶ ἐλθόντες εἰς τόπον λεγόμενον Κρανίου τόπος ἐσταύρωσαν αὐτὸν καὶ διεμερίσαντο τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐσκοτίσθη ὁ ἥλιος». <Ἔλεγχος> <οα>. Δόξα τῷ ἐλεήμονι θεῷ, τῷ συνδήσαντί σου τὰ ἅρματα, ὦ Φαραὼ Μαρκίων, καὶ βουλομένου σου ἀποδρᾶσαι καταποντώσαντι αὐτὰ ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ. προφασιζόμενος γὰρ τὰ πάντα οὐχ ἕξεις ἐνταῦθα οὐδεμίαν πρόφασιν. ὁ γὰρ μὴ σάρκα ἔχων οὔτε σταυρωθῆναι δύναται. πῶς οὐκ ἔφυγες τὸ μέγα τοῦτο ῥητόν; πῶς οὐκ ἐπεχείρησας κρύψαι τὴν μεγάλην ταύτην πραγματείαν, τὴν λύσασάν σου πᾶσαν τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς μεμηχανημένην κακοτροπίαν; εἰ γὰρ ὅλως ἐσταυρώθη, πῶς οὐ βλέπεις τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἁφὴν ἔχοντα καὶ ἥλοις τὰς χεῖρας πηγνύμενον καὶ πόδας; οὐκ ἂν δὲ ἠδύνατο δόκησις τοῦτο εἶναι ἢ φάντασμα, ὡς σὺ λέγεις, ἀλλὰ σῶμα ἀληθῶς, ὃ ἐκ Μαρίας εἴληφεν ὁ κύριος (σάρκα φύσει τὴν ἡμετέραν καὶ ὀστέα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα), ἐπειδὴ ὁμολογεῖται καὶ παρὰ σοὶ σταυρῷ προσπαγεὶς ὁ κύριος. <Σχόλιον> <οβ>. Παρέκοψε τό «σήμερον μετ' ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ». <Ἔλεγχος> <οβ>. Καλῶς τοῦτο καὶ ἁρμοδίως παρέκοψας, ὦ Μαρκίων· ἀπῆρες γὰρ ἀπὸ σεαυτοῦ τὴν εἴσοδον τοῦ παραδείσου. οὔτε γὰρ σὺ εἰσελεύσῃ οὔτε τοὺς σὺν σοὶ ἐάσεις. φύσει γὰρ τῷ ὄντι μισοῦσι τὸ ἀγαθὸν οἱ πλανῶντες καὶ πεπλανημένοι. / Scholion 71. 'And when they were come unto a place called Place of a Skull, they crucified him and parted his raiment, and the sun was darkened.' (a) Elenchus 71. Glory to the merciful God, who fastened your chariots together, Marcion, you Pharaoh, and though you hoped to escape, sank them in the sea! Though you make all possible excuses you will have none here. If a man has no flesh, neither can he be crucified. (b) Why did you not evade this great text? Why did you not try to conceal this great event, which undoes all your evil which you have devised from the beginning? (c) If he was really crucified, why can you not see that the Crucified is tangible, and his hands and feet are fastened with nails? This could not be an apparition or phantom, as you say, but was truly a body which the Lord had taken from Mary—our actual flesh, bones, and the rest. For even in your teaching it is admitted that the Lord was nailed to a cross! Scholion 72. Marcion removed the words, 'Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.' (a) Elenchus 72. You removed this rightly and suitably, Marcion, for you have removed own entry into paradise. You will neither enter yourself nor allow your companions to enter. For by their very nature both deceivers and deceived hate what is good.
It is passages like these that seemingly throw everything overboard again, as obvious a lie as the bold part is. Can nothing be trusted of what these liars say? How could Marcion teach something that is not in any text, not even any of the NT?
77. He falsified what Christ said to Cleopas and the other when he met them, 'O fools, and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not he to have suffered these things?' And instead of, 'what the prophets have spoken,' he put, 'what I said unto you.' But he is shown up since, 'When he broke the bread their eyes were opened and they knew him.'
Well, it would seem that Marcion does have a death and a resurrection, although there's no refutation of his material there - only here, for the first time after the garment scene.
Which basically means that he likely isn't deviating in a significant way from what the Church fathers want to say
[7] Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him----I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, "A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have," so transposed, as to mean, "A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones; "that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, "A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?" [8] Why, moreover, does He offer His hands and His feet for their examination----limbs which consist of bones----if He had no bones? Why, too, does He add, "Know that it is I myself," when they had before known Him to be corporeal?
And so forth. It is now more than likely that Marcion had a death, as he has the resurrection

Well, I'm at the end

Takeaways:

1) Marcion = Thomas
2) + a little epos around the sayings, touring the country side
3) + ending up being put to death and resurrecting after that
4) +/- miraculous healings of typically "Thomasine diseases" like blindness, added with driving out evil spirits (which is also very Thomasine, logion 14)
5) - without any footing in Judaism or Tanakh, without any prophecy fulfilling, and most certainly without any being baptised
6) - any eschatology, "behave or else" stuff, and so forth. This would have been just a fun and pleasant religion, perhaps not even more than spirituality-plus. No worshiping, no deities, impossible to market or monetise

- Paul comes after that, undoing the damage to the Law and the prophets which basically was done already by Thomas yet continued by Marcion
- Mark comes after that, providing a very solid footing in the Tanakh by throwing around Scripture (though not a bad as Matthew will do later)
- Luke comes after that, inventing 14 parables of his own and doubling the Thomas material from 35 logia in Mark to 65. Mind you, it is unclear how much of that is already present in Marcion but none of the self-invented parables are attested by the Church fathers

- I have yet to go by my Thomas parallels and add Marcion to the pile

Again, I have been rather strict and only confirm Marcion material when it's explicitly mentioned. Don't forget that books like these were primarily a podium to once more make propaganda for the Church. Unless Marcion contradicted Church script, there was no need to mention it - and it is on rare occasions like these that absence of evidence doesn't equate to evidence of absence.
For a change
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by davidmartin »

ml time for a sensible comment this time
although i'd be interested in your take on the 'pagan' material i posted above

first it makes sense to me Marcion has the crucifixion and resurrection - if he promotes Paul he surely must have?
" 'Don’t you believe that Christ was crucified?' 'Yes,' he said, and did not deny it"
i see it the other way round. instead of Marcion not teaching it, it's about recognising the crucifixion (done by the power of the enemy) nullified the Marcionite's claim Jesus couldn't have been tempted (ie if he can be crucified he can be tempted) - it seems more likely to me Marcion didn't have the temptation

for "Now why would Marcion have said that?" relating to charges made:
anything that made Jesus appear more guilty might have been Marcion's bag
it makes Jesus look more opposed to the system i guess

re: the stuff Marcion leaves in with resurrection/physical body

Ah.. again Marcion has to agree with Paul whose letters he promotes and I believe that its true, he's a radical Pauline. So he must have the cross and the resurrection... or he can't have Paul
I recon Marcion maybe taught Jesus already had the 'glorified body' of Paul, which appears fleshly. Possibly nothing of his body changed after the cross he means. So he's not the pure spirit of the gnostics but does have the new body Paul speaks of
So in other words Jesus 'appeared' to be normal but he really had the glorified body we find in Paul, which presumably is not 'born' right?!

I can see how the Paul based Christians could more easily split over Jesus's birth and body more than they could over the God issue. I bet you that there were Paul types who didn't have a gospel at all and rejected a physical Jesus body. Out of this group Marcion came, with a gospel and well against Jewish religion, its worth mentioning that for all Paul's quotes of scripture most are moralising and justification types, he doesn't use the same proofs the fathers or matthew uses. i'm not sure Paul even says Jesus is the messiah explicitly. so its not as crazy as it first appears Marcion uses Paul i think its possible to make sense of it.

i guess Marcion got his gospel from Mark and other sources available at the time, and someone 'corrected' it pretty early on to make Luke in parallel circulation for a while then chooom the fathers say he messed with Luke
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mlinssen
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Re: What was Marcion's Gospel?

Post by mlinssen »

davidmartin wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 3:40 am
Why do you think the birth story predates Marcion? Ephrem was born 300 CE
yeah that's true he was
i base it partly on the record Rhufinus (i think) left who writes of an ancient missive received at a pagan temple relating to Christ, as the pagans were attempting to show they too had heard of Christ. They referred back to the birth story. I recon this was normal back then. Was early Christianity able to express itself that way, sure why not, some of the apologies says the God of Christians was the same as Zeus or Apollo or whatever. But this is mega obscure so for whatever it's worth...
Mistress Pege, the great Sun has sent me to make the announcement to you, and at the same time to serve you in your giving birth—as he produces blameless offspring with you, who are becoming mother of the first of all ranks of being, bride of the single divinity with three names. And the child born without seed is called the Beginning and the End: the beginning of salvation, and the end of destruction

The females say to the males, disparaging the matter, Pege is she who was loved; for it was not Hera, was it? She espoused a carpenter.' And the males say, 'She has rightly been called Pege, we admit. But her name is Myria; for she bears in her womb, as in the sea, a vessel conveying a myriad. And if she is also Pege, let it be understood thus: This stream of water sends forth a perennial stream of spirit; it contains but a single fish, taken with the hook of divinity, and with its own flesh sustaining the whole world, while it dwells there as though in the sea. You have well said, "She has a carpenter"—but not a carpenter whom she bears from a marriage-bed. For this carpenter who is born, the child of the chief carpenter, framed by his most sagacious skill the triple-constructed celestial roof, and established by his word this dwelling with its triple habitations
"Pass the spliff!" was my first thought when I read this

Let's just call them Gnostics, for lack of a better word, who did not stick to the strictly monotheistic view of Christianity, as orderly as it is, cold, dark and sober, and where no one ever writes about anything because it has already been written that Gawd created all in 7 days (or was it 6?) and that's done and dusted now.
"Gnostics" wonder, they marvel. They admire the things that are and the things that are not tangible, and they write about it and try to make sense of them, or sometimes they just build entire edifices of fanciful fantasies around them

Sometimes they mix with the concepts of Christianity, and then the soup becomes one that consists of their ingredients and those of Christianity, and the quantities on both sides vary

I doubt this translation to be any good because the word carpenter in the NT is τέκτων. While the primary translation of that is carpenter or woodworker, it is a noun that is derived from the verb τίκτω, to beget. And whereas that verb is very frequently used in the Tanakh for cherishing and caressing blood lines, in the sense of creation it naturally is most apt in a Gnostic context: a begetter begets

It is very hard to find which part of the Greek Anthology of Rufinus you are quoting here, otherwise I would have had a look at the Greek

But if you want the birth story, you must be familiar with the proto evangelium of James / Jacob?
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