Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

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mlinssen
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by mlinssen »

See, sometimes I just need a bit of time.
I just popped the question to BeDuhn, and it's a rather basic and straightforward one really:

The Patristics accused Marcion of excising material from Luke, even though we know that to be just a feeble accusation - but ... that leads to an interesting conclusion:

So if Luke has material that is unattested to in *Ev by the Patristics, shouldn't it just be restored "automatically"?

We must assume that they would have jumped all over it in an attempt to finally make their case, had they been so fortunate to indeed encounter Lukan material that had been "excised by Marcion".
So if they don't jump at material that is not attested, the only conclusion must be that it is present - or its absence is so embarrassing that they best draw no attention to it at all

So, in the link given earlier, consider the green material:

viewtopic.php?p=123533#p123533

A fraction of it has been restored nonetheless, but I don't see why not all of it should be restored. Mind you, the green is not only Lukan material but it is also Thomasine, and a lot of it is part of Thomasine or Lukan material partially attested to already.
Take the first example, the prophet that we find in Luke, Mark and Matthew - and Thomas, of course. What are the odds that *Ev does not have it if everyone else has it?!
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mlinssen
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Thomas - *Ev (Marcion) parallels, complete

Post by mlinssen »

Code: Select all

*Ev	Thomas		*Ev	Thomas		*Ev	Thomas		*Ev	Thomas
4	23b	31			8	18	41			12	10	44			14	23	64	
	24b	32				16	33				13	72				24	64	
5	30	14	W			17	6				14	72				26a	55	
	31	14	W			20	99				16	63				27	55	
	33	104				21	99				17	63			15	4	107	
	34	104			9	4	14				18	63				5	107	
	35	104				5a	14				19	63				7a	107	
	37	47				18b	13				20	63			16	13	47a	
	38	47				20	13				22	36				17	11	
	36	47				23	55				23	36	G		17	6	48 / 106	
6	20b	54				58	86				24	36	G			20	113	
	21a	69			10	2	73				25	36	G			21	113	
	22a	68				5	14				27	36	G			22	38	
	34	95				7a	14				33	76				34	61	
	39	34				8	14				39	103			18	16	22a	
	41	26				9	14				49	10				17	22a	
	42b	26				27b	25				51	16			19	40	19	W
	43	43b			11	9	92				52	16			20	9	65	
	44	45				10	94				53a	16				10	65	
	45	45				21	21				56	91				11	65	
7	24	78				22	35			13	18	20				12	65	
	25	78				27	79				19	20				13	65	
	26a	78				28	79				20	96				14	65	
	26b	46				33	33b				21	96				15	65	
	28	46				34	24				30	4				17	66	
	31	21				39	89			14	16	64				22	100	
	32a	21				40	89				17	64				24	100	
8	5	9				42a	102				18	64				25	100	
	6	9				43a	102				19	64			21	6	71	W
	7	9				52	39				20	64				23a	79	W
	8	9			12	2	6				21	64				33	111	
	10a	62				3	33a				22	64			23	29	79	
The raw data plus a pic:
Thomas-Ev_Parallels.png
Thomas-Ev_Parallels.png (84.9 KiB) Viewed 1257 times
davidmartin
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by davidmartin »

I got to admit your analysis creates a problem for me. There is nothing 'Judaic' about these sayings
So squaring Thomas with any kind of Jewish setting, ie the Odes is problematic since I'm sticking with the originality of both these texts

There is a pathway in, along the lines of a heterodox understanding of the Messiah who 'merely' is a spiritual revealer - not a king or restorer of Isreal
I'm sure the idea of such "alt. Messiah's" existed on the fringes of Jewish thought. That could lead into the Jesus of Thomas stepping into this role as a fulfilment of Joel 2:27–29
That also makes sense of the later silly stuff about his disciples expecting him to be the warrior king (What, with 2 rusty swords bought from selling second hand tunics?)

Any guy stomping around the countryside speaking in parables is gonna be assumed to be this kind of spiritual messiah type by the unwashed peasant
Maybe the Odes represent the assimilating of this more formally into the spiritual messiah role, a development if you will of Thomas but from the same group. There's plenty in the Odes against traditional practices, no sacrifices, no circumcision's, no temple, no torah, no sabbath (all these are spiritualised not completely rejected though) and the priests are 'restrainers of water', and probably among ignorant they speak of giggling at. The tribe of the gospel freaking Jesus pouring piss on religion for the sake of religion

So yeah, your reading of Paul still works - he introduces Judaic elements not originally there and tinkers with the formula throwing in a bunch of Stoic ideas and a generous helping of sin (which the Odes don't mention at all). But Paul is also against certain Judaic things himself so it's also a vehicle for that in his suicide cult, it could make freaking sense.
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by mlinssen »

davidmartin wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:48 am I got to admit your analysis creates a problem for me. There is nothing 'Judaic' about these sayings
So squaring Thomas with any kind of Jewish setting, ie the Odes is problematic since I'm sticking with the originality of both these texts
Yup. I'm not looking for problems by creating the most wildly unconventional claims just for fun, they simply jump at me in the texts. Fully agree with you david
There is a pathway in, along the lines of a heterodox understanding of the Messiah who 'merely' is a spiritual revealer - not a king or restorer of Isreal
I'm sure the idea of such "alt. Messiah's" existed on the fringes of Jewish thought.
Shall I put you out of your misery here, or let you simmer in your own cooking?
There is only one reason to assume the above, and that is the brutal fact that the Jesus of the NT is the most lousy pseudo Messiah to have ever been acclaimed. Regardless, you have my sympathy for not being able to come up with any proof for what you assert :kiss:
That could lead into the Jesus of Thomas stepping into this role as a fulfilment of Joel 2:27–29
That also makes sense of the later silly stuff about his disciples expecting him to be the warrior king (What, with 2 rusty swords bought from selling second hand tunics?)
The Messiah is a warrior king - period. You wouldn't expect a reincarnation of Harry Potter to be a clumsy clown who couldn't even make a coin disappear, now would you? Because the Judaics continuously got their assess kicked by every neighbouring country they dreamed up a hero who would achieve what they failed to do - that's not so hard to see, I think
Any guy stomping around the countryside speaking in parables is gonna be assumed to be this kind of spiritual messiah type by the unwashed peasant
Maybe the Odes represent the assimilating of this more formally into the spiritual messiah role, a development if you will of Thomas but from the same group. There's plenty in the Odes against traditional practices, no sacrifices, no circumcision's, no temple, no torah, no sabbath (all these are spiritualised not completely rejected though) and the priests are 'restrainers of water', and probably among ignorant they speak of giggling at. The tribe of the gospel freaking Jesus pouring piss on religion for the sake of religion

So yeah, your reading of Paul still works - he introduces Judaic elements not originally there and tinkers with the formula throwing in a bunch of Stoic ideas and a generous helping of sin (which the Odes don't mention at all). But Paul is also against certain Judaic things himself so it's also a vehicle for that in his suicide cult, it could make freaking sense.
That's precisely how the gospels got written as well.
He isn't, he just needs to sell Chrestianity to them: the lack of observing food laws, the (brilliant) ridicule of circumcision, the rejection of Sabbath: it's all in Thomas, and *Ev likely copied the circumcision and Sabbath logion as well (can't imagine being able to resist that one).
The Law bring invalid then logically follows from those, meaning of you want to evangelise them, which was Paul's task:

"Write a story about how Judaism buys into Chrestianity"
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by davidmartin »

No problem, I can switch away from peasants and turn to Philo and his 'Word' instead which just revealed a new connection i didn't find before
"So that the Word (Logos) is, as it were, the charioteer of the powers"

Ode 38 "I ascended to the light of Truth as if by chariot and Truth, He led me and fetched me"

It's this 'Word' idea, the spiritualised messiah not sure how come you only see the warrior king version, cause it helps argue there's no Jewish connection if it's only a warrior king? sure, maybe plenty of Rabbi's thought so too but that doesn't mean anything if we got Philo saying it. So you're kind of arguing with him here maybe I should leave you two to get on with it lol

Paul can't have been serious that the pharisees or whatever would buy into his gospel, whatever Chrestians said they have more chance they he did, if only from Paul's habit of invalidating Judaism
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by mlinssen »

Cheers david

I'm quite sure that the Tanakh prevails over the ramblings of Philo, and went back a little further than he did and was slightly better known...

I dig all the spiritual shit you can throw at me bro, but I don't see a spiritual Messiah in the Tanakh. Let me just end all the Judaic origins hype with this beautiful Matthew stunt, which I must have posted earlier:

Matthew 2:17 Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 18 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping [for] her children, and refusing consolation, because they are no more.”

Now observe what Jeremiah really says, in full:

Jeremiah 31:15 This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, [and] refusing consolation, because they are no more.” 16 This is what the LORD says: “Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for the reward for your work will come, declares the LORD. Then [your children] will return from the land of the enemy. 17 So there is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children will return to their own land.

Spirituality as a basis to Chrestianity, perhaps even to some Christianity? Hell yeah, pass the spliff - I'm all for that and I do recognise more then enough of it; and I even find Genesis 1 to have a beautifully poetic and spiritual first few paragraphs

It's just that all of that drops dead when we look at what the Judaic Messiah would do - and then of course, silly me, I'm looking at what Judaism says about their own concept, instead of some idiot outsiders who wouldn't even respect the Tanakh or get their Hebrew straightened out
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by davidmartin »

Great. Now you've given me the realisation I need to actually read all of Philo. Balls. I really, really hope he's not long winded and tedious. He surely cannot be worse than Josephus, what a complete, total waste of time his books are

Sure, i've seen that Jeremiah quote not making sense, none of this makes sense, it never did the first time I read the New Testament either only the parables did

So a spiritual messiah is not in the Tanakh officially, agreed, but could that be what Chrestians believed?
I mean Paul is straight up heretical to Judaism, no doubt about it. But could the Chrestians merely be heterodox?

There's an infinite difference between heretical and heterodox, for example.
Imagine a Rabbi on finding they mistakenly had a heretical book in their bookshelf, they would give it to someone they didn't like, but a merely heterodox one might be on a lower shelf maybe, but still on the shelf.

What I notice is that Thomas is less heretical than Paul is to Judaism... ?!?!?!?!?!
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by mlinssen »

davidmartin wrote: Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:26 am Great. Now you've given me the realisation I need to actually read all of Philo. Balls. I really, really hope he's not long winded and tedious. He surely cannot be worse than Josephus, what a complete, total waste of time his books are
Yup. Philo isn't much better, but at least the subjects are more interesting
Sure, i've seen that Jeremiah quote not making sense, none of this makes sense, it never did the first time I read the New Testament either only the parables did

So a spiritual messiah is not in the Tanakh officially, agreed, but could that be what Chrestians believed?
Bullseye. Here is where I struggle and so does Markus: we accept that *Ev used John B to demonstrate that Judaism had failed to see for IS for what he is, but what on earth precisely did *Ev portray him as? How?
I mean Paul is straight up heretical to Judaism, no doubt about it. But could the Chrestians merely be heterodox?
You have to understand that Paul's task is one alone: demonstrate that Judaism accepts Chrestianity as fulfilling their prophecies. This is the crux of it all

1. the Christian gospels stage perform an IS who allegedly is the Messiah, that is their new angle to the previous versions from Chrestianity
2. yet that is one who even "redefines" quite a few common Judaic core values and habits, meaning that he basically ignores food laws, and the Sabbath, and has a lot of words to spill over praying, giving alms, and such

Naturally (2) is the Chrestian inheritance, whereas (1) is the Churchian response to it, an outing of their solution to fixing the anti-Judaism by instead changing it into pro-Judaism

So what does Paul do?

A He continues to prove how (1) is legitimate and justified by throwing mistranslated verses at the reader and by creating prophecies from simple Tanakh narrative, and so on: anything goes really

B Yet the entire problem is the inheritance, and the anti-Judaism can partially be undone by focusing the critique of common Judaic habits intro the Pharisees alone: where praying, giving alms and observing food laws is just plain bad in Thomas, AND LIKELY ALSO *Ev (and that's a void for my theory), it gets turned into the Pharisees posting and giving alms in a hypocritical way - praying and giving alms is implicitly perfectly alright, is just that the Pharisees turn it into a mockery.
So that part gets solved, but what doesn't get solved is IS ignoring food laws, Sabbath - and likely stating logion 53 which is such a fantastic putdown of circumcision - while the introduction of (1) forces Churchianity to redefine the rules for the Judaic Messiah concept and creates enormous conflicts

C So Paul must demonstrate that the conflicts really are outcomes that logically and naturally belong - and those are the focal points for his "anti-Judaism" which really isn't anti-Judaism but merely a demonstration of how IS "really fulfills the prophecies": whenever Paul goes against Judaism it is only to defend Thomasine material that spilled over into *Ev and thus the NT.
There's an infinite difference between heretical and heterodox, for example.
Imagine a Rabbi on finding they mistakenly had a heretical book in their bookshelf, they would give it to someone they didn't like, but a merely heterodox one might be on a lower shelf maybe, but still on the shelf.

What I notice is that Thomas is less heretical than Paul is to Judaism... ?!?!?!?!?!
Thomas is plain anti-Judaic, and so is *Ev.
Paul takes the sum total of that heritage, 180's IS into the Messiah in order to reverse the anti-Judaism, and must now make sense of the remnants of that heritage in the new context of his pro-Judaism.
And the essence there is that Thomas and *Ev can just spit on Judaic aspects and reject them forcefully, whereas Paul is tasked with actually having to defend those rejections as options of "the new Judaism" so to say, which he obviously can't label as such: so he piles all of them onto his 'fresh covenant' and puts his rhetoric to use

And the conflicts force him to make a choice: the Messiah acting in fierce contradiction with most if not all that a Messiah was supposed to do can only be upheld if the Messiah somehow was justified in doing so - and as a consequence Paul necessarily invents the supersessionism, which in wording is much less anti-Judaic than Thomas and *Ev, yet had far, far more devastating results
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by davidmartin »

ah ok i think i see where you are coming from better now
You have to understand that Paul's task is one alone: demonstrate that Judaism accepts Chrestianity as fulfilling their prophecies. This is the crux of it all
I think Paul's main audience were Chrestians, he is trying to convert them. It is Paul that draws a great distinction between other forms of what appears to be the same thing, to accept his gospel is effectively a conversion even, or especially, if someone was a Chrestian already
i see him laying that out pretty clearly

a secondary audience is all the gentile 'god fearer' types that were floating around and would seriously jump at the chance to inherit what they liked without
a) converting to Judaism b) submitting to Jewish authority, they can be part of Paul's new thing instead, be leaders themselves. He dangles a carrot

This can be summed up as demonstrating Judaism accepts Chrestianity from a gentile perspective, he also gets to define what Judaism is along the way and what the messiah is. He defines everything except he takes some things unchanged...

One big elephant in the room gets overlooked, he didn't change much the pneumatic element cause when IS is speaking i think it often a 'divine voice', aka the Spirit, even The Word.
Is Chrestianity revelatory? yeah i think, so Paul with his revelations is following that pattern except he is subversive to Chrestianity which although revelatory had a system worked out already. He is going off in a direction that undermines this, and it's leaders and message. He keeps some stuff the same though. I think maybe the differences and oppositions obscure what actually didn't change or is recognisable I recon there's a lot of that. I think it should be possible to note these without seeming to take his side

But IS might have said "his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will flee from him because they do not recognize his voice.” about Paul, which I think this is what it's about. The gospels are aware but can't openly speak against Paul because, well, the people they are giving these stories to are his followers - who add their own layer on top, not seeing the allusions.
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Re: Marcion and Thomas in all of Luke

Post by mlinssen »

davidmartin wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:54 pm ah ok i think i see where you are coming from better now
You have to understand that Paul's task is one alone: demonstrate that Judaism accepts Chrestianity as fulfilling their prophecies. This is the crux of it all
I think Paul's main audience were Chrestians, he is trying to convert them.
Yes, absolutely: the audience of his texts where Chrestians, yet if you look at the scenes depicted in Romans and Corinthians then he is obviously addressing Judaics there
It is Paul that draws a great distinction between other forms of what appears to be the same thing, to accept his gospel is effectively a conversion even, or especially, if someone was a Chrestian already
i see him laying that out pretty clearly

a secondary audience is all the gentile 'god fearer' types that were floating around and would seriously jump at the chance to inherit what they liked without
a) converting to Judaism b) submitting to Jewish authority, they can be part of Paul's new thing instead, be leaders themselves. He dangles a carrot
And that's the interesting part - because nowhere is conversion to Judaism even mentioned indeed.
He is vomiting all this verbal diarrhea about Judaism, I think 70% of Romans and Corinthians is about Judaism - but he isn't even promoting Judaism at any point whatsoever, he's only putting it down all the time while making it big - and that's where the dodgy corner is
This can be summed up as demonstrating Judaism accepts Chrestianity from a gentile perspective, he also gets to define what Judaism is along the way and what the messiah is. He defines everything except he takes some things unchanged...
Paul already gives us Christian Judaism, he describes the state that the host should be in for the parasite to develop
One big elephant in the room gets overlooked, he didn't change much the pneumatic element cause when IS is speaking i think it often a 'divine voice', aka the Spirit, even The Word.
Is Chrestianity revelatory? yeah i think, so Paul with his revelations is following that pattern except he is subversive to Chrestianity which although revelatory had a system worked out already. He is going off in a direction that undermines this, and it's leaders and message. He keeps some stuff the same though.
He had to, you can't change it all - some things can't be touched
I think maybe the differences and oppositions obscure what actually didn't change or is recognisable I recon there's a lot of that. I think it should be possible to note these without seeming to take his side

But IS might have said "his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will flee from him because they do not recognize his voice.” about Paul, which I think this is what it's about. The gospels are aware but can't openly speak against Paul because, well, the people they are giving these stories to are his followers - who add their own layer on top, not seeing the allusions.
There was no IS, there was no Paul - none of this ever happened in any way.
And evidently, the letters come after the gospels, it's identical to what Thomas has versus that what is in the gospels: the plagiarists take the original content and wrap their own context around it in order to make it work for them in the way that they need to
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