English Translation IIUC.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:50 amI believe I know the volumes you are speaking of but what does ET stand for? Pardon ignorance or momentary brain lapse.
Andrew Criddle
English Translation IIUC.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:50 amI believe I know the volumes you are speaking of but what does ET stand for? Pardon ignorance or momentary brain lapse.
Sorry, "English Translation." The old ET of Schuerer from the 1880s (I think) was based on the 2nd German edition of his book. If I recall correctly, the revised ET is based on the 3rd German edition.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:50 amI believe I know the volumes you are speaking of but what does ET stand for? Pardon ignorance or momentary brain lapse.
The simple explanation is that the New Testament collection called Marcionite wasn't Marcion's but was rather an old collection in use among dissident Christians that the Catholics labelled as "Marcionite" (just as they would later label every heretic a Manichaean).rgprice wrote: ↑Tue Oct 12, 2021 2:25 pm It seems that even Marcion's Gospel and Marcion's version of the Pauline letters still deal with the Jewish scriptures and still present a Jesus who is at least tangentially tied to Judaism. Given the teachings of the Gnostics, why did they deal with these materials at all? How did the canon that Marcion put forward inspire or support his teachings?
It seems that if one were going to simply fabricate a set of scriptures to promote the idea that an unknown god had come to earth to reveal himself, and that this god was not god of the Jews, that Paul's letters wouldn't have been the ideal candidates for this.
Here's another thread where I'm posting a change of mind. I earlier responded to the above by questioning the view that conflict that inflicted one of two parties that considered themselves brethren would lead to the other party wanting to distance themselves from the one suffering affliction. My thought was that tragedy on one family member tends to bring the whole family together in sympathy.rgprice wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 2:44 pm Well, having thought more about this, let me put this forward:
. . . .
After the First war, tensions started to grow in this community and such God-fearers became increasingly uneasy with their ties to Judaism. This increased over time as the conflicts continued to roil. Thus, while Pauline communities may have originally been more comfortable with their ties to Judaism, and had adopted many aspects of Jewish thought and religion, there was an increasing desire to split from the Jews while also holding on to many of the religious ideas and traditions they had adopted and had become integrated into their communities.
Thus, Anti-Semitic Gnosticism emerged as sort of the device for separating from Judaism, while taking possession of the aspects of the religion that had become integral to these communities.
There was certainly no "New Testament" in Justin's time, but I think you are referring to Paul's letters specifically. In another thread I posted my change of mind on Justin's apparent non-use of Paul's letters. There are good reasons to think he did know and use them in his Dialogue with Trypho: see detais and link to a key article at viewtopic.php?p=129090#p129090rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 5:13 am . . . . .
But I do find it very interesting that Justin certainly seems not to have known the New Testament, . . . .
Justin appears to be the only person that we still have record of, who believed this, even though the New Testament did not tell him so, because Justin appears not to have known the New Testament. Yet, we can see in Justin's works, the root for this belief, which was Justin's belief in Jewish prophecy. . . .
An article by Alexandru Ioniță, Israel in Marcion’s Theology and the Challenge of Contemporary Marcionism for the Orthodox Church, Revista Teologica 3 (2013), 67-84, is interesting in this respect.rgprice wrote: ↑Mon Nov 22, 2021 5:13 am ... BeDuhn and others also view Marcion's teachings as stemming from the wave of "anti-Semitism" that rose around the time of Hadrian. But we also know that Justin was anti-Marcionite as well.
< . . snip . > >
Marcion, then, while not necessarily "a Gnostic" worked from the same foundational ideas of the Gnostics within the context of Hadronic "anti-Semitism".
Hi maryhelena, I'm back for just a few minutesmaryhelena wrote: ↑Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:02 amMartin - my thinking about the whole body and spirit scenario is to try and understand what is at the root of what it was that the ancients were trying to articulate. After all, we do not live in the world of their imagination. Our 21st century world strives for logic and rationality. We can use science and psychology etc in attempting to understand our human nature. Yes, unfortunately, there are many today who choose to add a 'spiritual' component to their lives and deaths.mlinssen wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:26 pmEmphasis mine.maryhelena wrote: ↑Wed Oct 13, 2021 12:49 am The spirit does not exist in a vacuum - body and spirit go together like a horse and carriage...you can't have one without the other. That is of course, if one wants to be rational and leave aside notions of spirits wandering around in the invisible heavens. The word became flesh (gJohn) is not about an invisible spirit from the invisible heavens taking on human flesh. In our modern 21st century speak - 'flesh it out' relates to an idea, an argument, given some substance. For instance; an architect might imagine how his design will look - but only when the brick and mortar are used to build that design will his idea become 'flesh', become a physical reality.
We really need to get away from the archaic idea that invisible heavenly spirits come down to earth, from outer space, and put on human flesh....Carrier notwithstanding....
Marcion has his Jesus decent in the 15th year of Tiberius - Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea. His Jesus descends into Jewish history. The heavenly spirit Jesus and the earthly Jewish Jesus are one and the same Jesus - in other words - the body and spirit of human reality. The flesh is Jewish but the spirit is free. However far Marcion was going with his non-Jewish Jesus - he did not, he could not, get away from the very Jewish Jesus of the gospel story. Downplay the Jewish Jesus, side-step the Jewish Jesus - and Marcion's non-Jewish Jesus would have faded away.......In effect, Marcion has combined the bodily Jewish Jesus with the spiritual, the intellectual or philosophical, Jesus. He has combined body and spirit - mind and matter.
A simple concept really - but one which the early church 'father's failed to grasp in their condemnation of Marcion.
Of course Marcion didn't, why would he be interested in predating his story?
The Church Fathers naturally abused Marcion to insert some of their own inventions, such as this one. Brilliant hey, just claim that Marcion had the same material as they did but different so you can name and refute it, while its core is left intact
To Marcion, I am sure, IS was a concept: he comes 'from above', and John knows that and uses that.
Marcion highly likely did not have Coptic Thomas but only Greek copies that interpreted logion 28 in the wrong way:
28. said IS : did I stand to foot in the(F) middle of the World and did I reveal outward to they in Flesh ...
The Coptic is clear, IS "reveals" to "them in Flesh". How else could it be, the World in Thomas is everyone's own perceived Decoration (KOSMOS) of the world indeed.
Macrion didn't mention either body or spirit or flesh of IS, he just left it all like it is in Thomas: utterly unspecified. Which was a great problem for those who wanted to turn him into a man
( a recent comment on Twitter, quoting I understand a Catholic hymn) regarding the stabbing to death of a UK politician: ''May the angels lead him into paradise; may the martyrs receive him at his arrival and lead him to the holy city Jerusalem. May choirs of angels receive him and may he have eternal rest.'')
The ancients had two options when looking around the world they lived in. The material world and the 'spiritual' world - the unknown world. Animals die, men die - but - vegetation dies but is reborn in the spring. Thus, went the thinking, man being part of nature, reflects not only nature's material aspect but also it's rebirth in the spring spiritual aspect. (Man being a higher animal than other animals...) Since no material/physical rebirth was observed for man - a spiritual rebirth, an unseen rebirth, was man's destiny. Gods and an unknown heaven became man's rebirth reward. A spiritual rebirth in the unknown heaven became the goal of man - hence Gnostics and all those who seek spiritual enlightenment - often at the expense of overlooking the material needs of themselves or the natural environment.
Logic and rationality lead us to question the ideas of the ancients; belief in the existence of spiritual beings in some spiritual world is simply imagination not scientific knowledge nor rational thought. But if god does not exist in the way attributed to such beings by the ancients - what is the god idea all about? If god is that North Star that leads the way to safety - then god is nothing more, or nothing less, than our human intellectual capacity. God then becomes the driving force, the spirit, that drives forward our intellectual evolution. Ideas come, they die, and they are reborn in the spring. Knowledge grows on what went before. Intellectual evolution reflects the natural cycles of the vegetation we see all around us. In contrast, our material bodies simply decay back into the natural environment. Our 'spiritual' aspect, our evolving evolutional intellect, dies with our material body. Man only lives forever in the 'body' of knowledge he has contributed to while living.
Plain, simple, facts of 21st century knowledge.
The intricacies of ancient thought might be interesting, in and of themselves - however, it's the underlying concepts that provide a way forward. Ancient concepts of body and spirit - concepts of human nature - need to be expressed in 21st century language. The intellectual framework in which the ancients lived is not our world. It is, in effect, a dead world. Our job today is not to attempt it's rebirth but to seek that new intellectual world that the ancients perhaps sensed in their musings but were unable to grasp and hence to articulate.
My thought for the day...