The Josephan TF and Marcion

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maryhelena
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The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

I thought this idea deserved it's own thread: The post below is copied from the thread: Many of the Jews and many of the Greeks, here

The wording in the Josephan TF - He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. has been viewed as problematic as the gospel story has little to back up this idea. The focus of the gospel Jesus figure is that of a Jewish messiah figure - fulfilling OT prophecy. The NT story waits for Paul to do the Gentile outreach. However, early christian history identifies Marcion as someone with other ideas - his non-Jewish Christ figure was a Christ figure for everyman. Two stories, Jewish Jesus and the Pauline and Marcion non-Jewish Christ figure. Two stories that were fighting for dominance in the early christian church. Rather than seeking to accommodate both ideas, Marcion was branded a heretic and by all accounts excommunicated by the early church.

=============

Years prior to Eusebius someone had a motive in linking Greeks/Gentiles to the ministry of the gospel Jesus - Marcion.

Such, then, is to be the drift and form of my little treatise; subject, of course, to whatever condition may have become requisite on both sides of the question. Marcion has laid down the position, that Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown god, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from Him who was ordained by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come. Between these he interposes the separation of a great and absolute difference--as great as lies between what is just and what is good; as great as lies between the law and the gospel; as great, (in short,) as is the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Hence will arise also our rule, by which we determine that there ought to be nothing in common between the Christ of the rival god and the Creator; but that (Christ) must be pronounced to belong to the Creator, if He has administered His dispensations, fulfilled His prophecies, promoted His laws, given reality to His promises, revived His mighty power, remoulded His determinations expressed His attributes, His properties. This law and this rule I earnestly request the reader to have ever in his mind, and so let him begin to investigate whether Christ be Marcion's or the Creator's.

<snip>
It is, however, well that Marcion's god does claim to be the enlightener of the nations, that so he might have the better reason for coming down from heaven; only, if it must needs be, he should rather have made Pontus his place of descent than Galilee. But since both the place and the work of illumination according to the prophecy are compatible with Christ, we begin to discern that He is the subject of the prophecy, which shows 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.

Tertullian. Against Marcion . Kindle Edition.

Thus, for Marcion, from the beginning of Christ coming down to Capernaum - he was the non-Jewish Christ - the Christ of everyman. Yep, Pauline theology - but Marcion backdates the everyman's Christ to the very beginning of the decent to Capernaum.

(Basically, of course, indicating two Christ figures - the Jewish Messiah/Christ figure - plus the 'heavenly' Christ figure for everyman. The NT has a story to tell - first the Jewish messiah figure followed by the Pauline everyman Christ figure.......but human reality links body and spirit - which perhaps is what Marcion is attempting to articulate - and the church fathers were not having it....)

Anyway, what this idea regarding Marcion does do is suggest that a core TF could have been interpolated by Marcion - motive and opportunity - seemingly he went to Rome - were there. (along of course with the charge that he ''seems to have singled out Luke for his mutilating process.'' Tertullian. Against Marcion . Kindle Edition. )

=================

Marcion had the motive for an interpolation of 'many of the Greeks' into a core Josephan TF. On motive alone he has to be the prime suspect. Did he do it?
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maryhelena
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

Unlike Eusebius, Marcion would not be hamstrung by a 19 c.e. Pilate in Judea crucifixion date. After all, Marcion's Jesus is not a Jewish flesh and blood Christ/Messiah figure. Consequently, whatever the date any gospel writer, or Josephus, decides is suitable for a nativity or a crucifixion story - Marcion's 'descending' Jesus figure is there - part of the picture, part of the reality of body and spirit. Jewish 'body' and Gentile/Greek spirit.

Marcion, seemingly, was ahead of his time.....
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

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A minor but relevant point here is that it's uncertain whether Marcion had even read Josephus. There is no use of Josephus among any of the second and third century Christian writers of the west or Greece/Asia Minor. Josephus is not used by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Athenagoras of Athens, or Hippolytus of Rome, for example. Meanwhile, we find the first references to Josephus in Christian literature from writers that were familiar with the library of Origen, who started in Alexandria (with Clement) and ended up in Caesarea (where Eusebius was).

Another point here is that Josephus' text is never mentioned in connection with Marcion, providing evidence from that silence (which is not always a fallacy) that Marcion was not using the text in his arguments. Neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius, for example, bring up the TF, despite their extensive coverage of Marcion. Likewise, we know what Marcion actually did use to support his theology. Marcion used the Gospel, the Apostle Paul, and a short tract known as the Antitheses.

Last but not least, the authority of Josephus is inappropriate to the struggles that Marcion faced. Marcion's main opponents here were internal, and Josephus was not an authority for settling Christian doctrine. There was thus no real motive here for Marcion to go the back route through an interpolation in Josephus when it wouldn't even get him where he might want to be & there would have been other opportunities that made a lot more sense. However, we know that other Christians were doing a lot more to attempt to improve the legitimacy of Christianity in the eyes of the public, and it is in that apologetics context that an interpolation into Josephus would make sense. This is indeed consistent with the way the passage is actually used.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

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I think you are clearly onto something there. It indeed seems that as you have presented it Marcion had adequate motive.

Who then was the first to conceive that the spiritual Christ of Marcion descended upon the human Jesus of the Jews at a baptism staged for this seemingly Catholicizing/unification of what was initially two fully independent theological movements? And what was the motive for this merger? Could this apparently later development be what Marcion actually proposed/presented in Rome? Was a core of Marcion's proposal to Rome subsequently usurped, reworked, and unveiled/introduced not long after Marcion' was first disgraced, humiliated, and ran out of town? If Marcion did not go to Rome to unveil something along these Catholicizing lines, why and for what purpose did he go to Rome? Did he actually go to Rome?
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

Peter Kirby wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:41 am A minor but relevant point here is that it's uncertain whether Marcion had even read Josephus. There is no use of Josephus among any of the second and third century Christian writers of the west or Greece/Asia Minor. Josephus is not used by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Athenagoras of Athens, or Hippolytus of Rome, for example. Meanwhile, we find the first references to Josephus in Christian literature from writers that were familiar with the library of Origen, who started in Alexandria (with Clement) and ended up in Caesarea (where Eusebius was).
Uncertainty over whether Marcion had even read Josephus. We don't know in other words if Marcion had ever read Josephus.

Another point here is that Josephus' text is never mentioned in connection with Marcion, providing evidence from that silence (which is not always a fallacy) that Marcion was not using the text in his arguments. Neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius, for example, bring up the TF, despite their extensive coverage of Marcion. Likewise, we know what Marcion actually did use to support his theology. Marcion used the Gospel, the Apostle Paul, and a short tract known as the Antitheses.
Whether Marcion used or did not use the proposed interpolation in his arguments is not the issue here. The issue is that the TF text as we have it has the sentence - He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. 'He' being the wise man, Jesus. The gospels do not support this statement.

Last but not least, the authority of Josephus is inappropriate to the struggles that Marcion faced. Marcion's main opponents here were internal, and Josephus was not an authority for settling Christian doctrine. There was thus no real motive here for Marcion to go the back route through an interpolation in Josephus when it wouldn't even get him where he might want to be & there would have been other opportunities that made a lot more sense. However, we know that other Christians were doing a lot more to attempt to improve the legitimacy of Christianity in the eyes of the public, and it is in that apologetics context that an interpolation into Josephus would make sense. This is indeed consistent with the way the passage is actually used.
The proposed interpolation is a statement not an argument. It is a statement that proports to be a historical fact - that the ministry of Jesus drew many Jews and many Greeks/Gentiles. Well, no - the gospel story does not support that interpretation of the statement. If Eusebius wrote this statement he was in error. Projecting back in time a situation possibly from his own day.....

If Marcion - or re Olson - a Marcion scribe did it - the statement rings true for Marcionites. Yes, neither Jew nor Greek is Pauline theology/philosophy. Marcion has simply projected this back to the time of Jesus. He - or his scribe - were able to do this because Marcion's Christ figure is not flesh and blood but a descending spirit. Hence is not beholden to time constraints. The descending Christ was there from the beginning: Viewed through a theological/philosophical lens, not a historical lens, many Jews and many Greeks/Gentiles followed Jesus from the beginning. Yes, a philosophical/theological conundrum - but that's the nature of 'spirituality'.

And bottom line of course - since the gospel Jesus is a literary figure - questions about how many Jews and how many Greeks/Gentiles followed him is not a historical issue. The TF - even with interpolations - is not dealing with history. It is, like the gospel story from which it draws it's nuts and bolts - allegory.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

lsayre wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 9:09 am I think you are clearly onto something there. It indeed seems that as you have presented it Marcion had adequate motive.

Who then was the first to conceive that the spiritual Christ of Marcion descended upon the human Jesus of the Jews at a baptism staged for this seemingly Catholicizing/unification of what was initially two fully independent theological movements? And what was the motive for this merger? Could this apparently later development be what Marcion actually proposed/presented in Rome? Was a core of Marcion's proposal to Rome subsequently usurped, reworked, and unveiled/introduced not long after Marcion' was first disgraced, humiliated, and ran out of town? If Marcion did not go to Rome to unveil something along these Catholicizing lines, why and for what purpose did he go to Rome? Did he actually go to Rome?
Lots of questions there. ....

Marcion lost the fight and the orthodox won. The orthodox read the gospels as history instead of allegory - and by ditching Marcion's non-Jewish spiritual Christ figure - confined themselves to limbo. Eusebius, by turning the spotlight upon the Josephan TF as though it was a historical witness to gospel Jesus - dug deeper the hole in which Christianity finds itself today. Methinks, Marcion would be turning in his grave.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

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maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 am Whether Marcion used or did not use the proposed interpolation in his arguments is not the issue here.
It's relevant. You can also propose that Marcion interpolated the passage and never used it. But that also seems unlikely.
maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 amThe proposed interpolation is a statement not an argument.
Then Marcion is a poor candidate. A statement can more easily be made without finding a copy of Josephus and interpolating into it. If resorting to an interpolation, it could also more effectively be made with an interpolation into another source that is more relevant to Marcionites, such as the epistles or gospel.

You're pushing an interpolation hypothesis, while also divorcing it from the context of what interpolations say about someone's motivations, given our knowledge of interpolations in general. Adding a passage like this to someone's text speaks to an intention to persuade others on the basis of the revised text.

The main reason for the compartmentalization seems to be to preserve a neat-sounding idea.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

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maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 amThe issue is that the TF text as we have it has the sentence - He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. 'He' being the wise man, Jesus. The gospels do not support this statement.
I have no dog in this fight, but I think the Gospels do support that statement. There are minor examples like the story of the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant. In a couple of the Gospels, a centurion said that Jesus was the Son of God at Jesus's death. There is also Jesus healing a Greek mother's daughter near Tyre.

Then there is gJohn which has:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... n-kjv.html

John 12:20 And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast:
21 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.

But by far the most pertinent passages can be found in gMark and gLuke, which I give below. I think they are a match for what we find in the TF. First, the TF passage:

TF

For he was a doer of no common works, a teacher of men who reverence truth. And he gathered many of the Jewish and many of the Greek race.

In the Synoptics, Jesus is said to have gone to the region of Tyre and Sidon, which were both Gentile cities. In gMark and gLuke we have this:

Mark

3:8 And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.

Luke

6:17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;

In both gMark and gLuke, the multitude consisted of people from both Jewish and Gentile regions, who came out to hear him and to be healed.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

Peter Kirby wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:55 pm
maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 am Whether Marcion used or did not use the proposed interpolation in his arguments is not the issue here.
It's relevant. You can also propose that Marcion interpolated the passage and never used it. But that also seems unlikely.
maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 amThe proposed interpolation is a statement not an argument.
Then Marcion is a poor candidate. A statement can more easily be made without finding a copy of Josephus and interpolating into it. If resorting to an interpolation, it could also more effectively be made with an interpolation into another source that is more relevant to Marcionites, such as the epistles or gospel.

You're pushing an interpolation hypothesis, while also divorcing it from the context of what interpolations say about someone's motivations, given our knowledge of interpolations in general. Adding a passage like this to someone's text speaks to an intention to persuade others on the basis of the revised text.

The main reason for the compartmentalization seems to be to preserve a neat-sounding idea.
:) Yep, it's ''a neat-sounding idea'' alright. It just crossed my mind after reading your thread on the ''Many of the Jews and many of the Greeks''.

''context of interpolations' - maybe ''many Greeks' does for the TF what 'wife' does for the Gospel of Jesus's Wife. A red flag - pay attention here.

The wording - ''He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks' suggests, as you wrote in your thread; '' This line is a key to the mystery of the TF. It's the only thing that isn't in the Gospels. It's also unexplained why it's mentioned at all, in its current context. The rest of the TF reads like the adaptation of a credal summary.''

Eusebius notwithstanding - on a historical basis and on a gospel basis - there is no reason to take this statement as history. Hence, my 'neat-sounding idea' that perhaps we should give the original Arch-Heretic Marcion a consideration. From a spiritual, i.e. a philosophical view, the statement suits the approach of the Marcionites. Jesus descended as a non-Jewish messiah/christ figure. Therefore, Greeks/Gentiles were of the 'many' who were 'won over' by the wise man Jesus. In fact perhaps one could add the ''if indeed one ought to call him a man'' to the Marcionites theological/philosophical outlook.

My 'neat-sounding idea' would suggest that Marcionite ideas were, from the beginning, running alongside, parallel, to the body and flesh focus of the gospel story. After all that story is itself a story of ideas made flesh. The parting of the ways - re the expelling of Marcion - suggests the orthodox wanted Pauline theology coupled with a literal reading of the gospel story. Marcion wanted the Jewish Jesus story to take a back seat - to shift focus away from it's Jewish messiah figure with its inherent nationalism. Once the orthodox went for a literal gospel reading accommodation with Marcion became impossible. Marcion had his gospel Jesus story, i.e. he retained a gospel story albeit one without a birth narrative. He did not reject a Jewish root to his non-Jewish messiah figure - his focus was the flowering of that root. A flowering where Jew and Greek would become one in an intellectual, spiritual, philosophical world view.

The orthodox went for a literal gospel reading plus Pauline philosophy - in other words; a hybrid concoction. Pauline philosophy viewed through a literal reading of the gospel story, viewed through a gospel lens, is a recipe for social disintegration. Once identity becomes non-identity - focus is lost and we go around in circles failing to find a way out of our own, self made, intellectual prison.
Last edited by maryhelena on Fri Oct 29, 2021 12:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Josephan TF and Marcion

Post by maryhelena »

GakuseiDon wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 6:00 pm
maryhelena wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 11:45 amThe issue is that the TF text as we have it has the sentence - He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. 'He' being the wise man, Jesus. The gospels do not support this statement.
I have no dog in this fight, but I think the Gospels do support that statement. There are minor examples like the story of the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant. In a couple of the Gospels, a centurion said that Jesus was the Son of God at Jesus's death. There is also Jesus healing a Greek mother's daughter near Tyre.

Then there is gJohn which has:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... n-kjv.html

John 12:20 And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast:
21 The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus.

But by far the most pertinent passages can be found in gMark and gLuke, which I give below. I think they are a match for what we find in the TF. First, the TF passage:

TF

For he was a doer of no common works, a teacher of men who reverence truth. And he gathered many of the Jewish and many of the Greek race.

In the Synoptics, Jesus is said to have gone to the region of Tyre and Sidon, which were both Gentile cities. In gMark and gLuke we have this:

Mark

3:8 And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.

Luke

6:17 And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;

In both gMark and gLuke, the multitude consisted of people from both Jewish and Gentile regions, who came out to hear him and to be healed.
One can argue for maybe 'some' Greeks/Gentiles were followers of the gospel Jesus. However, when it comes to 'many' Greeks/Gentiles that were won over by the wise man Jesus - problems do arise. Did these 'many' Greeks/Gentiles become circumcised Jews? If they did get circumcised would not the Jewish priests be up in arms about all these heretical new Jews preaching that Jesus and God are one. The story goes on to say the Jews took up stones to stone Jesus. It hardly bares thinking about how the Jewish priesthood would respond to 'many' Greeks/Gentiles Jewish converts attempting to preach such a heretical theology........thousands of Greek/Gentiles Jewish converts drawing crowds, like their master, and methinks, it would be far more than stones that would be on offer - civil unrest.....Nope, Marcion and his intellectual non-Jewish Jesus allows for a philosophical view of those early first century days. No civil war but an intellectual 'war' was what Marcionism was about. The fruits of which would not be picked until, at the earliest, post 70 c.e.
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