The forgotten third Christian movement

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

Much attention has been given to "proto-orthodox" Christianity as it is shaped by engagement with Marcionism. But Justin speaks of followers of Simon Magus as another significant rival to what he presents as sound doctrine (Typho, 26, 56 -- yes, there are still more rivals, but let's focus on just this one additional player for now.)

My impression is that we may be focusing so much on Marcion's influence on the shaping of the NT because that's where much of the scholarly publications have focussed, so it's easy mining for choice nuggets of data to work with.

But I'd like to put in another plug for Roger Parvus's thesis that builds on both Turmel and Loisy: Paul's letters, as known to those responsible for our canonical Luke-Acts, may rather have been shaped by Saturnilians, a second-generation(?) follower of Simon Magus. This opens up another question: Were the letters of Paul in Marcion's hands derived from Saturnilians and was Marcion responsible for editing them by removing what he judged to be Saturnilian additions?

Was the production of our canonical Luke-Acts a response not only to Marcionism but also to the Saturnilians?

Parvus's view can be found in four posts linked in the box with the red heading "Second Thoughts: Revising the “Simonian Origin for Christianity” hypothesis" here.

Related to this question of origins, I copy here a question in another thread (Was Judas an Afterthought?) that appears to have been overlooked and not yet responded to. See the bolded point below. It was originally directed to rgprice but I'm happy for anyone to respond.
neilgodfrey wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 8:00 pm
rgprice wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:23 am. . .

I'm not saying that every detail of thought between the NT and Justin matches. The NT was created from existing material. That existing material already had various agendas and perspectives. I'm saying that the revisions to the material change it in the same direction as Justin. If you compare Marcion's Gospel and Marcion's letters vs Luke and the Catholic letters, then the change between the two is in the same direction as Justin's framework. And of course, if the NT was not created by Justin himself (which I'm not suggesting), then of course whatever did the editing may have been informed by Justin, but not of exactly the same mind as Justin.

But as for the case that Justin used Paul instead of Paul having been interpolated with Justin's arguments, I don't think the case is nearly so clear as you suggest. . . ..
Thanks for the detailed response, RG. I must take more time to rethink some points.

Meantime, given your scenario -- forgive me if I missed it -- where did Marcion, or Paul, come from? Was it a Jewish base that either or both were responding to? Was there anything Jewish about Paul's letters?
(It is my rethinking of the question as a result of rg's insights that have led me to bring in the Simon Magus/Saturnilian factor.)
ABuddhist
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by ABuddhist »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 4:10 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 8:00 pm
rgprice wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 5:23 am. . .

I'm not saying that every detail of thought between the NT and Justin matches. The NT was created from existing material. That existing material already had various agendas and perspectives. I'm saying that the revisions to the material change it in the same direction as Justin. If you compare Marcion's Gospel and Marcion's letters vs Luke and the Catholic letters, then the change between the two is in the same direction as Justin's framework. And of course, if the NT was not created by Justin himself (which I'm not suggesting), then of course whatever did the editing may have been informed by Justin, but not of exactly the same mind as Justin.

But as for the case that Justin used Paul instead of Paul having been interpolated with Justin's arguments, I don't think the case is nearly so clear as you suggest. . . ..
Meantime, given your scenario -- forgive me if I missed it -- where did Marcion, or Paul, come from? Was it a Jewish base that either or both were responding to? Was there anything Jewish about Paul's letters?
(It is my rethinking of the question as a result of rg's insights that have led me to bring in the Simon Magus/Saturnilian factor.)
I would say, in my cynical way, that Paul may have been like Yogi Bhajan (a Sikh who falsely presented himself to people unfamiliar with Sikhism as a representative of true, universal, modernized, Sikhism while actually innovating in many ways condemned by Orthodox Sikhism).

Marcion I would compare to the devotee of ISKCON Hinduism Henry Doktorski. Both being people who recognize that the original doctrines had been corrupted, both then tried, through lengthy written treatises, to restore, for the world and for themselves, the original, allegedly better teachings.

If these examples be obscure to the people within this forum, I hope that they can alt least be thought-provoking. People throughout the world tend to behave in predictable ways when they encounter similar things, and as the saying is, history may not repeat but it rhymes.
ABuddhist
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by ABuddhist »

By the way, Neil, when I readed this thread's title, I thought that you were referring to the Christianity as represented by certain second century CE apologists, in which there was (as far as we can tell from their surviving writings), no "Jesus", "Christ", or sacrificial death (whether upon the Earth, within the Heavens, or in an unstated place). But your use of the thread's title in this thread's context is also interesting.
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by RParvus »

Neil,
I noticed your plug and decided to add here a few thoughts about how Judas might fit into my Simonian/Saturnilian scenario. Realize that what I offer is here is half-baked, perhaps in more ways than one, but I’ll put it forward for whatever it is worth.

In the recently uncovered Gospel of Judas it is Judas who is the conduit for the “real” message of Jesus. There is much in that Gospel that resonates well with the admittedly little that we know from Irenaeus about the Saturnilians. One item in particular that catches my attention is the idea that men (created not by the highest God, but by lower angels) fall into two groups: one made for an imperishable realm and the other for total perishability. This type of predestinatory division calls to mind the “vessels of destruction” (Rom. 9:22) in the letter to the Romans with its: “Who are you, o man, to talk back to God? Will what is made talk back to its maker? ‘Why have you created me so?’ Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for a noble purpose and another for an ignoble one? - Rom. 9:20-21).

For me it also calls to mind the parable about the types of soil (hearers) in chapter 4 of gMark, the chapter in which Jesus is said to have privately revealed to his disciples the “mystery of the kingdom of God”. As Morna Hooker notes in her commentary on Mark: “The existence of four groups of hearers should not conceal the fact that basically there are only two: those whose hearing of the word bears fruit and those who hearing proves to be fruitless” (p. 132). Yet Jesus, in telling the parable, says that the reason he speaks in parables is to prevent some of his hearers from understanding.

It seems strange that there is so much repetition of the word “Hear!” in chapter four of gMark when at the same time Jesus is there preventing some of the hearers from understanding. Unless it is some kind of clue. Remember that Simonians claimed that Simon’s name meant “Hear!” and that it was given to him by the highest God when Simon heard/obeyed the command to descend to this world. And they believed that Simon was the Christ. And IF the Gospel of Judas was Simonian/Saturnilian in origin, it may be that an earlier gMark was modified at some point by them to provide pointers to the “real” gospel. That would give us a modified gMark for “those on the outside” (Mk. 4:11) that pointed to gJudas for those on the inside. And so it would come to pass that, as Mark 4 says, “Nothing is hidden” (in gMark) “except to be revealed” (in gJudas), “and nothing is concealed”(in gMark) ”except to be brought into the open” (in gJudas). “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear! And he said to them, ‘Pay attention to what you hear!’ ” (Mk. 4:22-23).

[The gospel of Judas would also provide a key to another enigmatic verse in Mark 4: “For whoever has, will be given more, and whoever doesn’t have will have what he has taken away.” (Mk. 4:25). That is, those who have the divine spark will be given spiritual imperishability; those who don’t have it will lose the only thing they have: physical existence.]

In this scenario there would, of course, have to be a third stage of development in which the proto-orthodox had the final say and further modified/cleaned up gMark to mesh with their own beliefs. One way to counter Simonian/Saturnilian pretensions regarding Judas’ private information would be to make him a traitor. Words like the following would belong to the third stage: “For the son of man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by who the son of man is betrayed” (Mk. 14:21). But perhaps initially there were some, Justin among them, that preferred to just ignore the claim of those who, as Justin saw it, were Christians-in-name-only. Why separate Judas from the 12 and wrongly tarnish his status just to counter an utterly baseless heretical claim?
ABuddhist
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by ABuddhist »

RParvus wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:11 pm [The gospel of Judas would also provide a key to another enigmatic verse in Mark 4: “For whoever has, will be given more, and whoever doesn’t have will have what he has taken away.” (Mk. 4:25). That is, those who have the divine spark will be given spiritual imperishability; those who don’t have it will lose the only thing they have: physical existence.]
Have you considered that Secret Mark (or an authentic text with similar content) may explain other puzzling passages in GMark, such as the man wrapped in Linen when Jesus was arrested?
RParvus
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by RParvus »

ABuddhist wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:14 pm
RParvus wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:11 pm [The gospel of Judas would also provide a key to another enigmatic verse in Mark 4: “For whoever has, will be given more, and whoever doesn’t have will have what he has taken away.” (Mk. 4:25). That is, those who have the divine spark will be given spiritual imperishability; those who don’t have it will lose the only thing they have: physical existence.]
Have you considered that Secret Mark (or an authentic text with similar content) may explain other puzzling passages in GMark, such as the man wrapped in Linen when Jesus was arrested?
No. It's just I remember that when I read the Gospel of Judas a few years back it struck me as Simonian/Saturnilian. I no longer read much on early Christianity, though I still regularly take a look to see what's new on this site and Vridar.
rgprice
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

ABuddhist wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:14 pm Have you considered that Secret Mark (or an authentic text with similar content) may explain other puzzling passages in GMark, such as the man wrapped in Linen when Jesus was arrested?
I take the naked man to be a scriptural reference to Amos 2: "16 And the strong shall find no confidence in power: the naked shall flee away in that day, says the Lord." Amos 2 also contains the selling of the righteous for silver, which happens in the same scene.
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by ABuddhist »

rgprice wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:18 am
ABuddhist wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:14 pm Have you considered that Secret Mark (or an authentic text with similar content) may explain other puzzling passages in GMark, such as the man wrapped in Linen when Jesus was arrested?
I take the naked man to be a scriptural reference to Amos 2: "16 And the strong shall find no confidence in power: the naked shall flee away in that day, says the Lord." Amos 2 also contains the selling of the righteous for silver, which happens in the same scene.
I certainly agree that your interpretation is plausible (and is what I personally accept), but I was asking whether Parvus has any thoughts about the passage in light of both Secret Mark and Parvus's invocation of GJudas in order to explain GMark.
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

@neil:
where did Marcion, or Paul, come from? Was it a Jewish base that either or both were responding to? Was there anything Jewish about Paul's letters?
I'm not really sure. I'm trying to figure out whether the first layer of the Pauline letters viewed the "God of Moses" as the Highest/Only god or not. I think that's a huge key to everything. I think there are certainly passages which indicate that the God of Moses is not the Father of Jesus, but these could be proto-Marcionite interpolations, because other parts seem only to make sense if the original layer views the God of Moses as the Father, and I am pretty confident they are from the original layer. But tis very hard to really be sure.
The earliest parts of the original collection of Paulines were written between 50 CE and 130 CE by Simon of Samaria and his successor, Menander.
Not sure about this.
The original gospel that Simon/Paul embraced was the Vision of Isaiah, i.e., chapters 6 – 11 of the Ascension of Isaiah.
Not sure about this.
The earliest written gospel that contained a public ministry for its central character was a Simonian allegory (that I will refer to as urMark) written sometime between 100 and 130 CE. That gospel’s public ministry was an allegorical portrayal of the apostolic career of Simon of Samaria. The allegory was intended to be a riddle that would be understood by Simonians, but befuddle “those outside” (Mk. 4:11). As a riddle, it was intentionally cryptic, giving enough hints for Simonians to recognize the real identity of the Jesus figure (i.e., Simon/Paul), but at the same time written in such a way that those outside would “look and see, but not perceive; hear and listen, but not understand” (Mk. 4:12).
Yes, I agree with this.

As for Roger's theory that, essentially, the Christ Hymn of Philippians is describing the Lord of Vision of Isiah, of that I'm less sure.

But its possible. I've been taking the Christ Hymn to be based on the Suffering Servant, i.e. that the Christ Hymn identifies the Suffering Servant with the Word of God. My reconstruction of its development uses Philo and Isaiah 53, showing how all of the elements can be found in passages from those two sources.
GMark, GMatthew, and GLuke were proto-orthodox reactions to urMark. Their authors solved the Simonian riddle and responded by attempting to turn it against the Simonians. They turned the tables by taking urMark’s allegorical Jesus and making him proto-orthodox. One of the principal ways they did this was by putting sayings (Q) about and by John the Baptist and his successor James into his mouth.
I sort of agree with this, but not exactly. I'd say rather that Matthew and Luke are proto-orthodox revisions of Marcion's Gospel, and that GMark is a proto-orthodox harmonization of urMark with Matthew and Luke. There is no Q, and saying were not put into Matthew or Luke by the proto-orthodox. Rather the teachings were added by the writer of Marcion's Gospel. The teachings, I believe, come from the community that wrote Colossians and Ephesians, which I believe was proto-Marcionite/Christian Gnostic. I think it was "Gnostics" who converted the mystical Jesus of urMark into the teacher and revealer of Marcion's Gospel. Marcionism relies on a teaching Jesus, who can reveal the Father.

But, I do think that Roger makes many good points about connections between the Vision of Isaiah and the letters of Paul. I'd say that overall he puts forward some very interesting and compelling points.
I have left out of my speculative proposal parts of GMark that are arguably later redactional additions, including the cast of named characters: Simon the Cyrenian who is the father of Alexander and Rufus, Mary the Magdalene, Salome, Mary the mother of Joses and James the Small. In a subsequent post I will argue that these were Simonian additions to the original passion narrative. They Simonized it. And I will also argue that the incidents that immediately precede the passer-by in GMark—the Last Supper, betrayal by Judas, denials by Peter, abandonment by the disciples, and preference of Barabbas over Jesus—are allegorical portrayals of events from the last trip of Simon/Paul to Jerusalem. The release of Jesus Barabbas—the son of the father— by Pilate is an allegorical portrayal of the release of Simon/Paul by Felix. The release of Barabbas would function as the seam that separated the allegory about Simon/Paul from the earlier story of the Son’s crucifixion. If this is correct, the only transitional verses that join the allegory to the crucifixion are Mk. 15:16-20 i.e., the crowning with thorns of the king of the Jews and the mockery of him by the soldiers. This transitional material may have been taken from Philo’s account of the mockery of Carabbas (In Flaccum, 6, 36-9).
Funny enough, I had not read this until you posted it here in this thread. However, I have reached many similar conclusions. This is why I'm arguing in the book I'm working on that the "we passages" in Acts come from a source story about Paul that pre-dated the Gospel of Mark, and that the writer of urMark based his Jesus character on the story about Paul that is partially preserved in the "we passages". Also, that the writer of Acts intentionally did not revise the we passages to put them into third person in order to appropriate the identity of the narrator of the original story.

The Ascension/Vision of Isaiah has always been puzzling for me and I didn't really know what to make of it, and thus stopped giving it much attention. But, Roger points out some very interesting connections that have some plausibility.

However, for Roger's proposal to have merit (at least as I understand it), it would require that Paul/Simon had either read some version of Vision of Isaiah and took it as literal truth, or that Vision of Isaiah records some sort of teaching that Paul/Simon was familiar with. That, in essence, Simon/Paul's mission and beliefs are derived from this story, either in written form or some telling of it. For some reason that seems difficult for me to accept. I had envisioned Paul's beliefs as having been derived from interpretations of the Jewish scriptures, not having developed from a story. Or am I misunderstanding something here?

But I agree, that there are many ways that Vision of Isaiah corresponds to statements in the Pauline letters, in ways that fit the Pauline teachings, while not fitting later teachings that derive from the canonical Gospels.

So is this Gnostic or proto-Gnostic:

CHAPTER 10:
12. And they shall not know that Thou art with Me, till with a loud voice I have called (to) the heavens, and their angels and their lights, (even) unto the sixth heaven, in order that you mayest judge and destroy the princes and angels and gods of that world, and the world that is dominated by them:

13. For they have denied Me and said: "We alone are and there is none beside us."

I definitely see ways in which VoI can be better related to Gnostic teachings than canonical ones. It is also perhaps easier to see how teachings like those of Valentinian, Marcion, etc. derive from narratives that derive from something like VoI than how they would derive from the canonical narratives.

The traditional view is that the "heretics" started with the canonical works and derived from them their teachings, which claimed that Jesus descended from heaven, that he took on human form but was not human, etc. This has never made much sense really. It is easier to see something like VoI giving rise to narratives that inspired the teachings of the heretics, in which Jesus is explicitly said to have descended from heaven and taken on human form, etc. and this fits better with "Paul's" statements.

But that does leave some uneasy questions about the Gospel of Mark. I'm not sure I'm quite as confident anymore that Mark was the first narrative about Jesus, but only that it is the most original narrative about Jesus that still exists, and it is likely the narrative that gave rise to the more widespread Jesus worship and belief that he was a real person. But maybe there was a narrative that started with something like the Transfiguration and went directly to Jerusalem and the Crucifixion, with no trial and no preaching.

I'm not sure about Saturnilians or Simon or Menander or whatever. I think trying to identify specific names with various developments may be a stretch too far, but I think Roger has some points.
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Jagd
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Jagd »

rgprice wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 2:58 pm But that does leave some uneasy questions about the Gospel of Mark. I'm not sure I'm quite as confident anymore that Mark was the first narrative about Jesus, but only that it is the most original narrative about Jesus that still exists, and it is likely the narrative that gave rise to the more widespread Jesus worship and belief that he was a real person. But maybe there was a narrative that started with something like the Transfiguration and went directly to Jerusalem and the Crucifixion, with no trial and no preaching.
I've spent a great amount of time trying to understand what the oldest parts of Mark are and the basics of what I've found are:
  • Christ (who may not have been called that in the earliest narratives) came to earth as a divine man (the details of how he is divine are, in my estimation, beautifully primitive in this early stage; he is a theios aner, simply a god-man)
  • He speaks parables/riddles of wisdom (which are both similar to the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas, with precedence in both the wisdom aphorisms of Heraclitus and the fables of Aesop)
  • He works wonders in the manner of ancient Greco-Egyptian magic and in the command of the elements seen in other theios aner (see: Empedocles & Apollonius of Tyana)
  • He is transfigured/glorified in a living apotheosis of divine light, departing from the world.
... and that's it. No discourses on the Law, no connections to the Old Testament (including the interpolations of Elijah, who is just inserted into the story and made parallel in order to link the wonderworking sage with a Judaic character) and scripture fulfillment are plain-as-day added later), no crucifixion, nothing even happening in Jerusalem (the setting appears to be in the regions north of Syria, and the "Sea of Galilee" could've been him crossing the Mediterannean and stopping by nameless villages and other places; in my estimation, almost everything in the details of the historical setting were added later), including anything with the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, Pilate, etc. No Judas. Peter may be there as a simple pun (the man being "the rock" as in he's dumb as a rock; all the disciples appear to be dumbstruck followers who don't really learn anything and are just there to ask questions). Probably no John the Baptist. No theology (god is simply the Father, as in the source, and, as Thomas suggests and John echoes, the Father and Child are one, meaning simply that they're both cut from the same divine cloth, they're both this magic Spirit); everything is elemental.

In terms of how the cross fits into this, I think that at some point the suffering aspect was put into the apotheosis, and any details (Was it celestial? On earth? Who did it?) were vague. In Manichaeism, for example, Christ's end is minimal: he suffers on a cross of light. The suffering event is one-to-one with the glorification, which is how it's presented in the Gospel of John. It could even be that this "hanged up" nature of his end didn't mean a crucifixion, but could be anything from the way Inanna suffered to simply being hanged from a tree. If Paul is anything to go by, it doesn't even look like he knows the details of the suffering event.
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