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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Jagd
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Jagd »

ABuddhist wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 5:48 pm [...] 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).
If those things were not there, what do you think was there?
Giuseppe
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Giuseppe »

My little contribute to any scenario that assumes Gnostics coming before any "Jewish"/Catholic thing is put in the following thread (it has to be read entirely to understand better my point):

viewtopic.php?p=113655#p113655

Essentially, the skeleton of any Passion narrative is to be found in something of very similar to that Gnostic story.

Obviously, the implications,if true, would be so surprising that even I would like to be more 'conservative' in such matters.
davidmartin
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by davidmartin »

Jagd wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:51 pm He is transfigured/glorified in a living apotheosis of divine light, departing from the world.[/list]
Jagd, yeah what you said indeed

I might add that early on this figure was considered salvific. The Odes demonstrate that
But his whole nature was basically salvific it wasn't the cross it was the words/deeds/life as a whole. The Pauline atonement theology was a later restating of this, which took a good long while to become 'orthodox'

This original post was about the Simonians. But we don't know who the heck they were
The best we can do is add them into the early mix somewhere without knowing a whole lot about them
They apparently didn't go along with the theology of orthodoxy and had mystical leanings, that doesn't help much. Beyond that, zip is all we know

So i don't know how much sense there is in talking about them as this separate thing, where it would make sense to talk about Marcion or Montanus (the also forgotten Christian movement that never gets talked about!!) because we have enough sources to go on with them
rgprice
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

@Jagd That is not what I would think the first layer of Mark would be.

I would think that if anything, the story would begin with the Transfiguration, which wouldn't look like the seen currently in Mark, but would be Christ's descent into the world, where he is transformed into a man. From there it would go directly to Jerusalem, and proceed to the Crucifixion.

But could this even be called a layer of "Mark"? Did it even look anything like Mark and share any common language at all?

What has to be dealt with in Mark is the fact that the scenes are all very heavily based on the Jewish scriptures. I cannot imagine that any of the scenes in Mark existed in a form that resembled their current form, and were not based on the Jewish scriptures. This is an excerpt from the book I'm currently working on:
The rest of the Gospel of Mark continues on in this same fashion. Scene after scene, passage after passage, is constructed from literary references like these. In Deciphering the Gospels, my focus was on literary references to the Jewish scriptures. I showed how scenes like the Calling of the Disciples, Jesus Walking on Water, the Miracles of Loaves and Fishes, the Cleansing of the Temple, and the Crucifixion were all constructed from literary refences to the Jewish scriptures. The relationship between the Crucifixion scene in the Gospel of Mark and Psalm 22 is well documented. This was one of the most pronounced and easily recognized literary relationships in the Gospel of Mark, and it is a relationship that was preserved across all of the Gospels. Less recognized, however, has been the relationship between the Temple Cleansing scene and Hosea 9. I addressed the literary basis for the Temple Cleansing scene in Deciphering the Gospels but would like to revisit it here in greater detail. This is because the Temple Cleansing scene is arguably the most important scene of the Gospel story other than the Crucifixion itself.

The scene opens with the cursing of the fig tree.
Mark 11:
12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it.
15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16 and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”
18 And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19 And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.
20 In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21 Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 22 Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. 23 Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. 24 So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
This scene utilizes a number of scriptural references, however the dominant hidden reference is to Hosea 9. The subject of Hosea 9 is God’s judgement of Israel. The passage accuses the Israelites of sinning against God, therefor God promises to punish and destroy them. The relevance of this theme to the First Jewish-Roman War are obvious.
Hosea 9:
10 ‘When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your fathers, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree. But when they came to Baal Peor, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved.
11 Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.
12 Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of everyone. Woe to them when I turn away from them!
13 I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place. But Ephraim will bring out their children to the slayer.”
14 Give them, O LORD—what will you give them? Give them wombs that miscarry and breasts that are dry.
15 “Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal, I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious.
16 Ephraim is blighted, their root is withered, they yield no fruit. Even if they bear children, I will slay their cherished offspring.’
17 My God will reject them because they have not obeyed him;
In addition to the hidden reference to Hosea 9, Jesus also quotes from Isaiah 56 and then paraphrases Jeremiah 7 in verse 17. Isaiah 56 says that God will extend his covenant to all who obey him, even foreigners from other nations. Isaiah 56 then goes on to accuse Israel’s rulers of corruption.
Isaiah 56:
6 And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant—
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

10 Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie around and dream, they love to sleep.
11 They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, they seek their own gain.
In Jeremiah 7, God proclaims his judgement against Israel. The people of Israel are accused of disobedience, for which the Lord pledges to destroy them. The Book of Jeremiah was written following the Babylonian invasion that devastated the Israelites living under Assyrian rule. Thus, the writings of Jeremiah are retrospective prophecies that narrate the outcome of the Babylonian invasion. In Jeremiah 7, the prophet Jeremiah enters the temple and accuses the priests of corruption and disobedience to God. The implications for the Gospel of Mark are obvious.
Jeremiah 7:
11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord. 12 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. 13 And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, just as I cast out all your kinsfolk, all the offspring of Ephraim.
So, we can clearly see the literary inspiration for this scene. Jesus’ actions at the Temple are foreshadowed in the opening lines of the Gospel of Mark with the scriptural reference to Malachi. But the foreshadowing is not obvious. The reader has to know the passage from Malachi or look it up in order to understand the foreshadowing. By foreshadowing the events of the Temple in the opening of the story, the writer is identifying Jesus’ coming to the Temple as central to the plot of the story. Within the scene itself, the writer uses at least three references to the Jewish scriptures, all of which refer to scriptures about God’s judgement upon the people of Israel. Clearly, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is a scene that was invented by the writer of the story in light of the First Jewish-Roman War and the destruction of the Temple. This scene is not a record of a real historical event in which some person named Jesus stormed into the Jerusalem Temple and re-enacted a scene from the Book of Jeremiah, which forecast the destruction of the First Temple.
So I would have a very hard time imagining a narrative in which Jesus cleansed the Temple, but it was not rooted in the Jewish scriptures. And virtually every scene in Mark is like this, so I have great difficulty imagining that any such narrative would have existed that wasn't derived from the scriptures. To imagine such a scenario, one would have to imagine that someone wrote a narrative that had the same basic outline as the Gospel of Mark but had nothing to do with the Jewish scriptures, and that somehow the writer of Mark was then able to go back and find passages in the Jewish scriptures that correlated to every scene in the original story, and restructure the original narrative in a way that identified parallels in the Jewish scriptures for all of the scenes. I think that is an entirely unrealistic expectation. The scenes in Mark have to reflect their original form, in which they were invented through a process of derivation from the Jewish scriptures.

I could see, that maybe there would have been a very small narrative that included the crucifixion and not much more, and that the crucifixion in the original was either almost the same as the current version in Mark, itself derived from Psalm 22, OR, that in the original the crucifixion was NOTHING like it is in Mark, and Mark is an entire re-imagining of the crucifixion, using the style and techniques of the writer who created the rest of the Markan narrative.

I can also accept, and in fact think that its likely, that canonical Mark has been significantly revised, with some scenes having been removed and some perhaps reordered and some shortened. I also think that a few things were added, especially names. I think its possible that the original "Mark" contained very few names in it, perhaps only, Peter, James and John. But here what I'm discussing is the possibility of a "pre-Markan" narrative, and then a proto-Markan narrative, or urMark, which was then revised into canonical Mark when it was included in the first NT collection, along with Matthew, Luke and John.

But I wouldn't see wonder-working or parables in the pre-Markan narrative. If there was a pre-Markan narrative, then it would have been very short, and closer, as Roger indicates, to Vision of Isaiah.

And as for the parables, I again have to see those as having been written by the same person who constructed most of the other scenes, because the parables are also themselves scriptural references. Again, from the book I'm working on:
The Book of Ezekiel, for example, makes use of parables. Indeed, a passage from Ezekiel is likely to have inspired the use of parables by the writer of the Gospel of Mark. The parable from Ezekiel opens as follows:
Ezekiel 17:
1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set forth an allegory and tell it to the Israelites as a parable. 3 Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: A great eagle with powerful wings, long feathers and full plumage of varied colors came to Lebanon. Taking hold of the top of a cedar, 4 he broke off its topmost shoot and carried it away to a land of merchants, where he planted it in a city of traders.
5 He took one of the seedlings of the land and put it in fertile soil. He planted it like a willow by abundant water, 6 and it sprouted and became a low, spreading vine. Its branches turned toward him, but its roots remained under it. So it became a vine and produced branches and put out leafy boughs.
The parable goes on from there and at the end of the parable Ezekiel is instructed to question his audience to see if they understand the parable.
Ezekiel 17:
11 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 12 “Say to this rebellious people, ‘Do you not know what these things mean?’ Say to them: ‘The king of Babylon went to Jerusalem and carried off her king and her nobles, bringing them back with him to Babylon. 13 Then he took a member of the royal family and made a treaty with him, putting him under oath. He also carried away the leading men of the land, 14 so that the kingdom would be brought low, unable to rise again, surviving only by keeping his treaty. 15 But the king rebelled against him by sending his envoys to Egypt to get horses and a large army. Will he succeed? Will he who does such things escape? Will he break the treaty and yet escape?
Both the Parable of the Bountiful Tree and the parables in the Gospel of Mark appear to follow the format set out in Ezekiel. In the Gospel of Mark, the first parable presented is the Parable of the Sower.
Mark 4:
2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
After delivering the parable Jesus tells his disciples that only they are to be told the secrets of the kingdom, but that everything is to be told to outsiders in parables. He then addresses the disciples’ understanding of the parable:
Mark 4:
13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?
After chastising the disciples, Jesus then goes on to explain the parable to them in much the same way as is done in Ezekiel 17. While it seems likely that the author of Mark was using Ezekiel as his inspiration, the use of this literary device was clearly not unique to the Gospels in this period. Indeed, we find other indications of the use of parables in texts from Qumran as well. The Book of Secrets (1Q27, 4Q299-301) also discuses the use of parables and riddles. Interestingly, however, in the Book of Secrets the teacher announces that he will reveal his teachings plainly to everyone, including Gentiles. The Book of Secrets rails against those who teach in parables.
And again, this is where I differ from Roger on some of these details. He was trying to tie the Parable of the Sower to Paul's use of phrases about seeds and sowing, etc., but I don't actually find much of that in Paul, and I think there are other better parallels directly in the OT.

And I don't find canonical Mark even to be significantly proto-orthodox. It does not appear to be reactionary against Marcion in the way that Matthew and Luke are. It also doesn't appear to have Gnostic roots the way that John does. So I see Mark as existing outside of the Gnostic/anti-Gnostic debate of the later works. The Jesus of Mark is definitely based on Paul and Mark takes many positions that are "anti-proto-orthodox", so I don't see it, overall, as something that would have been written in order to make a gnostic type work "more orthodox" in nature. It is pro-Paul, anti-Peter, denies that Jesus is a descendant of David, adoptionist, etc. I think it does have some later orthodox revisions, but they are fairly minor, mostly coming after 15:40. It may also have had some scenes cut and a few scenes may have been reworked, but most scenes must have been left in their original form because the scriptural references and chiastic structures are preserved. The scenes that have been altered have mutilated scriptural references and lack chiastic structure.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

RParvus wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:11 pm. . . . . 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. . . . .

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. . . . .
So instead of simplifying things for me you add further complications! ;)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

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?
I am reminded of Ken Olson's thread on Secret Mark: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7008
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by neilgodfrey »

rgprice wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 2:58 pm @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. . . . .
The fundamental question I have is: Why would Marcion have had any interest in Paul's letters in the first place? If Paul's letters were not grounded in Jewish religion in any way at all then on what grounds would not Paul's religious teaching have been viewed as a standalone novel idea, and if so, why would anyone have taken it seriously?
rgprice
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:44 am The fundamental question I have is: Why would Marcion have had any interest in Paul's letters in the first place? If Paul's letters were not grounded in Jewish religion in any way at all then on what grounds would not Paul's religious teaching have been viewed as a standalone novel idea, and if so, why would anyone have taken it seriously?
Right. Obviously this is a very difficult question. Here are my assumptions/views about Marcion and how he fits into the overall landscape:

1) Marcion comes into the picture in the early 2nd century.
2) Jewish "Gnosticism" developed throughout the first century, particularly after the First Jewish-Roman War.
3) Marcionism is a simplifying derivative of "Jewish Gnosticism".
4) Marcion was one of several non-Jewish adopters of the Jewish-gnostic "demiurgical myth", including Valentinian, etc.
5) The crossover from "Jewish Gnosticism" to "Gentile Gnosticism" likely happened among God-fearers who were involved with the Jewish religious community.

The big question, which I what you are getting at:

Was "Paul" a real person who was responsible for the dissemination of Jewish Gnosticism" to non-Jews? Was what Paul was preaching, actually Jewish Gnosticism?

And I think for this question we have to define what I mean by "Jewish Gnosticism". I use "Jewish Gnosticism" to denote a teaching that the God of Moses was not the Highest God. This would typically mean adoption of the demiurgical myth, which holds that the Creator is not the Highest God.

If Paul was preaching that the Creator was not the Father, then we have a pretty clear answer as to why Marcion was interested in Paul. I don't think that such an indication still exists in the Catholic form of the letters. If it ever existed, it doesn't any more. Justin does not clearly tell us anything about Paul. We cannot, I argue, suppose that Justin knew Paul's letters. Maybe he did, or maybe Justin's arguments were written into Paul's letters by the proto-orthodox editor.

So, if Justin didn't know the Catholic form of Paul's letters, then we know why Justin did not address the original content of Paul's letters in their Marcionite form. He would have had no reason to address Marcion's scriptures. But, we also know that most of the commentary we have on Paul's letters come from people reading their Catholic form, so they wouldn't even have been aware of what the original form might have said. However, Tertullian, et al., also don't indicate that Marcion's version of the letters clearly said that the Father was not the Creator. Instead, what the critics who addressed Marcion's letters seem to indicate are differences that provide a more ambiguous interpretation, that could be fit into a Gnostic framework.

Is there a way to legitimately get a a version of the Pauline letters that is unambiguously supports the demiurgical myth? Can we read the Vision of Isaiah in a way that embraces the demiurgical myth?

If not, then we have to ask, could a version of the Pauline letters and the Vision of Isaiah that did not fully embrace the demiurgical myth still have been adopted by Gnostics who did embrace the demiurgical myth? And, is there any logic that makes sense behind a view that is anti-Moses, but not anti-Creator? Does being anti-Moses and anti-Creator go hand in hand? Does one necessarily follow the other? I think a case for Paul being anti-Moses is pretty easy. The same goes for Vision of Isaiah.

But if you think that Moses wrote the Torah, then can you also worship the Creator? Does Paul ever quote the Torah? It seems like Paul uses Isaiah and the Psalms almost exclusively? Do Paul and the writer of VoI see Isaiah as a legitimate prophet, but not Moses? They would think that Isaiah came after Moses (though in fact Isaiah is older than the Torah).

The interesting thing is that, in fact, the Psalms and Isaiah are among the oldest writings of the scriptures. They pre-date the Torah. But, the way things are presented, it was claimed that the Torah pre-dated the Psalms and the Prophets. I go back to Margaret Barker. There is something going on here, where either there is recognition that this was not true, or there was at least some hold over of non-Deuteronomistic Hebrews who held on to pre-Torah traditions that contradicted the Deuteronomistic version of things, and while no one fully understood what was going on or how all the pieces fit together, the pre-Deuteronomistic Hebrew traditions clashed with the Torah in such a way that led to this Moses rejection and adopted elements of modified pre-Deuteronomistic Hebrew myths/traditions that seemed, in some ways, to be more compatible with Neo-Platonism. In other words, pre-Deuteronomistic Hebrew traditions were polytheistic, and contained a myth about the Highest God El, who was not the Creator. Instead, other Gods created the world. This fit with the Neo-Platonic demiurge better than the narrative of Genesis did. In fact, Isaiah could be read that Yahweh (the Lord) was the Creator, and the Highest God (El) was above.

So, if, as Barker suggests, remnants of the polytheistic Hebrew traditions survived from the time of the Deuteronomistic reforms (which I put at the 3rd century BCE, although I think that there was a move to exclusive worship of Yahweh going back to the time of the Persian invasion, but not before). And the remnants of these traditions came to be seen as more sensible than the Deuteronomistic reforms, and as being more compatible with Hellenism, then I can see people of Jewish background relying on the material that seemed to better fit the pre-Deuteronomistic view. That material happens to be the Prophets and the Psalms. Which, again, unbeknownst to first century Jews, was actually older than the Torah.

Thus the fallback to Isaiah as opposed to Moses. Now, of course, a problem here is that Isaiah still contains the claim that Yahweh is the one and only, and that Yahweh is the Creator of the world. But Isaiah does not contain the Law. So how do you get to a view that is anti-Moses but still worships the Creator? You can get there from Isaiah. (This is also why I now question the supposed argument about Abraham as being authentically from Paul. It stands out as a fairly unique reliance on the Torah within the Pauline letters.)

So the question is, do Paul and VoI espouse a view that is anti-Moses, but still worship the Creator? Or do Paul and VoI also reject the Creator?

I think that Marcion and other Gnostic types could still be drawn to Paul, even if he doesn't reject the Creator if he at least rejected Moses. Because if you are so inclined you can equate rejection of Moses to rejection of the Creator. So I think that we don't necessarily need to arrive at a Paul who rejected the Creator in order to see why Marcion and other Gnostic types would adopt Paul. If we accept that Paul rejected Moses, then I think that would have been enough to make his teachings appealing and adaptable to a "Jewish Gnosticism" which more thoroughly rejected the Creator as well.

I could see perhaps Paul and VoI as being stepping stones on the way to "full blown" "Jewish Gnosticism". But I'm not confident in that. I think it is possible also that Paul and VoI also reject the Creator. So I would say this:

I'm confident that Paul and VoI do reject Moses. "Jewish Gnosticism" rejects Moses. "Jewish Gnosticism" embraces the demiurgical myth, which holds that the Highest God is not the Creator. Paul and the writer of VoI might have also held this view, but it isn't clear whether they did or not. Regardless, the rejection of Moses by Paul and the writer of VoI was enough to make their ideas appealing to people who did adopt the demiurgical myth, which includes Marcion, Valentinian, and whatever other "Gnostic" types there were.
Giuseppe
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by Giuseppe »

rgprice wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:01 am If Paul was preaching that the Creator was not the Father, then we have a pretty clear answer as to why Marcion was interested in Paul. I don't think that such an indication still exists in the Catholic form of the letters. If it ever existed, it doesn't any more.
a curiosity: are you arrived to such conclusions independently from the reading of this book?

The author thinks that he has detected passages, for example in Galatians, where Paul means a supreme god who is totally alien to Jews (=not expected therefore to be YHWH).
rgprice
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Re: The forgotten third Christian movement

Post by rgprice »

Giuseppe wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:45 am The author thinks that he has detected passages, for example in Galatians, where Paul means a supreme god who is totally alien to Jews (=not expected therefore to be YHWH).
Interesting. Any citations?
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