@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.