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.