The Diatessaron Knows the Marcionite Gospel?

[davidmartin]

Oh yes, there's nothing divine about the IS of Thomas, he's not even there: he's a mere concept

that's why we're seeing it different, i just assume a historical IS/Jesus guy existed in some place and he says stuff i don't get why he has to be nothing to do with Judaic spirituality except its nice to have a clean sheet to not get influenced. but if he's floating around in the region its where he comes from. all the mythology is in what was said about him

[mlinssen]

Oh yes, there's nothing divine about the IS of Thomas, he's not even there: he's a mere concept

that's why we're seeing it different, i just assume a historical IS/Jesus guy existed in some place and he says stuff i don't get why he has to be nothing to do with Judaic spirituality except its nice to have a clean sheet to not get influenced. but if he's floating around in the region its where he comes from. all the mythology is in what was said about him

Well fine then, be my guest and point me to the Judaic spirituality in Thomas. I've already lined up a few that stand in stark contrast with that: viewtopic.php?p=153489#p153489

I'm totally serious david, I've read the rubbish on Thomas by Quispel and he didn't get burned at a stake (though he should have been for his false and fake Commentary that is not about anything in Thomas), so just shout out

I've tried to dirty my sheets, trust me. I've gone by all the copies of Thomas, desperately trying to view them through the NT lens - yet not even the NT takes his words and applies those to their fake pseudo-Judaism. In every single text that we have, IS is vehemently against Judaism: either he craps on it (Thomas) or he elevates himself above it (NT)

[davidmartin]

ok i'll admit the sayings of Thomas are otherworldly theres nothing 'Judaic' about them apparently although the 'anti-Judaic' stuff could be interpreted as being anti-religion in general, not Judaism specifically, are they 'universal'???
but... when they're actually connected to the known traditions, the gospels, the odes, even Paul i guess and heck, even the gnostics, they show up connected to Judaic spirituality somehow. why? its hard to ignore that for me i just default to tradition because i don't know

the only tiny clue i see is the difference between greek and jewish philosophy. the greek is sativa, all cerebral and in the mind. the jewish is indica, earthy and body centred. maybe the jewish philosophy was just plain better and Thomas could never have incubated in the greek intellectual world. i mean Thomas is parables about tilling earth, soil, fishing, agriculture its not trying to fit in with plato and look cultured. i got my Philo book come gonna take a few weeks to read that mighty tome maybe that will turn up some clues.

it strikes me if the differences are just too great for a Judaic connection the same thing is true for a Christian one, then it's not Christian either and nothing to do with Christianity.. as Ben said on this forum the gospels are practically a side show to the epistles just to serve some meagre purpose there's plenty of Christians like that today, the last thing they study is the parables their freaking bible falls open on Romans and they lap it up

[Peter Kirby]

Where it is stronger we get to the beginning of Christianity.

You just made up a rule that allows you to find "Marcionism" anywhere.

To be fair, I don’t think Secret Alias just made it up. A lot of people on the forum seem to be using it.

To be fair we're mostly amateurs and didn't have the reigning paradigm drilled into our heads to the point it becomes axiomatic.

And to be fair, I don't think Ken deserves to be hit with a 'reigning paradigm' stick. He's good people.

[Secret Alias]

Since I started this thread. Here's what I was thinking about yesterday. Is Christianity necessarily Marcionite? What I mean is the Pentateuch tells the story of God giving the ten commandments to Moses. That's what it's all about. The rest of Genesis is all a preface to this singular amazing event in the history of humanity or the Jews. These ten commandments took centerstage in the ancient Jewish (Samaritan) house(s) of worship.

And then along came the other laws that Moses gave to humanity.

I think it is impossible to avoid thinking that Marcion was "anti-nomian" in the sense that he was opposed to these other laws which weren't divine but had a human origin (Moses). As long as we define Marcion as "against THE Jewish Law" (like there is just one) it's easy to ignore what he has to say and see it as something other than ESSENTIALLY Christian or essential to the religion of Christianity. When you see Jesus confirming the ten commandments and its "you shall not lust" it's hard to see Marcion as an outsider.

[mlinssen]

ok i'll admit the sayings of Thomas are otherworldly theres nothing 'Judaic' about them apparently although the 'anti-Judaic' stuff could be interpreted as being anti-religion in general, not Judaism specifically, are they 'universal'???

Praying, fasting, giving alms, observing food perscriptions, keeping Sabbath, Messengers and Prophets, grapevind, Judeans, Adam, Israel, circumcision: that's what viewtopic.php?p=153489#p153489 gives me.
I'm afraid you can't wiggle your ass out of this one david - Thomas is plain anti-Judaic (and even a bit anti-Judean)

but... when they're actually connected to the known traditions, the gospels, the odes, even Paul i guess and heck, even the gnostics, they show up connected to Judaic spirituality somehow. why? its hard to ignore that for me i just default to tradition because i don't know

the only tiny clue i see is the difference between greek and jewish philosophy. the greek is sativa, all cerebral and in the mind. the jewish is indica, earthy and body centred. maybe the jewish philosophy was just plain better and Thomas could never have incubated in the greek intellectual world. i mean Thomas is parables about tilling earth, soil, fishing, agriculture its not trying to fit in with plato and look cultured. i got my Philo book come gonna take a few weeks to read that mighty tome maybe that will turn up some clues.

it strikes me if the differences are just too great for a Judaic connection the same thing is true for a Christian one, then it's not Christian either and nothing to do with Christianity.. as Ben said on this forum the gospels are practically a side show to the epistles just to serve some meagre purpose there's plenty of Christians like that today, the last thing they study is the parables their freaking bible falls open on Romans and they lap it up

Let me try to give you the superconcise reading of Thomas then

We are all dualised because we split when we i-dentified and no one stopped us from growing up (4) and as a result there is endless Seeking after a cause for that (2), we created the two, Ego and Self (11) instead - and as such we, and those, are the children of the living father (3) because that is who and were we come from: we are the living father, we come from the light - all of us.
The Seeking happens outside, all of which is bad (40, 64, 99). We think there is a Holy Grail, a proverbial Great Catch, but it is an illusion alone (8) because the Great Good fish is no longer good when we have emptied our net - and see that it is completely empty indeed.
What we must do instead is reach down into ourselves, where the kingdom resides (9); we must "come", ejaculate, fill our hands with our semen, our deepest thoughts and ideas, and cast those far from us. Where those catch on they have located and landed on "fertile soil", and it is that soil that we then need to cultivate, work, invest in so that we can grow our finds so that they bear the fruit that we need (20)

We must make the two one again, but can only do that via dissolving the Ego and Self so that the living father, who's gone into hiding (5, 6) can be restored. And naturally no amount of religion or philosophy can achieve any of that: we must look inside alone for all answers

Jung would have loved Thomas

From my bio on academia.edu:

Regarding the order and direction of texts:

Thomas writes his text about self salvation: the kingdom is of your inside and of your eye - make the two one!
It's not about any Jesus we know, not about Christianity, not even about Chrestianity: Thomas precedes all that

John takes that into a narrative, fully breathing the spirituality of Thomas: John has almost double the occurrences of "Father" when compared to the Synoptics combined (Matthew 45, Mark 6, Luke 23, John 123);

Marcion takes John and adds some 50+ logia from Thomas, and some really fierce anti-Judaism, among others the Transfiguration (cf. Christi Thora) and the patch (which he changes from old to new, explicitly separating his new religion from Judaism)

Mark counters Marcion by inverting the anti-Judaism into pro-Judaism by fusing Jesus with the Tanakh. Mark catches two birds with one stone: he redirects the anti-Judaism to the Pharisees and also invents the resurrection, blaming the women (from the Chrestian tradition) for the fact that no one had ever heard of that (he ends at 16:8). Mark turns the anti-Judaic Jesus into a true Messiah as much as he can, and is the first "Christian" gospel

Chrestianity still persists and after Mark an even bolder move is made: Marcion's *Ev gets redacted into Luke - by Matthew, who is writing his own gospel on the side. And the Thomas material in Mark gets doubled that way: 35 logia become 70, 6 parables become 13 - and the one parable that Mark made up himself acquires 14 siblings, all of which stand in stark contrast with the typical Thomasine parables

After that, the Septuagint gets composed: deliberate mistranslations of the Tanakh in order to substantiate the bogus prophecies and fake claims that the NT created in order to fuse Chrestianity with Judaism and vice versa. There are only scraps of Greek Tanakh prior to 4th/5th CE, and none of those contain the typical scribal signs that run like a red thread through the NHL and any and all Greek Christian MS: ï, ü, apostrophe and superlinear replacing line-ending Nu - all of which are present in Thomas as well

There's no historicity of anyone, the characters all are figments of the imagination, invented by Thomas and everyone who came after him: one will look in vain for XS or XRS in Thomas; there is no Chrest or Christ in his text, only an IS and IHS. Yet all the names in his text are in the NT

[davidmartin]

which is where it get's interesting! the teachings of Thomas have to be unravelled to know where to place it
let's say i admit your right and there's nothing 'Judaic' about these teachings, that would mean the author is just aware of 'universal truths' existing, it's no surprise it doesn't look Judaic if the concept of universal truth's is out there. i think that's self evident because Thomas has made it's way into Buddhist hands I see online, they think it looks Buddhist. They freaking like it as it is without mods. Generally non-Christians seem able to identify with Thomas quite easily so that says something about it. It gets positive reviews (except from Christians obviously)

what i'm less sure of is the 'anti-Judaic' reading. to what extent are the contrary anti-Judaic elements meant to throw the mind of the hearer into turmoil and to what extent are they literal statements of opposition? isn't Thomas trying to bring about a state of mind by saying unexpected stuff and get the hearers attention?

That would only work in an environment where the Judaic religion was the norm, it places the sayings in a Judaic context in order to make the point
It's like Thomas is saying, what's the point of keeping Sabbath, what's the point of circumcision, why do you do this stuff, what for? is it helping?
Thomas basically is saying what everyone who is not religious thinks about religion and calling for a reset, it just so happens there is a Judaic context to Thomas but it could have been priests of Jupiter and bullshit Roman emperors instead who were the antagonists. I suspect a pagan Greek reading Thomas would have seen the 'pharisees' as their own priests and the mystery schools hiding the truth away under lock and key. The 'Judaic' context is incidental but i do think it's there still, so in categorising Thomas it ends up (in the remotest way possible maybe) part of Judaic spirituality, they freaking own this one but it's hard/impossible to suggest this given the billion tons of rock dumped over the top, the whole weight of Christianity's relationship with Judaism of 2 millenia and the modern religions still duking it out to this day. There's no way to undo that. No way for it not to be used as part of an agenda or be immediately taken the wrong way. So I think Thomas is buried treasure despite being found it's still just as buried as when it was in that jar in Egypt!
what I like about your thesis is it is pure Thomas not trying to connect it to anything else, it's the safest option cause i think its impossible to connect it to anything else even if there is a connection, making that connection breaks what Thomas is about? i'm just dumb because i insist on trying to make impossible connections that are highly likely to be wrong!

[mlinssen]

which is where it get's interesting! the teachings of Thomas have to be unravelled to know where to place it
let's say i admit your right and there's nothing 'Judaic' about these teachings, that would mean the author is just aware of 'universal truths' existing, it's no surprise it doesn't look Judaic if the concept of universal truth's is out there. i think that's self evident because Thomas has made it's way into Buddhist hands I see online, they think it looks Buddhist. They freaking like it as it is without mods. Generally non-Christians seem able to identify with Thomas quite easily so that says something about it. It gets positive reviews (except from Christians obviously)

Indeed, there are tons of Buddhist takes on it, Zen ones even, and they easily recognise and handle the non duality, although they naturally do misunderstand the rejection of reincarnation. But yeah, none of them whines about how Judaic it all is - because it isn't, absolutely all of it is anti-Judaic alone at best

what i'm less sure of is the 'anti-Judaic' reading. to what extent are the contrary anti-Judaic elements meant to throw the mind of the hearer into turmoil and to what extent are they literal statements of opposition? isn't Thomas trying to bring about a state of mind by saying unexpected stuff and get the hearers attention?

LOL. If you raise questions of this kind, it is you who should be answering them. Don't be an April david, you're much better than that.
You know I wish you all the alleged and suspected Judaic tidbits to Christian origins that you desire, but the text of Thomas is clear, so are the dumb questions by the disciples, and so are the harsh and ruthless responses by IS

Perhaps your heart and mind are sold to Thomasine priority in at least some way - which implies that you'll have to make a decision. Either dump Thomas and continue on your Judaic path - which I am absolutely positive will lead to results, honestly - or dump the Jewishness and read my Commentary, which however will lead you to non historicity of all of it, and leave you devoid of Christianity. But at least you'll be on the path to enlightenment then, and I once thought that was a kewl thing to aspire, so who knows

That would only work in an environment where the Judaic religion was the norm, it places the sayings in a Judaic context in order to make the point

Absolutely, Thomas has a thing with Judaism. I'm guessing he was Samarian (ethnic) and not Samaritan, given logion 60 and what John has on the woman at the well, among others

It's like Thomas is saying, what's the point of keeping Sabbath, what's the point of circumcision, why do you do this stuff, what for? is it helping?

Yep. He starts out relatively nice but he gets louder and louder

Thomas basically is saying what everyone who is not religious thinks about religion and calling for a reset, it just so happens there is a Judaic context to Thomas but it could have been priests of Jupiter and bullshit Roman emperors instead who were the antagonists.

Absolutely. In fact, I think his Pharisees and scribes point to pharaoh-management and scribes - but let's not go there because that, now really, is extremely wild

I suspect a pagan Greek reading Thomas would have seen the 'pharisees' as their own priests and the mystery schools hiding the truth away under lock and key.

Yup. You will not be able to read religion of any kind into the two verses of Thomas where Pharisees act

The 'Judaic' context is incidental but i do think it's there still, so in categorising Thomas it ends up (in the remotest way possible maybe) part of Judaic spirituality, they freaking own this one but it's hard/impossible to suggest this given the billion tons of rock dumped over the top, the whole weight of Christianity's relationship with Judaism of 2 millenia and the modern religions still duking it out to this day. There's no way to undo that.

You'd have to start with pointing out at least one Judaic spiritual thing in Thomas before you can claim that it got foobarred...

No way for it not to be used as part of an agenda or be immediately taken the wrong way. So I think Thomas is buried treasure despite being found it's still just as buried as when it was in that jar in Egypt!

Thomas is the key to all of Christian origins precisely because it has nothing to do with any of it. It is psychology 101, self help 101, anti establishment 101, anti religion and anti-Judaic as a direct result of that last one.
Were he to write today he'd ruthlessly ridicule Christianity instead

what I like about your thesis is it is pure Thomas not trying to connect it to anything else, it's the safest option cause i think its impossible to connect it to anything else even if there is a connection, making that connection breaks what Thomas is about? i'm just dumb because i insist on trying to make impossible connections that are highly likely to be wrong!

I have no agenda, I really don't. Or at least, I didn't

I started all this in 2009 when I read Thomas for the first time and got immediately hooked - despite the fact that it obviously was about and by Jesus.
When they started showing parallels, it quickly became apparent that those all get applied in the NT, they all receive a purpose - none of which is present in Thomas. Evidently, those all boiled down to the same dumb, mundane, moral message - which posed the question why one would make up all these different stories and scenarios if they all lead to the exact same thing

Then my parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I lost a decade, and picked up where I left in 2019. I joined academia.edu for its vast amounts of material, and started writing some of my own.
And the rest is history

I don't do anything safe, I would wager. I am one of the most reckless, lawless and fearless idiots to do research in this swamp, and I just follow the texts and what's in them - and I certainly ignore any and all opinions because those are worthless on their own.
With my last distraction published yesterday I'm going back to the Commentary, which will be published in 2024/5

And after that, there is only one final work left to accomplish: Part III of the trilogy - which will make abundantly clear why I don't bother with peer reviewed academic publishing

[Stuart]

You should read up more on the Synoptic theory. There are literally dozens of proposed models, although only three or four get any airplay. Over the last two hundred fifty years a number of people who have proposed various prototypes. Even your theory (basically a logia model) falls into a category of prototype known as saying sources or logia. Here's a page showing some of the models out there (not all)

I certainly wasn't talking about the SP in general Stuart - but thank you for educating me on the subject

Yet you still haven't told me about yours, and the picture is useless as arrows point everywhere and it is impossible to tell what started where: if a picture isn't self explanatory then it represents a convoluted idea

Bilby appears to have a similar idea, by the way

I was answering your statement that you had not heard of proto-gospel theories. That was what the information I provided you was about, that there are many theories in the field about gospel composition that postulate sources including proto-gospel to mechanically explain the compositions.

Where things get murky is what I call the "pre-historic" era of Christianity, before the scripture is written and before we have any historical information (or what we have is entirely suspect, and likely interpolations such as Josephus and Pliny). Of course, underlying documents where we have not found an original are proposed, not certain. All theories make assumptions, the better advocates spell them out clearly, the lesser often allude to such, and the worst have little consideration.

My views, which are tangential to your question and my reply, lean toward an organic development, with a long incubation period. The lost prototype document, which in evolutionary terms is the equivalent of the "half a wing" problem (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/art ... 437/234719), had a different purpose than evangelism and developed for another purpose. I have no prejudice as to what that purpose was, although my suspicion is it was a play, perhaps performed during a ritual initiation for a group of novices or new members to the communities where the proto-gospel document(s) circulated. This document corresponds to the "M" and "L" variant lines that of the prototype gospel of the diagram. The differences between L1 and L2 or M1 and M2 merely represent local differences, much like between say the Gospel of Matthew found in the Greek Uncial B and that found in W. The reason I showed such distinctions is to emphasize that each author used a local copy they had at hand, and it likely had differences dues to the textual lineages. There may well have been other variant forms of the proto-Gospel in circulation, but only two variants forms are necessary to mechanically explain the gospel contents in my model.

Again, my model is not directly relevant, except to point out one example of a prototype gospel theory. And again my purpose was to show you that many different prototype gospel theories exist and have existed for a few centuries to explain mechanically how (not why) the gospels were written with so much content overlap.

[mlinssen]

You should read up more on the Synoptic theory. There are literally dozens of proposed models, although only three or four get any airplay. Over the last two hundred fifty years a number of people who have proposed various prototypes. Even your theory (basically a logia model) falls into a category of prototype known as saying sources or logia. Here's a page showing some of the models out there (not all)

I certainly wasn't talking about the SP in general Stuart - but thank you for educating me on the subject

Yet you still haven't told me about yours, and the picture is useless as arrows point everywhere and it is impossible to tell what started where: if a picture isn't self explanatory then it represents a convoluted idea

Bilby appears to have a similar idea, by the way

I was answering your statement that you had not heard of proto-gospel theories. That was what the information I provided you was about, that there are many theories in the field about gospel composition that postulate sources including proto-gospel to mechanically explain the compositions.

Where things get murky is what I call the "pre-historic" era of Christianity, before the scripture is written and before we have any historical information (or what we have is entirely suspect, and likely interpolations such as Josephus and Pliny). Of course, underlying documents where we have not found an original are proposed, not certain. All theories make assumptions, the better advocates spell them out clearly, the lesser often allude to such, and the worst have little consideration.

My views, which are tangential to your question and my reply, lean toward an organic development, with a long incubation period. The lost prototype document, which in evolutionary terms is the equivalent of the "half a wing" problem (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/art ... 437/234719), had a different purpose than evangelism and developed for another purpose. I have no prejudice as to what that purpose was, although my suspicion is it was a play, perhaps performed during a ritual initiation for a group of novices or new members to the communities where the proto-gospel document(s) circulated. This document corresponds to the "M" and "L" variant lines that of the prototype gospel of the diagram. The differences between L1 and L2 or M1 and M2 merely represent local differences, much like between say the Gospel of Matthew found in the Greek Uncial B and that found in W. The reason I showed such distinctions is to emphasize that each author used a local copy they had at hand, and it likely had differences dues to the textual lineages. There may well have been other variant forms of the proto-Gospel in circulation, but only two variants forms are necessary to mechanically explain the gospel contents in my model.

Again, my model is not directly relevant, except to point out one example of a prototype gospel theory. And again my purpose was to show you that many different prototype gospel theories exist and have existed for a few centuries to explain mechanically how (not why) the gospels were written with so much content overlap.

I think you completely missed what I wrote

I've never heard of your prototype theory, nor does it become clear what you think that it was and how it came into existence.
You shouldn't conflate the texts that we have with the hearsay from Josephus, nor the dogmatic dating to Christian origins

Trust me, I'm familiar with theories about Christian origins.
None of the theories are any convincing and they all have a main flaw, next to which they allege proto documents for which we don't have evidence.
I limit mine to only John as proto document, everything else is in our possession: Thomas, *Ev, and everything from the Christian camp. I've never heard anyone point to a flaw in my theory, come to think of it