Ken Olson wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 7:44 am
perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 04, 2021 6:41 am
Ken Olson wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:15 pm
Thomas R wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:12 pm
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:10 pm
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.
perseusmega9,
Are you saying that you accept:
(1) Secret Alias' axiom that 'where it [blaming the Jews] is stronger, we get to the beginning of Christianity'
and
(2) by implication, Marcion's Gospel is the earliest Gospel, Marcion's Apostolikon is the earliest from of the Pauline letters, and that blame of the Jews originated in Marcion's documents and progressively lessened over time?
No.
How would you demonstrate that? At present I think Matthew used Mark and Luke used Mark and Matthew, but that, at least in places, Matthew increased blame of the Jews over Mark ('his blood be on on us and on our children' in Matt 27.25 and the guards report in 28.11-15), while Luke lessened the blame of the Jews from what it had been in Matthew ("father forgive them, they know not what they are doing', Luke 23.34, if you accept authenticity, which I do, and Acts 3.17, 'I know you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers"). It does not seem to me that things are so simple or uni-directional.
I agree completely about simplicity and directionality. I disagree with conventional dating* schemes of the NT Texts, the comfort with certain authentic* books, and the dating of the Apostolic Fathers. We will never find a big bang moment of Christianity, but putting it at 29-33CE (one standard deviation?) and driving forward just reinforces the creedal nature of the religion. I don't think it's that simple.
*we all know what these means with the usual scholarly hem-hawing footnotes
I had a similar issue with Giuseppe on supercessionism. How can you distinguish (and date) the peculiarly Marcionite form of supercessionism as opposed the more general Christian form of supercessionism?
viewtopic.php?p=122277#p122277
I skim Giuseppe and find the occasional pearl but...I retyped this several times and then remembered my suggestion that he should just have an omnibus thread/island where he could play as much as he wanted and that's where everyone would go to talk to him. To your link, the question and state of the problem are laid out concisely and you ask Giuseppe (or anyone) for a replacement. Fair question. But it's still a question bolstering the paradigm. My question to you as a scholar would be to ask when you think the foundations have been eroded enough to reformulate your inquiry voice and your dissent voice?
It's fine, even laudable, to challenge reigning axioms (I've challenged a couple myself). It's quite another to set up a new one in its place. That requires demonstration.
Not much to disagree with here and you do have an idea of what responses are out there when one even mildly challenges the nice comfortable thought world where the scholarly consensus is constructed around the thoughtful interpretation of the (canonically biased) NT history, especially in response to conservative fundamental 'scholarly' treatments of the topic.
At present, I'm not convinced that theory of Marcionite priority (to Luke or to all the canonicals, and with Paul) is any better grounded in reason than the paradigm it seeks to replace.
So they're equally grounded, since Markionite priority is not 'better grounded'? This is a great example of what I come across in reading the scholarly literature about this topic in particular (Christian Origins). Everyone is just reading the same texts over and over until a new artifact appears. Then it goes through the churn of assumptions and gets placed into the paradigm that defined it.
Your field's scholarship is weird, and obviously biased. One of my favorite books on my shelf is Arlo Nau's
Peter in Matthew. His last chapter is an essay for the use/implications of his 'radical' thesis and how it can be incorporated into Christian belief or something like that. I don't know. It is superfluous and unnecessary with respect to his historical analysis and thesis, but the fact he felt the need to incorporate it into his book is troubling and shines a spotlight on the problems in the field. I wonder if he held back in his analysis. This is just one example of many I come across, but I think it's illustrative.
Ken, I'm just an amateur, but I know I can read. I apologize for not providing a vibrant and competing hypothesis, but I don't think one is possible with the current entrenchment of the field in its ideas.
Best,
Ken
Thank you and I do appreciate your contributions.