I have found that Marcion is way too late and has nothing really to contribute to our understanding of the origins and early development of Christianity. Despite fanciful conjectures, I have never seen any use for Marcionism in that respect. It was a late heresy that built on the historicizing gospel movement. It’s thus several steps removed from the original revelatory religion found in Paul. Little even can be argued from the few quotations we have of his “New Testament” as they are too few to build anything reliable on, and compromised by being related to us only by dishonest polemicists. There may have once been something useful there; but it’s lost now.
Generally, I have so far found that all theories about Marcion’s connection to our NT or earlier Christianity have to be built on towers of conjectures and suppositions and possibiliter fallacies. And that just gets us GIGO.
As for 1 Clement, I don’t see anything particularly anti-Marcionite in it, any more than what’s already in Paul. In its first thirty years Christianity already was “counter” Marcionite, because it embraced entirely contrary teachings (Jesus created the universe, not some evil demiurge; the Old Testament is still authoritative; Christians aim to become the adopted sons of Yahweh, not rebels seeking escape from his influence; etc.) so anything written then will sound “anti” Marcionite.
Moreover, by 140, the Bar Kochba revolt was through, and even anti-Marcionite Christianity had thoroughly chucked unqualified reverence for Judaism, adopting instead the “they got what they deserved” storyline explaining the destruction of the temple and the God-ordained obsolescence of their temple cult. So Clement would be far too peculiar in its appeal to that cult as a positive example. That’s not an anti-Marcionite position. It’s a pre-Marcionite position. It’s also self-defeating: if the author knew the temple cult was obliterated by God, he could not use the argument he gives without some apologetic rescuing it from so obvious a rebuttal.
Generally, I have so far found that all theories about Marcion’s connection to our NT or earlier Christianity have to be built on towers of conjectures and suppositions and possibiliter fallacies. And that just gets us GIGO.
As for 1 Clement, I don’t see anything particularly anti-Marcionite in it, any more than what’s already in Paul. In its first thirty years Christianity already was “counter” Marcionite, because it embraced entirely contrary teachings (Jesus created the universe, not some evil demiurge; the Old Testament is still authoritative; Christians aim to become the adopted sons of Yahweh, not rebels seeking escape from his influence; etc.) so anything written then will sound “anti” Marcionite.
Moreover, by 140, the Bar Kochba revolt was through, and even anti-Marcionite Christianity had thoroughly chucked unqualified reverence for Judaism, adopting instead the “they got what they deserved” storyline explaining the destruction of the temple and the God-ordained obsolescence of their temple cult. So Clement would be far too peculiar in its appeal to that cult as a positive example. That’s not an anti-Marcionite position. It’s a pre-Marcionite position. It’s also self-defeating: if the author knew the temple cult was obliterated by God, he could not use the argument he gives without some apologetic rescuing it from so obvious a rebuttal.
It is not the answer I expected, if not other because the Evangelion is a Synoptical gospel hence it deserves/invokes a serious comparison with Mark and Matthew, even more so if one concedes the Mcn's priority over canonical Luke.
The Carrier's discourse ("Marcionism is lost forever to us") would make a lot of sense if one invents a marcionism for himself, as Secret Alias on this forum, who denies irrationally that Mcn == proto-Luke.
