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Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:17 am
by Giuseppe
Richard Carrier has replied to my
question about the anomalous absence of Marcion in his articles:
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.
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.
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:04 am
by mlinssen
What an ignorant fool LOL
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:57 am
by MrMacSon
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.
lol, calling Marcionism a heresy is bad enough, but saying it ‘built on the historicizing gospel movement’ is worse.
And his second sentence is an absolute non-sequitur to his first (‘thus’ bells that cat). And ignores the likelihood of the Pauline letters being edited in the Marcionite community and subsequently by the orthodox catholicizers
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:14 am
by Kunigunde Kreuzerin
.
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:44 am
by dbz
mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:04 am
What an ignorant fool LOL
- Rather, only selectively ignorant.
I am currently the world’s leading expert on the specific, hyper-narrow question of the arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus. No one has published as much or studied as much or knows as much on that singular topic. Because they just haven’t studied it as much (and their ignorance on so many facts pertaining to it evinces that point: again, just look at all the things Bart Ehrman gets wrong, from simply not bothering to check facts or seriously study the matter). No one has even published any peer reviewed study on it in a hundred years. That’s an objective fact. Not an opinion. It signals a serious defect in the field. But that defect could be redressed. By someone doing the work. That I’m the only one so far who has, is not a mark against me. It’s a mark against them.
—Richard Carrier (14 October 2017). "Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate".
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:12 am
by Sinouhe
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 2:17 am
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.
I agree with him. What a poor source the gospel of Marcion is for trying to explain the origin of Christianity.
However I also find his theory of a celestial crucifixion based on fanciful conjectures.
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:38 am
by dbz
Sinouhe wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:12 am
I also find his theory of a celestial crucifixion based on fanciful conjectures.
- "stauros of shame" is a better term to use than crucifixion
The celestial LORD was willing to don Torah-doomed flesh: to become like a slave—humiliated; killed; displayed naked on the stauros instrument of shame. Thus the LORD was able enter the under world and rescue the redeemable dead prior to the imminent END of Earth 1.1.
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:19 am
by mlinssen
dbz wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 4:44 am
mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:04 am
What an ignorant fool LOL
- Rather, only selectively ignorant.
I am currently the world’s leading expert on the specific, hyper-narrow question of the arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus. No one has published as much or studied as much or knows as much on that singular topic. Because they just haven’t studied it as much (and their ignorance on so many facts pertaining to it evinces that point: again, just look at all the things Bart Ehrman gets wrong, from simply not bothering to check facts or seriously study the matter). No one has even published any peer reviewed study on it in a hundred years. That’s an objective fact. Not an opinion. It signals a serious defect in the field. But that defect could be redressed. By someone doing the work. That I’m the only one so far who has, is not a mark against me. It’s a mark against them.
—Richard Carrier (14 October 2017). "Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate".
No honestly, did he really say that? LOL
Quantity doesn't equate quality, Dick
Although he's spot on about Ehrman, of course
Listen, it's all very easy: the only objectively verifiable facts are in the texts - in the original MSS, in their original language.
All the rest is interpretation
Thomas, John, Marcion - and then Mark, and LukeMatthew.
That's the order, and all of it can be demonstrated, and that the canonicals are dependent on Thomas has been demonstrated
as nauseam already. What else needs to be done?
And who gives a damn about "Paul" - he has nothing to say, and Acts is the most obvious falsification of them all
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:57 am
by dbz
mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:19 am
Listen, it's all very easy: the only objectively verifiable facts are in the texts - in the original MSS, in their original language.
and quoted @ "
ESSAY:Critics of the historicity of Jesus".
RationalWiki.
Perhaps I will show it to my great grandson someday and recount how good scholarship works
Re: Richard Carrier is silent about Marcion
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2022 9:07 am
by Secret Alias
I think people underestimate HOW HARD IT IS to say anything meaningful about early Christianity. There is the accepted version of history which has its holes. And critics point to the holes. But reconstructing a better version of history is problematic because of the many nuances glossed over by the proponents of the traditional model. Hard to be productive in the field of early Christianity. Most of the stuff posted here at the forum is more about trying to win over proselytes who might "like" the theory than serious scholarship.