Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

From
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb21kYW ... Patristica

From 0.47, Mark Bilby:


A little later, in Bilby's opening spiel:


From 3.35, Markus Vinzent:


From 6.38:


From 7.15:


From 9.28, Bilby:

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Epiphanius was an assiduous collector of info on heresies. Yes, some of that is mere hearsay. But Epiphanius also quotes texts.

"Epiphanius, a native of Judaea who wrote circa 375 C.E. while bishop in Cyprus, has obtained a reputation as both tendentious and difficult to understand. But his boundless theological certainty enabled him to present abundant information about his opponents, as he was confident he could refute them." (from the Abstract)

"As examples of valuable information already recognized in Panarion consider that it includes: extracts of the gospel of Marcion (Heresy 42.11); the letter of Ptolemy the gnostic (Heresy 33.3-8); Montanist oracles (Heresy 48); writings by Marcellus and his opponent Basil (Heresy 72); long quotations of Methodius writing on resurrection against Origen (Heresy 64); titles of many gnostic books (e.g., Heresy 26.8.1). This list could easily be extended, and further examples will be discussed in the course of this study." (from p. 16 of my 1990 dissertation).

I think both the good and the bad are on display here.

The good: Irenaeus was one of his sources.
The bad: he's not telling people he's compiling or using a compilation of sources about Marcion and lying about having the Marcionite canon in front of him.

Because Epiphanius had many other heretical texts,
and because the Marcionite church widely used that canon and made it available,
I think Epiphanius had that text and was not lying.

Regarding your point about "believing" (which you refer to as "thinking"), I believe there is a strong reason to doubt that Epiphanius actually had access to Marcion's original texts.

Firstly, the quotes attributed to Marcion are arranged in an inexplicable order of the Pauline epistles, which seems to be secondarily rearranged. Epiphanius often tells his audience things like "this appears in our canon as X and in Marcion's canon as Y," following Irenaeus's Galatians-first canon—a sequence also shared by Ephraim and the Christians of the Near East.

In essence, there are two key points:

The Pamphlet Addition: There appears to be a pamphlet that Epiphanius received after the first draft of his Panarion. He seems to have added it later as an appendage. In this pamphlet, approximately 113 quotes from the Gospel and Pauline epistles are arranged (specifically the Pauline epistles) in the order of Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, and then First and Second Corinthians.

References to Irenaeus's Adversus Marcionem: Overlaid on this arrangement are clear references that resemble Irenaeus's original Adversus Marcionem. For instance, consider Epiphanius's statement before introducing the pamphlet:

Here are what he calls Epistles:

Galatians
Corinthians
Second Corinthians
Romans
Thessalonians
Second Thessalonians
Ephesians
Colossians
Philemon
Philippians He also has parts of the so-called Epistle to the Laodiceans.
From the very canon that he retains—the Gospel and the Pauline Epistles—I can show, with God's help, that Marcion is a fraud and in error, and can refute him very effectively. For he will be refuted from the very works which he acknowledges without dispute. From the very remnants of the Gospel and Epistles which he still has, it will be demonstrated to the wise that Christ is not foreign to the Old Testament, and hence that the prophets are not foreign to the Lord's advent; and that the apostle preaches the resurrection of the flesh and terms the prophets righteous, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among the recipients of salvation—and that all the teachings of God's holy church are saving, holy, and firmly founded by God on faith, knowledge, hope, and doctrine."

Following Lawlor and others' arguments regarding Epiphanius possibly having Hegesippus's works at hand, this passage sounds strikingly similar to what Irenaeus says in his Adversus Haereses:

Irenaeus writes:

But Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those passages which he still retains.

And again:

Wherefore also Marcion and his followers have betaken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and, curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul, they assert that these alone are authentic, which they have themselves thus shortened. In another work, however, I shall, God granting me strength, refute them out of these which they still retain.

Tertullian makes similar statements as well.

I mean this in the kindest way possible: I see many similarities between you and Epiphanius. Like Epiphanius, you possess considerable erudition. However, also like him, you sometimes root your scholarship in gossip and innuendo, mistaking interpretations for facts. There's a tendency to ascribe too much weight to sexual motivation—perhaps influenced by your association with Jungian psychology. Psychology, by its very nature, often leans toward subjectivism, which can affect objective analysis.

Another thought I'd like to share:

If either Irenaeus, Tertullian, or Epiphanius had explicitly said something like, "I will show you SOME of Marcion's gospel passages," or if they hadn't mentioned Marcion editing or reducing the canon, the remaining superficial references to "the Marcionite canon" especially in Epiphanius would make more sense.

In Irenaeus's case, his statements are clear because he explicitly accuses Marcion of stealing the New Testament from the orthodox church, choosing only Luke to falsify along with the Pauline epistles. Since we know Luke and the Pauline epistles, by quoting what Marcion retained, Irenaeus implicitly shows us what Marcion left out.

With Tertullian, this clarity diminishes. He doesn't claim to have the Marcionite gospel or the entire canon. While he makes similar references to Marcion curtailing or mutilating the canon, his accounts are vaguer and further removed from Irenaeus's explicit argument: "I am arguing from the portions of Luke which Marcion retained." This vagueness might be because Tertullian was copying Irenaeus's material but with less precision, perhaps due to the ineffectiveness of the original argument.

Epiphanius appears to have initially written his account of the Marcionites without the pamphlet he later added. Feeling that his first attempt wasn't sufficient, he then "discovered" the Marcionite canon—possibly by compiling various sources or with assistance from someone else (maybe Basil?). The key point here is that when we compare Tertullian and Epiphanius, if we're to believe they both had firsthand access to "Marcion's canon," why are there so many differences? If both men had the canon in front of them, why would they mention some aspects but not others?

The idea that the Marcionite canon changed over time doesn't hold water because the orthodox reading of scripture didn't change that much over a century and a half. We wouldn't expect an equally robust and conservative tradition like Marcionism to have significant changes either.

Therefore, it seems:

(a) Irenaeus was precise in his account (because his account was by its nature an "argument against Marcion from the portions of Luke which Marcion retained"). In other words, his audience had Luke so his account was in a way counter-exegesis.
(b) Tertullian copied Irenaeus but was less exact, omitting some references (because his account was written likely to correct deficiencies in Irenaeus's original approach, namely it's a stupid argument to argue against a tradition in this way).
(c) Epiphanius was superficial in his examination (because Marcion and Marcionism was merely one entry in Panarion).
But how could Epiphanius have been that superficial in such a detailed examination of Marcion (especially since it's a massive work)? And why does the ordering of the Pauline epistles in his arrangement not only contradict the Marcionite canon order he himself advocates (i.e., Galatians-first) but also all known arrangements of the Pauline epistles?

This raises important questions about the reliability of their accounts and suggests that perhaps none of them had direct access to Marcion's original texts. Epiphanius's account suffers by its superficiality, by his tendency to read other material incorporate what another author and another approach says into his own work which has a different objective and a different methodology.

On the Marcionite Pamplet as a Secondary Product viewtopic.php?t=12619

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2024 8:35 am the quotes attributed to Marcion are arranged in an inexplicable order of the Pauline epistles

Not inexplicable.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Tue Jun 20, 2023 8:57 am As part of the extracts themselves, Epiphanius notes the ordering of each set of extracts, both in his canon and Marcion's.

From the Epistle to the Romans, number four in Marcion’s canon but number one in the Apostolic Canon.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, < number five in Marcion’s canon >, but number eight in ours. [with no notes]

The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, < number six in Marcion’s canon >, but number nine in ours. [with no notes]

From the Epistle to Ephesians, number seven < in Marcion’s canon >, but number five in ours. [2 notes]

< From the Epistle > to the Colossians, number eight < in Marcion’s canon >, but number seven in ours.

The Epistle to Philemon, number nine < in Marcion’s canon >, but number thirteen, or even fourteen, in ours. [with no notes]

The Epistle to the Philippians, number ten < in Marcion’s canon >, but number six in ours. [with no notes]

< From the Epistle > to the Laodiceans, number eleven < in Marcion’s canon >. [1 note]

From the Epistle to the Galatians, number one < in Marcion’s canon >, but number four in ours.

< From the > First < Epistle > to the Corinthians, number two in Marcion’s own canon and in ours.

From the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, number three in Marcion’s canon and ours

Two things fully account for this order:

Epiphanius mistakenly put one of his notes under a different name for Ephesians (i.e. Laodiceans), appending it to the end, where otherwise he put them under the name of Ephesians and placed those two notes in the order of Marcion's Laodiceans.

Epiphanius starts with Romans. Other than that (and a single note on Laodiceans), he mechanically follows the Marcionite order. After Romans there is a sequence (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) in the Marcionite order, right up to the end. Then the stray note on Laodiceans. Then another sequence (1, 2, 3) also in the Marcionite order.

And while the Galatians-first order is that which is attributed to Marcion (in Against Marcion and by Epiphanius himself), the presentation of the Marcionite order -- with the twist of taking Romans first and then looping back around -- can best be understood as evidence that Epiphanius himself knew a Romans-first canon and was comparing between two different sets of texts of Paul, which were each arranged differently (his Romans-first, that attributed to Marcion Galatians-first).

This evidence is consistent with what Epiphanius himself writes about reading the Marcionite texts and going through them to compile (a word you've pointed out) the quotes that he takes from the Marcionite texts, quotes that notably are absent as a phenomenon in the rather different text Against Marcion.

Any hypothesis that relies on the assumption that Epiphanius didn't read what he understood to be the Marcionite texts themselves flounders on the evidence and will remain an idiosyncratic one for that reason.