Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Peter,

I'm not upset. But I just don't think it goes far enough to simply blue the entire verse because a word or two was present.

For example, for verses 24:44-47 what Tertullian actually says is

Exhibuimus Iesum Christum prophetarum doctrinis, sententiis, affectibus, sensibus, virtutibus, passionibus, etiam resurrectione, non alium quam creatoris; siquidem et apostolos mittens ad praedicandum universis nationibus

That supports the following

And he said unto them (i.e., the Apostles),
These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you,
that thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead the third day:
should be preached among all nations.

In addition we have plenty of examples of the concept of Christ suffering and rising again on the third day in Marcion in the gospel

Am 5.21.7, Luke 9:22: quia oporteret filium hominis multa pati, et reprobari a presbyteris et scribis et sacerdotibus, et interfici, et post tertium diem resurgere

and 1 Corinthians

Epiphanius, 1 Corinthian 15:1:γνωρίζω δὲ ὑμῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ὃ εὐηγγελισάμην ὑμῖν

Tertullian AM 3.8.5, 1 Corinthians 15:2-4; Tradidi enim, inquit, vobis inprimis, quod Christus mortuus sit pro peccatis nostris, et quod sepultus sit, et quod resurrexerit tertia die. . 'For I delivered, he says, to you first of all, that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day'; DA 5.6 Epiphanius P42 ὅτι Χριστὸς ἀπέθανε καὶ ἐτάφη καὶ ἐγήγερται τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ and ~ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ support F G K L P Ψ 049 maj, but not reflected in Tertullian; both accounts delete – κατὰ τὰς γραφάς

and that Christ's suffering and resurrection is the substance of what is taught we see from 1 Corinthians 15;11

AM 1.20.4 sicut et alibi, Sive ego, inquit, sive illi, sic praedicamus. AM 4.4.5 Sive ego, inquit Paulus, sive illi, sic praedicamus; Epiphanius P42 οὕτως κηρύσσομεν καὶ οὕτως ἐπιστεύσατε

Where in this is the remission of sins? And can they be separated from the clearly Catholic words in verse 24:44 "that it was necessary to fulfill all the the things written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms." I think not, since the remission of sins is tied so closely to the concept of the Law being in place, that you must first be forgiven by the same God as the OT, through Baptism it seems. It should be noted that verse 5:32 is also not attested, where Jesus claims his mission is to bring sinners to repentance, the same concept of the Catholic text for 24:47.

OK that is overkill. But I'm just trying to demonstrate a problem in examining the Marcionite text. Luke's version not only has additions to the text in whole verses, but also individual words and phrases. Many quality scholars over the years suffered lapses of judgment on the content of material in Marcion, including Knox, which lead to confusion and mistakes.

Mind you I tend for the more radical in my approach, eliminating all suspect material - admitting I may have overdone it. But that is because I think we are less apt to make a mistake about the content of the Marcionite texts and their interpretations of it when we only consider the attested and that which safely fits what is attested without theological contradiction. All I am trying to say is be very cautious about every extra word included in blue above.

Lk 21:32 Most certainly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things are accomplished.
According to Tertullian's AM, these words were replaced by:
gMarcion: "... The heaven and the earth shall in no wise pass away, till all things be accomplished." http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel5.html

Also

Lk 16:17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.
According to Tertullian's AM, these words were replaced by:
gMarcion "But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, ... than one tittle of my [Jesus] words to fail." http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel4.html

Cordially, Bernard

... all of which demonstrate how unreliable any of these 'attempts' to 'reconstruct' the 'Marcionite gospel.' At best it is best viewed as a psychological exercise in how need (in this case 'determining' something absolutely) inevitably trumps common sense. Tertullian's information is not reliable, no better than any of the other sources. It is only 'useful' for those who need to believe - believe in the same way that Jay Raskin has 'faith' in Bill Cosby in something rather than allowing things to remain as they should undefined.

Against Marcion 1:1 makes absolutely clear that our surviving Latin text is at least the third of what was probably countless rewrites of a lost original treatise. There plenty of explicit examples that Tertullian was using a Greek text with specific Greek words which were so technical and difficult to translate that they are retained in the surviving Latin text. There is no reasonable argument to believe outside of Tertullian's typical isolated bluster that he ever had the Marcionite text in front of him (the Greek original makes that plainly evident - i.e. someone else had the text and Tertullian copied out words from the eyewitness failing to offer the proper caveat (as would befit a true scholar) that he is not the one who saw the text.

This is another wasted parlor game. The Marcionite gospel was not 'Luke.' Luke was in fact constructed from Tertullian and Epiphanius's lost source - probably Irenaeus's Against Marcion. In other words someone (Criddle says Justin) criticized the Marcionite gospel and made reference to its shape and wording. This was modified by Irenaeus and like Irenaeus himself decided to take matters a step further and actually forge the alleged 'ur-text' Paul dictated to Luke (a lie developed from his great imagination). The 'alert' written at the beginning of Against Marcion 1:1 that various other copies of the text are floating around associated with heresy (or 'apostasy') is Irenaeus's not Tertullian's.

Irenaeus liked organizing things into five books. The parallels between the development of the five books of Irenaeus and the five books of Tertullian here are uncannily similar (i.e. forged = manufactured from older notes written before the development of the canon by Irenaeus in a subsequent period). It all comes down to Irenaeus and Irenaeus alone - viz Paul, the canon etc.

In other words to repeat.

1. Justin writes Against Marcion based on a comparison of the Marcionite text with his 'harmony' text (a text he passed on Tatian and which Tatian and his circle faithfully preserved).
2. Irenaeus used and modified that Against Marcion before he invented Luke and the rest of the garbage found in our canon. This text was probably still identified as Justin's Against Marcion
3. At some subsequent period (compare the various 'editions' of Ignatius) Luke was invented and Justin's Against Marcion was further modified to accord with this new fantasy gospel
4. Against Marcion 1:1 (the reference to all the other versions of Against Marcion floating around associated with apostasy i.e. the harmony gospel as opposed to the four) was written by Irenaeus and the five volume definitive edition of Against Marcion was created.
5. Tertullian copies and slightly modifies (4) in the third century and passes it off as his own 'according to the spirit' (and in part prompted by the opening incipit's recognition that 'heretics' corrupted and continued to corrupt the body of the work thus justifying periodic 'repairs').

The thing that throws people off are the agreements between Epiphanius and Tertullian. But these are easily explained by Against Marcion 1:1 i.e. there were as a matter of fact a multitude of versions of the lost original Against Marcion floating around. Epiphanius used one version, Tertullian another. They weren't exactly the same but nevertheless related.

So against this construct there is the simplicity of simply:

OPTION 1

a. accepting the pre-existence of Luke
b. assuming that Tertullian had a copy of both Luke and the gospel of Marcion
and
c. accepting that he simply wrote a comparison on his own

The unlikelihood that this happened however is the based on:

OPTION 2
1. the five books clearly come from a multitude of sources (i.e. book 2 has been demonstrated to derive from Theophilus, book 3 is a modified version of a common original shared with Against the Jews.
2. once one acknowledges that book 3 and Against Jews shows Tertullian or someone else expanded and manipulated pre-existent material written in Greek against Marcion by Justin (there are many Justinian allusions) the door is clearly open to assuming with Criddle that book Four was from another Justin treatise (although 5 was clearly written by the same author opening up the question of Justin's knowledge of Pauline material).
3. there are other parallel passages reused from Books Four and Five elsewhere in Tertullian's literary productivity reinforcing again that the parallels between book 3 and Against the Jews was not isolated.
4. Against Hermogenes MUST have been developed from Theophilus's treatise of the same name because the text opens with the basic idea that Hermogenes just visited Antioch and now moved on to Carthage. This is better explained by the fact that Tertullian (or Irenaeus) had a copy of Theophilus's original treatise and adapted it to make it relevant in a subsequent age.
5. the many examples (see Williams) of Tertullian claiming that Marcion removed things from 'his gospel' which don't appear in Luke are best explained by the Justin hypothesis i.e. that Justin was basing his argument on harmony gospel and then that text was later modified to accord with the sudden appearance of Luke
6. the massive amount of examples of Tertullian and others alluding to things in Marcion's gospel which don't appear in Luke but Matthew, Mark and John are best explained by the fact that the Marcionite gospel was Diatessaronic (for lack of a better word) thus explaining Justins' efforts to compare his harmony to Marcion's gospel too
7. the fact that Epiphanius and Tertullian have an ordering of Paul's letters which resemble that used in Ephrem's community (i.e. Galatians first) is best explained by the original author who used a harmony (like Ephrem) shared a Galatians first collection of Paul's letters like Ephrem.

Thus we come full circle and the arguments made by Irenaeus and every subsequent writer that Marcion's gospel was 'like Luke' was developed artificially from a series of corruptions to Justin's original Against Marcion modified from a harmony comparison to a Luke comparison for the sake of introducing Luke. The anti-Marcionite background was merely a Trojan horse for developing this particular gospel to firmly found a new understanding of Jesus.

The critical thing is to recognize that the Patristic texts developed from texts which were formed BEFORE Luke and assisted in its genesis.

Both options have difficulties but in the end it is difficult to imagine why so many authors outside of Irenaeus and Tertullian thought the Marcionite gospel was Diatessaronic or at least very similar to a gospel harmony if it wasn't so. Even Tertullian allows this to blurt out of his mouth although for reasons which again are a little bit more complicated.

And I have noted many times (mostly to deaf ears) the Islamic view of the gospel is very much what we must have been the position of the Marcionites once their tradition was effectively outlawed in the fifth and sixth centuries owing to the various burnings and destruction of literary evidence by the orthodox. Note arguments 2 and 3:

Missionaries who work with Mohammedans know that there are three ancient and standard objections to the Bible. 1. It has been abrogated by the Koran. 2. It has been changed and corrupted by Christians. 3. Christ took the genuine Injil of the New Testament back with Him when He returned to heaven. — J. Christy Wilson, "The Bible and Moslems," The Moslem World 28, no. 3 (1937), p. 237)

Why is the standard response of scholars to these arguments that they 'must' all be dated to the time AFTER the establishment of Islam? It is as if an entire religion (Islam) is made to be defined as starting from weakness and a lie. Surely the orthodox destruction of pre-existent Christian traditions led to the Qu'ran and the Islam conquest of the Orient was very much viewed as a 're-conquest' or a fulfillment of the outlawed traditions of Christianity. It is amazing how dense scholarship is right at the points where it actually matters. It is as if they strive to be irrelevant.

Secret Alias wrote: The anti-Marcionite background was merely a Trojan horse for developing this particular gospel to firmly found a new understanding of Jesus.

This fits with recently discussed and elaborated concepts of euhemerization.

1. The notion that the narratives about Jesus developed out of texts such as Paul's and or various harmony/Diatessaron-type texts

• eg. "the Christian leader(s) took a sky God and created a euhemerized Jesus man, set in the Jewish homelands" see http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... nt-1057518; and

2. Arguments that

• "For a long period, scholars have seen the early Christian utilization of euhemerism as a means of convincing the heathens of their religions fallacies and, hence, convert them to the "true" religion ... those early Christian texts were most likely read within the faith, that is, within the church, addressing issues pertaining to a new identity formation cultivated by the early Christians who saw themselves as a "third race", following those of the Jews and the Greeks/Romans1" p. 34 (top left column)
  
  http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?i=207716&p=32
  
  1 'Introduction: Apologetics in the Roman World'. In Apologetics in the Roman Empire: Pagans, Jews, and Christians, 1999; edited by Mark Edwards, Martin Goodman, and Simon Price, pp 1-13. Oxford University Press.

Peter Kirby wrote:Ben never called it a reconstruction (let alone a "reproduction"). He called it a "study aid for myself and for anyone else interested." He mentioned the limitations and "caveats" intended of it. I don't believe he called it an "improvement" over existing efforts, and I don't believe anyone else did either.

IMO, what would be nice are side-by-side quotations of Tertullian, Epiphanius, and the other such sources. (In translation and original... would be nice.)

I'd value that more than getting anybody's judgment calls about what may or may not be the exact wording of the text, which is for the most part unrecoverable anyway.

This may be of interest http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcionsection.htm

Andrew Criddle

Thanks. What I wish it had was the missing Lucan text.

Ben.