Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Stuart wrote:For me the two words which sealed the deal are the flavor word τε and the Lucan word for immediately παραχρῆμα. There would be no reason for any Marcionite scribe to remove them, and yet they are missing completely from the attested text in Marcion (that includes Paul). There are other unloaded words missing.

The underlining is mine. How many words are actually attested as standing in Marcion (to compare to how many are in Marcion overall, how many are in Luke overall, and the number of instances of παραχρῆμα and other words)?

Ben C. Smith wrote:

Stuart wrote:For me the two words which sealed the deal are the flavor word τε and the Lucan word for immediately παραχρῆμα. There would be no reason for any Marcionite scribe to remove them, and yet they are missing completely from the attested text in Marcion (that includes Paul). There are other unloaded words missing.

The underlining is mine. How many words are actually attested as standing in Marcion (to compare to how many are in Marcion overall, how many are in Luke overall, and the number of instances of παραχρῆμα and other words)?

I checked only παραχρῆμα. It seems there are only two attested instances.
In Mc 8:44 (healing of a hemorrhaging woman) παραχρῆμα is not attested, but in Mc 18:43 (healing of a blind man).

Ben wrote: Epiphanius, Panarion 42.11.6: <ιδ>. «Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ ὑπάγειν αὐτούς, συνέπνιγον αὐτὸν οἱ ὄχλοι. καὶ γυνὴ ἁψαμένη αὐτοῦ ἰάθη τοῦ αἵματος· καὶ εἶπεν ὁ κύριος· τίς μου ἥψατο;» καὶ πάλιν· «ἥψατό μού τις. καὶ γὰρ ἔγνων δύναμιν ἐξελθοῦσαν ἀπ' ἐμοῦ». / 14. 'And it came to pass as they went the people thronged him, and a woman touched him, and was healed of her blood. And the Lord said, Who touched me?' And again, 'Someone hath touched me; for I perceive that virtue hath gone out of me.'

Ben wrote: Adamantius Dialogue, according to Dieter T. Roth (page 387-388): 200,21–30 (5.14)—[Ad.] Ἐπειδὴ πάρεισιν οἱ περὶ Μεγέθιον, οἱ τοῦ δόγματος Μαρκίωνος, ἐκ τοῦ αὐτῶν εὐαγγελίου ἀναγινώσκω• ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ ἐγγίζειν αὐτὸν εἰς Ἰεριχώ, καί τις τυφλὸς ἐπαιτῶν ἐκάθητο παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν. ἀκούσας δὲ ὄχλου διαπορευομένου ἐπυνθάνετο τί ἂν εἴη τοῦτο. ἀπηγγέλη δὲ αὐτῷ ὅτι Ἰησοῦς παρέρχεται, καὶ ἐβόησε λέγων• Ἰησοῦ υἱέ Δαυΐδ, ἐλέησόν με. σταθεὶς δὲ ἐκέλευσεν αὐτὸν ἀχθῆναι. ἐγγίσαντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ἐπηρώτησεν αὐτόν• τί σοι θέλεις ποιήσω; ὁ δὲ εἶπε• κύριε, ἵνα ἀναβλέψω. καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς• ἀνάβλεψον• ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέ σε. καὶ παραχρῆμα ἀνέβλεψεν.

For me the two words which sealed the deal are the flavor word τε and the Lucan word for immediately παραχρῆμα. ... yet they are missing completely from the attested text in Marcion (that includes Paul)

But how much of the attested text of Marcion we know of? Very little.
How accurate are the attestations? in these days, not much.
gLuke has ten παραχρῆμα, and only once in the Pauline epistles (Gal 1:16).
But according to viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1765&start=20#p39326
gMarcion would have παραχρῆμα in 18:43.
And if gLuke were written after gMarcion, this would not be expected:
http://historical-jesus.info/53.html (see points 2), 3) & 4))
Also, the author of gJohn knew about gLuke when writing his gospel:
http://historical-jesus.info/62.html

Cordially, Bernard

Stuart wrote:

• I think the issue should have been settled by Knox in the 1940s.

Hi Stuart. Can you elaborate on this? Do you think the work John Knox did then was enough to settle it thereafter? or that he didn't do enough to settle it?

The one in Luke 14:53 is far from secure. It comes from the problematic part 5 of Dialogue Adamantius in the Greek (See Clabeaux, who rejects all of part five supposed Marcionite readings). However the text in Adamantius is not original, as it includes late (very post Marcionite) text variants, including the HT of verse 18:39 (33 157). Also Rufinus Latin rendering suggests he saw the common εὐθὺς as found in Mark (Matthew use the variant form εὐθέως) in the text before him. However the Latin is not conclusive - however it is generally considered superior in Adamantrius than the Greek, as Rufinus appears to have been working from an earlier text than the surviving Greek. There are other variants and issues in the text of the section, and some differences between the Greek and Latin that make readings less than certain here. The text of Adamantius, especially in part 5, shows significant signs of harmonization to the received text. At best this is uncertain. (I do think the text is drawn from the Marcionite, against Clabeaux, but defective)

Note: Luke uses παραχρῆμα in Luke and Acts to show the extraordinary of the event (χρῆμα). Not all the εὐθὺς/εὐθέως were replaced in Luke. Many were left in place, which we find in parallel with the other gospels, but a few were replaced with παραχρῆμα.

Note: Romans 1:16 is the only possible place τε could have been present, however it is clear πρῶτον is not present. But τε does not translate into Latin, and most likely τε πρῶτον were not present in Marcion (τε missing from א* and 1243; πρῶτον from B G). There are no other cases, and in this case the word adjacent is missing.

If you insist I can go through some 70 other words case by case. But I do not like to spew like Stephen Huller, rather invite you to investigate.

Thanks for this, Stuart. Interesting points.

Stuart wrote:If you insist I can go through some 70 other words case by case. But I do not like to spew like Stephen Huller, rather invite you to investigate.

Thanks for that, but my original question still remains: how many words are actually attested for Marcion (from Tertullian, from Epiphanius, from Adamantius, or from whomever)? It would be good to be able to compare this word count to the total word count to see just how remarkable any given omission is. If, for example, only 2% of the entire gospel is attested word for word (not even fiddling with whether the attestation is solid yet), then the omission of a lot of words from the lexicon might be completely unexceptional, as they may simply be lost to the 98% that is unattested. If, on the other hand, 20% or even more of the words are attested, we might be getting somewhere. Right?

I honestly have no clue how many words we are talking about here: do you? If not, how does the argument even get off the ground? If so, what is the count?

(I speak as one who is quite sympathetic to Marcionite priority, though my current position is that both Luke and Marcion drew from a common proto-gospel. But I want to get the arguments right, and in this case a word count seems crucial.)

About τέ:
There are 6 in gLuke, 14 in Ro, 4 in 1Co, 1 in 2Co & 1 in Phl.
We know very little about the Marcionite content (attested word by word) of Paul's epistles outside Galatians (which has no τέ).

to Stuart,

There are other unloaded words missing.

If you insist I can go through some 70 other words case by case

If τε and παραχρῆμα are about your best evidence, that does not say much about other words supposedly absent in Marcion's writings but present in gLuke & Pauline epistles.

Cordially, Bernard

The question of whether we "have" the Marcion gospel can't start from whether or not Luke is the source for Marcion (as Irenaeus first claimed). The question of whether all existing references to the Marcion gospel = the Marcion gospel in antiquity is a fundamentally important one. Why should we believe that? If we took three reviews of Star Wars from 1978 could we reconstruct a scene by scene understanding of the original screenplay? This is ignoring the question of what are Books 4 or 5 are exactly. Are they line by line reconstructions of the gospel and apostle? I don't think so. Are they "reviews"? Not exactly. Ben`s question is the place to start though. How many exact explicit citations do we have from Tertullian? Epiphanius is a problematic souce. Let's stick to Tertullian initially. How many "Marcion`s gospel says X" do we have? I say from memory, no more than 10. Probably 5. In short evidence worthy of being pissed on.

Epiphanius does make pretty grandiose claims about his research on the Marcionite text. Beyond anything else in the Panarion. This is the start of the scholarly obsession/belief that WE CAN reconstruct the Marcionite canon from Patristic evidence. Tertullian is collateral research. Let me cite him.