The Results of Previous Studies of Marcion Are Worthless

[spin]

Let me repeat, the thread you are frothing about dealt not with his gospel, but his Galatians.

Same difference. Galatians is about Marcion's gospel according to the statement in Adversus Marcionem.

If you whinge about something that was not talked about as though it was, you demonstrate you've lost the plot.

[Secret Alias]

The facts are the facts - it is not a simple matter to extract the Marcionite variants out of Tertullian and Epiphanius. Demonstrate the apparatus used by each author and you will see how flimsy the basis is for distinguishing (a) things said by the author using scriptural support from (b) actual Marcionite variants. If you won't do that I will continue to demonstrate this in this thread.

[Secret Alias]

For example, in Tertullian Adv Marc 4.2.5 is this is a citation from - or a reference to a reading - in Marcion's canon:

There would be still wanted that Gospel which St. Paul found in existence, to which he yielded his belief, and with which he so earnestly wished his own to agree, that he actually on that account went up to Jerusalem to know and consult the apostles, "lest he should run, or had been running in vain" in other words, that the faith which he had learned, and the gospel which he was preaching, might be in accordance with theirs.

I say it is not. My apparatus says that only explicit references to things in Marcion's canon can be considered. What say you or any of your erudite authors?

[Secret Alias]

Or what do you do with the summary in what follows in the rest of Adv Marc 4.3:

In the scheme of Marcion, on the contrary,66 the mystery67 of the Christian religion begins from the discipleship of Luke. Since, however, it was on its course previous to that point, it must have had68 its own authentic materials,69 by means of which it found its own way down to St. Luke; and by the assistance of the testimony which it bore, Luke himself becomes admissible. [2] Well, but70 Marcion, finding the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (wherein he rebukes even apostles71 ) for "not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,"72 as well as accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ), labours very hard to destroy the character73 of those Gospels which are published as genuine74 and under the name of apostles, in order, forsooth, to secure for his own Gospel the credit which he takes away from them. [3] But then, even if he censures Peter and John and James, who were thought to be pillars, it is for a manifest reason. They seemed to be changing their company75 from respect of persons. And yet as Paul himself "became all things to all men,"76 that he might gain all, it was possible that Peter also might have betaken himself to the same plan of practising somewhat different from what he taught. [4] And, in like manner, if false apostles also crept in, their character too showed itself in their insisting upon circumcision and the Jewish ceremonies. So that it was not on account of their preaching, but of their conversation, that they were marked by St. Paul, who would with equal impartiality have marked them with censure, if they had erred at all with respect to God the Creator or His Christ. Each several case will therefore have to be distinguished. When Marcion complains that apostles are suspected (for their prevarication and dissimulation) of having even depraved the gospel, he thereby accuses Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. If, then, the apostles, who are censured simply for inconsistency of walk, composed the Gospel in a pure form,77 but false apostles interpolated their true record; and if our own copies have been made from these,78 where will that genuine text79 of the apostle's writings be found which has not suffered adulteration? Which was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke?

What do you do with these references? Are these attestations of what exists in Marcion's canon (as most of them would have it) or - as I would have it - simply statements from the author's canon?

[MrMacSon]

Are these attestations of what exists in Marcion's canon (as most of them would have it) or - as I would have it - simply statements from the author's canon?

You think Tertullian had his own canon? Before or after his supposed conversion to Montanism? (Was he ever a 'Christian'?)

[DCHindley]

Are these attestations of what exists in Marcion's canon (as most of them would have it) or - as I would have it - simply statements from the author's canon?

You think Tertullian had his own canon? Before or after his supposed conversion to Montanism? (Was he ever a 'Christian'?)

Whaa? I think he's saying that Tertullian drew from the canon used by his own community, which was probably something akin to the proto-orthodox one. He was not arguing from Marcion's "canon", if he had one.

IMO, this is not to say that Marcion actually had his own canonical books, edited to go his way, but that he really drew from the proto-orthodox canon as it existed in his region. His Antitheses was published to point out that it contained paradoxes (antitheses) and offered the solution that the true gospel of Jesus about the Unknown God and his unconditional love for all had been corrupted by Judean concepts of the Righteous God of the material universe prevalent among Judeans.

This may be as far as he went! That is, no "gospel" or letters of Paul, of his own making. His later followers may have done something like that, though. Marcion was "rightly dividing" the word of truth, to use a Pauline phrase, which would suggest that to him the received Gospel and Pauline canons were, well, "the word of truth".

This was the same thing that the authors of the Pseudo-Clementine literature did with the Judean scriptures, in their case to weed out what they considered the doctrines of men that had become mixed with the divine doctrine. They proceeded in that task by using a concept of the "principles" that God was composed of (the cosmology) as a template, rather than try to derive the principles from the existing text(s).

Marcion had his own views about what cosmological principals actually existed, and applied them to the "Christian" canon(s) of his day and time.

This latter is probably NOT what SA is referring to. Tertullian was splitting hairs by setting up straw men that he could knock down, not knocking down what had been set up by Marcion. This is what you get from a man who did not shave the whiskers from the corners of his mouth. A foul smell!

DCH

[Secret Alias]

DCH

I am not sure that Marcion altered a pre-existent canon to agree with his beliefs. We've had this discussion before. The deciding factor I think is that Marcion's binary godhead agrees more closely with early Judaism than any other known tradition of Christianity. But that's beside the point of this discussion.

I am merely pointing a spotlight at the apparatuses used by previous studies of Marcion. I think we can both agree that many of the 'calls' are based on wishful thinking - much like this past election.

[Secret Alias]

And the second point here is the writing style of Irenaeus who I think is behind the edition of Adversus Marcionem immediately preceding Tertullian's Latin edition (which isn't at all Montanist which is a tipping point I think). Irenaeus tends to argue FROM HIS OWN CANON against the heresies. I can summon as many examples as needed from Adversus Haereses as you might want. The point is that 'the canon' is already decided. The true writings are found in the orthodox canon. His methodology is always to convict the heresies from the true writings.

Now let me move on to an argument from Adversus Marcionem which as I said is now derived from Irenaeus (albeit polishing up something originally written by Justin exactly in the manner that Adversus Haereses derives from Justin's Syntagma). Why, if as people suppose (mostly out of desperation I suspect) that Adversus Marcionem is a line by line attack against Marcion, does the other layer on top of this arguments from the Jewish writings? It is a very peculiar feature of Adversus Marcionem. In other words Adversus Marcionem has really two layers to it:

1. the argument (especially when it pertains to the gospel as in Book Four) that the gospel (= 'the story of Jesus') is derived from the Jewish Scriptures
2. the argument that the Marcionite canon is derived from orthodox source material
3. that the God of Christ was one and the same with the Creator who is the one God of the universe

I know spin keeps arguing that my reference to the 'gospel' is has nothing to do with 'Galatians' in Book Five but he obviously has less familiarity with the material. For Books 4 and 5 are a unit. In Book Four the argument is clearly (1) at the core and (2) layered on top of (1) clearly demonstrating IMHO that Irenaeus 'fixed' something written by Justin - Justin was the author of (1) and Irenaeus (2).

Of course in the case of Book Five the idea that Justin knew the contents of the Pauline epistles is a controversial assertion. Nevertheless as problematic as it is the relationship with Book Four and Book Five is undeniable as is Justin writing a work against Marcion and Irenaeus writing a work against Marcion. Book Five's argument is clearly stated somewhere in the beginning as being "that the apostle knew only of the one God, the Creator" or something like that. Nevertheless there are signs of a similar structure to (1) and (2) in Book Four namely that because Paul argued from the Jewish scriptures he believed in the Jewish god.

The difficulty here is that clearly some of the OT references in the present Pauline canon were later orthodox additions. I don't have an apparatus to tell you which ones are 'fake' and which ones are real but neither does anyone else. What is clear is that the fact the author acknowledges that Marcion 'retains' some OT references makes the anti-Jewish model for Marcion implausible. The Marcionite canon did have allusions to the OT by the apostle just not as many.

[Secret Alias]

If then SOME OT references were added to the Pauline letters (I would say MANY OT references) then we have a 'Judaizing' editor of the entire Marcionite canon (not just the gospel). This necessarily means that the argument that 'false apostles' changed his gospel represent a post-Pauline POV. Why then does the Pauline canon have a recognition on the part of the apostle that 'false-apostles' altered his gospel? Why does Galatians have the extended story of Paul submitting to the authorities with respect to the gospel (Irenaean recension)? I think the answer becomes obvious. The Marcionite position was that they possessed the ur-canon and it's primacy was demonstrated by the fact that Paul didn't know anything of the heresies (sects) which would follow from his revelation. So you basically had a Pauline collection (I prefer the term 'Apostle' or Apostolicon for the writings but no matter) which originally did not mention false-apostles, DID NOT reference any of the biographical details (cf the beginning of Adversus Marcionem 5) in Galatians - i.e. no submitting to the apostles) and instead manifest the daybreak of Christianity - a religion developed from the vision that the apostle had with respect to his encounter with Jesus (whether in the flesh or as a dream or vision is up for grabs). The subordinate nature of the Pauline vision was added to the canon by a later orthodox editor. Galatians chapters 1 and 2 were not found in the Marcionite recension which - as noted by Price and others - is why Jerome is silent with respect to Marcionite variants or interpretations (when drawing his Commentary on Galatians from Origen who knew the Marcionites better).

[Secret Alias]

Getting back to the apparatus to establish what is or isn't an attestation of Marcionite readings, I think I should be more thorough. Let's start with Galatians 1:1. Does this reference in the first chapter of Book Five count as an 'attestation' of the Marcionite edition of Galatians:

He professes himself to be "an apostle"----to use his own, words----"not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ."20 Of course, any one may make a profession concerning himself; but his profession is only rendered valid by the authority of a second person. One man signs, another countersigns;21 one man appends his seal, another registers in the public records.22 No one is at once a proposer and a seconder to himself. Besides, you have read, no doubt, that "many shall come, saying, I am Christ."23

I say no. This is not an attestation that Galatians 1:1 is in the Marcionite canon. What say your experts? IMHO the author is simply citing from his own canon given that he just finished saying that the Marcionites don't reveal who their apostle is.