Secret Alias wrote:it is not a simple matter to extract the Marcionite variants out of Tertullian and Epiphanius.
Who claimed it was simple?
Secret Alias wrote: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.
I do wish you would have paid attention and saved such wasted exposition.
Secret Alias wrote:If you won't do that I will continue to demonstrate this in this thread.
What you are demonstrating is the fact that you are so engrossed in your own thingy that you don't read what people say, but what you want them to say as reflective of how your antagonists think. So, keep it up, but understand that you are wasting your pearls on reality, which is blowing you a raspberry.
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
Secret Alias wrote:
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 wrote:
You think Tertullian had his own canon? Before or after his supposed conversion to Montanism? (Was he ever a 'Christian'?)
DCHindley wrote:
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.
I also thought SA was saying that "Tertullian drew from [a] canon used by his own community". Considering Tertullian is supposed to have moved communities --ie. gone from [orthodox] 'Christianity' to Montanism-- I thought it would be interesting to try to determine which community.
DCHindley wrote:
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!
Was there a "Christian" canon of [Marcion's] day and time? Was Marcion a strawman?
Was Tertullian's supposed conversion to Montanism a strawman red-herring?
I am not sure that Marcion altered a pre-existent canon to agree with his beliefs.
I think that's a reasonable proposition.
Secret Alias wrote:
The deciding factor I think is that Marcion's binary godhead agrees more closely with early Judaism than any other known tradition of Christianity ...
I am merely pointing a spotlight at the apparatuses used by previous studies of Marcion ... many of the 'calls' are based on wishful thinking ...
Secret Alias wrote: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 decided1. The true writings are found in the orthodox canon. His methodology is always to convict the heresies from the true writings.
1 Are you saying that 'the canon' was already decided before Tertullian's time?
Secret H wrote:... 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
... 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).
when you say " In Book Four the argument is clearly (1) at the core; and (2) layered on top". Do you mean -
"In Book Four the argument (1^above) is clearly at the core; and (2^) [is] layered on top" ??
I do wish you would have paid attention and saved such wasted exposition.
There's nothing in your OP about examining the apparatus of each author for determining whether or not a given passage from Tertullian is a passage from Marcion's canon. Epiphanius is a summary of previous research but not entirely reliable as Epiphanius as Plooij notes "I think Epiphanius ought to be the last witness we should trust uncontrolled, especially in his testimonies on heretics and heretical writings. He combines all kinds of notices, rumours, and calumnies into abracadabra often completely incomprehensible." [A Primitive Text of the Diatessaron p. 78]
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias wrote:
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 Irenaeus's 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 that 'the gospel' (= 'the story of Jesus') is derived from the Jewish Scriptures (especially when it pertains to 'the gospel' as in Book Four)
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
... 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.
I do wish you would have paid attention and saved such wasted exposition.
There's nothing in your OP about...
There's nothing in your OP about Epiphanius or Plooij. Obviously your OP is lacking: how can you talk about the worthlessness of previous studies of Marcion when you can't be upfront in your OP about what will be dealt with in a thread meant to initiate a discussion when you don't include all the material that people who might join the conversation should deal with? If you had read with any care the OP of the Marcion/Galatians thread I posted you would know that I was inviting discussion, not dictating that discussion, Herr Happy.
...examining the apparatus of each author for determining whether or not a given passage from Tertullian is a passage from Marcion's canon. Epiphanius is a summary of previous research but not entirely reliable as Epiphanius as Plooij notes "I think Epiphanius ought to be the last witness we should trust uncontrolled, especially in his testimonies on heretics and heretical writings. He combines all kinds of notices, rumours, and calumnies into abracadabra often completely incomprehensible." [A Primitive Text of the Diatessaron p. 78]
Dysexlia lures • ⅔ of what we see is behind our eyes
My point is simply - you haven't ever read Adversus Marcionem and thus don't realize how silly this whole "uncover Marcion's text of X" argument is.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Was there a "Christian" canon of [Marcion's] day and time? Was Marcion a strawman?
We only see 'Marcion's day' from the perspective of Tertullian, Irenaeus and the rest of the Church Fathers. Was there something underlying all the hyperbolic statements about Marcion in the Church Fathers? Yes I think so. What was it? I don't know.
Here's what I do know. In Irenaeus 'Marcion' takes the place of Marcellina in Hegesippus, a text which seems to predate Irenaeus. What that means exactly, I don't know.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
