Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 8:54 pm File this under, whatever.

I agree.

So to continue after saying:

If there are apostolic [Si et apostolicos] they are yet not alone, but appear with apostles and after apostles; because the preaching of disciples might be open to the suspicion of an affectation of glory, if there did not accompany it [si non adsistat] the authority of the masters, which means that of Christ, for it was that which made the apostles their masters.

He goes on with more this shitty, worthless rhetorical argumentation developed around 'ifs'. The four canonical witnesses are named and then Tertullian goes back to the canon which he obliquely referenced as 'the apostolikon' (= the Apostolic') just a second earlier:

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body. And here I might now make a stand, and contend that a work ought not to be recognised, which holds not its head erect, which exhibits no consistency, which gives no promise of credibility from the fulness of its title and the just profession of its author. [4] But we prefer to join issue on every point; nor shall we leave unnoticed what may fairly be understood to be on our side. Now, of the authors whom we possess, Marcion seems to have singled out Luke for his mutilating process. Luke, however, was not an apostle, but only an apostolic man; not a master, but a disciple, and so inferior to a master----at least as far subsequent to him as the apostle whom he followed (and that, no doubt, was Paul ) was subsequent to the others; so that, if Marcion even bore his Gospel in the name of St. Paul himself (si sub ipsius Pauli nomine evangelium Marcion intulisset), the single authority of the document, destitute of all support from preceding authorities, would not be a sufficient basis for our faith.

But do you see the trickery here? He just finished referencing the name 'apostolic' the name Marcionites gave to their gospel and canon. No the name 'Paul' doesn't appear at the front of the gospel but the lack of incipt is shared by the earliest copies of the gospel of Mark. The argument here is disingenuous when you know the canon including the gospel was called 'the apostolikon' - the Marcionites identified all their writings as being written by the Apostle.

It is most absurd and highly amusing that those who themselves reject the authorship, dating, and chronology of the Gospels and Epistles as claimed in writings attributed to Tertullian accept the claims about Marcion in Against Marcion.

The so-called writer Terrullian had no idea who really wrote the Canonical Gospels, did not know the order in which they were written, did not know when they were written and did not know that the so-called Pauline Epistles were not written by one person.

Examine Against Marcion 4.2

Of the apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; while of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards.

Those claims about Gospel writers by the so-called Tertullian are almost universally rejected by Scholars.

In effect, the so-called Tertullian had no knowledge of the history of early Christianity and their writings which means that "Against Marcion" cannot be accepted as credible.

Authors of Gospels were manufactured in "Against Marcion".

The so-called Tertullian inadvertently admitted he invented Marcion as an author of the Antithesis.

Against Marcion 4.2

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel....

There was no Gospel written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Marcion.

And if you didn't think that Tertullian's argument wasn't dodgy enough he ends chapter 2 with another big 'if':

Igitur si ipse illuminator Lucae auctoritatem antecessorum et fidei et praedicationi suae optavit, quanto magis eam evangelio Lucae expostulem, quae evangelio magistri eius fuit necessaria? Aliud est si penes Marcionem a discipulatu Lucae coepit religionis Christianae sacramentum. Ceterum si et retro decucurrit, habuit utique authenticam paraturam, per quam ad Lucam usque pervenit, cuius testimonio adsistente Lucas quoque possit admitti.

If he therefore who gave the light to Luke chose to have his predecessors' authority for his faith as well as his preaching, much more must I require for Luke's gospel the authority which was necessary for the gospel of his master. It is another matter if in Marcion's opinion the Christian religion, with its sacred content, begins with the discipleship of Luke.

Of course we know the Marcionites did not think this. But this use of 'si' makes clear the rhetorical character of Tertullian's attack. As I have said many times before Tertullian wasn't interested in science or the truth. He is just employing rhetoric throughout.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:05 pm
But do you see the trickery here? He [Tertullian] just finished referencing the name 'apostolic', the name Marcionites gave to their gospel and canon. No the name 'Paul' doesn't appear at the front of the gospel ... The argument here is disingenuous when you know the canon including the gospel was called 'the apostolikon' - the Marcionites identified all their writings as being written by the Apostle.

Yep.


Regarding -

Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body.

... Luke, however, was not an apostle, but only an 'apostolic man'; not a master, but [just] 'a disciple', and so inferior to a master ----at least as far subsequent to him as the apostle whom he followed (and that, no doubt, was Paul) was subsequent to the others¹; so that, if Marcion even bore his Gospel in the name of St. Paul himself (si sub ipsius Pauli nomine evangelium Marcion intulisset), the single authority of the document, destitute of all support from preceding authorities², would not be a sufficient basis for our faith.

¹ I just noted that says 'Paul was subsequent to 'the others' ' (and Luke was subsequent to Paul)

² It's interesting too, that Tertullian says Paul is "destitute of all support from preceding authorities"

Then chapter 3 closes with the most massive cluster of 'ifs' yet seen in the work:

Proinde si et pseudapostoli irrepserant, horum quoque qualitas edita est, circumcisionem vindicantium et Iudaicos fastos. Adeo non de praedicatione sed de conversatione a Paulo denotabantur, aeque denotaturo si quid de deo creatore aut Christo eius errassent. Igitur distinguenda erunt singula. Si apostolos praevaricationis et simulationis suspectos Marcion haberi queritur usque ad evangelii depravationem, Christum iam accusat, accusando quos Christus elegit. Si vero apostoli quidem integrum evangelium contulerunt, de sola convictus inaequalitate reprehensi, pseudapostoli autem veritatem eorum interpolaverunt, et inde sunt nostra digesta, quod erit germanum illud apostolorum instrumentum quod adulteros passum est quod Paulum illuminavit et ab eo Lucam? Aut si tam funditus deletum est, ut cataclysmo quodam, ita inundatione falsariorum obliteratum, iam ergo nec Marcion habet verum. Aut si ipsum erit verum, id est apostolorum, quod Marcion habet solus2 (et quomodo nostro consonat quod non apostolorum, sed Lucae refertur?) aut si non statim Lucae deputandum est quo Marcion utitur, quia nostro consonat, scilicet adulterato etiam circa titulum, ceterum3 apostolorum est. Iam ergo et nostrum, quod illi consonat, aeque apostolorum est, sed adulteratum de titulo quoque.

And besides, if false apostles also had crept in, their character too is indicated: they were insisting on circumcision, and the Jewish calendar. So it was not for their preaching but for their forms of activity that they were marked down as wrong by Paul, though he would no less have marked them wrong if they had been in any error on the subject of God the Creator, or of his Christ. Therefore we have to distinguish between the two cases. If Marcion's complaint is that the apostles are held suspect of dissimulation or pretence, even to the debasing of the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by thus accusing those whom Christ has chosen. If however the gospel which the apostles compared with
Paul's was beyond reproach, and they were rebuked only for inconsistency of conduct, and yet false apostles have falsified the truth of their gospels, and from them our copies are derived, what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators—that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke? Or if it has been completely destroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one. Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours? Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours—though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title—then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified in its title.

Of what value is any of this rhetoric? How do you develop a firm opinion about the Marcionite canon - the 'apostolic canon' - out of this pile of nonsense? There simply isn't anything here to work with.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:14 pm
... Tertullian wasn't interested in 'science' or the truth. He is just employing rhetoric throughout.

Yep. Which is why I wonder if Tertullian was writing before the NT canon or its main books were finalised, or even close to being finalised.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 9:23 pm
Then chapter 3 closes with the most massive cluster of 'ifs' yet seen in the work:

And besides, if false apostles also had crept in, their character too is indicated: they were insisting on circumcision, and the Jewish calendar. So it was not for their preaching but for their forms of activity that they were marked down as wrong by Paul, though he would no less have marked them wrong if they had been in any error on the subject of God the Creator, or of his Christ.

Therefore we have to distinguish between the two cases. If Marcion's complaint is that the apostles are held suspect of dissimulation or pretence, even to the debasing of the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by thus accusing those whom Christ has chosen.

If however the gospel which the apostles compared with Paul's was beyond reproach, and they were rebuked only for inconsistency of conduct, and yet false apostles have falsified the truth of their gospels, and from them our copies are derived, what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators —that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke?

Or if it has been completely destroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one. Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours?

Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours —though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title— then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified in its title.

Of what value is any of this rhetoric? How do you develop a firm opinion about the Marcionite canon - the 'apostolic canon' - out of this pile of nonsense? There simply isn't anything here to work with.
.

It's as if Tertullian is not aware of the texts.


Interestingly, Tertullian says this at the start of chap 3 of Adv Marc. bk IV -


¹ Paul is also dealing with other apostles

² Tertullian refers to other apostles with their own genuine Gospels


Seems like warring sects/factions galore ...


eta: also note "it must have had its own authentic material/s, by means of which it found its own way down to St. Luke" - so Luke did not write original material(?)

The question is why would you construct a thesis in such a curious manner. The bottom line is:

1. Tertullian offers no solid biographical details about Marcion
2. Tertullian does not reveal or systematically go through the contents of a published text called the Antitheses
3. Tertullian does not reveal or systematically go through the contents of the Marcionite gospel
4. Tertullian offers no concrete eyewitness testimony about the Marcionite religion

So we have to ask - of what value is his testimony? I am struck by the fact that eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship joins in Tertullian's Marcion-bashing as if Marcion and his religion is visible in Adversus Marcionem. The point here is that the voyeurism that religious apologists did in recent times is quite applicable to Tertullian himself. I think Tertullian might have gathered together a number of pre-existent Greek texts and 'cheered' the authors on as they pummeled Marcion not having a clue himself about who Marcion was, what his gospel looked like or what his religion was really about. Moderns do it, so why not Tertullian himself.

They make a lot about 'bullying' today. Back in the day we just called it - a boys passage to adulthood. Maybe we forget how much fun young men had 'piling on' when one youth abused a weaker members of the pack but that's what's really going on with the Church Fathers. Word has gotten out that 'Marcion' has gotten out of favor with the alpha dog in the pack and various lower ranked dogs are lining up to have a go at him. The arguments don't matter. Each pack member is just trying to demonstrate his loyalty to the alpha dog, the leader of the pack. The same thing happened in recent times with Morton Smith. Both Marcion and Morton were dead when these postmortems took place. What might have started cleverly with Stephen Carlson ended up in a massive boondoggle at the SBL conference where a team of psychologists was called in to 'examine' the modern heretic and pronounce him 'mentally unstable.' Undoubtedly the low point in contemporary religious scholarship.

The point is that over time we lose sight of the actual situation in reality because of an inner cruelty that lies repressed in our cultivated civility. Whatever Marcion was, by the time Tertullian published these five books (even by the third time he published it if you believe the literal words of the incipit) we are so far removed from Marcion, his religion and his canon that all we are left with is the barest outline of the original 'thing.' We have before us a caricature - in fact three or four caricatures (1) Tertullian's 'corrupting Luke' ship-owner (2) Ephrem's corrupter of a gospel harmony (3) Eznik's gnostic 'mythopoet' and (4) the various examples of what is clearly an unstable tradition (viz. the 'two gods' vs 'three gods' tradition, Apelles, the two Marcionites in De Recta in Deum Fide.

That the instinct of scholars is always to oversimplify and draw a straight line where no fair assessment of the data will allow a straight line is to some degree understandable. As scientists in the loosest sense we all want certainty. We want to use language to create a certain thing. But the reality is that we have to somehow reconcile the underlying conflict between:

1. Irenaeus's claim of a deliberate corrupting of Luke vs Ephrem's and the ur-text of Adversus Marcionem's corrupting of a gospel harmony
2. Irenaeus's periodic reference to a Persian style dualist with consistent evidence for a modified form of an Alexandrian Jewish tripartate godhead including Irenaeus himself (see book four's explicit testimony of Marcion's dividing the godhead between two powers of judgement and mercy)!
3. Marcion the 'Jew-hater' vs. Marcion the Jew

In the end, the dualist Marcion the Jew-hating corrupter of Luke caricature won out. But I happen to believe the Alexandrian Jewish mystic associated with a single long 'harmony gospel' tradition is older given the evidence of explicit rewriting of the text behind Adversus Marcionem. Regardless of where you come down on the issue the idea that anyone should be 'certain' about Marcion, his religion and his canon is so stupid given the paucity of reliable evidence, the judgement of that person should be seriously questioned.

To Secret Alias,

But this older text acknowledges Marcion's erasure of things found now only in Matthew. From memory the most frequent accusation of erasure deals with things from Matthew not things now found in Luke. At the very least the accusation of erasure from Matthew is indistinguishable from that made about Luke. 'The gospel' is a gospel which - at least initially - is one part Matthew, one part Luke (from our perspective).

But how do you explain Tertullian saying Marcion's gospel is a truncated gLuke, and in the same book, would infer there is a lot of gMatthew stuff in the same gospel? That does nor make sense.
Tertullian could not be so stupid into characterizing gMarcion as a mutilated gLuke (as did Irenaeus) and then comment on the Marcionite gospel containing a lot of gMatthew material.
Note: If you think you have evidence a verse (or part of it) of gMatthew is missing in gMarcion, that would mean the verses before or after the missing one were existing in gMarcion. If not, how could Tertullian declare a verse (or part of one) of gMatthew missing if the context verse(s) is/are not existing in gMarcion?
AM, book IV:

Now, of the authors whom we possess [John, Matthew, Mark, Luke], Marcion seems to have singled out Luke for his mutilating process.

The allusion to the so-called missing gMatthew verses or bits can be explained by:
A) Tertullian's full (and true!) gospel was actually a four parts one (the four canonicals) while the one of Marcion was that mutilated gLuke. To oppose Marcion (or rather the Marcionites), Tertullian suggested that Marcion missed/erased/expurgated some verse(s), or part of one, (from gMatthew) which would contradict his beliefs.
Or
B) Through faulty memory, Tertullian would attribute words from gMatthew as being in gLuke.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1757&hilit=The+Marc ... f+Matthew.
AM, Book IV:

The same authority of the apostolic churches will afford evidence to the other Gospels also, which we possess equally through their means, and according to their usage--I mean the Gospels of John and Matthew--whilst that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter's whose interpreter Mark was. For even Luke's form of the Gospel men unsually ascribe to Paul. And it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters. Well, then, Marcion ought to be called to a strict account concerning these (other Gospels) also, for having omitted them, and insisted in preference on Luke; as if they, too, had not had free course in the churches, as well as Luke's Gospel, from the beginning.

Cordially, Bernard