On dating the Gospels late e.g. 120CE

[Kapyong]

Gday Stephan,

You've covered some ground since yesterday, here I am just summarising your points :

There is no evidence I know of which could be used to suggest that the Marcionites thought Paul or the apostles was written in any period after 70 CE.
..
But the bottom line is that a date of sometime between the 'apostolic age' and 70 CE is clearly defined here. I don't see how a second century date can even work here.
...
That person [the writer of both the Apostolikon and Euagelion ] was Paul on both counts
...
Paul wrote the gospel, Paul wrote the apostolic epistles. That is Marcion 101. No need for explanation here.
...
the term 'apostolikon' seems to have been used by both Catholics and Marcionites alike:

...
Use of Apostolikon by Clement Alex., Celsus, Irenaeus, Eusebius,

Interesting stuff ... it kind of suggests that prior to the "New Testament" there was a two-book "Euangelion and Apostolikon" used by all Christians, not just Marcionites. This division would also explain why the apostles are not credited with authorship of the gospels -- their role in the scriptures was conceived of as authors of epistles. Once the Marcionites started this innovation with Paul, the Catholics followed with letters from their guys.

Exactly.
...

To put it in the simplest terms possible - 'the evangelic' portion of the NT = the hello, 'the apostolic' portion of the NT = the goodbye, presumably of the same heavenly being.

So, just to be clear your argument is that :
* Paul wrote the original Gospel and the Ten Letters
* he wrote before 70CE
* there was a two-fold category of writings from the beginning - the Euagellion and the Apostolikon

Sometimes Stephan, you leave your topic point unspoken because it's obvious, or leave us hanging with a rhetorical question that points to your conclusion. I don't always follows your arguments, sorry.

Kapyong

[Stephan Huller]

"The ancients" believed all sorts of things - a great diversity of contradictory viewpoints and interpretations.

But if I were in the business of studying cats my job would be to understand how they think and behave not to judge them.

The issue is that you are just picking sides instead of engaging in an independent evidence-based investigation of the matter.

No it has become quite standard in the study of early Christianity to assume or at least consider Marcionite primacy. It is an argument that has a lot going for it.

The Marcionites ... believed that "Paul" wrote the original gospel,

Yes according to most real scholars as well. It is what they claimed and it is what the Church Fathers report as coming out of their mouths.

and that the Catholic Luke is a later interpolated version of it.

Yes this is what the Church Fathers record the Marcionites as saying.

Irenaeus, on the other hand, believed that "Luke" wrote the original and that the Marcionites mutilated it.

Yes that's right.

Now, it is theoretically possible that just one of these views is incorrect, or that both are incorrect.

One is certainly truer that the other, one is likely going to be found to be more correct than the other.

Simply asserting that "of course the Marcionites are correct" is not an argument.

If I said that I was only reflecting my own POV based on years of study. This is an informal gathering place. It is not an academic symposium or conference.

If you want to establish your conclusion rationally - rather just emotively announcing it - you need provide evidence that is relevant to determining actual authorship - not "who sect X believed the author was".

I thought I had or at least I thought - since you were pontificating about Marcion - I had assumed you were familiar with the sources. Now we know you don't even know the first things about the sources. That is worth something.

[Stephan Huller]

Hi Kapyong

I am sorry for any confusion. Just to be clear I only argue when I think someone is acting like a complete bonehead about something which I consider to be self-evident based on the discussion of evidence. I don't come here to argue. I want to learn new things. Like going to a bordello. I don't take what goes on very seriously.

The reason I don't take things seriously is that things are much more complicated than a typical thumbnail sketch. For instance:

* Paul wrote the original Gospel and the Ten Letters

The reality is that (a) I don't know if the apostle's name was Paul. Also (b) it might have been the original gospel. Early sources sometimes speak in terms of an 'oral gospel' associated with Peter and a 'final, perfect' gospel written by Mark or Paul. I don't know. I am pretty sure it wasn't ten letters but I don't know how many there were, what order they appeared as in the canon or what their names were. Something like our collection of letters is a safe bet.

* he wrote before 70CE

Yes, I think this is certain. Perhaps after. But not fifty years after the destruction.

* there was a two-fold category of writings from the beginning - the Euagellion and the Apostolikon

Yes there appears to be a two fold division to the canon right from the beginning. I am starting to think this is associated with god 'coming' and 'going' (or hello and goodbye) but ideas like love seize the mind and later prove to be fleeting.

[theomise]

"The ancients" believed all sorts of things - a great diversity of contradictory viewpoints and interpretations.

But if I were in the business of studying cats my job would be to understand how they think and behave not to judge them.

The point is, you ARE judging them. You believe the Marcionites are correct about Pauline authorship, and (e.g.) Irenaeus is incorrect. You are just not judging in a rational manner based on relevant evidence.

The issue is that you are just picking sides instead of engaging in an independent evidence-based investigation of the matter.

No it has become quite standard in the study of early Christianity to assume or at least consider Marcionite primacy. It is an argument that has a lot going for it.

The present argument has nothing at all to do with Marcionite primacy. Try to stay on topic.

The Marcionites ... believed that "Paul" wrote the original gospel,

Yes according to most real scholars as well. It is what they claimed and it is what the Church Fathers report as coming out of their mouths.

I don't disagree. However, it is still an INFERENCE based on assuming that the church fathers correctly reported the beliefs of the Marcionites. We have no independent corroboration, so it is not a certainty. Of course, you have to go by at least some of what the church fathers said if you want to make any claims about Marcion at all. So that's what everyone assumes.

and that the Catholic Luke is a later interpolated version of it.

Yes this is what the Church Fathers record the Marcionites as saying.

Irenaeus, on the other hand, believed that "Luke" wrote the original and that the Marcionites mutilated it.

Yes that's right.

Now, it is theoretically possible that just one of these views is incorrect, or that both are incorrect.

One is certainly true that one view is going to be found to be more correct than the other.

What? Are you saying it is "certainly true" that Paul wrote the Marcionite gospel? I hope not, because that would be insane. Both theories are probably false, and one is not "more correct" than the other.

Simply asserting that "of course the Marcionites are correct" is not an argument.

If I said that I was only reflecting my own POV based on years of study. This is an informal gathering place. It is not an academic symposium or conference.

Weak cop-out. If you had anything of any evidential value to put forward, you would have done so many posts ago. If you want to call me out for making a poor argument or for 'poor scholarship', fine. But be prepared to back up your charges with more than just apologetics and transparent sophistry.

If you want to establish your conclusion rationally - rather just emotively announcing it - you need provide evidence that is relevant to determining actual authorship - not "who sect X believed the author was".

I thought I had or at least I thought - since you were pontificating about Marcion - I had assumed you were familiar with the sources. Now we know you don't even know the first things about the sources. That is worth something.

More vague posturing from the pleader. If there is a "source" that empirically establishes Pauline authorship of the Marcionite gospel, you certainly have not referenced it anywhere. And that's because it does not exist.

[Kapyong]

Gday all,

So here is a summary of where we stand from a broad-brush view.

Initially,
I started an thread trying deliberately to put the Gospel as LATE as possible.
There is much opposition to this idea - especially internal evidence.

Secondly,
Blood put Paul LATE :

c 125 Apostolikon of Marcionites
c 125 Euangelion of Marcionites

There is opposition to this idea - e.g. Marcionites having Paul soon after Jesus

Thirdly,
Stephan Huller puts the Apostolikon and Euangelion EARLY and by ONE Marcionite author, call him 'Paul' for convenience. He quotes the fathers often referring to these two terms - mostly late examples. He compares the two as 'coming' and 'going' documents - hello and goodbye.
There is opposition to this idea - why does Stephan Huller assume the Marcionite view is true ?


So, situation normal at BC&H - some interesting theories, and all with critics.

The question of the Marcionites is also critical for my late Gospel experiment, but I ignored him before due to the other argument - So where do I put Marcion? I shall take the view he redacted Luke and put his Euagellion just after Luke - 140s-150s, a fairly mainstream date. My experiment is squeezing the Gospels into an ever decreasing band, from late 130s to 150 or so, with all the action squeezed into a short time, here is the key excerpt of my latest list :

130s Proposed creation of the first Gospel G.Mark
130s? Papias' clues of written Gospels come from Eusebius
130s Clement, knows G.Mark among some sayings of Jesus
130s Apocalypse of Peter knows Mark/Matthew
140s Proposed G/Matthew and G.Luke and Acts
140-150s Marcionite Euagellion and Apostolikon
140s Epistles of the Apostles talks about writing Gospels
138-161 Aristides mentions an un-named singular Gospel that is 'recently preached'
150s - Proposed G.John

This is still all my experimental late Gospel dating - because not everyone agrees that the internal evidence is good for dating because it amounts to knowing the mind of the author (e.g. neilgodfrey).

Essentially I am trying to place the Gospel in the Bar Kochba period, and saying the author wrote a historical theological mimicry that echoed his disaster in the 130s with the disaster of the 70s. We don't know what message he was really trying to convey at all.


Kapyong

[MrMacSon]

Gday all,

So here is a summary of where we stand from a broad-brush view.

• <snip>

Thirdly,
Stephan Huller puts the Apostolikon and Euangelion EARLY and by ONE Marcionite author, call him 'Paul' for convenience. He quotes the fathers often referring to these two terms - mostly late examples. He compares the two as 'coming' and 'going' documents - hello and goodbye.

I think Stephan unnecessarily confuses the issues & his arguments ...

• * 1/ by referring to a Marcionite "New Testament"
  
  • ~ Blood repeats that dubious term here
    ~ as does Stephan again in another post on the same page; and
    ~ Stephan refers to an "original gospel [of Paul's]" two posts up on this page
  and
  * 2/ by referring to a "Marcionite Gospel" here

I think it's better to talk in terms of

• Pauline epistles & texts; & [possible] 'pre-Pauline texts'; and
• synoptic & canonical gospels; and possible pre-gospel-texts for them

because of a proposition that Stephan previously raised, that I refer to in the next post ....

[MrMacSon]

Beyond what has already been cited about Paul in the Marcionite tradition, that he was 'brought to the side' of Jesus in (the third) heaven soon after the calling of the other apostles, it should be noted that the Marcionite and other 'heretical' traditions also understand Paul to have engaged or reacted against a group of apostles headed by Peter.

This is also a conclusion (or the conclusion) of a Dutch Radical, AD Loman; as outlined in this previous post (in Oct 2013; in another thread, of course)

• 
  
  On page 50, Hermann Detering summarizes Loman's proposal in 1881:

  "Christianity in its origin was nothing else than a Jewish-Messianic movement ... the figure of Jesus had never existed, but represented a symbolization and personification of thoughts that could only make full headway in the second century. A gnostic-messianic [Pauline] community later appeared alongside the Jewish-Christian messianic [Petrine] community. In the period between 70 and 135 CE the two groups opposed one another with bitter animosity.
  
  "Only in the middle of the second century did they achieve a reconciliation, in which the gnostic community [then?] had Paul as its representative and the [then?]Jewish-Christian community had Peter. The result of this process of reconciliation was the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. ... the letters of Paul are all inauthentic and represent the product of the newly-believing, gnostic-messianic community."

  
  

There are actually two models which are mentioned. The first is similar to what appears in our canonical texts (i.e. Paul condemning Peter to his face etc). The other is that Paul improved upon the understanding of Peter. The first obviously might be argued to only reflect the familiar contents of orthodox scripture.

Nevertheless the second is very widespread and necessarily also assumes the existence of apostles in apostolic era. This can't be dismissed as a 'fictitious' invention I don't think because it acknowledges that Paul used pre-existent scriptures and modified them (in the manner of Mark's development of his gospel with the preaching of Peter in Clement of Alexandria). It is hard to imagine a fictitious Paul to begin with.

re ".. Paul improved upon the understanding of Peter]" - this could have happened later, too -

It seems there was lots of scriptures, texts, epistles (or whatever) that were 'modified'/redacted; and these modifications were later 'modified'/redacted -

it all seems to be layer-upon-layer-upon-layer: 'cumulative elaboration'.

Hence

.... an anonymous 'real author' in the second century writing about a fictitious Paul modifying a fictitious 'gospel' written or told by a fictitious Peter about a fictitious Jesus (!!) ... There is no evidence I know of which could be used to suggest that the Marcionites thought Paul or the apostles was written in any period after 70 CE.

Pauline-texts, or pre-Pauline texts, and pre-synoptic-gospel texts, could have been written before 70 CE, and modified to include or refer to ~70 CE events; and then be further modified/redacted in subsequent generations or centuries, as proposed above.

We don't seem to know what Marcion thought.
.

[Kapyong]

Gday,

It seems there was lots of scriptures, texts, epistles (or whatever) that were 'modified'/redacted; and these modifications were later 'modified'/redacted -

it all seems to be layer-upon-layer-upon-layer: 'cumulative elaboration'.

I think that is the answer to many a problem - and it's hardly a maverick view that many of our documents went through stages of redaction. One model presented here (by theomise) had various documents presented in stages, that seems like the way to go.

Pauline-texts, or pre-Pauline texts, and pre-synoptic-gospel texts, could have been written before 70 CE, and modified to include or refer to ~70 CE events; and then be further modified/redacted in subsequent generations or centuries, as proposed above.

Quite possible - three stages of evolution, we know Paul's letters have been redacted in various ways.


Kapyong

[MrMacSon]

[Stephan Huller]

why does Stephan Huller assume the Marcionite view is true ?

I don't assume it's true. I just assume its the oldest because Irenaeus (and Polycarp) already know the Marcionite position and can be demonstrated (especially in the case of Irenaeus) to have developed a theological reaction against it. I am always interested in context. Your wife has sex with you because she feels sorry for you. Your whore has sex with you because you pay her money. In both cases there's sex but the context is different. Context is critical (especially in the case you fall into the trap of mistaking superior lovemaking skills for love).

Getting back to the issue at hand, Irenaeus is our context for almost everything in early Christianity. If you want to go beyond Irenaeus there are really only two ways to go - Marcion and Clement of Alexandria. To understand Marcion, you have to gather together the things said about him and make sense of some underlying context which is difficult, but we've started to that. That context does not allow for a second century dating of Paul IMO.