TedM

What are you concluding here--that o kai parelabon was not in the original?
And, that without those words there was no tradition? I don't see how you get from one to the other since what spin and toto have been claiming is that the word is technical in that the information passed along was from someone with authority. The claim does not restrict the use of a tradition or creed in without our word. If Paul got it from someone on the street, who it could be argued had no special authority, and thus Paul would not use the phrase, it still could have been a tradition, and a creed, learned and passed on successively verbatim.

Plus, and maybe more simply, the information after the phrase in question doesn't require that the phrase be included at all.

So to me the impact of this interpolation is very minor indeed. All it does is points to a possible Catholic scribe trying to bolster the Pauline subordination concept.

Feel free to correct any misunderstandings.

Your 'one interpolation' was the whole block. Your OP on the subject, which took out the entire block to demonstrate how smooth you thought the passage is without it, demonstrates that position quite clearly. If you stand by that claim, then the Tertullian/Irenaeus issue (ie our phrase wasn't in their copies) necessitates that there were multiple interpolations.

That's why I commented as I did--you can talk about pieces being interpolated, but if you are still hanging onto the concept of the whole block having been interpolated, you have to deal with the added complications of it being done over multiple occasions.


Ted

stephan huller

I am concluding that Tertullian's reading wasn't a mistake, it represented at least one textual tradition (pre-Jeromian Latin) and it was certainly the Marcionite reading as well given the agreement with their principles (i.e. removing the words removes the idea that Paul learned the gospel from men).

No there were two textual traditions but the addition of o kai parelabon contradicts the overriding sense of various other passages (Galatians 1 most obviously) and the whole Marcionite weltanschauung.

This is the implicit desire of the Catholics to remold Paul from the portrait developed in sources like the Acts of Archelaus (originally written in Syriac and now corrupt but still provides the closest glimpse to a Marcionite document).

But if o kai parelabon is an addition, we can associate its purpose with those who added it (i.e. those who promoted Acts as a historical map to the early Church). The Marcionites did not accept Acts and the idea that Paul compromised his own divine revelation with the beliefs associated with a church of mere men.

But we now have to accept that not merely the Marcionites but also the early Roman Church shared the reading. This means that o kai parelabon was an addition. It was not merely the Marcionites who 'cut it out.' Those promoting the Catholic vision of 'Paul' added it and from there we can piece together why they wanted to add it to the text.

But the Marcionites clearly promoted the idea that the gospel came to its apostle through a divine revelation/the Holy Spirit etc. According to Acts there were Christians before Paul. According to the original tradition behind the Acts of Archelaus Paul is the Paraclete, the Christ who reveals the gospel, the foundation of Christianity.

Once again the question becomes what is the context for this addition. There has to be another addition somewhere in the Apostolikon which helps explain what Paul received. My guess is that Galatians chapter 2 provides some context, where the apostle goes to Jerusalem to meet the elite of the Church established allegedly before his revelation:

While this still doesn't quite straighten things out it opens the door to the possibility to a compromise. The Catholics would keep the Marcionite idea that 'the gospel' (now not a text but something else) was untouched by the elites of Jerusalem but that he had agreed nevertheless to 'receive' various points of doctrine already in existence before his revelation.

The most obvious example is 1 Cor. 11:23 - "For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread..." We have to remember that the Catholics did not believe that Paul met Jesus or partook in the Passion. As such this is an example of the 'reception' in 1 Corinthians 15.

What is all of this suggesting? It would seem to reconfirm the traditional notion that - in the Catholic system at least - the apostle received or learned core points of doctrine from the elders in Jerusalem. His 'gospel' - whatever that was - was allegedly left untouched.

archibald

And the epistles.

This is where you appear to shift from evidenced and therefore more resasonable matters to something a lot more speculative.

There does not have to be another addition. By any means. As far as I can see.

Apart from anything else, if the 'adders' had wanted to do a consistent job, they would have said that when Paul met the others, he 'received' something. Ties in with the 1 Cor 15 v3 thing. Easy as pie. They could also have amended Gal 1:12. That would have removed contradictions, and would make more sense, if what you suggest had been their motive.

stephan huller

I don't think it is beyond the realm of possibilities that the Marcionites had the original understanding of the apostle. The Catholics had to subvert that understanding but they couldn't completely trash it. Hence the effort to move in from the edges (i.e. to define 'gospel' in vague terms, leave it untouched, but add the bit about receiving doctrine from the elders in Jerusalem). I don't see how anyone can argue that this is implausible. It might be speculative but so is everything about earliest Christianity.

The one thing that is not speculative is spin's assertion with respect to what 'reception' means in 1 Corinthians 11 and 15. It is now our duty to understand how the Marcionite tradition (and Tertullian) would have developed an understanding which plainly contradicts the idea of Paul 'receiving as a student from a teacher.' It is worth noting that McGowan demonstrates how often Marcionites and Montanists were confused in antiquity.

archibald

Yes, but 'not being beyond the realm of possibilities' does not seem to warrant 'there had to be an interpolation'. Equally, I see others saying, 'it is an interpolation' and 'we can be certain we have encountered an interpolation'.

I do accept that you can't qualify your convictions with the preface, 'if my hypothesis is correct...' each and every time. :]


Agreed, IMO, quite a while ago. :]

I might be tempted to add that another thing which is not purely speculative is the partial interpolation of, 'which I also received'.


It may be just me, but I don't see a problem in them taking that view. Surely they could simply have been relying on Gal 1:12?

Incidentally, I'm curious about Marcion and what he believed (not forgetting of course that whatever it was, it could have been wrong). Do you, for example, find more clear evidence that, say, he thought of Paul as the 1st apostle? Pardon me for not being sure, but it seems some here even discount that there were other followers before him, and I'm not sure if you would subscribe. On the face of it, it seems unlikely, to me.

Btw, if you clarified what you read in Gal 1 vv6-7, I think it would help me to see where you are coming from a bit better. Maybe.

stephan huller

While I haven't found any rejection of 'receive' in 1 Corinthians 11:23 it is worth noting that Harnack and McGowan identify the Marcionite text as 'This is the type of my body.' A number of Church Fathers are aware of this reading including Theodore of Mopsuestia and Gabriel Qatraya of Nisbis (who reject it) and the Testament of Our Lord, Sarapion, Cyril of Jerusalem, the Latin Canon of the Mass (Pseudo-Ambrose de Sacramentis) etc who receive it. In many of these sources it is followed by 'this is the type of my blood.' The reality is of course is that the bread and the drink are properly designated types. I don't know where the idea of identifying things that aren't actually flesh and blood as flesh and blood started. The Greek terminology varies in man of these cases lending me to believe that the original language of transmission may have been Aramaic

archibald

Personally, I now think there may be something odd about 11:23. For starters, it's arguably not 'the gospel', or an interpretation, it's bio.

If you asked me for my layman's opinion, I might say, yes, there may have been a meal ritual, but it seems odd that Paul would have had, or claim to have had, one particular one described to him in detail during an hallucination. Not impossible though, since it wasn't just a typical ritual meal, but the one the 'night before the big day'. And paul could have been claiming to have received it during a vision when in fact he had obtained it elsewhere.

Also, it's not in Acts, or anywhere else, I think?

Going back to verses 1-5, they seem to make more sense without the addition of 'I receive'. Even verses 6-8 would appear to be less confusing, from a 'logical' pov. Paul can add himself to the list, because he is no longer saying that he 'received' that info, just that he preached it to the Corinthians. What do you think?

Also, while we might speculate that Paul 'wouldn't' put himself at the end of the list, it's not actually contradictory to anything else in the epistles, or is it? Is it not in fact totally consistent with the remainder? Coming off the subs bench doesn't mean you see yourself as inferior to the team already on the pitch. I hope that analogy translates. :]

archibald

I presume this what you are referring to:

'And our Lord Jesus Christ, making no tarrying, in the space of one year restored multitudes of the sick to health, and gave back the dead to the light of life; and He did indeed embrace all things in the power of His own word. And wherein, forsooth, did He make any tarrying, so that we should have to believe Him to have waited so long, even to these days, before He actually sent the Paraclete? Nay, rather, as has been already said above, He gave proof of His presence with us forthwith, and did most abundantly impart Himself to Paul, whose testimony we also believe when he says, “Unto me only is this grace given.” [Eph. iii.8]'

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...n-acts-of.html

Now, it's the next bit which seems to present a more complicated picture:

For this is he who formerly was a persecutor of the Church of God, but who afterwards appeared openly before all men as a faithful minister of the Paraclete; by whose instrumentality His singular clemency was made known to all men, in such wise that even to us who some time were without hope the largess of His gifts has come. For which of us could have hoped that Paul, the persecutor and enemy of the Church, would prove its defender and guardian? Yea, and not that alone, but that he would become also its ruler, the founder and architect of the churches? Wherefore after him, and after those who were with Himself—that is, the disciples—we are not to look for the advent of any other (such), according to the Scriptures; for our Lord Jesus Christ says of this Paraclete, "He shall receive of mine." [1781] Him therefore He selected as an acceptable vessel; and He sent this Paul to us in the Spirit. Into him the Spirit was poured; [1782] and as that Spirit could not abide upon all men, but only on Him who was born of Mary the mother of God, so that Spirit, the Paraclete, could not come into any other, but could only come upon the apostles and the sainted Paul. "For he is a chosen vessel," He says, "unto me, to bear my name before kings and the Gentiles." [1783] The apostle himself, too, states the same thing in his first epistle, where he says: "According to the grace that is given to me of God, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering [1784] the Gospel of God." [1785] "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost." [1786] And again: "For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me by word and deed." [1787] "I am the last of all the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle. But by the grace of God I am what I am." [1788] And it, is his wish to have to deal with [1789] those who sought the proof of that Christ who spake in him, for this reason, that the Paraclete was in him:

http://christianbookshelf.org/archel...k_that_you.htm

How can Paul be both the Paraclete and a faithful minister of the Paraclete?

But even setting that aside, (there is probably an explanation), there is also:

.....so that Spirit, the Paraclete, could not come into any other, but could only come upon the apostles and the sainted Paul

(my boldings)

Overall, reading through all of the above, this sounds more like it's describing a preference to consider Paul the most important 'special' apostle, even that Paul considered himself to have received 'something unique', but not that he was necessarily the only one, or indeed the first one?

TedM

from wiki
I'm not up on Marcion, so may be off here, but: Does Paul write of two gods in this manner? I haven't seen it. Do the arguments against Marcion indicate that his epistles not only had information removed but actually had references to two gods? If not, why should one conclude that Marcion's interpretations about two gods came from Paul? Because of his 'secret' knowledge? Is that evidence, Stephan?


It's not difficult. Paul says so in Galatians. But he is so vague about it--even says that those other gospels are not even other gospels--that nobody can be sure that he didn't receive any information at all about the Christianity from other people.

stephan huller

The text is corrupt but the report comes from Osroene where Marcionitism was the official orthodoxy according to Bauer. Something like this is reported in Origen's Homily on Luke. The identification of Paul as the Paraclete is clearly more original as it fits better with the nature of the controversy which prompted the letter - i.e. a dispute over whether Paul claimed to be the Paraclete or announce someone else (= Mani) as this figure. The reference to the Paraclete as the Holy Spirit or any other diminishing of Paul's original identification as the Paraclete (i.e. the one Jesus heralded at the end of the Gospel of John) is a sign of Catholic corruption.

The text survives only in barbarous Latin even though Jerome tells us the text was originally composed in Syriac. Like most Marcionite material it went from Syriac to Greek to Latin (think Book Four and Five of Tertullian Against Marcion).

It is also worth noting that McGowan explicitly references Origen's report of the Marcionite gospel containing parts of the Gospel of John (= references to the Paraclete).