Juststeve

Shesh:

Surely there is a difference between “the first Christianity” and the “first Christianity that had an established canon of writings”. Macionism may qualify as the latter but I really don’t see how it can be the former. The very existence of the Christian writing that Marcion assembled into his canon demonstrates the existence of Christian writers before his canon could be assembled.

Steve

stephan huller

Y'all

There is only a difference between 'original Christianity' and 'original Christian group to establish a canon' if you assume the Acts paradigm of a 'primitive Church.' What I mean by that is that Moses is said to be the first to establish Israel and a Hebrew religion even though it is universally recognized that there must have been some primitive Semitic religion which got refined with Egyptian elements at the time of the Exodus (whenever that was). No one seems too troubled with allowing there to be this 'primitive Semitic faith in Egypt' when trying to reconstruct Jewish religion. The same thing should be true with Christianity which is really a messianic fulfillment religion within the original expectation established by Ezra in the name of Moses (that's a mouthful).

In other words, if Christianity is said to be the fulfillment of the coming of 'one like Moses' (Deut 18.18). The religion established in the Apostolikon (the second half of the Marcionite NT) around the Gospel of Christ (the first half of the Marcionite NT) then Marcionitism was the first to make a convincing claim of 'messianic fulfilment' of the original expectation. There might have been some primitive claim that Jesus was the Christ but the Marcionites brushed this aside and said that Jesus was not the messiah expected in the OT. He was Chrestos - which is something divine and different than Christos.

The Marcionite tradition argued that the guy who wrote the NT (not many 'guys' but one guy - the apostle) was the Christ announced by Jesus. This claim was later appropriated by the Montanists for 'Montanus' (I am not sure this was a real name), the Manichaeans for 'Mani' (a diminutive of menachem, one of the titles of the messiah) and the Muslims for 'Mohammed' (the strange favor shown Edessa in early Islam hints at a Muslim appropriation of Marcionite ideas; perhaps the hanifs were Marcionites).

There is evidence within the Marcionite readings of the gospel that they reacted against an original gospel associated with Peter which made the claim that Jesus was the Christ. The point of course is that this tradition which historically insignificant or defeated only to be resurrected by Polycarp, Irenaeus et al in the late second century (through the Hypomnemata which first argued for the existence of a mythical 'Jerusalem Church' established through living relatives of Jesus).

Sheshbazzar

Steve, it is acceptable to rephrase my statement, but not proper to employ "......." direct quotation marks when so doing.

I did not write “first Christianity that had an established canon of writings”.

These are exactly types of little changes that creep in and tend to lead to latter confusions.

But this serves well as a working example of what contributed to the corrupting of the Christian texts as they were passed from hand to hand, and from sect to sect, and from Christianity to Christianity, and from language to language.
At each transition or translation there is opportunity in the 'rephrasing' of adding, altering, or changing significant details, either intentionally or unconsciously and inadvertently.

Someone reading your argument and 'quotation' without having access to what I had actually wrote, could with the loosing that context and detail, easily take the first step down the path to misunderstanding or misinterpreting what was originally written.

What you 'quoted' was not exactly what I wrote, but your 'version' of what I wrote. This is the problem that particularly plagues our remaining Manichaen texts.


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Juststeve

Stephen:

There is no need to resort to the book of Acts to establish the existence of a Christian Church that pre-dated the Marconite Canon. Paul addresses his letters to particular churches and those letters later turn up in the Marcionite Canon. Since the churches must have existed before Paul wrote to them, and the letters before the Marcionite Canon, the churches existed before the Marcionite canon. No need to resort to Acts at all.

In light of the fact that Christian churches existed before Marcion wouldn’t their brand of Christianity be more original than his?

Steve

Juststeve

Shesh:

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to quote you but I can see how my sloppy use of quotation marks could have caused that impression. I was just trying to set off two phrases that I was trying to contrast.

Steve

Sheshbazzar

Understood and no offense taken.
In fact I owe a thanks to you for setting up this 'textbook illustration' of how thoughts and writings can get gradually changed during their transmission.
This happened in over less than an half-hour.
Imagine what changes could creep in over in over four centuries of transmission, and between three to five different languages, and between groups with competing ideas.

Juststeve

Shesh:

You're quite welcome. I'm always glad to serve as a poor example.

Steve

stephan huller

Why do letters to churches prove the existence of the primitive Church of Acts?

Toto

That's want they want you to believe.

But this assumes the orthodox dating and the orthodox interpretation of these scriptures. And we know that this particular issue was very important to the orthodox, and a likely topic for invention.

You can't be sure that "Paul" addressed letters to particular existing churches, as opposed to the author writing a treatise or a fictional work in the form of a letter - which was a common practice then as now (see Ancient Epistolary Fictions: The Letter in Greek Literature (or via: amazon.co.uk), preview at Google Books, review here.)

We don't know when these letters were written, and we have no actual evidence of these churches outside of Paul's letters. It has been speculated that the letter to the Corinthians was actually meant for the Kerinthians, a heretical sect. "Paul" writes to a church in Rome that supposedly existed before 60 CE, which seems improbable.

stephan huller

... and the Marcionites said the epistles were directed to different cities and places (ephesians as to the Laodiceans). The Ephesian example is particularly interesting because (a) some Catholic MSS do not provide a location and (b) Ephesus is so central to cult of Polycarp and John.

One can make a case that this makes a strong case for Catholic tampering with a Marcionite original Apostolikon. Look at Onesimus ending up as the bishop of Ephesus in the equally false Ignatian epistle (from humble beginnings in Philemon)

And there is the mystery of the Epistle to the Alexandrians (which I think was the original name of 1 Corinthians)