jgreen44

What think ye of this...?

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...arcionite.html

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...ry-pimpin.html

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...cret-mark.html

aa5874

But, just a few posts ago you were claiming Marcion did exist and now you are putting me onto links that are claiming Marcion was fiction.

As I told you before I try to avoid the opinions of those who may have HIDDEN agendas and try as much as possible to deal with sources of antiquity.

Based on the ABUNDANCE of sources of antiquity that mentioned Marcion and described him as just a man then I will accept that Marcion did exist unless new evidence can be found to contradict.

It appears to me that the character called Mark the supposed author of gMark is by far the least mentioned writer of all the Gospels. It must be noted that Marcion even in apologetic sources is mentioned far more times probably hundreds of times more than Mark.

jgreen44

I'm not claiming Marcion did not exist. I just wondered what you thought about this guy's theories. In any case I don't think Stephan Huller is claiming that Marcion did not exist so much as he is claiming that the man's actual identity was "Mark".

aa5874

But, this is getting real weird. If Stephan Huller is claiming that there was no-one named Marcion but Mark then it must be logical that Marcion did NOT exist.

Now if you read "Against Heresies by Irenaeus you will notice that there are several chapters on the doctrine of Marcus starting at chapter 13 and then at chapter 27 he deals with the doctrine of Marcion.

The doctrine of MARCUS appears to be different to the doctrine of Marcion.

Marcus and Marcion appear to be different persons.

jgreen44

But Stephan Huller is maintaining that...

"chapters 22 onward (of "Against Heresies") represent a later addition of Justin's Syntagma - then we have a very curious situation where Irenaeus DID NOT originally mention the Marcionites."

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...irenaeuss.html

aa5874

But, Marcion can be accounted for by Justin Martyr.

This is found in "First Apology" LVIII Now, Justin Martyr's First Apology is deemed to have been written BEFORE "Against Heresies" by Irenaeus so it does not make much real difference at what chapter Stephan Huller thinks "Against Heresies" ends.

Justin Martyr may well have been an eyewitness of Marcion since he was alive when Justin wrote his "First Apology"

Listen to Justin in "First Apology" XXVI Irenaeus may be irrelevant, he did not even know that Jesus could not have been FIFTY years old once he was crucified under Pilate and was 30 years old in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius.

Irenaeus could not even count or was probably the most uninformed bishop on the planet.

stephan huller

Hi my name is Stephan Huller and I was asked to explain my position. I asked someone else who had an account to post a fuller response (which I don't see know that I joined). The bottom line is that Justin's principle alleged witness to Marcion appears in chapter 26 of the Apology. I can demonstrate that this couldn't have been written by Justin. If you look back to chapter 23 Justin lays out his case against 'scandalous' Roman slander against Christianity. Chapter 24 is his first point. Chapter 25 his second. Chapter 26 is alleged to be his third point (he accuses the Romans of worshipping Simon Magus; Marcion is a footnote to that original report). The statue referenced in the report has been rediscovered and it has nothing to do with Simon Magus. it would also be impossible for a native of Samaria such as Justin to have mistaken Semo Sancus Dius Fidus for someone named Shimon. I would argue that the original third point in Justin's argument appears in Chapter 27 - an attack against pagan licentiousness which is Justin's last point in the original thesis viz. "infamous and impious actions." In short someone subsequent to Justin's original composition added the misidentification of Semo and the accompanying reference to Marcion.

ApostateAbe

Stephan Huller, that introduces a whole new set of ideas on top of all the other propositions being thrown about all over the place. If you are the same Stephan Huller who wrote The Real Messiah: The Throne of St. Mark and the True Origins of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk)--I am not actually trying to advertise your book for you by linking that, I am only trying to save the moderator a little trouble--then I imagine that your explanation ties into your general theory of Christian origins, a theory that may come off as either a headscratcher or preposterous to most observers. At least in that respect you are not alone. You'll have to compete with about a dozen other mythicists around here with their own peculiar theories. The ideas that carry the most weight--or at least they should carry the most weight--are the ideas that have the best explanatory power and scope, that tie into the evidence the best. If you have an explanation to bring to the table, it is in your advantage to supply it with evidence, though of course you don't have to. Most of us don't.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephan huller,

This is an excellent point. Good ancient rhetorical writers do not interrupt their arguments in this way. It is a sign that the work has been tampered with at this point.

One of the problems with early Christians works is establishing that they were not tampered with and parts added or subtracted. Since we do not have any knowledge of their publication history, we have only their structure to go by. Where elemental rhetorical rules of composition are broken, we can and should postulate that the work has been tampered with by a later writer.

By taking out the parts that have been added, we get a much better picture of what the original writer intended.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

aa5874

But, then Justin may have been a "not-so-good" rhetorical writer. And perhaps Justin was forced to write because he and others were "unjustly hated and wantonly abused."

So, you are admitting that claims of tampering cannot be really confirmed. Postulating that a work has been tampered with does not establish actual tampering.


You cannot established that anything about Marcion was actually added in "First Apology" unless you can find that Justin, in a known and established early writing, wrote about Marcion in a way that fundamentally contradicted the Marcion in "First Apology".

It simply cannot be shown that Marcion of Pontus did NOT exist and was NOT alive in the middle of the 2nd century.

And secondly it cannot be shown that any advantage was gained by the supposed interpolating passages about Marcion.

There is no claim that Marcion used the Pauline writings, or any Gospels in "First Apology", that is, even without the passages on Marcion there is virtually no significant change in Marcion's "First Apology".

It makes very little sense for an interpolator who may have been aware that it was claimed Marcion used the Pauline writings and gLuke and simply FORGOT to include that information when it is CLEAR that Justin did NOT write a single thing about Luke, or Paul.