dog-on

You have lost me here...

Is it your position that the epistles are post-Marcion?

angelo

Marcion was a Gnostic teacher born in Asia Minor, active in Rome around 144 ce. He acknowledged Paul as a great apostle. The question has to be asked is; where did he get his information? Hearsay? Myth, that had already 100 years head start on him?
That he regarded Paul as a Great Apostle is not correct. Paul never met or new a Jesus of Nazareth. So his information was wrong to begin with.
I think Marcion may have been seduced by the early christian propaganda that was around in abundance in those days.

dog-on

You have a copy of the Apostolikon? Can I see?

Amaleq13

I think you are confusing "apostle" with "disciple". Only the latter requires personal acquaintance. Paul claims the risen Christ made him an apostle.

aa5874

In "Against Marcion" 4.2, by Tertullian, this writer claimed that Marcion's Gospel had no named author, neither "Luke" nor "Paul". And his chronology of the writings of the Gospels appear to be in error.

Against Marcion 4.2
Tertullian's writings in "Against Marcion" SEEM to suggest that Marcion did not explicitly use the words LUKE or PAUL in his Gospel and the admission by Tertullian that Marcion's Gospel had no known author SEEMS to coincide with Justin Martyr's reference to "memoirs of the apostles", of which no authors were ascribed in his extant writings.

It is therefore not certain that Marcion knew of "Paul" when he ,Marcion, wrote his Gospel, maybe at a later date the word "Paul" was added to the "memoirs of the apostles" and even so "Paul's" history still appears to be fiction.

spamandham

More importantly, his detractors claimed he espoused a kind of dualism which seems mostly absent from the letters attributed to Paul, yet Marcion supposedly revered Paul and came up with his theology based on his own version of Luke and 10 of "Paul's" epistles.

Ben by arguing that Marcion was indeed aware of the epistles of Paul that we know as the epistles of Paul, and yet he derived a kind of mystical dualism from them, are you not inadvertently agreeing that there is a historical basis to Doherty's dualistic interpretation of Paul's letters! Afterall, if Marcion was the earliest source of these letters, and that's how he interpreted them, then does that not strongly suggest his was the proper interpretation!?

I don't see how you can dismiss Doherty's interpretation of Paul and simultaneously accept that the letters we know as Paul's are the same ones Marcion knew as Paul's.

aa5874

I am more inclined to think that it is the information coming from Marcion's enemies that are in error. If his foes can accept what appears to be a wholly fictitious history of "Paul", they may have had the propensity to circulate and write text "full of mistakes" about Marcion.

Based on Justin Martyr, the Jesus of the apostles was not the Jesus of Marcion, in effect, "Paul's Jesus was not Marcion's Jesus, so I find it difficult to understand why Marcion would need to mutilate epistles that were already assigned an author who worshipped a God and his Son that Marcion rejected.

And further, if the so-called Pauline epistles were actually written at about 50 CE, bearing "Paul's at that time, and were really circulated among the Churches, then Marcion would have been immediately found to be a liar and be discredited.

After reading Against Marcion by Tertullian, Against Hersies by Irenaeus, and First Apology by Justin Martyr, it would appear to me that there were no epistles assigned the name "Paul", at least up to Justin, this name was probably fabricated along with a fictitious history and the name "Paul" was added to existing anonymous writings, possible called "memoirs of the apostles".

patcleaver

Ben, you can not use ancient documents that were in the control of the Church to prove things that the Church may have wanted to prove because the Church has intentionally corrupted the documents.

It is well known that ancient documents regularly misquote other ancient documents.

It is well known that ancient documents have been extensively revised.

Generally ancient documents are unreliable, and any statement in any ancient document that could have supported the political or religious apologetics of anyone who controlled those documents, up until the time that we can reliably date of an extent copy, should be presumed to be an interpolation.

If you have a copy of Justin Martyr's first apology, that was carbon dated or otherwise reliably dated to the 13th century, then the only thing you really know is what that document said in the 13th century. Any statement in Justin Martyr's first apology that might support a political or religious apologetics between the 2nd and 13th century is probably in interpolation and should be presumed to be an interpolation.

No document is prima fascia proof of anything until the reliability of the document has been proved. The documents have been corrupted by Christian apologists so the Christian apologists have the burden of proof - it is up to the Christian apologists to prove what the documents originally said.

schilling.klaus

The canonical epistles are post-Marcion.
Marcionite epistles preceed them.

Klaus Schilling

schilling.klaus

No, that's not the case. Paul, the exemplary mystagogue, meets Jesus, the Logos, regularly in visions, dreams, and so on, and that's all one may ever get from Jesus. The appendix "of Nazareth" is absurd. Marcion was not deceived unlike those who believe in a human Jesus.

Klaus Schilling