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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: seattle, wa
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A Possible Marcionite Exegesis of Psalm 8.5 in Clement of Alexandria
I know that the idea of a 'Jewish Marcion' is incredible to people. Nevertheless we needn't go there just yet. Let's simply acknowledge that the Marcionites did develop interpretations of the 'Old Testament.' The idea appears throughout the anti-Marcionite tradition of the Church Fathers, whether it be Marcionite opinions about Moses being better than the Creator (in Tertullian's Against Marcion) or Daniel's stone that became a mountain (in the Dialogues of Adamantius). Here is another possible example of a Marcionite exegesis of Psalms 8:5.
In Tertullian's Against Marcion 1.27 we read the Church Father declare:
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He is the Son of the Creator, his Word whom by bringing him forth from himself he caused to be his Son. From then onwards he put him in authority over his whole design and purpose, reducing him a little below the angels,[Psalm 8:5] as it is written in David. By this reduction he was brought by the Father to these (acts and experiences) which you disapprove of as human : for he was learning even from the beginning,by so early assuming manhood, to be that which he was going to be at the end. He it is who comes down (to inquire into Sodom), who asks questions (of Adam and of Cain), who makes request (of Moses), and swears with an oath. That the Father has become visible to no man is the testimony of that gospel which you share with us, in which Christ says, No one knoweth the Father save the Son.
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Let's look now at Clement citing the closing words of the Romans as somehow relating to a 'tradition' which agreed with the Marcionites that Psalm 8:5 was inappropriately connected with Jesus:
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The most of men have a disposition unstable and heedless, like the nature of storms. “Want of faith has done many good things, and faith evil things.” And Epicharmus says, “Don’t forget to exercise incredulity; for it is the sinews of the soul.” Now, to disbelieve truth brings death, as to believe, life; and again, to believe the lie and to disbelieve the truth hurries to destruction. The same is the case with self-restraint and licentiousness. To restrain one’s self from doing good is the work of vice; but to keep from wrong is the beginning of salvation. So the Sabbath, by abstinence from evils, seems to indicate self-restraint. And what, I ask, is it in which man differs from beasts, and the angels of God, on the other hand, are wiser than he? “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.” [Ps. 8. 5] For some do not interpret this Scripture of the Lord, although He also bore flesh, but of the perfect man and the gnostic, inferior in comparison with the angels in time, and by reason of the vesture [of the body]. I call then wisdom nothing but science, since life differs not from life. For to live is common to the mortal nature, that is to man, with that to which has been vouchsafed immortality; as also the faculty of contemplation and of self-restraint, one of the two being more excellent. On this ground Pythagoras seems to me to have said that God alone is wise, since also the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans, “For the obedience of the faith among all nations, being made known to the only wise God through Jesus Christ;” [Rom. 16. 26, 27]. and that he himself was a philosopher, on account of his friendship with God. Accordingly it is said, “God talked with Moses as a friend with a friend.” [Ex. 33. 11]. That, then, which is true being clear to God, forthwith generates truth. And the gnostic loves the truth. “Go,” it is said, “to the ant, thou sluggard, and be the disciple of the bee;” thus speaks Solomon. [Prov. 6. 6, 8]. For if there is one function belonging to the peculiar nature of each creature, alike of the ox, and horse, and dog, what shall we say is the peculiar function of man? He is like, it appears to me, the Centaur, a Thessalian figment, compounded of a rational and irrational part, of soul and body. Well, the body tills the ground, and hastes to it; but the soul is raised to God: trained in the true philosophy, it speeds to its kindred above, turning away from the lusts of the body, and besides these, from toil and fear, although we have shown that patience and fear belong to the good man. [Clement of Alexandria Stromata 4.3]
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I think there is a yet another example of how Marcionitism stood very close to - and was likely identical with - the Alexandrian tradition. For those keeping score at home yes (a) Tertullian says the Marcionites 'shared' a gospel with the Catholics and (b) yes Philo's citation of Exodus 33.11 is not the same as the received LXX. Moses is here identified as the 'philo' of God.
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10-01-2011, 01:57 PM
