jakejonesiv

Hi Mary Helena,

Thanks for this consise summary.

That is pretty much my take away from Stephan's dicsussions except that he must discredit any study of Marcion that does not follow this trajectory.

I am sure Stephan can add a thousand pages of nuances, but I want to make sure that this doesn't misrepresent Stephan's position in some fundamental way.

Jake

aa5874

Your post is MOST amusing. You seem to have NO idea of what you are talking about.

Stephan has very little respect for maryhelena views even when she quotes stephan OWN views.

I find stephan huller's arguments to be MOST CONTRADICTORY and without basic sense or logics.

He CONSISTENTLY argues OPPOSING views simultaneously.

By the way, you seem to hang around for DOHERTY and DAVE 31. Your posting history is KNOWN.

maryhelena

Indeed he must - the problem with the new study by Sebastian Moll is that Moll has focused on the theology of Marcion - the good god and the evil god - which has simply produced additional 'pain' for Stephan's position. Sure, it's up to Stephan to clarify his position re Marcion - one can't debate the OP if someone is arguing from a position without being upfront about that position. Thousands of pages of nuances should not be allowed to obfuscation Stephan's fundamental theory - Marcion is not a historical but a fictional figure......

aa5874

Frankly, I was completely taken aback and surprised when you showed that stephan actually believed Marcion was a fictional character.

This revelation is probably the final straw for me with stephan.

His beliefs about Marcion renders the Church writings as fraud and fiction yet at times he argues the very opposite.

jakejonesiv

I think all of the extant Pauline epistles are inauthentic, but I am not one who insists that Marcion wrote all of the Pauline epistles from scratch and revealed them to the world all at once in Rome in the 140's CE.

I do think Marcion was most likely the first to gather a collection of Pauline epistles (unless the those Deutero-Pauline epistles had circulated separately before Marcion included them). But this was in the "wild areas" of the heretics. In Rome, some rumor of Paul may have reached, but if so he was not held in any esteem.

It seems to me that the Marcionites (or urMarcionites if Marcion had not yet reared his head) were in contact with certain gnostic groups before Marcion brought his collection of Pauline Epistles (The Apostilicon) to Rome. Indeed, the best answer for the Duetero-Paulines seems be contact with second century gnostic influence.

It is interesting to note that all of the Heretics that the Church fathers identified as tracing their doctrines back to Simon the Samaritan had a high regard for "Paul"!

Basilides the heretic (about 138 CE) was the first to elevate any Christian text (in this case the Pauline epistles 1 Corinthians and Ephesians) to the level of Scripture (Hippolytus, Refutatio, 7,13-14). It is clear that the figure of Paul arose and held the ascendency in heretical circles, and was only grudgingly accepted by the catholics after massive changes.

But there is one heretic that is not associated with Simon Magus, and thus likely had a different origin, Cerinthus. He is the only early Heresiarch that the Church fathers did not in some way connect to Simon the Samaritan, and the Cerinthians and hated Paul! As did all of the Jewish Christian sects such as the Ebionites, Cerinthians, and Elchasaites. Since the uber-Paulinist Marcionites and the Cerinthians are both known to have been in Asia minor on the early second century, we may reasonably expect to find evidence of clashes between these two “heretical” sects.

So this is the situation we find in the second century:
1a) Marcionite Churches in Asia Minor and other outlying areas that look to a founder "Paul." They held a docetic Chrisology.
1b) Gnostic groups and sects that had some affinity with the Marcionites and also respected Paul. They viewed Jesus through the lenses of Redeemer Myths.
3) Proto-orthodox Churches in Rome (and areas that acknowledge the authority of Rome) that look to a founder of "Peter" who would eventually be declared the first Pope. They held an Incarnational Christology.
4) Jewish Christian sects that looked to "James" as the proxy head. They held an adoptionist Christology, or considered Jesus a mere man.
(Anyway, that is how I see it. I cannot readily identify the “Celestial only Christ cults” with a known sect).

These were the big three (if we lump Marcion with the Gnostics), and they were in fierce competition with each other. Acts is a book of fiction that tries to harmonize all of these sects into the catholic fold. Likewise, 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 is also a late interpolation that attempts to harmonize these competing traditions! :innocent1:

Jake

aa5874

What you think about Marcion is based on what sources? The same sources you REJECT?

It is just a complete waste of time to use REJECTED sources for the history of Marcion and the Pauline writings.

Even apologetics sources CONTRADICT themselves.

Hippolytus claimed that Marcion did NOT use the Pauline writings at all but was a disciple of EMPEDOCLES and PLAGERISED the his teachings.

"Refutation Against All Heresies" attributed to Hippolytus

Examine also the 18th chapter of the same book.

Hippolytus completely CONTRADICTS Tertullian's "Against Marcion" and both are supposed to be APOLOGETIC sources.

Without any credible source for Marcion it is NOT necessary to INTRODUCE more RUMOR based opnions of Marcion.

It must be noted that Lucian and Justin Martyr did mention a character called Empedocles.

stephan huller

Today is a very busy day for me but as the OP is whether the Marcionites preserved the authentic NT or 'mutilated' the Catholic scriptures let's stick to the OP. I have been spending every minute that I have not engaged in work, child-rearing, husbandry, eating etc. putting together a resource of early references to the Epistle to the Romans at my blog. Aside from the fact that I have found that Clement of Alexandria's Epistle to the Hebrews and the Marcionite text show clear signs of parallels there is one more surprising development that should be mentioned.

The OP asks was Marcionite a mutilator. Here's the exciting wrinkle. Irenaeus and Tertullian never cite from any material past chapter 14. In other words, they don't seem to know anything about chapters 15 and 16. It may be often reported that Origen (through Rufinus) says that Marcion's gospel ended at chapter 14. Yet this is a misquoting of the original material. The actual original Latin says 'cut up' not 'cut off':

http://books.google.com/books?id=3E9...cal%22&f=false

What's more - as the author here points out - it makes no sense to suppose that Origen or Rufinus meant to say 'cut off' because he/they again note that the doxology at the end of chapter 16 was also absent. The clear sense then is that from Romans 14:23 to the end of the Marcionite Epistle to the Romans there were 'cut up' or spotty references to the material found in later Catholic versions of the Epistle to the Romans.

Why is that significant? Because it throws in a twist to the discussion. Now we have Irenaeus and Tertullian likely only having a 14 chapter edition of the Epistle to the Romans and a Marcionite and early Alexandrian version of the Epistle to the Romans with material which goes beyong chapter 14 to what is now called chapter 16. I am working to prove that Clement's Romans and Marcion's were identical. The evidence is pretty strong I think. Nevertheless it can no longer be said that Marcion's NT was manufactured by Marcion cutting material from the Catholic canon. It's not that simple.

Moreover, we know independent of Tertullian and Irenaeus 14 chapter versions of Romans in the Roman tradition. This would seem to indicate that shorter versions of the letters cannot be used by the apologists of the Catholic tradition as an argument for corruption (a stupid argument anyway as EVERY OTHER example of forgery involves the adding of material not its subtraction). It is strange to imagine the development of a tradition from subtraction. It would be like taking the Pentateuch and 'erasing' all the E passages or - as the case stands with the allegation agianst Marcion - the deletion of some BUT NOT ALL E passages. What would be the point in that? Why would that movement gain in popularity at the end of the second century?

Indeed given that Christianity was at the time of the greatest popularity of Marcionitism very open to the idea of 'spiritual revelations' - i.e. creative ADDITIONS to the canon - why would someone coming along with the exact opposite agenda have gained so much traction? It would be like conservatives in the United States literally presenting a Bill of Rights with half the content deleted in an age where the other half of the population was successfully adding amendments. It would be very hard to make the case that the Founding Fathers were in favor of this 'half Bill of Rights' or even that they represented 'Andrew Hamiltonism' or 'Thomas Jeffersonism' (i.e. a radical position where one of the Founding Fathers 'really' didn't agree with all the rest and received direct, personal revelations from God about the shape of the constitution and then 'broke away' and founded a separate community hostile to the rest of the Founding Fathers even though there was no historical evidence to support any of their claims).

It's just a bizarre argument to make and then to end up being successful at it. How could that be explained? It's just so implausible.

It is much easier to believe that there were a number of hostile Christian communities centered around an 'apostle' or visionary - i.e. Peter, Paul - who were absolutely hostile to one another for the first hundred or so years and only later to be reconciled by a false document (Acts) as part of an effort at greater ecumenicism. Why is that? Because Celsus essentially tells us so. What's more we see this all the time in American history. Look at the myth of Pocahontas, the Disney film. Sure there are references to racism. But it is all glossed over in the same way that Acts did it (i.e. that two leading figures from each side realized that peace was the only answer). Real history isn't so sweet.

stephan huller

It's not so clear cut as that. The Jewish portrait of Jesus includes among other things, Jesus being a resurrected Balaam, a supernatural demon, a bastard etc. It's not as simple as accepting that at face value especially when it become impossible for the culture to disentangle the Roman Church from Jesus. There are many Jewish traditions about Jesus. Most do infer that Jesus was human but how could the Jews have accepted Jesus as God? To do so would be to embrace Christianity.

Gorit Maqueda

In other words, Sergio Leone was influenced by Philo! Even Clint Eastwood's character had no name!
Sorry, I couldn't resist it...

stephan huller

A while back when I was living in Orlando and they first opened the Virgin store at Downtown Disney (since closed) they had a wide assortment of unusual music CDs. Very unusual for a tourist area in the United States. I always enjoyed Italian movie soundtracks from the 1970s and lo and behold they had an almost unlimited supply (I always wondered if that was a reflection of Branson's personal taste to; if you fly his airline you get the same feeling). In any event, I got about ten Ennio Morricone and about the same number of lesser none artists. Very cool.