aa5874

It has occurred to me that Marcion's historicity is accepted by many posters posters, but that of Paul appears to be doubtful. Both Paul and Marcion were regarded as Christians although of vastly different concepts. Marcion was regarded as one the greatest threat to Christianity of the "begotten Saviour",son of the God of the Jews.

Marcion believed Jesus to be a phantom and was the son of another God greater than the God of the Jews, where as Paul believed that Jesus was the son of the God of the Jews. Marcion is regarded to have lived up to around 160 CE, and Paul up to around 66 CE.

Almost all we know of Marcion of Pontus came from his Christian adversaries like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius to name a few. On the other hand, Paul is considered the greatest asset to Christianity as we know it today, his post conversion history is written in the Acts of the Apostles and it is claimed he wrote at least 9 epistles to the Churches.

Now based on all the information you know about Macion and Paul, which of the two historicity is more doubtful?

Tigers!

You need another option that said both were of equal historicity i.e. both existed and we know something of them.

mountainman

Hey aa5874,

Not only that, both Marcion and Paul could be equally
non historical and fraudulent and totally fictitious literary
profiles devised by a later century of imperially sponsored
forgers.

Certainly this option needs to be included.
That both Paul and Marcion were in the same
category as supporting roles in much later
century popular monstrous tale, like Harry Potter
His Circle of Friends, and the One True Basilica.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

aa5874

Well, in that case you can probably vote "don't know". I am not 100% sure that either were real figures of history, but I do seriously doubt the history of Paul far greater than that of Marcion.

aa5874

What you say may be true, but at least Justin Martyr who lived in the 2nd century wrote about Marcion and his followers while he was supposed to be living, and preaching his gospel of the phantom, but I cannot find anything from Philo or Josephus about "Paul" at all, and these writers all lived in the 1st century.

And further the history of Paul appears to have been written in the second century in a book called Acts which appears to be fiction, so I am prepared to give Marcion the benefit of the doubt.

TedM

Acts and Paul's epistles corroberate each other on probably a hundred items. Yet, they appear to differ on some very significant accounts--details of Paul's conversion, timing of Paul's visit to Jerusalem after his conversion, the number of trips Paul made to Jerusalem, for example.

Here's some problems I see with the idea that Paul was a creation of Marcion:

1. It makes little sense for Marcion to have had Paul visit Jerusalem and be accepted by the Jewish Christians, since Marcion's Paul didn't venerate the Jewish God.

2. It makes little sense for Catholics to have embraced this Paul fellow, who expoused beliefs that were considered heresies. It makes more sense to excommunicate ANYONE having ANYTHING to do with the Marcion epistles, than to adopt them and change them to match their own theology better.

3. If you still think Catholics "bought into" the idea that Paul was a major Gentile missionary because of the sudden appearance of Acts (and against the Justin's testimony according to aa5874), it makes little sense to have not modified Acts or the epistles in such a way as to have smoothed over the apparant discrepancies between Acts and the epistles. Changing Galatians alone would have been easy enough. Rather, the so-called "interpolator" would have had to put in that Paul didn't go to Jerusalem for 3 years, which is not the simplest reading of Acts! Why actively put in something that has the appearance of a contradiction? It makes little sense.

The whole idea that Paul never existed, Marcion made him up as a mouthpiece via epistles, the Catholic church excommunicated Marcion as a heretic, and then later embraced the concept of "Paul"--missionary to the Gentiles, and then modified Marcion's writings to match Paul more closely with Paul of the Acts, yet did a lousy job of doing so, is quite plainly: Ridiculous.


Even if you want to claim that Marcion never put in Paul's name into his epistles, or they originally had various other names (even though he styles were all quite similar), the idea of a subsequent acceptance of such epistles by the Catholic church with modifications to have them all be written by Paul, is still ridiculous due to all of the reasons already mentioned.

If you believe Marcion existed and that the Catholic Church canon consisted of most of his accounts of Paul's epistles, the most logical conclusion to reach is that Marcion butchered already existing epistles that were written prior to Marcion by the very real person Paul. And, the fact that there are many many points of similarity between Paul and the Acts but also some significant coexisting problems shows that there was no concerted attempt to make the Canonical Paul of the epistles match the Paul of the Acts, even though they clearly were one and the same person.

ted

aa5874

It is not my view that Marcion fabricated "Paul", that, it appears, was done by the author of Acts, some scholars call the author Luke, the physician. Even some of "Paul's revelations, instead of coming from Jesus in heaven, they appear to come straight out gLuke on earth.

Only the author of Luke alone claimed Jesus said these words at the Last Supper, as in Luke 22.19. But, very strange, when Jesus was talking to "Paul" from heaven, he used Luke's words himself in 1Corinthians 11.24 "Paul's Jesus appears to be gLuke.

And Tertullian in "Against Marcion"4.5 And Eusebius in "Church History" 3.4.8 And "Paul" in Romans 2.16, 16.25 and 2Timothy 2.8 But "Paul" was supposed be already dead long before gLuke was written, but Eusebius claimed "according to my gospel "means "Luke's gospel", so "Paul" was alive after gLuke was written and the "Pauline Epistles must have been written some time after the gospel of Luke, and perhaps gLuke was written by "Paul" himself, since he called it "my gospel".

"Paul's" history according to the NT appears to be fiction.

Doug Shaver

Neither. There is no good reason to doubt the historicity of either one.

schilling.klaus

the Paulinic epistles are incopnsistent patchwork, where the Catholic Redaction is a fraudulent corruption of the Marcionite Redaction.
this is valid with or without historical Paul or Marcion.

Klaus Schilling

TedM

Fine. You are basically implying that the Catholic church tried to match the Marcion Pauline epistles with Acts. Then why do Paul's epistles agree in probably 100 places with Acts, yet appear to disagree on several critical issues? You can't get around this problem.


Eusebius was wrong if that is what he said. Galatians itself says "I recieved my gospel from no man." Paul's "gospel" has little to do with any of the four "gospels". Paul's Gospel is that of salvation to the Gentiles through faith in Jesus. You are simply barking up the wrong tree on this one, though it is certainly possible that Luke and Paul knew each other as is the orthodox view.

ted