PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

Thanks for this. This is a wonderful resource page.

What really stopped me in my tracks and zapped me like a thunderbolt from Zeus was your reconstruction of the Marcion text on the page.

You wrote:

Thus we see that the text of Marcion as Tertullian had it must have jumped from misit deus filium suum (God sent his son) to ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret (to redeem those who were under the law), skipping the phrases about the son being made of a woman or made under the law (factum ex muliere, factum sub lege).

You base this, I suppose, mainly on the quotation in Tertullian's Against Marcion (5.4.2):

But, when it came about that the time was fulfilled, God sent his son...(But to what purpose did he send his son?) To redeem those that were under the law.


This seems to me quite reasonable and gives us the chance to make a pretty much exact reconstruction of The text that Tertullian was reading from Marcion.

But, when it came about that the time was fulfilled, God sent his son to redeem those that were under the law.
And so as to make it certain that we are sons of God, he has sent his own spirit into our hearts, crying: Abba, father.

Now here is what I wrote yesterday (based on a logical analysis of the text):

[4] But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his [son] word to those born of woman, born under the law,
5] to redeem those who were not under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
[6] And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his [son]word into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"

I think we certainly have to take Marcion's as the original text.

I had assumed that the phrases "born of woman" and "born under the law" were in the original, but I think we now have no reason to believe they were. We really have to treat them as a later interpolations. Tertullian specifically labels this a passage that Marcion has not tampered with, as opposed to others that he allegedly has.

The most important thing to notice is that in line six, Marcion has, "he has sent his own spirit into our hearts". My text is "God has sent the Spirit of his word into our hearts". The important thing here is that my reconstruction and Marcion's does not contain the word, "son". The difference between 'spirit' and 'word' in this context is trivial. The important thing is that the word 'son' is not found in the Marcion text at this point. The fact that we now find the phrase, "God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts"
indicates that at some point an editor changed 'God's Spirit' to 'Spirit of his Son'

Note notice that line's four and six do not match in Marcion's text. In the present New Testament text, we have both lines four and six matching by talking about God's son; while in Marcion we have God's son in line four and God's Spirit in line six. We may asssume that sometime around 200 (if Tertullian is writing) or after (if the text is being revised) somebody made a change in line six so that the text read 'spirit of the son' instead of 'spirit'. Should we not assume that Marcion did not make a split reference in lines four and six, but that he made the same reference in both lines. Since we know that 'spirit' was changed to 'spirit of the son' after this writing of Tertullian's (or whomever), should we not assume that in line four the same thing was done before or at the time of this writing. Is it not more probable that Marcion's work originally contained the word 'spirit' in both lines four and six. T

Thus the actual reading of Marcion's text was:

But, when it came about that the time was fulfilled, God sent his spirit to redeem those that were under the law.
And so as to make it certain that we are sons of God, he has sent his own spirit into our hearts, crying: Abba, father.

This, we may assume was the original prior reading that we may assign to the time of Marcion 150 C.E.

Now, Tertullian is also specific in On the Flesh of Christ 20.2b-3a:that the phrase 'made of woman' and not 'born of woman' was originally in the text:

But Paul also imposes silence these grammarians: God, he says, sent his son, made of a woman. Does he mean through a woman or in a woman? This is indeed the more emphatic in that he says [the word] made in preference to [the word] born.

We may assume that some gnostic interpolated 'born of woman' into the text and that was modified to 'made of woman' at some point. Although, it is not impossible that the change went the other way.

Irenaeus or someone who wrote/edited Against Heresies also has the phrase 'made of woman' in the text:

The apostle Paul, moreover, in the epistle to the Galatians manifestly says: God sent his son, made of a woman. And again in that to the Romans he says: Concerning his son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh,

From this we can easily see how the concept of the son being born of woman evolved.

The phrase in Galatians that was put in was "made of a woman". This phrase was developed from a concept in Romans:


Romans 1.3: Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

The idea here can be referred back to and explained by a later passage in Romans:

Romans : 9.8: That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God:

which in turn gets derived from a concept found in
Philo's "Heir of Divine Things"

XII. (57) So that the race of mankind also is twofold, the one being the race of those who live by the divine Spirit and reason; the other of those who exist according to blood and the pleasure of the flesh.

The writer of Romans 9.8 is aware of Philo's usage of the term "of the flesh" to denote people who are unspiritual.

The writer of Roman 1.3 applies it to the vulgar Jews who think that Jesus Christ is of the seed of David.

The writer/editor of Galatians who imports/interpolates the phrase 'made of woman' does not recognize at all that it is only the Jews who are "children of the flesh" non-spiritual who think Jesus is/will be of the seed of David. He simply sees seed (sperm of David) and assumes the son is born or made of woman

In all, it appears that we are dealing with at least four important sharp changes to the passage:

1. 'God's Spirit' is changed to 'God's Son' in line four.
2. the phrases 'born of woman' and 'under the law' are interpolated into the text. (these might be two different interpolations occurring separately)
3. 'God's spirit' is changed to 'God's Son' in line six.
4. 'The phrase 'born of woman' is changed to 'made of woman'

This development of the text suggests that the passage is strong evidence that the original writer of Galatians had no idea that the son of God was an historical personage. It was only altered, perhaps one or two centuries later, partially to combat the idea of a docetic Christ.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spamandham

I think the necessary assumptions are a bit less than this, and consists only of:

1. Paul views himself as living in the end of the age/fullness of time.
2. Paul views this as a short period
3. Paul views the crucifixion as the redemptive act.

(2) is the weakest assumption here it seems.

Doug Shaver

I think your interpretation is plausible, but as cryptically as Paul has expressed himself in this passage, it think it would be rash to say other interpretations are not at least equally plausible.

spamandham

I agree! I'm looking for the tidbits that tilt the scale one way or the other. I don't like cumulative arguments much, since they tend to be too subjective unless overwhelming. But it seems that's all we have, and the case is not overwhelming as far as I can tell.

Clivedurdle

This might explain the creation of the trinity - a result of editing spirit and son and word!