TedM

1. Do we know that Marcion removed passages from Luke or Paul's epistles? That is, do we have clear citations in pre-Marcion works of passages in Luke or Paul's epistles that are missing in Marcion's version?

2. Do the Marcion epistles of Paul include any references to the existence of a Supreme God and a (lesser) Creator God? If not, can we not conclude that Marcion derived his own belief system regarding that without reliance on Paul?

3. I read that Marcion rejected the OT. What exactly does that mean? Did he remove all quotations from it in his NT canon?

What I am trying to determine is whether Marcion created his own philosophy based on ideas that appealed to him. IF so, why should we have any reason to believe that he did not mutilate gospels, and epistles to conform to his preferences?

stephan huller

You know what I think. The only argument that might convince me otherwise is the question of chapter 15 and 16 at the end of Romans. Irenaeus and Tertullian don't cite from those chapters. It is assumed that Marcion didn't have those chapters because of a statement in Origen which Zahn thinks is misconstrued. If the Marcionites had a longer version of Romans then one could make the case that there was a more original version of Romans. Yet even this isn't very convincing. The evidence seems to point to the idea that the Marcionite material was older just as the shorter Syriac epistles of Ignatius are older than the Greek material. The more interesting argument is to understand why anyone would believe that someone would 'remove' material from a holy book rather than add new material. I can think of countless examples of the latter. I would like to hear of one verified example of an ancient religious person 'taking out' material from a holy Book.

maryhelena

Ted

The latest scholarly study on Marcion is by Dr Sebastian Moll. The link to the following thread will give you details, quotes, and links to his book as well as to his recent article on the Bible and Interpretation website.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=306236

(unfortunately, Stephan Huller has sought to discredit Moll's study........:constern01

google books view of Moll's book.


http://books.google.com/books?id=P3D...20moll&f=false

stephan huller

Moll's a genius. I am just happy Mary Helena read a book (or at least the part of the book on Google preview).

maryhelena

Oh, my - changed your opinion on Moll.......:devil3:


my formatting

archibald

I don't know enough about 'ancient editing' to form an opinion, but it is an interesting question.

It does seem to be possible in principle, and is happening nowadays:

'Conservapedia hosts the "Conservative Bible Project", a project aiming to rewrite the English translation of the Bible in order to remove terms described as "liberal bias" '

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conserv..._Bible_Project

jakejonesiv

Hi Ted,

Three great questions. I will stick to the first one in this reply, and emphasis why this question needs to be asked.

Indeed, I think that it is the most important question in New Testament studies. The unexamined assumption of the unity of authorship of the seven so-called authentic Pauline epistles is the greatest obstacle to understanding Christian origins that we face.

The underlying assumption of all mainline scholarship, which they take for granted and never discuss, is the unity of authorship of the seven "authentic" Pauline epistles. By this I mean they assume that these epistles flowed from the pen of the alleged first century apostle in--for all practical purposes--the canonical version, might as well say the Nestle-Anand 27 text of Paul's epistles!! This is a gratuitous assumption.

We know with 100% certainty that another, shorter, version of the Pauline epistles circulated before the middle of the second century CE, long before the oldest extant documents. It is Marcion's Apostilicon. The Heresiologists accused him of cutting down the epistles, but the other possibility is that the proto-orthodox interpolated them heavily to "tame the Apostle of the Heretics."
Marcion’s recension can be reconstructed with a good degree of accuracy (esp. Galatians and Romans) through citations in Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem, Epiphanius's Panarion and Adamantius' Dialogues on the True Faith, Irenaeus and a few other sources. Which traditional scholars have undertaken a study to determine whether the Apostolicon predates the canonical version? The answer is none of them. The history of mainline scholarship has been to follow snout to tail ever since Tertullian. They are following church tradition about the posterity of Marcion, not engaging in textual criticism. Until that is done, you can cite the works of 1,000 mainstream scholars without ever contributing anything to the question proposed in the OP.

Yet we know that of the scholars who have undertaken to study this question, many of them have become convinced of the priority of the Apostilion. The most recent investigation of this sort is by Dr. Hermann Detering of Berlin. One needs to read his specific works on Galatians and Romans to engage meaningfully on this topic. Also, I understand that a new book on Paul is in the works by Robert Price (although publication date has been pushed back to next year).

Stylometric studies by Dr. Detering indicate that the authors of the Marcionite Recension (MR) and the Catholic Redaction (KR) are different *within* the same epistles. This is something that traditional scholars have never even thought to examine, and it invalidates the stylometric studies that purport to have validated the genuine seven epistles.

Modern scholarship has with great success subjected the gospels and Torah to higher critical studies that have demonstrated that the texts grew by successive redactions. Yet for some reason, the Pauline epistles are claimed to be exempt from such scrutiny. Indeed, the institutional investment in Paul is so great that anyone who dares “cross the line” has found themselves ostracized and eventually out of a job. This is not an accident, but a rear guard action, the last line of defense of those who hold to some semblance of traditional Christian origins in the Levant in the early first century. Why? Without an authentic Pauline corpus, the entire edifice of first century Christianity unravels, and we must cut anchor and look to the second century CE.

Jake Jones IV

TedM

I agree Jake. Thanks for all of the info. This is quite simplistic, but I would think one beginning approach would be to compare all citations to Paul's epistles prior to Marcion with what we know is in Marcion's works. If there is stuff in the citations that isn't in Marcion's then we can conclude Marcion butchered text as is charged. Is this the kind of thing Deterring looked at?

Of course one complication is whether the citations really preceded Marcion: (were Ignatius, Clement etc..later forgeries?).

TedM

IF you read my OP closely you might see why: Marcion is charged with purposefully creating a new religion. Why does anyone do that? If he rejects the OT outright, why wouldn't he remove material as he sees fit?

jakejonesiv

Hi Ted,

Yes, you are absolutely correct. How one views 1 Clement and the Ignatia will influence how one views the OP.

There has been an undercurrent, perhaps even a trend in recent scholarship to view these as inauthnetic.

Walter Schmithals, once a student of R.Bultmann and teacher of Dr. H.Detering died on March 26, 2009 in Berlin. In his final essay, he joined sides with those who denied the authenticity of the Ignatian epistles. His article was published posthumously “Zu Ignatius von Antiochien,“ in ZAC 13 (2009) 181–203. (Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/Journal of Ancient Christianity).

The obvious purpose of the Corpus Ignatianum is to establish the monepiscopate in the Roman church. This belies the traditional date.

Walter Schmithals dated the Corpus Ignatianum during the reign of Mark Aurel (161-180 AD). Schmithals arrived at the conclusion of a late date following the work of R. Joly, R.M. Hübner, and T. Lechne. Among other criteria, he arrived at the conclusion of inauthenticity based on terminology and a dependence on Noetus of Smyrna.

If one accepts these conclusions (and of course there is always another opinion!), this effectively removes Ignatius as a pre-Marcionite witness to the PE. However, Schmithals work does not deal with the interpolations and thus falls short of Joseph Turmel (aka Henri Delafosse).

The traditional dating if 1 Clement is also entirely suspicious. Now, one does not have to date it as late as 160 CE to remove the objection that the proto-orthodox had the Pauline epistles before Marcion. A date in the late 130's or 140's would suffice for that.

The dating of 1 Clement is usually based on 1Clem 1:1, "sudden and repeated misfortunes and hindrances which have befallen us." This is then assumed, by circular reasoning, to be an allusion to the alleged persecution of Christians in Rome under at the end of the reign of Domitian in 95 or 96 CE. The evidence for such a persecution is tenuous at best, and may have never happened. But the question must be asked, “Why Domitian? Why not some other persecution under another emperor such as Trajan?” The reason is quite simple and quite circular, Domitian is chosen because he was the Emperor when by Catholic Church reckoning, Saint Clement, was supposed to be the Bishop of Rome! But we know that this Clement never wrote the “epistle.” With that you lose you dating anchor.

But the discussion of which emperor and which persecutions are really a tempest in a teapot. No persecutions are mentioned in 1:1, only “misfortunes and hindrances” which are apologetic formula for personal or domestic hindrances.

The internal indications are that a long time, generations, have passed since the founding of the Roman church, 23:3, 44:2-3, 47:6, 63:3. It could as easily be dated to 50 years—or more—after the traditional date, which as we have seen is based on Christian Apologetics.

Please note that 1 Clement is a sermon from the Diaspora synagogue that has been redacted by a proto-catholic Christian editor. It is way too long to be the letter it pretends to be. There are other indications that the document is not what it pretends to be, and I will direct the interested reader to _1 Clement and the Ignatiana in Dutch Radical Criticism_
http://www.hermann-detering.de/Clem_eng.pdf Don't worry, this one is in English!

Best Regards,
Jake