10-03-2011, 06:14 PM
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#1
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: seattle, wa
Posts: 9,337
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Marcionite Falacy #34 - The Claim that the Marcionite Gospel was Luke
I promise this Marcionite obsession will be over in a few days. It comes over me like viruses in flu season:
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If Marcion had designed a fixed collection of sacred scriptures, however, it is strange that his followers welcomed verses from Matthew, Mark and John. Ephrem Syrus notes that the Marcionites had not rejected Mt 23:8 (see Song 24.1). Likewise, according to Adamantius, the Marcionite Marcus quoted John 13:34 and 15:19, and he accuses the Marcionites of corrupting Matthew 5:17 (Adamantius, Dialogue 2.15.18). Origen also quoted a Marcionite interpretation of Matthew 19:12 in his Commentary on Matthew (5:17). Geoffrey Hahne- man appropriately concludes: “if Marcion and his followers added verses to their accepted texts, then they may just as well have added additional sources to their collection of scriptures.”58 It is also likely that the so-called Marcionite Gospel Prologues came from either Marcion or his followers.59 In the early churches, Ire- naeus appears to be the first to speak of a limited number of Gospels (only four). He says nothing about a closed collection of Paul's Epistles, the Catholic Epistles, or any other literature that made up his New Testament canon. In the fourth century, Eusebius lists such a collection, but this list may be Eusebius's invention based simply on Irenaeus's citations of New Testament books. [Lee Martin McDonald Forgotten Scriptures p. 26]
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Another example which should be noted is Professor Markus Vinzent's recent characterization of Tertullian's anti-Marcionite position in Book Four of Against Marcion that Marcion's gospel was both a corruption of Matthew and Luke: http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/20...arcion-as.html
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Tertullian, in this critical remark still gives a relatively balanced description of what he had in front of him with The Gospel, ‘a summary’, hence not a narrative as detailed as those with which Tertullian compared it (mainly Matthew and only rarely Luke). He qualifies Marcion’s Gospel as ‘concise and obscure’, and grants that the text bore ‘hidden meaning’ which, however, did not allow for a theological ‘interpretation’ along the lines of Tertullian’s own theology. In addition, he sets out the opposite claims made by himself and by Marcion. Marcion, if Tertullian reports correctly – and why would he put this strong argument into his opponent’s mouth – must have complained that while his Gospel was a true account, the ones that Tertullian uses, namely Matthew and Luke were falsifications of his own:
I say that mine is true: Marcion makes that claim for his. I say that Marcion's is falsified: Marcion says the same of mine. Who shall decide between us?[5]
In his ensuing rhetoric, Tertullian does not recur to content, but sets out the question of chronological priority. So, which of the Gospels was produced first, that of Marcion or the ones that Tertullian used, Matthew and Luke? Again, he admits, the views of Marcion and his own are opposed:
If that Gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke ... is the same that Marcion by his Antitheses accuses of having been interpolated by the defenders of Judaism with a view to its being so combined in one body with the Law and the Prophets that they might also pretend that Christ had been fashioned from that place, evidently he could only have brought accusation against something he had found there already. No one passes censure on things afterwards to be, when he does not know they are afterwards to be. Correction does not come before fault.
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The Philosophumena's oft-quoted remark that the Marcionite gospel was not the real gospel of Mark makes absolutely clear to anyone with critical sensibilities that the Marcionite gospel must have resembled a Diatessaron and so it is that Raymond Casey came to this very conclusion from the late Armenian report of Eznik of Kolb:
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/20...-at-least.html
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