spin

I'm sorry, Roger. When you hide behind a position which has never been tested, it's like relying on the emperor's new clothes to cover your inadequacies.


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
While I very much appreciate Roger's translations I don't remember him ever writing any post of Substance here so I don't expect any meaningful response from him.

It's exponentially more likely that Marcion's "Luke" was closer to original than Tertullians' than Christians like Roger think because:

1) "Luke" itself is a re-write of "Mark".

2) "Luke" is a radical re-write of "Mark".

1 - A priMary theme of "Mark" was to discredit "The Disciples" while a
priMary theme of "Luke" was to credit "The Disciples".

2 - "Mark" is notoriously anti-hierarchal.
"Luke" is notoriously hierarchal.

3) Marcion's "Luke" has the Logic that the Jesus of "Luke" can not be reconciled with or even found in the Jewish Bible.

4) Marcion's "Luke" lacks the Infancy Narrative which is definitely Forged.

5) Marcion has the Logic that the author of "Luke" intended a stand alone Gospel.

6) Ehrman demonstrates several times in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (without really trying) that regarding specific verses which Tertullian claims Marcion Forged, the evidence left to us by Tertullians' brand of Christianity indicates that Marcion was actually original.

7) Marcion retains a primary Markan theme of Separationist.

8) The Original source "Mark" has a primary theme that Jesus is only to be found in the Jewish Bible in Ironic, Unexpected Ways. Thus the Distance from the Source, "Mark", to a Gospel that says Jesus was not in the Jewish Bible, is shorter than most people think.

9) According to Peter Brown Orthodox Christianity has Forged evidence for its version of "Luke".



Joseph

SCRIPTURES, n.
The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

jakejonesiv

Hi Roger,

I think that spin had asked some very pertinent questions. Apparently, you are ready to accept Tertullians characterization of Marcion at face value. But when one reads the rhetoric and turpitude of the introduction of Adv. Marcion, we can see that he is hardly a dispassionate witness. He is attempting to present a "worst case scenerio."

I love the bit about the Pontic mouse! :rolling:

Thus the question that spin asks, applies not only to yourself, but to Tertuallian also.

In order to illustrate the point, here is a "worst case scenerio" of Tertullian.

What did the opponents of Tertullian see as his religion? A horrible blend of practices; infanticide and incest, worshiping an ass-headed god, half ass and half goat! A stolen legacy of worshipping crosses and worshipping the sun.

Tertullian wrote about Marcion at least a generation after his death. But according to latter Christians, Tertullian himself was a heretic! He became a Montanist, broke openly with the church (ca. 211 CE, or was he excomunicated?), and was subsequently condemned. He believed Montanus to speak as the Paraclete.

Tertullian taught a heretical version of the Trinity (e.g. Against Praxeas 9),that the Son was subordinate to the Father and that the Trinity is not eternal. Eventually, all of his works were condemend, non recipiendis libris, in the Decretum Gelasianum. Yep, old Tertullianus the heretic, damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema for ever.

Tertullian descended into severity, harshness, and legalism, to the point where he demanded that virgins go about wearing a veil, based on a dream. His bitter legacy includes "De Virginibus velandis". Tertullian apparently thought that Jesus and Paul had castrated themselves (Tertullian, On Monogamy).

But Tertullian did not have the courage of his convictions as Origen did.

When the same measure that Tertullian uses to attack Marcion is measured against himself, he appears to be a hypocrite.

Jake Jones IV

Amaleq13

Really? Not even the direct question put to you?:

On what grounds do you refer to the work as "fake"? Can one trust antagonistic analyses? If so, why?

Does making an assertion but refusing to provide support for it qualify as making an effort to "contribute"?

andrewcriddle

I am relying on memory here but I think the relevant articles are found in the collection by Drijvers History and Religion in Late Ancient Syria

Drijvers held, I believe, that Marcion was more of a full blown Gnostic than is usually recognised and found the account by Eznik relevant.

(I will try and reread the articles and comment further but that will be in a few weeks time.)

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Interesting again. It sounds like an interesting volume.

I was thinking about the possible sources available to Eznik. Were there Armenian-speaking Marcionites at all, I wonder? But there were certainly such in the Syriac-speaking world, at Edessa, as Ephraim Syrus makes plain, and early Christian influences in Armenia are from Syriac sources.

There was also that Armenian monastery in Jerusalem, which was making translations from Greek and sending books home, such as part or all of Irenaeus Adversus Haereses and the Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, Eusebius' Chronicle, and the Apology of Aristides.

So one could ask whether Eznik's knowledge is actually based at least partly on literary sources, rather than contemporary Marcionitism. If so, obviously it could reflect some very early sources, judging from the other works above.

Should you come back to this, it would be interesting to hear what Drijvers argues.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

History and Religion in Late Antique Syria (Variorum Collected Studies) is available from Amazon.uk or in the US at Amazon.com (or via: amazon.co.uk), or, hopefully, a local library.

spin

Yeah, the knee trembles at $135 for a little light background reading! :frown:


spin

spin

Could you get a little more specific on this item, Joseph, I mean about what you consider Ehrman inadvertantly does in OCS, perhaps withan example or two from his comments?


Taa.


spin

Roger Pearse

I was wandering around Google books looking at what was available full size (searching on "Loeb Classical") and stumbled over the full text of a recent study on Titus of Bostra Contra Manichaeos, with various interesting details about translations, all unpublished. How I grudge having to find books offline, once you get accustomed to finding stuff online!

All the best,

Roger Pearse