Juststeve

Toto:

Paul addresses his letter to the Church in Rome circa 60 C.E. and Tacitus says Christians were being persecuted in 64 C.E. but Toto says a church in Rome before 60 seems improbable. He doesn't say why but he is incredulous. How much weight to we assign to that.

Steve

stephan huller

There is a fundamental problem believing that the OUR inherited church had a presence in Rome before 147 CE. The problem is Polycarp and his feud with Anicetus. Irenaeus glosses over the conflict but the dispute demonstrates the existence of two churches - one which attempted to incorporate Jewish beliefs and practices BACK into Christianity (Polycarp) and another which argued that Christianity was something BETTER than 'mere' Judaism, just as the number eight was is 'one better' than the number seven (Anicetus's church by inference).

I don't know what to make of Tacitus's reference. Roger Viklund has been blogging about that for a while. The underlying point for me at least is that the Catholic tradition was founded on the 'compromise' that Irenaeus establishes between Polycarp and Anicetus. Before that there was no 'Catholic' Roman tradition. This is also suggested in my mind by the fact that even Irenaeus couldn't reconcile 'Paul' and 'Peter' being buried together.

There seems to be separate burial places for both men in two different parts of Rome (something which wouldn't have happened if the church there was really founded by both men as Irenaeus claims cf. AH 3.3). Even the claim that Rome is the See of 'Peter and Paul' is strange. How does this reconcile with Acts account of a reconciliation and founding of the Church at Antioch?

Given that there wasn't a 'reconciled' Church and that Peter and Paul were understood to be buried in two different parts of the city we are probably dealing with two different traditions which only became reconciled much later. Notice that Clement is said to be Peter's disciple. There is also a sense that there were two bishops of Rome ruling at the same time down to the time of Hippolytus.

The Roman Catholic Church also seems to have some Marcionite characteristics (celibate priesthood) that distinguish it from the Greek church.

There is a complex mixture of influences at Rome including Imperial collusion. It really is hard to untangle the ball of yarn.

The Marcionites clearly had an Epistle to the Romans and as such as early as the beginnings of the Marcionite tradition (according to Clement 'Marcion' became a Christian at the time Simon heard the preaching of Peter). As such there was a Marcionite church at Rome before the canonization of their NT writings.

The question is when did the Marcionites think that their apostle wrote his gospel and the letters that make up the Apostolikon?

The easier question to answer is the origins of the gospel. Since most scholars date the gospel to the time of the destruction of the temple the Marcionite gospel - which shared the same basic structure as the existing narratives and is at least once identified as a 'Gospel of Mark' (Philosophumena 7.18 from memory) - the letters of the same apostle could only have been written AFTER 70 CE (given that the letters make reference to the gospel).

As such the earliest a Marcionite community in Rome could have been established is within a few years of the destruction of the temple.

Juststeve

Stephen:

I would be interested in knowing when you think Marcion lived. We I Google him I get a birth circa 85 C.E. and his excommunication in the middle of the second century. Do those dates seem right to you?

Steve

stephan huller

Well as I think that Marcion was the Alexandrian St. Mark I would put his dates at c. 70 CE but Clement helps me out to some degree with this overlooked reference:

And [the age] of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, ends with Nero. It was later, in the times of Adrian the king, that those who invented the heresies arose; and they extended to the age of Antoninus the eider, as, for instance, Basilides, though he claims (as they boast) for his master, Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter. Likewise they allege that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas. And he was the pupil of Paul. For Marcion, who arose in the same age with them (i.e. the apostles), lived as an old man with the younger [heretics]. And after him Simon (Magus) heard for a little the preaching of Peter. [Str.7.18]

Irenaeus really doesn't give an age for when Marcion started only when he 'flourished' which is the middle of the second century. I think this is the period that the gospel of Marcion was first brought to light and that there is some confusion between Marcellina and Marcion (both diminutive forms of the name Mark) from the Hypomnemata. Jerome thinks that Marcellina was the first Marcionite minister in Rome. Pseudo-Tertullian Five Books on Marcion (the poem not the treatise) seems to make a similar error.

I really don't think that there was someone named 'Marcion.' I think instead that the early followers of Mark addressed him with a dimunitive of his name (like the Manichaeans did 'Mani'). Hilgenfeld points to parallel examples of the contemporary use of diminutives in Christianity. Here again is a rough English translation of his original article:

That Μαρκίων is a diminutive of Μαρκος, I conclude also from the relation of Εὔρυτος to Εὐρυτίων, (vgl. Phil. Griech. Gramm. 21. Aufl. S. 119, Anm. 12), κοδράτίων (from Philostratus vit. sophist. II, 6 p. 250) to κοδράτος (vgl. W. H. Waddington, Memoire sur la Chronologie de la vie du rheteur Aristide, 1867, p. 32). So also I think κάλλιστος, the Roman Bishop (217 - 222) against whom the author of the Philosophumena shows such hostility, is behind Rhodon's reference to κάλλιστίωνι προσφωνων (Eusebius, Church History V, 13, 8). Stronger still is the case for the Μαρκιανοί - which Justin Dial c. Tr. c. 35 p. 253 mentions before the Valentinians, Basilideans, Satornillians, etc - being a reference to Marcionites. Similarly, one will have to read the Muratorianum Z 82-84: quia etiam librum novum psalmorum Marciani (= Marcionitae conscripserunt). [Hilgenfeld, Adolf, “Häreseologische Berichtigungen”, Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie,(1888), XXIII, 478—483]

The next stage of my research will be into the use of dimunitives in the period. It should close the book on the argument.