Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 10-02-2011, 08:46 PM

Mary Helena likes to cite the work of Sebastian Moll to demonstrate that Marcion was a strict dualist. I know this isn't true because I have been reading the Patristic material for some time now and have never been convinced of Moll's claims. Nevertheless I happened to be doing some more work on my side by side comparison of Clement of Alexandria's Epistle to the Romans and that of the Marcionites and I realized just how fraudulent Moll's claims are. For Moll uses Origen's Commentary on Romans throughout his 'Arch-Heretic' Marcion book.

Yet as I was going through his book I kept noticing him make the weakest, screetchiest arguments to allegedly make the case that Origen supports his claims. His argument in one place was like 'because Origen references the two trees' (i.e. good and bad) it proves that he thought like Moll does about Marcion. But then as I looked at chapter one of Origen's Commentary on Romans I realized what a fraud this book is. For Origen makes it absolutely explicit that Marcion was not a strict dualist:

Quote:

Nevertheless, let us ask those who deny that the good God is also a just judge what shall they say in response to these things which the Apostle says, namely that God "handed them over to the desires of their heart to impurity to the degrading of their bodies." For in this not only will their system, once completely excluded, be forced out, but even our own explanation. For how shall it be just that whoever is handed over — granted that it is on account of their own sins that they are handed over — nonetheless are handed over to lusts and handed over to this, to the devotion of their own bodies to impurities and lusts? For example, anyone who is handed over to the dungeon for punishment cannot be charged with the accusation that he is in darkness. Or, anyone handed over to fire cannot, for this very reason, be blamed for why he is burnt. Likewise in the case of those who are handed over to sinful desires and impurities so that they degrade their bodies, it will not seem fitting for them to be charged when, situated amongst lusts and impurities, they defile their bodies with degradations. Well then, Marcion and all who spring forth from his school like a brood of vipers shall not dare to touch the solution of these matters, not even with their fingertips, since they have thrown away the Old Testament on account of these sorts of problems, wheresoever they happened to have read such things in it. But what good did it do them? For they are no less strangled by similar problems in the New Testament. (Origen, Commentary on Romans 1.18)

This is why professional scholars are often so deceptive. Each of them have to make a name for themselves as 'young and up and coming scholars.' We know of more famous examples with respect to developed claims about Morton Smith forging his discovery, but this is even worse. Why? Because Moll is German. I expect more out of Germans. He comes from a culture with a long history of thoughtful scholarship on Marcion. This is scandalous.

stephan huller · 10-02-2011, 09:04 PM

And here is a parallel discussion of Rom 1:22 - 28 in De Oratione with the same understanding:

Quote:

Marcion, finding much that is recorded in the Old Testament and the sin and suffering that occurs in the world to be inconsistent with God's love, invented another "god", a god of justice, to account for these facts

All I can say is incredibly dishonest.

stephan huller · 10-02-2011, 09:15 PM

The last quote comes from the Google preview of Eric Jay's 1954 translation of De Oratione. Yet I can't find the same explicit reference to Marcion in my Rowan Greer translation. All I see is:

Quote:

Surely, all this must be taken into consideration by those who cut the Godhead into two; and those who suppose that the good Father of our Lord is someone other than the God of the Law must be told this - Suppose the good God leads into temptation the one who does not gain his prayer. And suppose the Father of the Lord gives up those who had previously committed any sin "in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves." (Rom 1.24) He gives them up "to the dishonorable" passions and "to an unfit mind and to improper conduct" (Rom 1.26, 28) Assuming all this, would those so condemned not have been "in the lusts of their hearts" even if they had not been given up to them by God? Would they not have fallen into "dishonorable passions" even if they had not been given up to them by God? Would they not have fallen into an "unfit mind" quite apart from being given up to it by God? Now I know very well that these problems are extremely troubling to the people I am talking about, and that is why they fabricate a God other than the Creator of heaven and earth, since they find many such statements in the Law and the prophets and take offense at a God who they think could not be good if He utters such words.(Origen De Oratione 29)

All scholars acknowledge that Marcion is being referenced here. This lends credence to my suspicion that Jesus was understood to be the repentant Creator and the Father a superior divinity.

maryhelena · 10-03-2011, 03:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Mary Helena likes to cite the work of Sebastian Moll to demonstrate that Marcion was a strict dualist. I know this isn't true because I have been reading the Patristic material for some time now and have never been convinced of Moll's claims. Nevertheless I happened to be doing some more work on my side by side comparison of Clement of Alexandria's Epistle to the Romans and that of the Marcionites and I realized just how fraudulent Moll's claims are. For Moll uses Origen's Commentary on Romans throughout his 'Arch-Heretic' Marcion book.

Yet as I was going through his book I kept noticing him make the weakest, screetchiest arguments to allegedly make the case that Origen supports his claims. His argument in one place was like 'because Origen references the two trees' (i.e. good and bad) it proves that he thought like Moll does about Marcion. But then as I looked at chapter one of Origen's Commentary on Romans I realized what a fraud this book is. For Origen makes it absolutely explicit that Marcion was not a strict dualist:

Quote:

Nevertheless, let us ask those who deny that the good God is also a just judge what shall they say in response to these things which the Apostle says, namely that God "handed them over to the desires of their heart to impurity to the degrading of their bodies." For in this not only will their system, once completely excluded, be forced out, but even our own explanation. For how shall it be just that whoever is handed over — granted that it is on account of their own sins that they are handed over — nonetheless are handed over to lusts and handed over to this, to the devotion of their own bodies to impurities and lusts? For example, anyone who is handed over to the dungeon for punishment cannot be charged with the accusation that he is in darkness. Or, anyone handed over to fire cannot, for this very reason, be blamed for why he is burnt. Likewise in the case of those who are handed over to sinful desires and impurities so that they degrade their bodies, it will not seem fitting for them to be charged when, situated amongst lusts and impurities, they defile their bodies with degradations. Well then, Marcion and all who spring forth from his school like a brood of vipers shall not dare to touch the solution of these matters, not even with their fingertips, since they have thrown away the Old Testament on account of these sorts of problems, wheresoever they happened to have read such things in it. But what good did it do them? For they are no less strangled by similar problems in the New Testament. (Origen, Commentary on Romans 1.18)

This is why professional scholars are often so deceptive. Each of them have to make a name for themselves as 'young and up and coming scholars.' We know of more famous examples with respect to developed claims about Morton Smith forging his discovery, but this is even worse. Why? Because Moll is German. I expect more out of Germans. He comes from a culture with a long history of thoughtful scholarship on Marcion. This is scandalous.

Stephan, I have never referred to Marcion's dualism as a "strict dualism" - that is your term not mine. Please be more careful when referencing my statements.

Sebastian Moll's position on Marcion's dualism is:

Quote:

page 47

Marcion’s dualism forms without doubt the centre of his doctrine. The nature of this dualism does not seem to give rise to much doubt, either, ever since Harnack established his idea that Marcion distinguishes between a just and a good God, and thereby also established a scholarly consensus which lasted for almost a century. However, in the present chapter we shall see that this view is one of the greatest misconceptions concerning Marcion’s teaching, for the heresiarch’s distinction was in fact far less ‘protestant’ than Harnack imagined, as he simply distinquished between an evil and a good God.

1. The Evil God

While recent scholarship has correctly pointed out that Harnack’s perspective is due to his ‘Neoprotestant interpretation” of Marcion, it would be false to claim that there was no evidence in the sources to support his view of a just and a good God within Marcion’s system. As so often, the sources do not provide a coherent picture of Marcion’s doctrine in this matter; however, an extensive chronological overview of the sources’ testimony will show that Marcion’s original distinction was in fact between an evil and a good God, whereas the figure of the just God was only introduced by later generations of his followers.

my bolding and color

The Arch-Heretic Marcion (or via: amazon.co.uk)

also on google book view

maryhelena · 10-03-2011, 03:43 AM

Email from Sebastian Moll

Quote:

Dear Mary (if I may),

thank you for bringing this to my attention. Your fellow poster is right about one thing: I am German and as it happens, today is German Unity Day, so all the more reason to feel good about it ;-)

However, if I responded to every blogger who is disagreeing with my scholarly work, I wouldn't get any of that work done anymore. I'm always shocked about the arrogance of those people. They read one patristic source and believe they know everything about the ancient church. If he had read chapter III of my book, he would have realised that Origen represents a later stage in the development of Marcionite theology.

Anyway, I'm glad that you are so interested in my work and wish you all the best!

Sebastian
(You may quote me on FRDB if you like)

Doug Shaver · 10-03-2011, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Mary Helena likes to cite the work of Sebastian Moll to demonstrate that Marcion was a strict dualist. I know this isn't true because I have been reading the Patristic material for some time now and have never been convinced of Moll's claims.

You're not convinced, therefore you know it isn't true?

stephan huller · 10-03-2011, 09:27 AM

Thanks for the email from Sebastian. I would much prefer debating Sebastian than you Mary Helena but he obviously is not a member of the forum. His point is however not correct. Origen was a contemporary of Tertullian, the same source that he uses to 'prove' that Marcion was a dualist. The problem is that there is no evidence that Tertullian ever met a Marcionite which is not true in the case of Origen. Origen's patron is said by Jerome to have been a repentant Marcionite. Origen's understanding of Marcionitism is wholly independent from Irenaeus or other non-Alexandrian sources. What he knows, he knows from first hand personal experience.

If Origen and Tertullian wrote at the same time and the former had clear personal contact with the tradition and the latter undoubtedly had second (or third hand) contact with the tradition, basically reshaping an existing Syriac or Greek anti-Marcionite treatise into Latin (and according to a 'corrupting Luke' framework which was not in the original text) what value is this testimony? Indeed who can take seriously the idea that Marcion was a strict dualist?

I can't believe that anyone would take any of this seriously when:

(a) our oldest sources, Justin and Irenaeus do not support his thesis
(b) Tertullian's anti-Marcionite treatise has a giant preface at the very beginning which says 'this text was reworked three times' and by at least two - possibly three - different people
(c) the third book in Tertullian's series came from a source associated with Justin if not Justin himself (for whom we have no evidence that he believed Marcion was a strict dualist) and the text was adapted to argue against both Jews and Marcionites
(d) the only other independent source which makes reference to Marcionite dualism is the Philosophumena but in that text the argument stands side by side arguments for the older claims that Marcion divided the godhead into mercy and judgment.

The point is that Moll knows all these things and nevertheless makes it seem as if the Irenaean position that Marcion divided the godhead into mercy and judgment is more recent than the claims of the threefold revised text of Tertullian. This is an error which cannot be excused as a 'mistake' on Moll's part. It is misrepresentation and it has to be noted than none of Moll's more informed (and more famous) German predecessors in Marcionite scholarship takes this absurd view.

I have no explanation for why Moll suddenly lost his abilities to count Tertullian's position as 'older' than Justin and Irenaeus other than he wants to make a name for himself. It should also be noted that the English version of his book must be missing some footnotes because there are numerous times when Moll discusses Origen's testimony and he clearly made use of the work of Schmid and von Harnack but there is no reference to this in the footnotes. Is this book a popular reworking of his PhD thesis or journal article? I have no idea. It is unfortunate that Schmid's work hasn't found its way into an English translation (Schmid speaks English fluently).

stephan huller · 10-03-2011, 09:35 AM

My review of Schmid's book Marcion und sein Apostolos from a few years back at my blog: http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/se...max-results=20

Quote:

Ulrich Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1995.

What Schmid has done is re-examine all the evidence much more carefully and systematically than had been done so far. His finding is that Marcion’s text differed from other mss. in a way that would affect the meaning in only a few places, though these few differences are important. All the rest of what was listed by Zahn and Harnack and others is simply agreement between Marcion’s text and the papyri or the Western Text or readings attested in the Syriac transmission. Tertullian and Epiphanius and others saw the disagreement with their text, without realising that the disagreement was not specific to Marcion. Besides this, a large part of what was cited in previous work as specific to Marcion is no more than Tertullian’s re-wording of indirect quotations to fit his sentence structure, or Epiphanius not always quoting clearly.

The Dialogue of Adamantius is worthless, since the author knew just about nothing, and invented readings. Epiphanius used two different mss., not exactly the same as each other. When this is recognised, using his evidence is straightforward.

Schmid proves beyond any doubt whatever that Marcion DID use the Old Testament, and he DID have O.T. quotations in his text of the Epistles. As for the supposed rejection of the O.T. or of the Torah attributed to him from the Antitheses, everyone starting with Tertullian and extending into modern times has missed the point. The structure of this work was a list of theses in the technical sense of the term, that is, terse single statements each serving as the heading of a reasoned development of an argument. The details and subtleties would follow the headings. Treating the headings as statements meant to be adequate on their own shows ignorance of an important ancient method of composition. It is like reciting the list of theses that Luther stuck up on the church door while forgetting that he headed these as “theses to be debated”. (This comparison is mine). The theses or headings are in fact not understandable without the development, and not meant to be understandable on their own. It seems that neither Epiphanius nor Tertullian had ever seen the booklet, only the table of contents, that is, the list of Antitheses. Or otherwise it suited them not to quote the clarificatory developments of each heading so that they could misrepresent what the headings meant. (This last bit is not in Schmid’s conclusions in such an explicit form, but from what is cited in other places in the book this seems possible). Everyone seems to have wrongly thought that this list was the booklet, because Tertullian and Epiphanius said so or thought so.

Schmid thinks in terms of Marcion having made changes, but what he says can be re-phrased in terms of what was original, that is, Marcion’s, being changed. When he speaks of Marcion’s deletions, we can take that to mean that additions were put in by others.

The full list of all the differences between Marcion and the majority of Catholic mss. where at the same time Marcion is not supported by the papyri or the Western Text and so on, is very very short. See just above the middle of p. 310, starting with the words „Sein Beitrag beschränkt sich auf die Streichung präzise eingrenzbarer Textabschnitte....“ Notice that all these differences are what Schmid calls omissions by Marcion and I would call additions in the Roman & Catholic Recension. Most are additions of long phrases or whole sentences or verses with additional highly loaded content, but the last one listed by Schmid only concerns references to “the flesh of Christ”, much shorter but still loaded with implications.

All the same, the list of places where Marcion differs from the majority of Catholic mss. and is in agreement with the papyri, the Western Text and so on, is long: it comes to thirty pages in Schmid’s listing. Very few of these differences affect the meaning, but some make a big difference. These differences affecting the meaning are explained by Schmid as being due to Marcion’s use of mss. of a recension that was anti-Jewish and had been revised in accordance with the Western Text and some related recension before Marcion saw it. This can be turned round to mean that the Western Text and this similar unknown recension represent a more original text than the form in the majority of Catholic mss. The term “anti-Jewish” is in my judgment simply silly, just as silly as it is when applied to John’s Gospel. Turn this round and say the false view of the Torah and the trivialising of the argument from the Torah and introduction of some irrelevancies from the O.T. and the obscuring of the overall argument were inserted into the Roman & Catholic Text by changing words and phrases, but there was a form of the Western Text free of these alterations and agreeing with Marcion

stephan huller · 10-03-2011, 10:06 AM

And my gripe against Mary Helena is, it is fine to use a scholarly opinion. But as individuals who are not religious nor tied to a particular dogma, we CHOOSE the opinions we associate ourselves with. In this case, I don't feel that Mary Helena has picked Moll because of a careful consideration of the evidence associated with Marcion but merely as a way of rebutting my claims about Marcion. I can demonstrate that thought process over the course of the posts here at the forum.

That Moll has decided IMO to reinforce popular misconceptions about Marcion based in no small part on the testimony of much later Patristic writers is one thing. I can see how it would further someone's career to simply write papers and books which say 'don't listen to those carefully reconstructed and nuanced attempts by my German forefathers to understand Marcion; all the popular prejudices are true.' This catering to intellectual laziness will get you a lot of mileage in the academic world as there are a great number of conservative scholars who want to write off Marcion as a strict dualist.

Nevertheless as I said we who have no ties to a particular position are theoretically at least 'truth seekers' in the truest and most idealist sense of that word. We should use our freedom to know what the truth is rather than picking a position just to rebut someone's claims in a debate.

Promoting the idea that Marcion was a dualist who held that the Jewish god was evil is a disservice to the truth because there are simply so many knowledgeable witnesses like Origen who demonstrate that this view is untenable. Origen had firsthand knowledge of Marcionites as I mentioned. To dismiss that testimony is akin to siding with an autobiography of a celebrity which claims he was gay and never had sex with a woman as long as he lived after reading an interview with at least one - possibly many women - who claim he did.

Interestingly, I have noted that Morton Smith is often claimed to be gay - and it used as part of the alleged motivation for 'forging' the document - but I found a woman whose mother dated Morton Smith for the entire period of time leading up to and after the Mar Saba visit. I can't prove they 'did it' of course. The daughter obviously wasn't there in the room but she does assume 'it' happened. Yet it is amazing to see how people even on the authenticity side of the debate don't want to accept this and other testimonies which contradict their own person 'wishes.' They tell me it isn't important or it distracts from the debate etc.

The truth is the truth. We should just go where it is and not get distracted by personal agendas. Or as Madonna once said, the truth is where you find it not just where you bump and grind it.

stephan huller · 10-03-2011, 10:28 AM

And of course my argument against Moll is - the book and the PhD thesis saying that Marcion was in fact a dualist should never have been published because the combination of Justin and Irenaeus's testimony (the oldest) and Origen's testimony (the most knowledge first hand source) makes the claims of Tertullian impossible. Moll's work merely becomes an exercise in argumentation. It is no different than allowing mountainman an opportunity to develop his thesis. Pete is excluded by the authorities, perhaps owing to his inability to formulate a coherent position. Yet Moll is allowed owing to the popular prejudices in later Church Fathers and those in favor of Patristic sources in theological departments. If the universities were run by Islamic fundamentalists though, Pete would get an opportunity to publish his Eusebius doctorate (hint to Pete, why not enrol at the University of Tehran, just cite heavily from Abd al Jabbar). Yet it does all come down to popular prejudices. One could publish a paper in some parts of the world that the Jews really do use Christian children in their Passover matzah. Claiming Marcion 'hated' the Jewish god and made him the Devil is the other end of the spectrum and it is a complete disservice to the truth.

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10-03-2011, 09:27 AM	#7
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Thanks for the email from Sebastian. I would much prefer debating Sebastian than you Mary Helena but he obviously is not a member of the forum. His point is however not correct. Origen was a contemporary of Tertullian, the same source that he uses to 'prove' that Marcion was a dualist. The problem is that there is no evidence that Tertullian ever met a Marcionite which is not true in the case of Origen. Origen's patron is said by Jerome to have been a repentant Marcionite. Origen's understanding of Marcionitism is wholly independent from Irenaeus or other non-Alexandrian sources. What he knows, he knows from first hand personal experience. If Origen and Tertullian wrote at the same time and the former had clear personal contact with the tradition and the latter undoubtedly had second (or third hand) contact with the tradition, basically reshaping an existing Syriac or Greek anti-Marcionite treatise into Latin (and according to a 'corrupting Luke' framework which was not in the original text) what value is this testimony? Indeed who can take seriously the idea that Marcion was a strict dualist? I can't believe that anyone would take any of this seriously when: (a) our oldest sources, Justin and Irenaeus do not support his thesis (b) Tertullian's anti-Marcionite treatise has a giant preface at the very beginning which says 'this text was reworked three times' and by at least two - possibly three - different people (c) the third book in Tertullian's series came from a source associated with Justin if not Justin himself (for whom we have no evidence that he believed Marcion was a strict dualist) and the text was adapted to argue against both Jews and Marcionites (d) the only other independent source which makes reference to Marcionite dualism is the Philosophumena but in that text the argument stands side by side arguments for the older claims that Marcion divided the godhead into mercy and judgment. The point is that Moll knows all these things and nevertheless makes it seem as if the Irenaean position that Marcion divided the godhead into mercy and judgment is more recent than the claims of the threefold revised text of Tertullian. This is an error which cannot be excused as a 'mistake' on Moll's part. It is misrepresentation and it has to be noted than none of Moll's more informed (and more famous) German predecessors in Marcionite scholarship takes this absurd view. I have no explanation for why Moll suddenly lost his abilities to count Tertullian's position as 'older' than Justin and Irenaeus other than he wants to make a name for himself. It should also be noted that the English version of his book must be missing some footnotes because there are numerous times when Moll discusses Origen's testimony and he clearly made use of the work of Schmid and von Harnack but there is no reference to this in the footnotes. Is this book a popular reworking of his PhD thesis or journal article? I have no idea. It is unfortunate that Schmid's work hasn't found its way into an English translation (Schmid speaks English fluently).

10-03-2011, 10:06 AM	#9
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	And my gripe against Mary Helena is, it is fine to use a scholarly opinion. But as individuals who are not religious nor tied to a particular dogma, we CHOOSE the opinions we associate ourselves with. In this case, I don't feel that Mary Helena has picked Moll because of a careful consideration of the evidence associated with Marcion but merely as a way of rebutting my claims about Marcion. I can demonstrate that thought process over the course of the posts here at the forum. That Moll has decided IMO to reinforce popular misconceptions about Marcion based in no small part on the testimony of much later Patristic writers is one thing. I can see how it would further someone's career to simply write papers and books which say 'don't listen to those carefully reconstructed and nuanced attempts by my German forefathers to understand Marcion; all the popular prejudices are true.' This catering to intellectual laziness will get you a lot of mileage in the academic world as there are a great number of conservative scholars who want to write off Marcion as a strict dualist. Nevertheless as I said we who have no ties to a particular position are theoretically at least 'truth seekers' in the truest and most idealist sense of that word. We should use our freedom to know what the truth is rather than picking a position just to rebut someone's claims in a debate. Promoting the idea that Marcion was a dualist who held that the Jewish god was evil is a disservice to the truth because there are simply so many knowledgeable witnesses like Origen who demonstrate that this view is untenable. Origen had firsthand knowledge of Marcionites as I mentioned. To dismiss that testimony is akin to siding with an autobiography of a celebrity which claims he was gay and never had sex with a woman as long as he lived after reading an interview with at least one - possibly many women - who claim he did. Interestingly, I have noted that Morton Smith is often claimed to be gay - and it used as part of the alleged motivation for 'forging' the document - but I found a woman whose mother dated Morton Smith for the entire period of time leading up to and after the Mar Saba visit. I can't prove they 'did it' of course. The daughter obviously wasn't there in the room but she does assume 'it' happened. Yet it is amazing to see how people even on the authenticity side of the debate don't want to accept this and other testimonies which contradict their own person 'wishes.' They tell me it isn't important or it distracts from the debate etc. The truth is the truth. We should just go where it is and not get distracted by personal agendas. Or as Madonna once said, the truth is where you find it not just where you bump and grind it.

10-03-2011, 10:28 AM	#10
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	And of course my argument against Moll is - the book and the PhD thesis saying that Marcion was in fact a dualist should never have been published because the combination of Justin and Irenaeus's testimony (the oldest) and Origen's testimony (the most knowledge first hand source) makes the claims of Tertullian impossible. Moll's work merely becomes an exercise in argumentation. It is no different than allowing mountainman an opportunity to develop his thesis. Pete is excluded by the authorities, perhaps owing to his inability to formulate a coherent position. Yet Moll is allowed owing to the popular prejudices in later Church Fathers and those in favor of Patristic sources in theological departments. If the universities were run by Islamic fundamentalists though, Pete would get an opportunity to publish his Eusebius doctorate (hint to Pete, why not enrol at the University of Tehran, just cite heavily from Abd al Jabbar). Yet it does all come down to popular prejudices. One could publish a paper in some parts of the world that the Jews really do use Christian children in their Passover matzah. Claiming Marcion 'hated' the Jewish god and made him the Devil is the other end of the spectrum and it is a complete disservice to the truth.

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