Sheshbazzar

My view is somewhat similar, in that I believe that Saul of Tarsus was a real pre-christian Jewish writer, whose writings were at an early date taken over by Marcion and edited to become the initial 'chrestian' writings, now of Marcion.

These were then in the late 2nd century taken over again by the emerging orthodox christian church and heavily edited, interpolated, 'Christianized' and expanded to forge the Christian 'Pauline' Epistles.

Thus I see three distinct stages in the development of these texts;

1. Purely Jewish -addressed by Saul of Tarsus to legitimate Jewish synagogues.

2. The 'Chrestian' Marcionite - with a Iesu mythology directed to an essentially gentile cult audience.

3. The 'Christianized' orthodox -created by a gentile hierarchy dedicated to the de-legitimatizing and replacing of any synagogue connections.

The original Jewish Paul knew nothing of the gospel tale. And what he actually wrote would have only comprised a small fraction, say 10% of our present 'Pauline' texts.

Bernard Muller

Jake,
I want to add on the pot two more points:
First one, showing that gLuke was written before Marcion's gospel. Here
Second one, against a late Pauline writer writing in secret an epistle. Here
Now, I'll be working on a case which shows the author of 'Acts of the apostles' knew about Josephus' Wars but not his 'Antiquities'.
Cordially, Bernard

jakejonesiv

Hi Avi,

According to the Alogi and Caius Revelation was suspected of being written by Cerinthus, the great heretic of the late1c. early 2. CE. ‘"What good," they [the Alogi] said, "is the Apocalypse to me, with its seven angels and seven seals? What have I to do with the four angels at Euphrates, whom another angel must loose, and the host of horsemen with breastplates of fire and brimstone?" They seem to have been jejune rationalists opposed to chiliasm and all mysterious doctrines. They absurdly attributed the writings John to the Gnostic, Cerinthus, whom the aged apostle opposed. Hippolytus “On the Gospel and Apocalypse of John,”' Epiphanius Her. 51.3.

Whether Cerinthus actually wrote Revelation (or redacted an earlier zealot document), he is Revelations’ earliest known proponent. According to Eusebius 3.28, Cerinthus claimed to have received revelations of angels written by a great apostle. The angels revealed a Kingdom of Christ would be set up on earth for a thousand years filled with sensual pleasure and marriage feasts. The reference is certainly to the book of Revelation, with the thousand year reign of the faithful with Christ being found in 20.4, the marriage feast 19:5, the angels 1:1 etc, and the great apostle “John” 1:1, 4:7 etc.

Jake

jakejonesiv

Yes.

Thanks,
Jake

jakejonesiv

Hi Benard,

The first depends on a theory of "Q". The second (delete keys) is the type of imaginitive apologetics it would not be productive for us to discuss. I am not going to debate with your imagination. It it makes you feel better, then by all means believe it.

I have here one that is a bit more substantial to discuss, the old wine in the new wineskins.

Luke chapter 5 NASB
37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined.
38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.

Here Marcion argued that the gospel about Jesus was the new wine and Judiasm was the old wineskins. That is actually a pretty good argument, and hard to refute especially in a debate format.

But then look at what a proto-orthodox redacter did. He added another verse, not in Marcion's version. Here it is.
39 And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’”

Now, that doesn't make a lick of sense as a parable. It contradicts the point of what went before. But as an interpolation, it makes perfect sense. It turns Marcion's meaning on its head, and kicks up enough dust to obscure the otherwise clear meaning.

Bernand, let me anticipate that you may object, that Marcion cut 5:39 from his version of Luke because it favors continuity with the Old Testament which he opposed. But that would be a very poor debate tactic if Marcion's opponent's text already contained the refutation before he even stated his argument! So it is very unlikely that either Marcion or his opponents had Lk 5:39 when Marcion made this antithesis.

As suggested earlier, 5:39 doesn't make any sense. When we look at the synoptic parralels we see that Lk 5:39 is missing. It is not included in Mark 2:21-23 or Matthew 9:16-17 and this suggests that it is extraneous. It is also missing from Luke in Bezae and in the Old Latin version as reconstructed by Jülicher.

"We note that if the passage was not in Marcion's Luke, the ruling possibility is that it was added later by an anti-Marcionite hand, to counter the Marcionite interpretation of the preceding passage. There is thus a convincing motive for the addition of what, on any reasonable reading, is inconsistent with the plain sense of the preceding "new wine" metaphor. In the event that other evidence suggests that 5:39 was not in Marcion's Luke, we thus have a plausible scenario for its addition. It is not immediately obvious that an equally convincing motive can be adduced for its addition after the completion of Luke, but before Luke was seen by Marcion. To that extent, the possibility that 5:39 was not present in Luke as seen by Marcion is better supported against the alternative."
A Marcion Textual Crux, Luke 5:39, The Old Wine is Good. http://www.umass.edu/wsp/biblica/marcion/lk-5-39.html

Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Hi Shebazzer,

Would you consider Simon the Samaritan instead of Saul of Taurus? If so,we would pretty much agree. See _The Amazing Colossal Apostle_ by Robert M. Price.

IMO, the connection of Paul to Saul of Tarsus is pretty much a fraud. It is mentioned nowhere but in Acts.

In Acts chapter 9, is the tale of how Saul was converted on the road to Damsacus. Many people assume that this is when Saul's name was changed to Paul. But this is incorrect. The Saul character retains his old name for four more chapters!

As late as Acts chapter 13, Saul still doesn't have his new name, Paul. Saul, Bar-Nabas, and John meet a magician named Bar-Jesus, the son of Jesus (13:6). Of course, this magician must be labeled a false prophet.

The author of Acts immediately wishes to confuse the fact the the magican was known as the Son of Jesus by changing his name to Elymas (13:8), and claiming that is what Bar-Jesus meant all along. It makes no sense and has
lead to many variants in the extant manuscripts.

Bar-Jesus/Elymas was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus. This is the first time in Acts we encounter a Paul, and it isn't Saul.

But is soon as Sergius Paul is intoduced, within two verses, Saul takes his name! "Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence .... But Saul, also known as Paul..." Acts 13:7,9.

This is the old switcheroo. Sergius Paulus loses his name (he is merely the proconsul in 13:12), and henceforth our hero is known by his familiar name, Paul.

Now that the catholicized St. Paul, has fully been revealed by gaining his rightful name, sort of like Batman getting his first bat suit. He is now ready to battle the Magus, the arch heretic whom he calls "... son of the devil, you enemy of all that is right, full of every sort of deceit and fraud" Acts 13:10.

But there is something the author of Acts cannot hide; the new Paul is battling his evil doppleganger, his mirror image.

Paul continues in 13:10, "will you not stop twisting the straight paths of the Lord?" But wait, in Acts 9:11 it is Saul who is on Straight Street; now Elymas Bar-Jesus the Magician who is on Straight Street, and he is making it crooked.

The magician (is he son of Jesus or son of the Devil?) is struck blind for a time, just like the presumed Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus.

"Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him to Damascus. For three days he was unable to see..." Acts 9:8-9. "You will be blind, and unable to see the sun for a time." Immediately a dark mist fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand" Acts 13:11.

This story is the twin to Simon Peter's confrontation with a near identical Magician, the anti-Simon, Simon Magus. Acts 8:9-24. (In Acts, Peter and Paul are like the Double Mint Twins).

Who then is this son of Jesus, Elymas the magician? The closest one can find is Josephus Antiquities 20.7.2, which mentions a Jewish magician on Cyprus named "Atomos". But variants of this text give Simon as the magician's name.

Hermann Detering in "The Falsified Paul", pages 164-165 commented that when refering to a person, "Atomos" in Greek and "Paul" in Latin are equivalent.


Jake

jakejonesiv

Hi Toto,

If we agree that Marcion had the original version of Luke and possessed the primitive version of Paul's letters, we have made significant progress in our discussions. But unfortunately Hoffmann gets the dates for Marcion wrong, placing him too early, and this throws off his chronology.

He starts to go wrong by finding Marcion as one of Ignatius' opponents. There are two things wrong here. The first is that it is not at all clear that the writer of Smyrneans 5.1 has Marcion in view since these "advocates of death" reject the gospel as well as the OT. The second problem is that the traditional dates for the Ignatians are quite likely wrong; too early! And RJH also goes astray with Polycarp. If he had read the Dutch Radical scholars, he would not have made these errors.

You can see part of my debate with DR. Hofmann here on Mythtic Pizza and Cold-cocked Scholars
I emphasis part of the debate, because when I started to question him about Marcion's chronology, he simply quit allowing my comments to appear in the blog.

(When I asked Dr. Hoffmann to cite the text to substantiate his claim that Tertullian did not have Marcionite text, he quoted AM 1.1 which has nothing to do with the subject. Tertullian could have written any number of editions of his own book, even starting from scratch, and still had the same Marcionite text.)

This error in chronolgy forced Hoffmann to theorize that Marcion had never gone to Rome. But this is one of the elements of Marcion's biography that is the most sure, as attested by the Church Fathers. The variaition in the time of his arrival from these sources does not justify the conclusion he never came to Rome at all, and it certainly does not justify the unsupported assertion that Marcion died when he is traditionaly dated to arrive in Rome!


Jake

P.S. Marcion, (a follower of Simon a follower after Cerdo), and his money being rejected is the history retrojected into the apostolic age in the rejection of Simon in Acts 8, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money!"
And, btw, it is also the inspiration of Paul taking up a collection for the great church in Jerusalem, the 1c. proxies for the 2c. Roman church.

Bernard Muller

Jake,
My first name is Bernard.

The first was about two different verses. Only the first one involves the existence of Q. Actually, as I admitted, the existence of Q, with Marcion knowing it, weakens my argument.
For the second verse, there is no Q in the equation, and it is a stronger point, that obviously you did not consider.

I found two verses in gMarcion which were fairly well witnessed, and show significant differences with the corresponding gLuke verses. Let's examine them and ask ourselves: did Marcion write his gospel from gLuke (case 1) or was gLuke an elaboration from gMarcion (case 2)?

Verse 1:
Lk 16:17 "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail." NKJV
gMarcion "But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, ... than one tittle of my [Jesus] words to fail." http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel4.html

Case 1: The change is easy to explain: Marcion was light years away from accepting compliance with the Law of Moses.
But what about gLuke? Certainly the gospel has a Gentile outlook (2:29-32, 7:4-10), yet not very pronounced. However the same saying appears also in gMatthew (5:18), but not in gMark, and therefore would be part of the Q source, which "Luke" felt compel to include, even when it hurts (another example is Lk 14:26). See more about Q http://historical-jesus.info/q.html .

Case 2: Why would "Luke" modify a verse from gMarcion (when it was very acceptable for the author) in order to comply with gMatthew (with a clear Jewish outlook)?
That's very unlikely. And "Luke" knowing about gMatthew is not widely accepted (I argued against it here http://historical-jesus.info/q.html).
But if Q existed in the 2nd century, and with "Luke" adopting the Q version of the verse, then:
a) if Q was known when gMarcion was written: Marcion would have modified a Q saying, illustrating Marcion's tendency to make strategic changes on existing material (as other Christian writers did).
b) if Q was not redacted yet when gMarcion was written: there is a possibility that the Q author of the verse modified gMarcion version (implying that gMatthew was written afterwards).

To conclude, it is more likely Marcion modified a verse from gLuke rather than "Luke" changing it from gMarcion, even if Q cannot be used to unvalidate case 2.

Verse 2:
Lk 21:32 "... this generation will not pass away till all has taken place." RSV
gMarcion: "... The heaven and the earth shall in no wise pass away, till all things be accomplished." http://www.gnosis.org/library/marcion/Gospel5.html

Case 1: Because gMarcion was written well into the 2nd century, Marcion had obvious reason to make a change: since "all things" included the advent of the Kingdom (21:25-28), it was evident Jesus' generation had died down before the big event. But with gLuke written in the 1st century, some of the generation of Jesus would still be alive. So the author would have no problem for including in the gospel a verse from gMark (13:30), as also did "Matthew" (24:34). Furthermore, "Luke" also copied from gMark (9:1) the following verse:
9:27 "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." KJV
Note: the same verse also appears in Mt 16:28, but is not reported to exist in gMarcion.

Case 2: Why would "Luke", generating his gospel from gMarcion, well into the 2nd century, would include 9:27 and switch to the Markan & Matthean version for 21:32, at a time when Jesus' generation had died?
There is no reason, as far as I can see.

To conclude, it is far more likely Marcion modified a verse from gLuke rather than "Luke" changing it from gMarcion.

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller

Jake,
Here it is, for everyone to see. I certainly do not see why I would be an imaginative apologetics on that:

Paul, letting his Jewishness take hold of him (and likely revealing his personal views), starts on the wrong foot by being very discriminating against the female gender, and putting women much lower than men. He will realize the error and, from 11:10, tries to re-establish complete equality between the two genders. Then he attempts to find some other argument (away from Genesis 2:7, 20b-23) but goes quickly into conflict with what he said earlier in 11:5-6. There, an uncovered woman is shameful, as just like having her head shaved, but later, at 11:15, a woman's hair is her covering & glory. An exasperated Paul has to suggest the true reason (11:16): in Gentile Christian gatherings, women with uncovered hair would look bad (for Paul!) if observed by visiting other Christians.

11: 2 Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you. 3 But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. [Christ is inferior to God, and a woman is (way) below a man]

4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.
[Very strong and unambiguous language!]

6 For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered.
[Even more explicit: an uncovered woman is to be treated like a sheep with wool!]

[Does what follow represent the personal (Jewish) views of Paul on women? Likely so]
7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man is not from woman, but woman from man [Ge 2:20-23]. 9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

[At that point, Paul probably understood that, if the previous statements are not "corrected", he will lose the support of many women, including the very generous ones of Philippi. So he starts to be "nice" about women]
10 For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
[??? which reason? Suddenly, the hair covering becomes a symbol of authority!]

[And now, it's time for Paul to do some heavy damage control in order to repair what he said in 11:3-9]
11 Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man, in the Lord [back to equality!]. 12 For as woman came from man, even so man also comes through woman [back to equality again! and opposite of what Paul said in 11:8a] ; but all things are from God.

13 Judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?
[Now, woman's hair covered or not is a matter of propriety, subject to human judgment]

14 Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him? 15 But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.
[Paul likely knows he is contradicting himself (see 10:5-6 "...with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved") and getting trapped into a mess: now the woman's long hair is considered a head covering! Certainly, he is not going anywhere]

[Now the time has come to forget about intellectual arguments using dubious logic & controversial basis and be more direct & plain]
16 But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.
[We have it now: women should cover their hair because it is the custom in other churches]

Does the above verses look to come from a "fabricated Paul"?
According to 1 Cor 16:21, Paul did not write the letter, he dictated it.
And Paul, very likely, did not want to loose face in front of his scribe, probably one of his followers, by asking him to erase several verses (which was near impossible to do or creating a mess) or rewriting the letter (if on a scroll) or part of it (if on sheets). That would imply Paul made a mistake (& was not inspired from above!).
However, someone writing in the name of Paul in secret had the luxury to do some rewriting in order to remove any "faux pas".

Cordially, Bernard

Bernard Muller

Jake,
First my first name is not Bernand.

Why do you assume Marcion wrote it first? And not "Luke".

Why do you assume a proto-orthodox added on gMarcion? And not written by "Luke" before gMarcion.

Actually it makes sense in gLuke:
Luke's community was probably warned against new Christian teaching: keep the old one, it is better! Then "But new wine must be put into new wineskins" gets a different meaning: take that new unwanted stuff somewhere else! "the old is better"
Luke 5:38 might look awkward, but he/she was working from Mk2:22 and gMark (which some in the Lukan community knew). He/she had to change the meaning by adding 5:39.
Cannot follow you on that. But if Marcion thought his stuff was new and good, then deleting 5:39 makes a lot of sense. And "Luke" did not have to think about Marcion on that, but some others who were preaching another "new" Christian message before him.

Cordially, Bernard