Ben C Smith

Say, Jake, one thing puzzles me about your view.

As I understand you, you think that Marcion originated the Pauline epistles (which the proto-orthodox later hijacked). You also think that Marcion produced a gospel text that later became the gospel of Luke.

Now, it is my view that the author of the Pauline epistles (Paul, middle of century I) knew that Jesus did his thing in Palestine. But it would seem that it is also your view that the author of the Pauline epistles (Marcion, middle of century II) knew that Jesus did his thing in Palestine; after all, that is what his own gospel says. On the other hand, you complain of a relative lack of references to a person who did his thing in Palestine in the Pauline epistles; so how do you explain Marcion leaving all those gospel details out?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I have no idea what this question is in reference to.

Ben.

Gamera

For a religious propagandist, he certainly was a skilled novelist. People in droves accepted his account as reality almost from the start, and they now number in the hundreds of millions. Accepting your premise, if Luke had only applied his talents to fiction writing and not theological revisionism, he would have been the Hellenic Chaucer. The anti-Marcionists were sure lucky to have him on their side.

Toto

How do you know that people accepted his (or her) account as reality when it was first written? Perhaps "Luke" did apply his/her talents to fiction, but only two works survived.

jakejonesiv

The Pauline writings developed in an area outside of gospel influence.
The gospels contained stuff foreign to Marcionite dogmatics. It was hard enough to purge the gospels of "error" why would the Marcioites "pollute" the Paulines? (the proto-orthodox did that latter).
One could ask the same thing of the Synoptics. Why do they know little or nothing of Pauline soteriology if there was step wise chronological development?

Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

:rolling:

Were beings deemed to be fantastic mixtures of the carnal and divine thought to have existed in those days? Must be. :huh:

jakejonesiv

Sorry. No offense intended.

Ben C Smith

None taken.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

Ben, very interesting comment from you - Jake got it!

There is probably something here that we are talking past each other about.

All I did was note you had quoted a verse where Jesus is described as human and a god - classic xian theology.

But I continually if I see the word god or spirit or similar link these concepts in my head with ghosts and the supernatural and things that go bump in the night and ghostbusters.

So if I have a chimera of human and god - a god with fleshy bits - I ask what is historical.

The difference with cleopatra and the caesars is that they are human to whom godly bits were attributed.

Jesus does look like a god to whom fleshy bits were added.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(mythology)

(And I find links to gas vents particularly interesting!)

Gamera

You would expect that if people did consider it fiction, there might exist some secondary texts stating it was so taken. The classic world produced volumes of texts about texts. Thus, we have texts about Plato's texts, and from this we derive he wasn't doing fiction, but philosophy. Similarly we have volumes of texts about the NT texts. And they all seem to treat it as history.

I can't disprove a negative about Luke not having written fictions that don't exist and nobody mentions. But your question is similar to asking how do we know Shakespeare didn't consider himself an historian, and all of his other clear historical works are lost.

I think it's appropriate to deal with the texts we have and the secondary texts about them, and they all seem to indicate that Luke thought he was doing history, and his audience agreed.