Doug Shaver

By giving them all the benefit of doubt. If a writer says he has studied Greek, I assume he has in fact studied it unless I find evidence that he is lying.

dog-on

I did not mean to imply that Marcion was Paul, however, it is possible that the writings attributed to Paul were originally written by someone associated with Marcion. I guess we need to prove that an actual Paul did or did not exist.

Paul seems to have carried some weight in legendary circles in the second century. The church may have needed "Pauline" theology, because pull this theology from the NT and maybe you are only left with Judaism plus one.

dog-on

Ben, who, before Marcion, do you site as a credible witness to the letters written by "Paul"?

How many copies of Marcion's version of the letters would you estimate were extant prior to 150AD?

dog-on

Dr. Gibson, how many people, would you say, were Christians prior to 150AD?

Regarding the Rove analogy, I was thinking of the use of the "Swift Boat" attacks against Kerry in 2004 and the amount of distortion of Kerry's record that were taken as gospel (pun intended) by a certain segment of the US population. I could go on, but this is not a political board.

The prologues that are still extent in the most manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate.

Who witnesses to the Epistles after Marcion but prior to Ireneaus in about 180AD? Though Justin Martyr alludes to some "Paulian" theology, nowhere, to the best of my knowledge, does he appeal to the Pauline Epistles themselves. 30+ years does not seem to be a quick dissemination.

Unless the church needed parts of his theology, for some reason. Which it seems that they did. The church may have wanted to establish it's priority on the basis of something ancient, like the Hebrew writings. This basis would obviously lend to support its self-declared authority. Marcion, for this reason, needed to be dealt with, by the church, in the way that he was.

But aren't you also assuming intentions? I merely point out that, as far as I can tell, Marcion is the first to bring the Paul of the Epistles into the church. Am I incorrect in this view?

Ted Hoffman

Um, actually, "gracious" is my middle name .
I reviewed it. I wanted to ask you exactly what was ambiguous and when I reread your old explanation, it was already there.
It means that I think Earl was in error. And you were right. It does not mean the JM hypothesis is any weaker. It doesnt reduce my respect for Earl in any way. Even Price, Crossan, Meier and several other scholars have been in error in some clear instances but where they are not in error, we value their contributions. It doesnt make them charlatans and it does not make those of us who point out their errors any better than them. I am yet to see a defect-free work. Even Raymond Brown's work has errors so...

It also means I was not reading you carefully and I therefore need to be more vigilant in future especially when I am in the middle of a discussion.
It also means your Greek is not that bad after all . It also means that the sooner I get through with the CD of Mounce's Greek For The Rest of Us, and other Greek books, the better.
Thanks anyway for your valiant efforts to explain Burton's meaning. For whatever its worth, I got it.

To Ben: those are good examples illustrating the use of gennaw and related phrases. Now, which ones among the examples you have given meet the following requirements:

(1) The author was familiar with, and probably adopted the cosmology of middle platonism.

(2) The character in question was regarded as a god.

(3) There are various theories/understandings about the nature of the character referred to as born of woman (for Jesus, we have adoptionist Christology, Ebionism, Gnosticism, Marcionite Christ, A Historical Jesus etc).

If you have no character that meets the above criteria, you havent illustrated anything IMHO.

Ben C Smith

1. Ignatius references him. If you think the Ignatian corpus as a whole is a late forgery, then....

2. Clement references him and his first letter to the Corinthians in 1 Clement. And I am confident that 1 Clement dates to century I.

3. The internal evidence from at least some of the letters indicates that they were written before 70 (1 Corinthians 10.18; 2 Thessalonians 2.4), but after the accession of Augustus (Philippians 4.22; and there is another argument from the Corinthians letters).

4. The book of Acts describes Paul as active in about the same timeframe as the internal evidence from the epistles indicates.

5. Whoever wrote 1 Corinthians 15 and Galatians 1-2 was a contemporary of James the just. James can be placed in the middle of century I by a mass of evidence from Josephus, Hegesippus, the epistle of Jude, the epistle of James, the gospel according to the Hebrews, the gospel of Thomas, the canonical gospels (indirectly), and certain works from century II which invoke his name.

I can support all of the above (and there are more arguments to be made at that), but do not wish to do so at this time, on this thread. If your argument on this thread depends on either the nonexistence of Paul or the identity of Paul with Marcion in century II, then our debate will have to go back about three steps and wait for another time; I am too busy with other matters (including some relating to the matter of born of a woman) to go into the authentication of Paul right now. My apologies.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

That post was not meant to illustrate anything yet. It was just a list of raw data.

As for your list of criteria, #1 is not relevant until it is demonstrated that Paul rejected Jewish cosmology and embraced middle Platonic cosmology; and then the meaning of that phrase for a middle Platonist has to be assessed. If it turns out that middle Platonists do not use that phrase, then it stands to reason that Paul was not pointing to a middle Platonist concept when he used it. #2 is relevant, but does nothing to demonstrate the meaning of born of a woman; we cannot get at what an author was thinking until we pin down what he meant when he wrote what he wrote. Furthermore, we know that Christianity ended up with a doctrine which taught that Jesus was both human and divine; the question here is whether Paul thought that Jesus was both human and divine. And is the phrase born of a woman one that points to his humanity or to his divinity? #3 mixes groups for whom that phrase is anathema (Marcionites, gnostics) with groups for whom that phrase would be either acceptable or even welcome (adoptionists, Ebionites). I therefore do not understand what is at stake in #3.

Ben.

dog-on

Ben, I appreciate your response and will study what you have advanced as evidence regarding pre-Marcion attestation to the Epistles as well as the historical Paul.

1. I think that there are good reasons to believe the Ignatious letters as possible forgery.

2. Clement, I am undecided.

3. I'll see where you are going with this.

4. Acts, I believe is part of the churches response to Marcion, but I will study it again.

5. I believe these references in Paul to be later interpolations.

My position on this thread is that Gal. 4:4 is an interpolation, regardless of whether or not Paul was the actual writer of the epistles.

Ben C Smith

Am I reading you right? You regard at least 1 Corinthians 15.3-9; Galatians 1.19; 2.9, 12 as interpolations? Every reference to James in Paul? Maybe even 1 Corinthians 9.5?

I do not want to debate it here, but I find such a position to be very curious, and do not recall ever having seen it before.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
Again Glibson, isn't Christianity Guilty of everything you accuse Mr. Doherty of:

"misconstred, misread, and cooked the evidence from ...tenditiously..."proof texts" in Hebrews, and how idiosyncratic and unsupportable...torturous exegesis...engagaed in...which seem to have no other grounds...other than a committemnt to...an apriori."

concerning the Hebrew Bible with the main difference being Mr. Doherty has never murdered anyone publicly trying to embarass him (yet)?



JW:
Is English not your first language? Maybe your Greek is as good as you think it is.

I've never seen a Professor act like you do. What is your Position and where is it?



Joseph

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