gurugeorge

Here is what is to my mind an absolutely gorgeous, moving, and apparently proto-Gnostic passage (roughly 4:1) from a reconstruction of Marcion's version of Paul's letter to the Galatians (taken from the Marcion website library):

As a man I say,
when we were barely-born,
we were enslaved
under the elements of the cosmos.
But when the fulness of the time came,
God sent forth his Son,
That he might purchase those under law,
and that we may receive adoption.
God sent forth the Spirit of his Son
into your hearts, crying,
"Abba, Father".

Now compare and contrast with the received version (RSV) with what looks like added stuff in red:

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate;
but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father.
So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe.
But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"
So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.

If the reconstruction is reasonably accurate, Marcion's text is basically proto-Gnostic - i.e. he's saying that "Christ in you" is that very thing in you which yearns, bleeds for meaning, that seed in you, that little voice in you which hints to you that there's "more" to life than the mechanical nature of the material world around you that binds you - the little yearning voice that cries for some kind of deeper significance to things, some larger context in which you are embedded. Like a child crying for its father. THAT IS THE CHRIST, that is the Anointed One, the heir of the Cosmos, who will "save" you (i.e. the idea is that heeding that small voice will give your life meaning, for if you let that voice cry out God will notice it, and wake up in you). (Compare this with the first bit of The Gospel of Truth, reckoned to be by Valentinus, who according to his followers was taught by a student of Paul: The gospel of truth is joy to those who have received from the Father of truth the gift of knowing him by the power of the Logos, who has come from the Pleroma and who is in the thought and the mind of the Father; he it is who is called "the Savior," since that is the name of the work which he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father. For the name of the gospel is the manifestation of hope, since that is the discovery of those who seek him, because the All sought him from whom it had come forth. You see, the All had been inside of him, that illimitable, inconceivable one, who is better than every thought.)

Now notice what the red stuff adds, some theological fluff that steers the mind away from any such deeply mystical and directly moving meaning, gives it a sort of mind-numbing legalistic meaning, and adds that little spike of insistence on the historical biography ("born of woman"). Notice the superficially plausible but punch-draining change from "your hearts" to "our hearts". Notice how the emphasis is subtly shifted from Christ being a spiritual principle in you, to being an entity outside you.

Now here's the crucial question: which of these two versions would move people, speak to their hearts directly, inspire them to a religion? Which of these two versions looks like it's by someone who kick-started a religious movement that spread quickly through some regions of the Mediterranean world in the 1st century CE?

Which is the authentically spiritual voice?

(Note: of course I understand that the reconstruction may not be accurate, and that I'm working with translations. I'm playing with this in a balls-to-the-wall way to see what can be said given its accuracy, and to start off a discussion - a discussion which might find its accuracy wanting, and my interpretation therefore silly.)

Gnomelord

Paul's position, from the start, was to removed any human element from Jesus and regard him entirely as a spiritual entity. If we consult 2 Corinthians 5:16 we see that Paul did not want people to know Christ "according to the flesh."
In that spirit I believe the first passage would be more accurate than the following one, though none can know for certain.

gstafleu

Given that we're in the Levant, I'd say the red version is likely to have more success.

Their are two main streams in myth. One, found east of Persia, sees godhood, good and evil as residing inside human beings. The other, found West of Persia, sees (usually one) god outside man, and equally puts good and evil as absolutes outside man. In the Eastern view Nature is self generating (and man is part of nature), in the Western view Nature, and man, have been created by a Creator who is essentially not part of Nature.

These streams are of course not monolithic, you can find traces of each in the other (think the Yin/Yang symbol ). The gnostic bit you cited is a form of internalizing myth as found in the East, the red additions bring it back to Western main stream. Hence I suspect that, given where we are, the red version would have been the successful one. The gnostic version, though, would in modern parlance be the more "spiritual" one.

Gerard Stafleu

Clouseau

That is not insistence on historicity, which is always assumed in Paul. It is reference to the means by which salvation is attained, i.e. through one who was subject to all temptations, but was sinless- a recurrent theme in Paul's writings, and, it might be said, an inspiring one.

I fail to see how the change of personal pronoun makes any difference to that issue. It might indicate an author's unwitting personal desire to keep at arm's length from the central aspects of his subject.

It is clear from Paul's writings that no-one other than Jesus indicated so strongly internalisation of motive. This very thing was always the intention in Christianity, as can be seen in the Old Testament, which showed over long centuries the almost complete failure of external law; and it promised an internal 'law', one that was contingent on realisation of forgiveness, the stated aim of Jesus' ministry. Paul wrote of the saints being 'temples of the Holy Spirit, of them having 'the mind of Christ'- astonishing claims by any measure.

gurugeorge

Well, I don't think the first version even hints at a historical Jesus, He's purely a spiritual principle in you, your "inner guide" and link to the Divine. But it's true, we can't know for certain, and either Marcion could have cut the red stuff or the red stuff could have been orthodox addition. But if aesthetics is any criterion, judging by the translations as they stand, it looks pretty clear that the first version is powerful, direct and deeply meaningful, and clearly spiritual; whereas the second is kind of twiddly, a bit meaningless and bitty (it's even internally self-contradictory) and tendentiously historicist. Allthough I have to admit, even then, strictly speaking the first version could have been edited by Marcion to be powerful, and Paul might just have been a pedantic fool. Or it could just be an artefact of Tertullian's quoting, or of the respective English translations.

To really get a more trustworthy sense of it, one would have to be expert on the languages, and have some feel for what counts as literary power in the original Greek (and Latin, and have a sense of Tertullian's own literary quirks too).

But just as they stand, it's blindingly obvious to me.

gurugeorge

Nice post Gerard.

Gamera

I don't think this is a particularly gnostic reconstruction, and of course the gnosticism of Marcion is in dispute.

What is not in dispute is his rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures as fundamental to the gospel. And this is seemingly what he found attractive in Paul's epistles, not any alleged proto-gnosticism that purported that eminated out of the authentic Paul.

What attracted Marcion to Paul (and what I find good about Marcion) is the gospel-centricism of Paul. Paul identified the narrative about Jesus as salvational in itself, irrespective of one's knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures. Indeed, Paul attacks the fixation of some in the early church on the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly in the form of the Law, in contrast to the categorically unique message he claims the gospel narrative entails.

This seems to be the source of Marcion's enthusiasm for Paul (and parenthetically, I think he was right). I just don't see much gnosticism in Marcion or his understanding of Paul.

dog-on

Marcion supposedly believed that the Jews worshiped the Demiurge. "Paul" found the hidden mystery showing the true nature of the real God and the salvation he offered through the ransom of his son, the Christ, to this Demiurge.

Read Paul with this understanding, and the "bits that don't fits" stand out like a sore thumb...

gurugeorge

Absent the "legalistic" stuff in red, which even in a literary sense is pure fluff, and even internally self-contradictory, the Marcion text has the clear and powerful juxtaposition of subjection to the "elements" (which could mean either spiritual forces, or more likely simply law-like or "binding" structure of the world) with a something that's "in you" that cries out for its true Father, who then comes to the rescue to break the bondage (the "in you" being something emphasised strongly in several of the Epistles).

This is Gnosticism in a nutshell, surely? (e.g. change the metaphor slightly and you have the prostituted Sophia calling for her true spouse, etc.; and the metaphor of crucifixion and resurrection - the latter half of which is often expressly stated to be done by God to His Son - is just another way of looking at the same thing, is the same thing simplified even more).

It's easy to see how a simple, direct, emotionally engaging message like this could be elaborated; and if we take seriously (as there's no reason why we shouldn't) the Valentinians' claim that Paul was Valentinus' grand-teacher, the message of foreign bondage and some portion of God inside that yearns for release and calls to the larger Godhood beyond the bounds is quite clearly evident all the way through to Valentinus (e.g., it's the central message of the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Truth, presuming that is Valentinian, as it seems to be).

Clouseau

Please explain.