show_no_mercy

Can you expand on this more? The word ευαγγελιον is a Greek word originally associated with military victory. It would be no surprise that the Christians would co-opt an originally military idea (like the Jewish messiah) and couch it in military-victory terms. This also explains why Paul would talk about the parousia, a word also associated with official functions.

stephan huller

I am driving right now but I have written about this many times here. As long as you simply look at the Catholic texts and the interpretation promoted by later Church Fathers (mostly from the fourth century and later) skeptics and believers have an accepted 'battlefield' to work with. The problem is that it has little to do with Christianity from the pre-Nicene period (hence mountainman here becomes an important exercise to see how far the disease of interpreting Christianity as a strictly Hellenic concept can go).

The reason the Marcionites are so interesting is that - of course - there is something 'sensible' about the religion. Christianity is on some level an abandonment of the traditional Jewish religion. Circumcision was clearly the 'head' of that rejection of traditional religious values - but here is where I think people like Jay lose sight of the underlying thread.

Why was circumcision abandoned? The answer clearly is preserved in the rabbinic story associated with Agrippa or Aquila (in different manuscripts) - viz. the commandment to circumcise was NOT included in the ten utterances (English 'ten commandments').

Why does this matter? Because various rabbinic reports/the Samaritan writings of Marqe etc. emphasize that the earliest position in Israel was that only the ten utterances came from God. God literally wrote them out with fire from his finger on the stone tablets. All the other commandments including circumcision by that logic were man made (i.e. they came from the authority of Moses).

The rabbinic literature makes clear that the Sadducees venerated the ten utterances as having a different degree of sanctity from the rest of the 603 man-made statutes. It is evident in Marqe too (which again makes the argument of Stenhouse and others that Marqe must be from an early period; Broadie puts him in the first century). Yet the position is clearly the basis for the formulations of the gospel writers (i.e. 'Moses allowed you to divorce, but God ...') The Apostle's language regarding 'according to man' and 'according to God' undoubtedly derives from this perspective too.

The point is that the Marcionites did not circumcize. They castrated. The justification is clearly rooted in the events of Peniel. But how did we get from here to there?

The concept of the Jubilee.

It is amazing to learn (as a Jew) that the Jewish tradition simply abandoned a core concept like the calculation of Sabbatical years. I don't see how the seven years rest is any less sacred or holy than the Sabbath. Can you imagine the Jews abandoning the seven day rest? It should be equally amazing that they ended up forgetting to calculate sabbatical years and jubilees. The Samaritans continued to do so. There is no way that this could have happened naturally. It must have been coerced from outside and above (Imperial conspiracy). It can't be any other way. The same thing applied to the abandonment of the Passover sacrifices. The loss of the temple has nothing to do with the decision to end the sacrifices. One could clearly exist without the other and did at the time of Moses.

In any event, the Samaritans, who kept the observance of sacrifices and who continue to calculate and maintain sabbatical years and jubilees continued to maintain the language associated with those things.

The Samaritan Arabic commentary on the Torah, on Leviticus XXV:9. Slightly condensed and slightly re-arranged translation. “The High Priest and the King acting together are to send heralds out on the Day of Atonement to go into all countries over the next six months blowing the shofar in every land and region [not just Canaan] with the announcement [bashâ’ir, plural of bashîrah] of the information of the approach of the Jubilee Year and the release of captives SO THAT IT REACHES THE WHOLE NATION”. The Arabic bashîrah = the Hebrew bassorah. The person doing it is the mubashshir = Hebrew mevasser, or the bashîr. Notice carefully that the bashîrah is not the information, but the announcement of it. This is the connotation of the Greek euangelion. Notice that the meaning only becomes clear and sharp in the context of the SAMARITAN halachah.

mevasser (Isa 52.7) = 'the evangelist' but it clearly has messianic implications. The title was adopted by early Islam in association with Mohammed and Mubashir (A. mubdshir) came to mean 'official agent to expedite law and other business, commissioner.'

The point of this is clearly that the Marcionite paradigm of rejection of the Law was not what the Catholics developed their silly explanations from (and generations of modern scholars who can only think the way they did). The Marcionites clearly made the argument that IT WAS BECAUSE JESUS CAME TO ANNOUNCE THE YEAR OF FAVOR (= Jubilee) that the Law and prophets had no force. This is what the Gospel means - i.e. Jesus announcement of the coming of the messiah and the implication that the Law and the prophets were coming to an end.

The Law and the prophets had not come to an end with Jesus. They ended with John but the Marcionite gospel had no reference to John the Baptist. Yet they retained the formula. I see this as an argument for Jesus prophesying the messianic age in a period subsequent to his crucifixion undoubtedly coinciding with the destruction of the Jewish temple.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephen,

I have a problem with Jesus prophesying the messianic age or anything at all. The problem is he did not exist on Earth as a man. However, as the name for the Hebrew God or as the name for the Son of the Hebrew God such prophesy could well have been attributed to him.

The issue of Circumcision proves the mythological nature of Jesus.

the writer of Galatians says (2,7), "I had been intrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the gospel of the circumcision"

This is sometimes translated as the gospel to the uncircumcised and the gospel to the circumcised. However, in light of other sentences in Galatians and in light of Acts, this could not be the case.

Here Paul is blaming the forced circumcision of Titus on "false brethen," and claiming that he did not yield to them for even an hour on this issue.

Here the writer explicitly calls the party of James and Peter the party of circumcision.

We know that in acts Peter is sent to preach to the gentiles

Peter tells them about hearing voices from heaven in a trance and convinces the others that it is okay to preach to the gentiles. This already makes the existence of Jesus as described in the gospels problematic. One would imagine that in all the months he listened to Jesus give those long sermons, at least once Jesus might have said that his message was for non-Jews as well as Jews. Apparently, Peter never heard him say it and had to rely on a direct communication from God to find out that it was okay to preach to the gentiles.

Clearly, there was no issue between Paul and Peter/James about preaching to the gentiles, the issue was over circumcision and if the non-Jews had to be circumcised to join the Jesus group.

Paul argues "a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus".

Now is this an argument that Paul could have used against men who actually knew and heard an historical human named Jesus. They would have answered him in one of two ways:

1) Yes, faith in Christ Jesus is important, but he personally told us that nobody was allowed to be a follower of him, unless we circumcised them. Or they might have answered

2) Jesus did not say anything on the issue of circumcision in the many months we were with him, but we kind of got the impression, wrong or right, that he would have been for it, so we oppose it.

In either case, the epistle writer would have found it necessary to use answer these arguments. In the first case, it would have been necessary for him to deny that the apostles were telling the truth about Jesus' words or drop his objection to circumcision. In the second case, he would have used this non-commitment on the part of Jesus to bolster his case and say that Jesus had plenty of opportunity to support circumcision and never did, and thus Paul's opinion on the matter is as good as the opinion of the apostle's that knew him.

Instead of taking either of these two courses, Paul treats the argument as if Jesus never existed on Earth and never met James and Peter.

In Acts, Peter's appeal to heavenly revelation to defend proselytizing gentiles makes sense in that both sides could have known that Jesus made no pronouncements on the issue. It does not make sense for Paul to oppose circumcision when only the opposing side could have known Jesus' posiition on it. Paul needed to at least have made clear Jesus' neutrality or possible neutrality on the issue.

We may deduce that the writer could take this line of argument, ignoring Jesus' authority on the issue, because he did not know about Jesus being on Earth and interacting with James and Peter.

It seems reasonably certain that the epistles were written before the gospel myths of Jesus appearing on Earth.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin