Ben C Smith

I think so. But why, if Tertullian knew that Marcion implied the gospel was that of Paul, did Tertullian not simply say so and either reject the insinuation or conclude that Marcion had butchered Paul? He is not this shy when he criticizes Marcion for tampering with the Pauline epistles.

In fact, in 4.5.3 he actually tells us that the followers of Marcion did in fact attribute the gospel to Paul. But his wording seems not to include Marcion himself.

And why were the anti-Marcionites so eager to attribute their version of this gospel to Luke, a mere follower of Paul, if they could have had Paul himself?

Ben.

the_cave

I used to take the skeptic position that Luke copied from Marcion. Now I am not so sure. Luke's first few chapters too closely parallel Matthew's to be coincidence--yet Luke cannot be copying from Matthew due to the Great Omission. So they must be sharing a source, a source which must include a nativity. So it can't be Marcion.

Yet that source must also include the Q material. So it must be related to Marcion somehow. Therefore both Luke and Marcion must rely on it. Thus Marcion could be a "mutilation" of "Luke"--i.e. proto-Luke--and "Luke" can also represent the tradition, i.e. canonical Luke is in fact an expansion of proto-Luke.

That's the best explanation I can come up with so far. However...it's possible that Marcion derives from it, and Luke used both it and Marcion. I haven't really investigated that possibility yet. I need to compare that scenario to Crossan's Cross Gospel hypothesis. I don't think the Cross Gospel included a nativity. Yet Crossan says Luke shows signs of using the Cross Gospel. I don't know if that is necessary--it's possible simply that one of Luke's sources used the Cross Gospel (assuming it existed, which personally I find likely).

I have also sometimes wondered if "Luke" is actualy Lukuas, or perhaps somehow represents Lukuas, the Messiah from Cyrenaica, and leader of the Kitos War.

BTW I have also suspected canonical Luke is related to Montanist communities in Anatolia, with its connection to Marcion and its emphasis on prophetic speeches by women. Just a hunch, nothing more.

aa5874

I am on topic.

I will try to re-construct the Marcionite gospel and it probably wont look anything like yours.

The re-construction of Marcion's gospel must take into account all those who made reference to Marcion, and that includes Justin Martyr.

dog-on

I believe that, by the time of Tertullian, Paul was still a bit of a 'hot-potato'; a possible reason for the multiple versions of the anti-Marcion diatribe that Tertullian, himself, admits to having written. The Marcionite church must still be a relevant entity. Why else spend such a large amount of ink refuting it, considering that Ireneaus and Justin (to an extent) did the same in prior generations?

We do not know how the APOSTOLIKON(sp?) was actually laid out. Could it have been laid out in a way that implied that the author of the epistles and the JC bio where, in fact, one and the same? Could Marcion have, in fact, implied a Pauline authorship for the entire work?

As for Paul, is it possible that until Ireneaus' time, Paul was viewed as heretical to the catholics? Is it possible that the catholics, in trying to convert the marcionites to their view might have found it convenient to do so by converting the marcionite's main man, Paul?

If there is a group who justifies their belief based on a 'book' and another group wants to win them over, wouldn't simply convincing them that their book was actually a corruption of the "original", (as has been done successfully with later religious groups, like the Mormons, for instance), be an effective way to accomplish this?

Is there a question of infrastructure that should be asked and answered here?

My view is that Paul was, initially, heretical to the catholics. Around the time of Ireneaus, after the death of Marcion, the APOSTOLIKON was re-written to, more closely, agree with the catholics, especially as a vehicle to promote the idea of apostolic succession and to significantly undermine the position of the marcionites. Acts of the Apostles was also written at this time, likely by the same author that rewrote Marcion's gospel and "corrected" the Pauline epistles.

Maybe this was done by Ireneaus, or one of his colleagues.

dog-on

cont...

The reason for the Luke attribution, instead of Paul was, to my mind, part of the securing of the apostolic succession concept. Paul admits that he met JC, only in a revelation. I imagine that this was a fairly popular way of "meeting" JC.

The catholics needed a way to claim authority and decided on a physical relationship as being of primary importance. So Peter, etc....

This allows the catholics to use Paul, contra the Marcionites, without undermining their own, claimed, authority.

neilgodfrey

Scholarship about Marcionism that I have read has explained this. To Marcion, the gospel that Paul preached was spirit, was orally conveyed, and not written. It could not be written. The written narrative that is called the gospel was, for Marcion, an inferior and to-be-forever-revised text according to the lights of the orally/spiritually relayed gospel of Paul.

For Marcion, the written gospel was not the true gospel at all. It was an imperfect narrative that was expected to undergo -- and did -- ongoing revision even beyond his lifetime.

Neil

neilgodfrey

Hoffmann et al, if I recall correctly, explain that Marcion was emphatic that the narrative we know as the gospel was not the gospel. The gospel was a spiritual thing, not a text document. It was a message one heard and took to one's heart. The narrative was a very imperfect story about the introduction of the gospel that would always require revision as the gospel (of Paul) was the more deeply discerned.

I understand your proposal in the first line to imply that the author of canonical Luke intended this narrative gospel to be known as "Luke's" gospel. If so, why not give his name if he wanted himself to be known? I see the original anonymity of the gospels as quite plausibly an extension of the "Old Testament" genre of the "authority of anonymity" in relation to the written history of Israel (the Primary History). The attribution of names was a later development to meet changing circumstances when gospels did begin to appear under apostolic names.

Neil

Ben C Smith

What if the source they share does not include a nativity, but rather is a nativity? A precursor to our extant infancy gospels, as it were.

I disagree, BTW, that the great omission shows that Luke did not know Matthew. (It would also show that Luke does not know Mark!)

I think we might need to take seriously what the prologue to Luke says. Many have undertaken to write up an account. Luke, then, may have many sources.

That could be Matthew.

This seems to basically be my option 3.

I admit I am not yet persuaded of the existence of the Cross(an) gospel.

Interesting. I would have to review how early the Montanist movement began....

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I doubt Tertullian had any qualms about claiming Paul; he relied on Irenaeus, who claimed Paul.

I agree with this.

This is what I am disputing. If the gospel had been attributed to Paul at this stage, the orthodox could have had Paul as a gospel author instead of merely Luke when they claimed Luke as their own.

I doubt it. For one thing, we have 1 Clement (with attestation from Dionysius, Hegesippus, and Irenaeus), Ignatius (with attestation from Polycarp and Irenaeus), and Polycarp (with attestation from Irenaeus). I know it is fashionable in some circles to call all three of these texts late catholic forgeries, but I have not yet seen a convincing reconstruction.

We also have the pseudo-Paulines, especially the pastorals, written from what seems to be a proto-orthodox perspective. And 2 Peter may be relevant here.

Ben.

bacht

I've seen it suggested that Mark, the reputed author of the gospel, was really Marcion himself. Is this totally implausible? We can see that Peter gets short shrift in this telling. Does the docetic idea work with the baptism by John, or the passion?