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Markus Vinzent saw what I saw in this letter. Commenting on the next line in the Epistula (Christ's Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New Testament p. 132 - 134 http://www.academici.net/blog.aspx?bid=9947) Vinzent writes:
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The Apostles drew their revelation from the encounter with the Risen Christ:
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We do write according as we have seen and heard and touched him, after he was risen from the dead: and how that he revealed to us things mighty and wonderful and true.
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As early as EpAp 2 Marcion's key Resurrection passage, (pre-)Luke 24:36-43 ('touching the Lord') is used in order to emphasize the belief of the authors. EpAp then expands on the Resurrection and has a detailed story of the three women going to Jesus's tomb. Having dealt with Marcion's key Lukan passage, the narrative in EpAp no longer follows Luke or any of our known Gospels, but it has parallels to all four later canonical texts Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and also to the Gospel of Peter. Older scholarship has assumed that EpAp relies on the canonical Gospels, although more recently one has become more sceptical about the authoritative character of these.3°° It seems from the loose way of referring to them or their underlying traditions that the author of the Epistle may have been of Acts, the Letter of James, and potentially some of Paul's letters, but he handles these texts with extreme liberty, guided by his own authority, the revelation of the Risen Christ:
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‘And there went three women, Mary, she that was kin to Martha, and Mary Magdalene (Sarrha, Martha, and Mary, Eth.), and took ointments to pour upon the body, weeping and mourning over that which was come to pass. And when they drew near to the sepul-chre, they looked in and found not the body (Eth. they found the stone rolled away and opened the entrance). And as they mourned and wept, the Lord showed himself unto them and said to them: For whom do you weep? weep no more! I am he whom you seek. But let one of you go to your brethren and say: Come, the Master is risen from the dead. Martha (Mary, Eth.) came and told us. We said to her: What have we to do with you, woman? He that is dead and buried, is it possible that he should live? And we believed her not that the Saviour was risen from the dead. Then she returned unto the Lord and said unto him: None of them has believed me, that you live. He said: Let another of you go to them and tell them again. Mary (Sarrha, Eth.) came and told us again, and we believed her not; and she returned to the Lord and she also told him.’ (EpAp. 9f.)
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This story about the sceptical apostles despite the body being absent, a major argument for Marcion about the unreliability and worthlessness of the so-called apostles, and the following resurrection appearance to the disciples are gaplessly interconnected by the author of the Letter:
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‘Then said the Lord to Mary and her sisters: Let us go to them. And he came and found us within (sitting veiled or fishing, Eth.), and called us out; but we thought that it was a phantom and believed not that it was the Lord. Then he said he to us: Come, be not fearful! I am your teacher, because I am the master whom you, Peter, did deny three times before the rooster crowed, and now do you deny again? And we came to him, doubting in our hearts whether it were he. Then said he to us: Why do you still doubt, and are unbelieving? I am he who spoke to you of my flesh and my death and my Resurrection. But that you may know that I am he, Peter, put your finger into the print of the nails in my hands, and you also, Thomas, put your finger into the wound of the spear in my side; but you, Andrew, look on my feet and see whether they leaves a print on the earth; for it is written in the prophet: “A phantom of a demon makes no footprint on the earth”. And we touched him, that we might learn of a truth whether he were risen in the flesh; and we fell on our faces (and worshipped him) confessing our sin, that we had been unbelieving. Then, our Lord and Saviour said to us: Rise up, and I will reveal to you that which is above the heaven and in the heaven, and your rest which is in the kingdom of heaven. For my Father has given me power (sent me, Eth.) to take you and those who also believe in me up to here.’ (EpAp. 10-2)
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These passages prove the extraordinary ability of composing a story line as a response to the opposite interpretation of the Resurrection and appearance of the Risen Christ given by Marcion. The author accepts from the traditional accounts that the apostles were, indeed, distrusting the message of the women, and he even particularly mentions Peter to whom the master had announced that he were to deny him three times, although Peter, for example, does not play a role in the parallel story in Luke 24. But the question that the Risen Christ adds, is shown by this story to be a rhetorical one, intending only to stylise the even greater act of believe by Peter, prompted not by human authority of the women, but by the Lord himself. He allowed Peter, Thomas and Andrew in all possible realism to touch the nails in his hands, put the finger into the wound of the spear in his side and to look at his feet and see the Lord’s prints on the earth, underlined by a prophetic saying that cannot be found in the canonical Scripture, but must have been known at that time, as it is also found in Commodian’s Apologetic Poem (third century?) and in the Acts of John: ‘A phantom of a demon makes no footprint on the earth.’
Luke 24 is turned from Marcion’s testimony for a pneumatic body of the Risen Christ into a proof text for the fleshly Resurrection appearance of the Lord, where the Lord is not proofing the non-belief of the apostles to reserve his hidden revelation for a mysterious message to Paul, but where the Lord himself overturns the natural scepticism of the apostles vis-à-vis human testimonies and enables the apostles to believe what has been written down in this Epistle of the Apostles.
A central part of the Epistle comprises a paragraph on the Lord’s incar-nation and his death. According to the Epistle the Lord himself became the angel Gabriel, being all things in all, and ‘brought the message to Mary’, another reference to Luke 1,26f. which was missing in Marcion’s Gospel, although the angelological Christology that the Epistle develops sounds rather close to that of Marcion so that, after all and despite the clear opposition to Marcion, the author(s) are not so far apart from the one they attack. There remains, however, a major difference – the fleshly nature of the incarnate: ‘On that day when I took the form of the angel Gabriel, I appeared to Mary and spoke with her. Her heart accepted me, and she believed (and laughed, Eth.), and I formed myself and entered into her body. I became flesh, for I alone was a minister to myself in that which concerned Mary in the appearance of the shape of an angel. For so must I needs do. Thereafter did I return to my Father (Copt. After my return to the Father, and run on)’ (EpAp. 14).
What surprises in this theological summary is the missing Resurrection. Instead, the Epistle talks about the ‘return’ to his Father until such time that he will come back ‘like the sun when it is risen, and my brightness will be seven times the brightness of it! The wings of the clouds shall bear me in brightness, and the sign of the cross shall go before me, and I shall come upon earth to judge the quick and the dead’ (EpAp. 16).
Did the authors integrate an older summary of faith, or did they formu-late it themselves? If the latter was the case, and the angelological Christology points to it, they positioned themselves with regard to the incarnation between Marcion and Cerinthus. They accepted Marcion’s idea of an angelic body of Christ, but broadened it by the flesh, while they also distinguish themselves from Cerinthus’ belief that Jesus’ birth took a normal course. On the contrary here, the Lord is his own and only minister, he forms himself, becomes flesh which therefore is not only of the creator’s worldly nature, but an angelic body.
The celebration of Pascha, and he obviously does not make a difference between the Jewish and the Christian Pascha, as we will see in more detail in the chapter below, is for the Epistle a ‘commemoration of the Lord’s death’ (EpAp. 15).
Only the Ethiopian version adds a formula which is not present in the Coptic parallel passage with reference to the Resurrection. Already the English translator, Montague Rhode James in 1924 wrote about the Ethipian addition: ‘It is an interpolation, in place of words which the translator did not understand, or found heretical’. And, indeed, only in the Coptic version – although not easy to interpret – the text runs logically without the explanatory ‘this means …’ of the Ethiopian text which obviously tried to incorporate a copyist’s note in the margins that served to illucidate the certainly difficult original text, preserved in the Coptic: ‘I am wholly in the Father and the Father in me, because of the likeness of the form and the power and the fullness and the light and the full measure and the voice. I am the Word, I have become to him a thing, that he is. I am the thought, fulfilled in the likeness; I have become it on the eighth day (Ogdoade), which is the Lord’s day. But the whole fulfilment of the fulfilment you shall see after the redemption which has come to pass by me, and you shall see me, how I go up to my Father which is in heaven. But behold, now, I give you a new commandment: Love one another and obey one another, that peace may rule alway among you. Love your enemies, and what you would not that man do to you, that do to no man’ (EpAp. 18).
Then, the Epistle talks about the present state of the Lord who after his ascension and as the Word and God’s thought, is what God is, namely lives in the Father and the Father in him (which reminds of John’s Gospel). It is the eschatological divine unity, the ‘whole fulfilment of the fulfilment’ which the Lord has become on the eighth day, a day that is therefore called the Lord’s day and which the disciples are promised in the eschaton (EpAp. 19). Up until the coming back of the Lord, however, the Church has to embrace the ‘new commandment’.
In a second explanation of what that unity entails, the Epistle launches its manifesto for the resurrection of the flesh as a result of the Resurrection of the Lord – a clear anti-Marcionite position. The passage starts with an opening question:
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‘Like as I am in him, so shall you also be in me. Again we said to him: In what form? In the fashion of angels, or in flesh? And he answered and said to us: See, I have put on your flesh, in which I was born and crucified, and am risen again through my Father which is in heaven, that the prophecy of David the prophet might be fulfilled, in regard of that which was declared concerning me and my death and resurrection, saying:
Lord, they are increased that fight with me, and many are they that are risen up against me.
Many there be that say to my soul: There is no help for him in his God.
But thou, O Lord, art my defender:
thou art my worship, and the lifter up of my head.
I did call upon the Lord with my voice and he heard me (out of the high place of his temple, Eth.).
I laid me down and slept, and rose up again:
for thou, O Lord, art my defender.
I will not be afraid for ten thousands of the people, that have set themselves against me round about.
Up, Lord, and help me, O my God:
for thou hast smitten down all them that without cause are mine enemies:
thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Salvation belongeth unto the Lord, and his good pleasure is upon his people (Ps. 3:1-9).
If, therefore, all the words which were spoken by the prophets have been fulfilled in me (for I myself was in them), how much more shall that which I say to you come to pass indeed, that he which sent me may be glorified by you and by them that believe on me?
And when he had said this to us, we said to him:
In all things have you had mercy on us and saved us, and have revealed all things to us;
but yet would we ask of you somewhat if you give us leave.
And he said to us: I know that you pay heed, and that your heart is well-pleased when you hear me:
now concerning that which you desire, I will speak good words to you.
For verily I say to you: Like as my Father has raised me from the dead, so shall you also rise (in the flesh, Eth.) and be taken up into the highest heaven, to the place of which I have told you from the beginning, to the place which he who sent me has prepared for you. And so will I accomplish all dispensations (all grace, Eth.), even I who am unbegotten and yet begotten of mankind, who am without flesh and yet have borne flesh : for to that end am I come, that (gap in Copt.: Eth. continues) you might rise from the dead in your flesh, in the second birth, even a vesture that shall not decay, together with all them that hope and believe in him that sent me: for so is the will of my Father, that I should give unto you, and unto them whom it pleases me, the hope of the kingdom.
Then we said to him: Great is that which you let us hope and tell us. And he answered and said: Do you believe, that everything that I tell you shall come to pass? We answered and said: Yes, Lord. (Copt. resumes for a few lines: then another gap. I follow Eth.) He said to us: Verily I say to you, that I have obtained the whole power of my Father, that I may bring back into light them that dwell in darkness, them that are in corruption into incorruption, them that are in death into life, and that I may loose them that are in fetters. For that which is impossible with men, is possible with the Father. I am the hope of them that despair, the helper of them that have no saviour, the wealth of the poor, thc health of the sick, and the resurrection of the dead.
When he had thus said, we said unto him: Lord, is it true that the flesh shall be judged together with the soul and the spirit, and that the one part shall rest in heaven and the other part be punished everlastingly yet living? And he said to us: (Copt. resumes) How long will you inquire and doubt?
Again we said to him: Lord, there is necessity upon us to inquire of you – because you have commanded us to preach – that we our-selves may learn assuredly of you and be profitable preachers, and that they which are instructed by us may believe in you. Therefore we must inquire.
He answered and said: Verily I say to you, the resurrection of the flesh shall come to pass with the soul in it and the spirit. And we said to him: Lord, is it then possible that that which is dissolved and brought to nought should become whole? And we ask you not as unbelieving, neither as if it were impossible to you; but verily we believe that that which you say shall come to pass. And he was wroth with us and said: O you of little faith, how long will you ask questions? But what you will, tell it me, and I myself will tell you without grudging: only keep my commandments and do that which I bid you, and turn not away your face from any man, that I turn not my face away from you, but without shrinking and fear and without respect of persons, minister in the way that is direct and narrow and strait. So shall my Father himself rejoice over you.’ (EpAp. 19-24)
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The Epistle of the Apostles seems to be the earliest (or at least: one of the earliest) writing where the resurrection of the flesh is explicitly discussed in conjunction with the state of human nature. The opening question of this passage takes the one raised by Marcion head on: Is the body of the risen dead of angelic or of fleshly nature? The answer that the Epistle gives is based on the same grounds on which Marcion based his thoughts about salvation and eschaton: The Lord’s nature, although they come up with opposite views. In Marcion, it is clearly an angelic body, not a fleshly one, and certainly not the kind of salvation that has been promised long ago by the prophets and David in the Jewish Scriptures, but an unknown one, a similar view as in Jesus’ reply to the Sadducees that the risen dead are like angels in heaven (Mark 12:25), – whereas in the Epistle it is precisely the fleshly nature of the risen dead, based on the fleshly Resurrection of the Lord who is raised by his ‘Father which is in heaven’ in fulfilment of the ‘prophecy of David the prophet’, substantiated by Ps. 3. The accomplishment of the fleshly salvation is anchored in the Lord’s incarnation (EpAp. 39), ‘for to that end am I come, that you might rise from the dead in your flesh, in the second birth, even a vesture that shall not decay’. But the Resurrection is the prime example that the Lord’s fleshly incarnation and Resurrection through his Father will lead to a fleshly resurrection of the dead, so that they shall be taken to the place in the highest heaven, in a ‘vesture that shall not decay’. A little later the Epistle formulates a principle that will re-occur again and again in the church fathers: ‘That which has fallen shall rise again, and that which was lost shall be found, and that which was weak shall recover, that in these things that are so created the glory of my Father may be revealed. As he has done to me, so will I do to all that believe in me’ (EpAp. 25). The fleshly resurrection is also necessary for the day of judgement, so that everybody can be judged according to their deeds (EpAp. 26-9).
Although, the whole Epistle is based on the Risen Lord talking to the autors and revealing them his message, the letter is sceptical of those who want to see the Lord, and quotes the beatitude: ‘Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed, for they shall be called children of the kingdom, and they shall be perfect among the perfect, and I will be unto them life in the kingdom of my Father’.
After the section on the resurrection of the flesh follows a chapter on Paul. It is another unambiguous domestication of Paul, as where Paul is praised – all the more astonishing, as Manfred Hornschuh has noted, as Paul’s letters are neither quoted, nor having significant influence, if one at all in EpAp. –, but Paul is subjugated to the teaching, instruction and blessing of the Eleven. Moreover, where – against Marcion – Paul’s Jewishness is stressed, his being circumcised, and where the ‘the last of the last’ only becomes a preacher to the Gentiles by recognizing that the ‘fathers’, namely ‘the prophets spoke’ of the Lord, and that in the Lord is fulfilled what has been prophecied. The Eleven, the authors of the Epistle, are Paul’s ‘guide’, they are instructing him ‘and bring to his mind that which is spoken of’ of the Lord in the Scriptures. Only ‘thereafter shall he become the salvation of the Gentiles’ (EpAp. 31). Once one reads this passage against Marcion’s ‘over-statement’ of Paul, the aim of this chapter becomes apparent.
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03-22-2013, 03:12 PM
