Ben C Smith

I could not disagree more. Jesus looks like a human to whom divine attributes were (rightly or wrongly) attached.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

Please explain rightly or wrongly - which is it? I thought everyone was on a level playing field here that divine attributes were agreed to be non existant!

We really cannot get anywhere if we allow mumbo jumbo in at first base.

If a human has divine attributes surely by definition we are no longer talking about that real human but a mythical legendary construct. The question then is about dirt in oysters creating the pearl - was there one or is the pearl completely artificial?

Another puzzle, if xians are so happy with mumbo jumbo and "trash" like resurrections and eucharists how come they are so unhappy with Freke and Gandy who state explicitly that they see their work as helping xians?

andrewcriddle

I am less confident than Frazer that I know what a Maenad thought she was doing, when in ecstasy she ripped a live animal to pieces and swalled its raw flesh.

However the literary evidence for connecting (as Frazer does) these rather lurid rituals with the myth of the murder cooking and eating by theTitans of Dionysus the child (Dionysus Zagreus) is very weak.

The problems are
a/ that the whole myth of Dionysus and the Titans is probably late developing c 400 BCE under Orphic influence.
b/ There is little explicit evidence of the linking of the ritual of eating raw flesh with the myth of the Titans and none early. (One of the clearest pieces of evidence for this identification is in a scholiast (ancient commentator) on Clement of Alexandria). This link of ritual and myth may be part of the way Christians understood the worship of Dionysus more than how the worshippers themselves understood things.
c/ On theoretical grounds we should be very reluctant to connect myths about cooking and eating flesh (in this case the flesh of the baby Dionysus) with rituals about eating raw flesh.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

So you think Marcion was disingenuous? That he really did not believe that Jesus (as a docetic being) had touched down in Capernaum, worked wonders, and so forth in the land of Palestine?

Rather, Marcion thought that this docetic phantom had, in fact, operated at a particular point in both chronology and history; if he did not, then reworking a gospel makes no sense. Yet, according to you, none of his thinking on that issue made its way into the epistles.

This is not a problem for me. Epistles are different things than biographies. But you complained about the lack of historical references in the epistles.

Paul speaks of the risen Lord more often than not. The synoptics speak of the historical Jesus, before he rose from the dead.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

You keep asking me questions about what I think, and follow up with questions & comments I find scarcely comprehensible. :huh: If you still consider the gospels to be biographies, there is scarcely anything I can write that will be meaningful to you.

But since you have asked for opinion, the redeemer was a pure spirit which could appear only in phantasmol form. Being a celestial character, Marcion did not lend human birth to him. An already adult Jesus but without birth, therefore without past, a son of God who appears to those of insight. He comes down from the sky at Capharnaum which is mystically interpreted.

This primitive account of the descent of Christ to the earth was increased considerably and naively interpreted by both the proto-orthodox and some Marcionites of the second and the third generations. IMO Marcion would undoubtedly not have admitted it in this form but it would have recognized the fundamental myth of it.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

My apologies. What did I write that you found to be incomprehensible?

I am quite capable of imagining the gospels as pure allegories or as fictional novels, so I think I can extract meaning from your words even while I disagree with you.

Okay, but the problem I am seeing is one that is internal to your view (that is, even if I accepted all your presuppositions I would still have a problem). On the one hand, you complain that my view suffers from too few indicators of historicity in the Pauline epistles (when you wrote that born of a woman and flesh are incomparably weak attestations to historicity). On the other, you are happy to affirm that Marcion knew many gospel details (as evidenced in the gospel that he produced), yet excluded them from his Pauline epistles. The question presses itself: Why is it problematic, then, for my view to admit that Paul presents few indicators of historicity? If Marcion can keep his epistles free of details about Capernaum and healing people and going to Jerusalem (though we know he knew these details), why can Paul not keep his epistles free of such details?

IOW, how can a dearth of Pauline epistular references to gospel details mean that Paul did not know such details when a similar (and even more extreme) dearth of Marcionite epistular references to gospel details does not mean (on your view) that Marcion did not know them?

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

What a strange argument, that imagined interpolations from the gospels did not occur. Why didn't Marcion? What benefit would have accrued to him? AFAIK, none. But we indeed have evidence of proto-orthodox interpolations that were in support of their doctrine.

In either case, the Pauline epistles developed outside the influence of the alleged gospel traditions. This is devastating to the historical cause.

Apologies if I have misunderstood your questions.

Jake Jones

P.S. Maybe this will help.

The Heretics developed the Pauline epistles.
The proto-orthodox developed the Gospels.

When the two groups clashed, each side took the scriptures of the other and attempted to subvert it to support their own doctrines. Neither side was entirely successful.

However, the proto-orthodox eventually won out. Their scribes only propogated the texts of their side. Thus we have the catholic version of the Pauline Epistles, but no extant copies of the Marcionite version. We have the canonical gospels, but the The Evangelion attributed to Marcion by the Heresiologists was almost certainly not the one originally produced by him.

Tertullian (Against Marcion) and Epiphanius (Panarion, esp ch 42) often worked from memory even when they compared Marcion with Luke. Thus, they reproached Marcion for having removed certain passages of the Gospel of Luke which were actually contained in the Gospel of Matthew. WTF? The implication is astounding; the Heresiologists had neither Marcion’s Evangelion nor the canonical form of the gospel of Luke before them while writing the refutations.

Ben C Smith

I fear either I have not been anywhere close to clear or you are speaking a different language. I am not talking about interpolations.

Do what?

I just cannot imagine how this is addressing the question I asked.

Did they? This is closer to the question I was posing. On your view you have Marcion (A) accepting and adjusting a proto-gospel that has (a docetic) Jesus really operating in a real Capernaum and Galilee and really marching off to Jerusalem; you also have Marcion (B) writing the Pauline epistles from scratch.

So, it looks to me as if on your own view the Pauline epistles developed within the influence of the gospel traditions; after all, on your view Marcion apparently both stood within the gospel tradition (even producing one of his own!) and wrote the Pauline epistles. Yet you have complained that the Pauline epistles possess too few indicators of historicity (even including the passages you would count as interpolations!) for my view to be viable. So the question would seem to double back onto you: Why, if Marcion knew (and produced some of) the gospel materials that place Jesus in Capernaum and so forth, did so little of that (especially once your interpolations are removed) spill over into the epistles that he penned?

If Marcion (on your view) can both know the gospel traditions and pen epistles that lack pointers to them, why can Paul not both know the gospel traditions and pen epistles that lack pointers to them? IOW, what were you objecting to in my view that does not impact yours as well?

Ben.

ETA: I wrote this before you added your postscript. But please go ahead and answer the questions here so that I can get a clearer picture of your views. Thanks.

jakejonesiv

No, I think the Pauline epistles were pretty much finished in Marcionite circles before being introduced to the proto-orthodox, the exception being Galatians.

I think that Marcion's gospel began with the alteration of a proto-gospel that itself was somewhat gnostic. The literalism that you are wanting to find may be due more to Tertullian than Marcion. ymmv.

I would be satisfied if you would agree that with Paul, the priority is with Marcion.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

Yes, I clocked that. I am still not seeing how you avoid the paradox I pointed out.

If Marcion altered a proto-orthodox gospel to suit his own purposes, then he must have known its various details (Capernaum, healings, Jerusalem), right? And presumably he kept the details he agreed with or could live with and eschewed the details he did not like very much, right? Yet, even knowing the details of this early gospel tradition, he produced epistles that lacked knowledge of that early gospel tradition. Why did he include no such details in his epistles?

If your answer is that it is no embarrassment for your view that Marcion knew all kinds of gospel details and yet produced epistles that lack them, then I have to wonder what exactly it was about my view (that Paul knew all kinds of gospel details and yet produced epistles relatively light in that area) that you found embarrassing.

Ben.