Juststeve

Stephen:

How can Marcion’s Christianity be the original Christianity when his proposed Canon presupposes a number of Paul’s letters and parts of Luke’s Gospel? Wouldn’t the Christianities of Paul and Luke have to come before Marcion’s, in a temporal sense?

Am I missing something here?

Steve

stephan huller

Well I don't know if you are missing anything. Maybe you are happy having hostile witness against the Marcionites as your only source of information. I'm not and neither are many other people who take the Marcionites seriously. To me at least having Irenaeus, Tertullian and the gang as our only source for the Marcionites would be like someone trying to uncover what the Jewish people were from the Protocols of Zion and Mein Kampf.

Seriously, these are books written by people who had at least some contact with the Jews and - like the Church Fathers with regards to the Marcionites - they seem to know 'something' about Jews and Judaism. An argument could be made two thousand years into the future that if only these texts survived from our era that the historians of that age should be content to merely take these sources at face value.

So I say - I don't know if you're missing anything. If your happy employing sources which literally demonize the Marcionites into a conspiracy organized by the Devil to develop a 'fake Church' in imitation of the true Church and where every statement begins and ends with embittered hostility, feel as comfortable as you want taking these sources uncritically.

It's not a hate crime to engage in anti-heretical polemics even today.

Juststeve

Stephen:

I have no desire to attack Marcion in particular. I have read that Marcion proposed a Canon of scripture that included some of Paul's letters and a truncated version of Luke. If you think he didn't just say so. If you think he proposed such a canon please explain how he could include Luke and Paul if they didn't precede him. That is an honest question since you said his was the original Christianity.

Steve

show_no_mercy

Well, doesn't our current canon (which, incidentally, is more than likely a reaction to Marcion's, since his was first) also presuppose a limited amount of Paul's letters? This is why we don't have 3 Corinthians in our canon, even though it is just as spurious as Titus. Maybe 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus didn't exist when Marcion was gathering Paul's letters.

Isn't Luke's gospel, according to most solutions to the synoptic problem, itself a reimaging of Mark's gospel? Maybe Luke's gospel is actually a reimaging of Markion's gospel instead of Mark's gospel (a lot of the arguments used to argue the priority of Mark over Luke - if applied to Marcion's gospel - make Marcion's gospel predate Luke as well).

True, Paul's letters according to most schemes, predates Marcion. But all of our received manuscripts of Paul's letters are after Marcion. All of the heresiologists are writing after Marcion. The original Paul might have been closer to Marcionism than he was to what eventually became orthodoxy.

Juststeve

Mercy:

From what I have read, less than Stephen to be sure, Marcion was the first person to propose a canon of writings for Christians. In that sense his canon was first. However, what he proposed was a collection of pre-existent writings, not a collection of his own writings. In other words the writings he collected, part of Luke and some of Paul's letters existed prior to Marcion. I am just wondering if my understanding is correct about that, and if so in what sense Marcion's could have been the original Christianity.

Steve

Toto

The orthodox Christians charged that Marcion included a truncated version of Luke's gospel, plus altered versions of Paul's letters. Marcionites (and some modern academic commentators) charge that the orthodox added anti-Marcionite materials to the original gospel and Paul's letters. Some radicals believe that Marcion wrote all of Paul's letters. We don't have the originals, so we can't disprove any of these claims.

But it is quite conceivable that Marcion represents the earliest version of Christianity. He collected the first canon, and the orthodox canon was a response to his.

Juststeve

OK. I see what Stephen is driving at. Thanks.

Steve

Chili

It does not have to be a fake church but a misguided religion is good enough to be called heretical since they both cannot be right in a narrow gate scenario.

Let the evidence speek for itself and consider that Mark Jesus retuned to Galilee for another 40 years and such an extended purification period is equal to hell on earth and that cannot be said of Luke's Jesus

Chili

and never a hermaphridie God but an androgyne God is the proper form = pre gender orientation of male and female.

Sheshbazzar

Re. Marcion as being the 'original' Christian religon, I concur with Stephan.

Rather than quibbling over details. I'd explain it this way. The Marcionite group is our first identifiable Christian 'denomination' with a known specific and limited body of Christian texts (Canon) as opposed to other, or previous small and highly divergent Jewish/proto-Christian sects.

As such the Marcionites were the first identifiable group (denomination) to bring together these texts -from various sources and strands (flavors) of Christian thought and writing (diverse 'Christianities')- as one cohesive and collective unity of 'Canon' (ie 'texts regularly read and accepted as authoritative for teaching and doctrine within the Christian community')
The Marcionites were the first to do this, and were in this sense the 'original Christianity', to which all other and latter groups were forced to react.