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Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: seattle, wa
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I think arguing about the implications of the original Syriac of Ephrem are going to be fruitless. I happen to know about five of the most authoritative scholars on the subject of Marcion and they can't do any better with Syriac texts. Let's look at some of the Latin references to the stranger concept in relation to Marcion. Irenaeus cites this saying from Matthew 25:
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our Lord says: "Come, ye blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you. For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me to eat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: naked, and ye clothed Me; sick, and ye visited Me; in prison, and ye came to Me."
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Clearly the idea of Jesus being identified as the stranger does not require him being an extraterrestrial. Irenaeus clearly and unmistakably understands the term to mean 'Gentile' as we see in a discussion against the Marcionites a little later in the same book where he cites the same verse in Matthew:
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For, because He knew that we would make a good use of our substance which we should possess by receiving it from another, He says, "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." And, "For I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was naked and ye clothed Me." And, "When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." And we are proved to be righteous by whatsoever else we do well, redeeming, as it were, our property from strange hands. But thus do I say, "from strange hands," not as if the world were not God's possession, but that we have gifts of this sort, and receive them from others, in the same way as these men had them from the Egyptians who knew not God; and by means of these same do we erect in ourselves the tabernacle of God: for God dwells in those who act uprightly, as the Lord says: "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that they, when ye shall be put to flight," may receive you into eternal tabernacles." For whatsoever we acquired from unrighteousness when we were heathen, we are proved righteous, when we have become believers, by applying it to the Lord's advantage. [AH 4.30.3]
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In case you are wondering the context here is Irenaeus answering to Marcionite objections that the Catholic Church is in the pockets of the Roman government. 'Strange hands' = Gentiles throughout this passage. The reference to Matthew 25 clearly underscores knowledge of the Marcionite interpretation of 'strange' meaning 'the Egyptians who knew not God' (the Marcionites object here to the Israelites taking the gold from Egypt but this is familiar exegesis within Judaism; the criticism of the ancient Israelites is found in the rabbinic sources connected to the debe Jannai).
That 'strange' again means 'Gentiles' to both Irenaeus and the Marcionites is seen in another passage in the same book:
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But in Christ every blessing [is summed up], and therefore the latter people has snatched away the blessings of the former from the Father, just as Jacob took away the blessing of this Esau. For which cause his brother suffered the plots and persecutions of a brother, just as the Church suffers this self-same thing from the Jews. In a foreign country were the twelve tribes born, the race of Israel, inasmuch as Christ was also, in a strange country, to generate the twelve-pillared foundation of the Church. [AH 4.17.3]
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This chapter is devoted to the figure of Abraham who is above all else 'the stranger' in the Jewish and Samaritan traditions and so Irenaeus identifies Abraham throughout Against Heresies. In Book Five we read:
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Thus, then, the promise of God, which He gave to Abraham, remains stedfast. For thus He said: "Lift up thine eyes, and look from this place where now thou art, towards the north and south, and east and west. For all the earth which thou seest, I will give to thee and to thy seed, even for ever." And again He says, "Arise, and go through the length and breadth of the land, since I will give it unto thee;"(5) and [yet] he did not receive an inheritance in it, not even a footstep, but was always a stranger and a pilgrim therein. [Ah 5.32.3]
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Interestingly the term 'stranger' is most often applied to the seed of Abraham speaking of the time when they sojourn in Egypt as Irenaeus cites Stephen's speech from Acts:
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"The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, ... and said to him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee; ... and He removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell. And He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on; yet He promised that He would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him. ... And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land, and should be brought into bondage, and should be evil-entreated four hundred years; and the nation whom they shall serve will I judge, says the Lord. And after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place. And He gave him the covenant of circumcision: and so [Abraham] begat Isaac."
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Now with regards to the Marcionites being strangers because of Jesus the stranger, Irenaeus writes a little later:
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A spiritual disciple of this sort truly receiving the Spirit of God, who was from the beginning, in all the dispensations of God, present with mankind, and announced things future, revealed things present, and narrated things past--[such a man] does indeed "judge all men, but is himself judged by no man."(11) For he judges the Gentiles, "who serve the creature more than the Creator,"(12) and with a reprobate mind spend all their labour on vanity. And he also judges the Jews, who do not accept of the word of liberty, nor are willing to go forth free, although they have a Deliverer present [with them]; but they pretend, at a time unsuitable [for such conduct], to serve, [with observances] beyond [those required by] the law, God who stands in need of nothing, and do not recognise the advent of Christ, which He accomplished for the salvation of men, nor are willing to understand that all the prophets announced His two advents: the one, indeed, in which He became a man subject to stripes, and knowing what it is to bear infirmity,(13) and sat upon the foal of an ass,(14) and was a stone rejected by the builders,(15) and was led as a sheep to the slaughter,(16) and by the stretching forth of His hands destroyed Amalek;(17) while He gathered from the ends of the earth into His Father's fold the children who were scattered abroad,(18) and remembered His own dead ones who had formerly fallen asleep,(19) and came down to them that He might deliver them: but the second in which He will come on the clouds,(20) bringing on the day which burns as a furnace?(21) and smiting the earth with the word of His mouth?(22) and slaying the impious with the breath of His lips, and having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and gathering the wheat indeed into His barn, but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire.(23)
2. Moreover, he shall also examine the doctrine of Marcion, [inquiring] how he holds that there are two gods, separated from each other by an infinite distance. In what way will he be good who draws the strangers away from him who created them and calls them to his kingdom? And why is his goodness, which does not save all [thus], defective? Also, why does he, indeed, seem to be good as respects men, but most unjust with regard to him who made men, inasmuch as he deprives him of his possessions? Moreover, how could the Lord, with any justice, if He belonged to another father, have acknowledged the bread to be His body, while He took it from that creation to which we belong, and affirmed the mixed cup to be His blood? And why did He acknowledge Himself to be the Son of man, if He had not gone through that birth which belongs to a human being? How, too, could He forgive us those sins for which we are answerable to our Maker and God? And how, again, supposing that He was not flesh, but was a man merely in appearance, could He have been crucified, and could blood and water have issued from His pierced side? What body, moreover, was it that those who buried Him consigned to the tomb? And what was that which rose again from the dead? [AH 4.33]
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Some of Tertullian's use of the term 'strange' and 'stranger' in relation to the Marcionite might be useful too. In Book One Tertullian notes:
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I submit that the goodness of Marcion's god is not rational, on this account first, that it has brought itself into action for the salvation of man, who belonged to someone else. I know they will object that primary and perfect goodness is precisely this, when without any obligation of kinship it is willingly and liberally expended upon strangers (hominis alieni: in extraneos); just as we are ordered to love even our enemies, in which reckoning strangers are included. When then he did not from the beginning have regard for man, who from the beginning was a stranger, by this delay he established the principle that with the stranger he has no concern. Now the rule about loving the stranger or the enemy comes after that command to love your neighbour as yourself, which, though taken from the Creator's law, you also will have to adopt, since by Christ it has not been overthrown but more firmly established.a To cause you to love your neighbour the more, you are told to love the enemy and the stranger ... Even suppose there could be a rationality of goodness, which began at the second degree, that in respect of the stranger, not even this second degree could be firmly based upon rationality: there is another means of casting it down. Not even secondary goodness, towards the stranger, can be considered rational unless it functions without injustice to him to whom the property belongs. Any goodness whatsoever is in first instance made rational by its justice. Even as in the primary degree the goodness, if it is just, will be rational when it is exercised in respect of its own belongings, so also towards the stranger it will be seen to be rational if it is not unjust. Otherwise, what sort of goodness is this, which comes to exist by means of an injustice, and even that on behalf of a stranger? Perhaps on behalf of one of the household an unjust goodness may be conceived of as to some extent rational: but on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even honest goodness was lawfully due, by what reasoning can goodness so unjust be defended as rational? [Tertullian Against Marcion 1.23]
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In Book Two we see the term defined as follows:
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Both aspects, the goodness and the judgement, combine to produce a complete and worthy conception of a divinity to which nothing is impossible: and so I am for the time being content to have rebutted in summary fashion those antitheses which, by criticism of the moral value of the Creator's works, his laws, and his miracles, indicate anxiety to establish a division, making Christ a stranger to the Creator—as it were the supremely good a stranger to the judge, the kind to the cruel, the bringer of salvation a stranger to the author of destruction. [2.29]
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This most clearly references 'stranger' as meaning 'other' or 'another' (a shade of meaning in Aramaic). In Book Three there is yet another clear example that 'stranger' meant 'Gentile':
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So then, since heretical madness was claiming that that Christ had come who had never been previously mentioned, it followed that it had to contend that that Christ was not yet come who had from all time been foretold: and so it was compelled to form an alliance with Jewish error, and from it to build up an argument for itself, on the pretext that the Jews, assured that he who has come was an alien, not only rejected him as a stranger but even put him to death as an opponent, although they would beyond doubt have recognized him and have treated him with all religious devotion if he had been their own. [3.6]
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The same meaning (stranger = Gentile) is explicitly referenced in the next chapter of the same book:
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If these facts are thus considered, it is now apparent for what reason the Jews both rejected Christ and put him to death—not because they took Christ for a stranger, but because though their own, they did not accept him. For how could they have taken for a stranger one of whom no announcement had ever been made, when they had been incapable of understanding him who had at all times been the subject of prophecy? The possibility of being understood or not being understood arises when some fact, by having a foundation in prophecy, is able also to provide subject-matter for acknowledgement or for error: whereas that which is devoid of subject-matter has no room for wisdom or its outcome. Consequently, it was not as belonging to another god that they objected to Christ and persecuted him, but as being nothing more than a man, whom they supposed to be a magician in his miracles, and their opponent in his doctrines: with the result that this man, as belonging to them, being a Jew, yet a perverter and overthrower of Judaism, they brought to judgement and punished by their law: a stranger they would certainly not have judged. So far are they from appearing to have taken Christ for a stranger, that it was not as a stranger that they brought his manhood5 to judgement. [3.7]
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Tertullian (= Justin) is clearly reacting to the original Marcionite meaning of the term (i.e. that their Christ was a foreigner, an argument which resurfaces time and again in the rabbinic literature with regards to Jesus). Marcion then takes Jesus's words from the gospel to mean that he had a mission to the 'strangers':
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As the saying goes, let us get down to it: to your task, Marcion: remove even this from the gospel, I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and, It is not <meet> to take away the children's bread and give it to dogs:c for this gives the impression that Christ belongs to Israel. I have plenty of acts, if you take away his words. Take away Christ's sayings, and the facts will speak; See how he enters into the synagogue: surely to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. See how he offers the bread of his doctrine to the Israelites first: surely he is giving them preference as sons. See how as yet he gives others no share of it: surely he is passing them by, like dogs. Yet on whom would he have been more ready to bestow it than on strangers to the Creator, if he himself had not above all else belonged to the Creator? [4.7]
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And again in the next chapter Jesus is not recognized and thus a stranger to the demons (who live in the temple):
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Therefore that which shall be born in thee shall be called holy, the Son of God:d and, Thou shalt call his name Jesus. Also, though he was only a demon, he had in fact some sense of the Lord's purpose, more than if it had been a stranger's and not yet well enough known. For he began by asking, What have we to do with thee, Jesus?, not as though addressing a stranger, but as one whose concern the Creator's spirits are. For his words were not, What hast thou to do with us?, but, What have we to do with thee?, in sorrow for himself and in regret at his own case: and as he now sees what this is he adds, Thou art come to destroy us. To that extent he had recognized Jesus as the Son of the judge, the avenger, and <if I may say so> the severe God, not of that perfectly good god who knows nothing of destruction and punishment. [4.8]
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In the next chapter Jesus the stranger EXPLICITLY means 'Gentile' or God on a mission to the strangers (= Gentiles):
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But even though Elisha, the Creator's prophet, cleansed no more than one leper, Naaman the Syrian, when there were all those many lepers in Israel, even this does not indicate that Christ was in some sense different, as though he were in this respect superior, that being a stranger he cleansed an Israelite leper, whom his own Lord had not had power to cleanse: because the Syrian was more easily cleansed as a sign throughout the gentiles of their cleansing in Christ the light of the gentiles, who were marked with those seven stains of capital sins, idolatry, blasphemy, homicide, adultery, fornication, false witness, fraud. [4.9]
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The argument is clearly defined again by Biblical notions of 'strangeness' (i.e. not extraterrestrial ones) in what follows:
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After that the pharisees watch if he will heal a man on the sabbath, that they might accuse him—evidently <accuse him> as a breaker of the sabbath, not as the setter forth of a strange god [4.12]
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And again 'strange' does not mean extraterrestrial but 'outsider' in chapter 14:
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And of the same a little later, when she sees the unknown and the strangers: And thou shall say to thine heart, Who hath begotten me these? and who hath brought me up these? and these, tell me, where have they been?n Must not this be the Christ of the prophets? So who can the Christ of the Marcionites be? If perversity is to their mind, the Christ who was not of the prophets. [4.14]
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In chapter 16 'strange' clearly means Gentile:
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But about the loan, more hereafter. Now if anyone wishes to argue that the Creator ordered gifts to be given to the brethren, but that Christ said they must be given to all who ask, so that this is something new and different, I answer that this will be one of those points in which the Creator's law is found in Christ. For Christ has prescribed the same action towards all men, as the Creator did towards the brethren. For although that kindness is greater which is exercised towards strangers, it takes no precedence of that which was previously a debt towards the people next door. For who is there that is able to love strangers? But if the second degree of kindness, towards strangers, is the same as that first degree, towards one's neighbours, that second degree will have to belong to the same one to whom the first belonged—much more easily than that the second degree
should belong to one whose first was non-existent. So it was in accordance with the course of nature that the Creator first taught of kindness towards neighbours, intending afterwards to extend it towards strangers, and, according to the reckoning of his own dispensation, at first towards the Jews, and afterwards also towards every race of men. [4.16]
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In chapter 22 speaking of the Transfiguration and Jesus standing beside Moses and Elijah:
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Is this the way he shows they are strangers to him, by having them with him? Is this the way he teaches us to repudiate them, by linking them with himself? [4.22]
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It is clearly against the identification of Jesus as 'the stranger' in Matthew 25 (ghettoized as it were because it founded the Marcionite understanding Tertullian pulls out another saying of Jesus to disprove the association:
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The Creator however was in a position to give such injunctions through Christ, to the intent that because man by sinning had offended his own God, he might toil, and by persistence in asking might receive, by persistence in seeking might find, and by persistence in knocking obtain admission. With that in view, the parable that comes before this represents that man who at night asks for bread, as a friend, not a stranger, knocking at the door of a friend, not of one unknown. Now man, even if he has offended, is more the friend of the Creator than of Marcion's god: and so he knocks at the door of him to whom he has the right to come, whose door he can easily find, who he knows has the bread, who is now in bed with those children whose birth was to his liking. Even that he knocks late at night—the tune belongs to the Creator: the late hour belongs to him. whose are all the ages, and the sunset of the ages. At this new god's door no one would have knocked late at night: he is only just waking up into daylight. It was the Creator who long ago shut up against the gentiles that door at which the Jews long ago were knocking: he it is who rises and gives, if not yet as to a friend, at any rate not to an entire stranger, but, as it says, because he is troublesome. [4.26]
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And again with respect to the saying render unto Caesar etc.:
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Let Marcion's god go and fetch coinage for himself—Christ's command is for the penny, which is man, to be rendered to its own Caesar, not to a stranger—except that one has to do this, who has not a penny of his own. [4.26]
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In Book Five Tertullian attempts to squirm away from the passage I cited earlier which has clear significance for the Marcionites:
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Remembering that ye were in time past gentiles in the flesh, who are called the uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh, made by hands: that ye were at that time without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants and their promise, having no hope, and without God, in the world. Without which god does he mean the gentiles were, and without which Christ? Evidently him to whom pertained the commonwealth of Israel, and the covenants and the promises. But now, he says, in Christ ye who were afar off are made nigh by his blood. From whom were they formerly far off? From those mentioned, above from the Creator's Christ, from the commonwealth of Israel, from the covenants, from the hope of the promise, from God himself. If that is so, the gentiles are now in Christ being made nigh to those from whom they were then far off. But if in Christ we have been brought very near to the commonwealth of Israel, which is in the religion of God the Creator, and to their covenants and promise, and even to their God, it is very strange if the Christ of a different god has from far off brought us near to the Creator. [5.7]
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and again with respect to this same passage
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So then as he preaches peace to them that are nigh and to those afar off, we have along with them obtained access to the Father, and are no longer strangers or resident aliens, but fellow citizens of the saints, and resident in the household of God— evidently that God from whom we have just shown we were formerly foreigners, set at a far distance—being built upon the foundation of the apostles. [ibid]
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and later:
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But what point was there in asserting the ignorance of a Creator who was a stranger separated by far distances, when even those of the household of your superior god remained ignorant?
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and again:
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On behalf of whom, once more, does he reconcile all things unto himself, making peace by the blood of his cross, if not of him whom all things had offended, against whom they had rebelled by that transgression—him in short to whom they belonged? For they might have been conciliated to a stranger, but reconciled to no god except their own. [5.19]
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I have to go. This took far too long. But this is all the relevant passages in Irenaeus and Tertullian and it is patently clear that 'alien' in the sense of extraterrestrial is NOT the meaning of the Marcionite terminology but 'non-Jewish' or 'Gentile.'
Brock notes that nukraya is still used by the Syrian monks as a term they choose to identify themselves with. Oops. I went back to Syriac.
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01-06-2012, 02:55 PM
