Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 04-09-2013, 12:56 PM

FWIW I have always tended to think that there was no such text as 'the Antitheses' of Marcion. Nevertheless I find Harris's arguments very persuasive. Look for example at the Treatise on Free Will by Methodius. There is nothing in it which would suggest any sort of connection with the Valentinians per se other than the designation of the adversary of 'the Orthodox' in the debate. The Church Fathers tended to view Marcion as the one who 'brooded' over the problem of origin of evil.

Methodius is a shadowy figure. He isn't even mentioned by Eusebius and no one knows for certain where he was from. There are many of these strange 'dialogues' attributed to Methodius. Even the Dialogues of Adamantius are related to Methodius. It's all very strange.

Harris makes a good point when he notes the strange agreement which exists between the material in Book One of Against Marcion and this Prologue to the gospel as he terms it:

Quote:

The sea upon which the winds play is called by Homer the Pontus; and no doubt he means the Thracian Pontus, from which Boreas and Zephyrus come in the twenty-third book to fan the flames of the funeral pile of Patroclus (II., 23, 230). It was, however, a word susceptible of misunderstanding; its most natural meaning is the Euxine, and we suspect that no less a person than Tertullian has thought of it as being the Pontus Euxinus, or Black Sea, about which he has so many epigrammatic in his books against Marcion.

For, in his first book, after impaling Marcion on the horns of a dilemma, he says, .. Marcion, 'you are caught in the surge of your own Pontus. The waves of truth overwhelm (involvunt) you on every side. You can neither set up equal gods nor unequal gods." The sting of the retort is evident, if Marcion had, to Tertullian's mind, represented himself as walking by the storm-tossed Euxine and imagining that he would be engulfed in the waves. ..The very thing," says Tertullian; "you are so, and the waves are the waves of truth breaking over you " (Tert. adv. Marc., i. 7)

When Tertullian comes to discuss the Antitheses or supposed Contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, he suggests that if we are going to search for contradictions, we shall not be limited to the two Testaments. Nature is full of contradictions, man is a bundle of them. Must we try to assign the inharmonious parts to separate Authors and Origins ? Tell me, Marcion. ... Why have you not reckoned up also the Antitheses which occur in the natural works of the Creator, who is forever contrary to Himself? Why were you not able to reflect (recogitare) that the world, at all events, even amongst our people of Pontus, is made up (unless I am mistaken), out of a diversity of elements which are mutually hostile?"(adv. Marc., iv. I).

The suggestion of the Pontic discords, about which he professes to have some knowledge, is at once explained by the Prologue which we have been studying, if that Prologue be really Marcion's. For it is clear that the people on the shores of the Pontus have a very black picture drawn of them, whatever Pontus may be meant by the writer. We think it is natural to explain the Prologue by Tertullian, and Tertullian by the Prologue. In that case, the Prologue is Marcion's.

If Harris is right, one can even take the argument one step further than what is in the current article. If this text represents the beginning of the antitheses of Marcion then there is no reason to understand that Marcion ever had any original association with 'Pontus' or 'Sinope.' The Catholic authors started by ridiculing this 'revelation' which came to Marcion out on the shores of the sea (pontos) and this eventually developed over a few rewrites or misunderstandings to 'Marcion of Pontus.'

stephan huller · 04-09-2013, 01:13 PM

Another take on Harris's work:

Quote:

Tertullian takes not a little both from Ovid (Ex Ponto 1.3.47, etc.) and from Homer (II. 16.34 f.) when he traces the violent sophistries of Marcion to the inhospitable crags where he was bom:

Quote:

Pontus, qui dicitur Euxinus, natura negatur, nomine illuditur... Dies numquam patens, sol numquam libens, unus aer nebula... Sed nihil tam barbarum ac triste apud Pontum quam quod illic Marcion natus est. (Adv. Mar. 1.1)

Yet Rendell Harris was able to maintain that the following lines were a preface of Marcion's.5 Even if Methodius is accurate in assigning them to the other great heresiarch Valentinus, the author of the Adversus Marcioncn might have felt that a parody of them would not be wasted upon his foe:

Quote:

As I was walking yesterday evening, my friend, along the shore of the sea ...l saw ... waves very like mountain-tops ... reaching up to heaven itself. Whence I expected nothing else but that the whole land would be deluged, and I began to frame in my mind a plan of escape.

http://books.google.com/books?id=6jG...and%22&f=false

stephan huller · 04-10-2013, 04:37 AM

In case the reader isn't clear Strabo (Geography 1.2.23) makes clear that contemporary writers understood Homer to be referencing the existence of only two principle winds or forces:

Quote:

Some writers tell us there are but two principal winds, the north and south, and that the other winds are only a slight difference in the direction of these two. That is, (supposing only two winds, the north and south,) the south wind from the commencement of the summer quarter blows in a south-easterly direction; and from the commencement of the winter quarter from the east. The north wind from the decline of the summer, blows in a westerly direction, and from the decline of the winter, in a north-westerly direction. In support of this opinion of the two winds they adduce Thrasyalces and our poet himself, forasmuch as he mentions the north-west with the south,

From the north-west south, [Iliad xi. 306, xxi. 334]

and the west with the north,

As when two adverse winds, blowing from Thrace, Boreas and Zephyrus. [Iliad ix. 5]

stephan huller · 04-10-2013, 04:57 AM

The north wind is typically identified as a hostile power. Tertullian On the Soul 8

Quote:

In the book of Job also, he is said to be the king of all things in the waters. The prophet threatens that evils will be kindled by the north wind upon all who inhabit the earth. Now the north wind is described in holy Scripture as cold, according to the statement in the book of Wisdom, “That cold north wind;” (Ecclus. xliii. 20) which same thing also must undoubtedly be understood of the devil.

Whereas the west wind is:

Quote:

the gentlest of the winds, Zephyrus is known as the fructifying wind, the messenger of spring. It was thought that Zephyrus lived in a cave in Thrace.

But it is important to note that the reference in Homer makes clear that the two winds have one and the same source:

Quote:

The undying authority of Homer informs us that these countries were formerly extended over an immense space of tranquil plains and high rising grounds; since that poet represents both the north and the west wind as blowing from thence: a statement which is either fabulous, or else which shows that the extensive district inhabited by all those savage tribes was formerly included under the single name of Thrace. [Ammianus Marcellinus 4.3]

stephan huller · 04-10-2013, 11:22 AM

I think that Harris's arguments are very persuasive here. I used to be very doubtful about the existence of the Antitheses. Now I am quite certain that Tertullian and others are responding to something. The question of course is (a) why don't other commentators ever comment on Harris's thesis and (b) where does it leave us with respect to the person of Marcion. With respect to (a) I am actively trying to dig up some commentary, critique etc against Harris's position. Hopefully that will turn up something. With respect to (b) it is less clear. If the Catholics really had access to the Antitheses (as is demonstrated by Tertullian, Adamantius and Methodius's testimony, why wasn't the original material preserved? When you look at the argument presented in the Antitheses it would seem a slam dunk case. Marcion had a revelation independent of Paul as to the nature of the universe and the godhead. As such his opinions were not those of Paul, thus he was an innovator. Slam dunk. What we get instead is the preservation of tangential arguments which - strangely - lack the specificity which really could finish 'Marcion' off once and for all.

For instance if Tertullian cited directed - line by line - from the Antitheses - one would expect there would be no context in the debate with Marcionitism. By contrast the surviving works 'Against Marcion' are rambling and again lack any sort of specificity. My guess is that something is preventing the Church Fathers from reproducing the Antitheses. The argument that Marcion was an innovator might not have been as strong a first appears. Take the argument developed in the Philosophumena:

Quote:

When, therefore, Marcion or some one of his hounds barks against the Demiurge, and adduces reasons from a comparison of what is good and bad, we ought to say to them, that neither Paul the apostle nor Mark, he of the maimed finger, announced such (tenets). For none of these (doctrines) has been written in the Gospel according to Mark. But (the real author of the system) is Empedocles, son of Meto, a native of Agrigentum. And (Marcion) despoiled this (philosopher), and imagined that up to the present would pass undetected his transference, under the same expressions, of the arrangement of his entire heresy from Sicily into the evangelical narratives. For bear with me, O Marcion: as you have instituted a comparison of what is good and evil, I also to-day will institute a comparison following up your own tenets, as you suppose them to be.[7.18]

This could have developed from knowledge of the Antitheses. But look at the rest of the argument - 'this is not (the gospel of) Mark.' The Marcion falsified Luke argument does not appear here. Hence the relationship with the apostle is not carved in stone.

My guess is that the Antitheses were not kept because it demonstrates that Marcion = Mark and/or Paul. In other words, the original understanding challenged the foundation of the Catholic universe. The Antitheses's author seems to have a lot of creative license. This could be attributed to the fact that he was a vain, imaginative here OR he was the original author of the material.

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