stephan huller

And you are only showing that you lack imagination and come to the forum to make yourself feel better about that by crushing little bugs.

Jeffrey Gibson

Which neither Mark nor Luke claim anyway. In fact, both are at pains to say otherwise.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Same thing Pete has said. In any case, imagination isn't the issue. Pete is very inmaginative. But that hardly makes him right. Nor does whatever the reason might be for "coming here" have anything to do with what is at issue, namely, the validity of what I say when I am here. Back to the using the ad hominem circumstantial to defend yourself, are you Stephan?

Interesting admission, though, that when it comes to mastery of the material you pontificate on, you are a bug.



Jeffrey

stephan huller

But the question isn't what the Catholic texts say but to speculate (a) what the heretical texts say and (b) why they say it. It is always safe approach to attack the vulnerabilities of others but those people usually end up very alone in the world.

stephan huller

How on earth are we going to know what the Marcionite text said or what the Marcionites believed if we don't use imagination? This is utterly idiotic. You may have no interest in these matters but you have demonstrated yourself to have all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer here at the forum. Yes, its true if we hide behind what exists or what has survived from antiquity we will be safe. But that's not the same thing as knowing the truth.

stephan huller

Since you have been here the only function you have engaged in is proving that you - someone who was educated at Oxford - are better and smarter than everyone else at the forum. There is no question that you have the best skills at the forum and you use those skills to demonstrate shortcomings in things that other people have said. This is a useful function in itself and you should be commended for taking the time to do that.

However there is this other side to this effort which isn't so great. There is always this smugness that by making a mistake the person has proved that he or she is useless, worthless etc. If that makes you feel better to belittle people then enjoy the sport of squashing ants.

I on the other hand welcome any corrections that you could make to anything I put down at the forum. I come here to be corrected. I like it when Andrew Criddle suggests something that I had thought of or someone else at the forum says 'that won't work' or 'this is why that won't work.' But stop with the 'you suck because you made a mistake' nonsense.

I am interested in the heretical traditions of early Christianity. It is my exclusive interest in early Christianity and always has been. The only way we are going to get to an understanding of that tradition is by a hit and miss, trial and error method of connecting bits and pieces that exist in many different sources. Stop with the 'you suck' business because it only shows how terribly insecure you really must be to come to a forum round the clock to prove that people suck more than you do and nothing else. No productive efforts here (of course not we're all scumbag losers, why would you want to associate with us).

As I said feel free to tell me I am wrong, show me why I am wrong but stop insulting me for engaging in speculation.

Jeffrey Gibson

The issue isn't what the Marcionite text said, but what Marcion and his followers said the God of Jesus was. For Marcion, Adamantius' claim that this god was the god of Israel is blasphemous, since he was not good, and Jesus himself declared that his god, the god he came to reveal, was.

You have misunderstood the background and purpose of the scriptural argument that is here being employed. It does not need for Jesus to have been called "good Lord" for it's truth or its force.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

One of the marks that someone does not have a case to make is that in order to score some points against an opponent, he/she has to attribute to that opponent things they never said.

I'd be grateful if you could point out exactly where I have ever said "you suck because you made a mistake".


Um .. didn't I just show you that you were wrong with regard to your claim about Church fathers "never, never, never" uttering "Ὁ Ἀγαθός Κύριος" before the fifth century?

And as to insulting you, all I did was to point out the undeniable fact that you often do what Pete does. And you do. I can't help it if you equate the stating of a fact with an insult or that you are so committed to your ego that you can't bear having inconvenient truths about your "scholarship" pointed out to you.

Instead of playing the aggrieved party card, you might pay a little more attention to avoiding unsound speculation, especially the sort that is based on the misreading of texts and non evidenced emendations of them to make them say what you need them to say to make your case (something you yourself excoriated Pete for engaging in). Then you'll be less liable to have how you and Pete are cut from the same cloth pointed out to you.

Jeffrey

stephan huller

But my developing these here at the forum is that this is naive understanding of the Marcionites. Look at what Irenaeus says about the division of the Marcionite between powers of 'mercy' and 'justice' - it is nothing more than a recycling of the Philonic and rabbinic understanding of 'two powers' in heaven - the Lord and God being separate powers (albeit the rabbinic tradition strangely reverses the original understanding of which is mercy and which is judgment).

The point then is that there wasn't one god of Israel at the time Marcion was writing. There were two powers and Marcionitism could have been criticizing the neo-Pharisaic Yahwehism which challenged the traditional authority of Philo. I don't think I have 'misunderstood' either Marcionitism or Judaism. I have only brought to the fore things that have been overlooked.

In other words, was Marcionitism a radicalized form of Alexandrian Judaism? (I only say 'Alexandrian' Judaism because we know so little about Palestinian forms of Judaism in the period i.e. Elisha ben Abuyah, Samaritan sects etc)

Jeffrey Gibson

There are three begged questions here:

1. that the Marcionite division (of what?) between powers of mercy and justice" is "nothing more than a recycling of the Philonic and rabbinic understanding of 'two powers' in heaven" concept.

2. that the Rabbinic (alexandrian???) concept was not only unified and formulated early enough to influence Marcion (in Turkey, let alone in Rome), but was also the same as Philo's concept (if indeed he had one).

3. that you know enough about what these concepts were to make authoritative statements about them, let alone to say with any degree of certainty that the parallels you see between them and what you find in the theology of Marcion are real and are truly indicative of influence of the latter on the former.

Sorry, but as far as I can see, you have done little to show the validity of these assumptions.

Jeffrey