DCHindley

Unlike Stephan, I don't start all my posts with a weird assertion formed as a question. This weekend I spent some time Christmas shopping with my wife, went to a funeral, and completed an English-Greek table of all the passages that Philip Amidon had culled from Epiphanius' Panarion, chapter 42, on "Marcionists". What a pain! I downloaded the unicode file from a site with Migne's PG, and scanned in the passages from Amidon, then set them up as an Excel file in parallel columns. It wasn't easy, mind you. The critical text used by Amidon is that of K Holl (3 vol, 1915, 1922, 1931-33) and as revised by J Dummer (vols 2 & 3, 1980 & 1985). Of course the text divisions used by Holl don't correspond to the traditional "heads" (chapters) that are used in Amidon's book. He has placed the passages to the side of the translation, but they are not particularly accurate. That was pretty much all I had to go on in deciding what passages Amidon translated, and I realize there will be errors. I am not a Greek expert, just an average Joe who likes taking things apart.

We had some threads a while back in which we questioned the interpretation some folks placed on the evidence for what Marcion believed and what was in his canon of sacred books. I like to have access to the source materials, and aside from Tertullian, Epiphanius is right up there in importance. He happens to be the source I have gotten into first ... Adamantius is probably next and Tertullian will be last.

Remember Sebastian Moll? He's the one who said that Marcion conceived as a disobedient son rebelling against his creator dad. This idea is represented in sections 14 & 16 of the end of chapter 42 on Marcionites:

[H/D2.183] ... 14.1. Finally, we must mention that some of the Marcionists . . . , impudently repudiating in another place the divinity of the very one of whose lordship they thought good to make mention, if only nominally, show no fear of disparaging his supernal generation.	[2.183]… 14.1. Ἔτι δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα πάντα ἐπεμνήσθημεν ὡς τινὲς ἀπὸ τῶν αὐτῶν Μαρκιωνιστῶν, … καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἑαυτῶν δαιμονιώδους διδασκαλίας ἐμβρόντητοι παντάπασι γεγονότες καὶ οὗ ἐδόκουν κυρίου μόνον κἂν δι' ὀνόματος μνημονεύειν
2. [H/D2.184] For some of them have dared, as I said, shamelessly to call the Lord himself a son of the evil one, while others disagree saying that he is a son of the judge and demiurge.	2. [2.184] καὶ αὐτοῦ ἀθυρογλώσσως ἑτέρως τὴν αὐτοῦ θεότητα ἀποστρέφοντες, τὸ ὄνομα τῆς ἄνωθεν γεννήσεως κακίζειν οὐκ ἐντρέπονται. τινὲς γὰρ αὐτῶν τετολμήκασιν, ὡς ἔφην, αὐτὸν τὸν κύριον εἶναι υἱὸν τοῦ πονηροῦ λέγειν οὐκ αἰσχυνόμενοι, ἄλλοι δὲ οὐχί, ἀλλὰ τοῦ κριτοῦ τε καὶ δημιουργοῦ·
3. <But> being kindlier and good, he left his own father below (some of them say that the latter is the demiurge, others the evil one), sped upward to the good God who is in the unnameable places, and adhered to him.	3. εὐσπλαγχνότερον δὲ γεγονότα καὶ ἀγαθὸν ὄντα καταλεῖψαι μὲν τὸν ἴδιον αὐτοῦ πατέρα κάτω πῆ μὲν λεγόντων τὸν δημιουργόν, ἄλλων δὲ τὸν πονηρόν, ἄνω δὲ ἀναδεδραμηκέναι πρὸς τὸν ἐν ἀκατονομάστοις τόποις ἀγαθὸν θεὸν καὶ αὐτῷ προσκεκολλῆσθαι·
4. But he, the Christ, came as sent by him into the world and in opposition to his own father to abolish all that his natural father had legislated, whether the latter is he who spoke in the law or the God of evil whom they assign to the third principle. For they explain it variously, as I said, one saying that he is the demiurge, another the evil one. ...	4. πεμφθέντα δὲ ὑπ' αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν κόσμον καὶ πρὸς ἀντιδικίαν τοῦ ἰδίου πατρὸς ἐλθόντα τὸν Χριστὸν καὶ καταλῦσαι αὐτοῦ τὰ πάντα ὅσα ὁ κατὰ φύσιν πατὴρ αὐτοῦ ἐνομοθέτει, ἤτοι ὁ λαλήσας ἐν τῷ νόμῳ ἤτοι ὁ τῆς κακίας θεὸς ὁ παρ' αὐτῶν ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ ἀρχῇ ταττόμενος. ἄλλως γὰρ καὶ ἄλλως ἐκτίθενται ὡς ἔφην, ἄλλος μὲν τὸν δημιουργὸν λέγων, ἄλλος δὲ τὸν πονηρόν. ...
[H/D2185] … 16.7. If (Christ) had not fled, as Marcion says, to the God above, the good God would have had no one to send, if conflict had not arisen between the father of Christ and his own son, as Marcion says. . . .	[2.185] ... 16.7. … εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἀπέφυγε κατὰ τὸν τοῦ Μαρκίωνος λόγον ὁ Χριστὸς πρὸς τὸν ἄνω θεόν, οὐκ ηὐπόρει ὁ ἀγαθὸς θεός τινα ἀποστεῖλαι, εἰ μὴ ἐν προσκρούσει ὁ τοῦ Χριστοῦ πατήρ, ὡς ὁ Μαρκίων λέγει …

This is the only place he mentions this idea that Christ was a son of the Creator God, and on account of his own unsurpassed goodness ascended up to the Good God, who sent him back to rescue the sould of men from Hades. And even here it is said to be the opinion of "some of the Marcionists", mentioned almost as an afterthought.

"Epi," as I affectionally call him, has a ... um ... peculiar style. Here's a taste:

[H/D2.107] 11.1. Those who make it their practice to obtain accurate information about the spurious ideas of the deceiver Marcion and to distinguish the devices fabricated by his herd will not be slow to peruse this collection.	[2.107] 11.1. Ὅτῳ φίλον ἐστὶ τὰς τοῦ ἀπατηλοῦ Μαρκίωνος νόθους ἐπινοίας ἀκριβοῦν καὶ τὰς ἐπιπλάστους τοῦ αὐτοῦ βοσκήματος μηχανὰς διαγινώσκειν, τούτῳ τῷ συλλελεγμένῳ πονήματι ἐντυχεῖν μὴ κατοκνείτω.
2. For we have devoted ourselves to arranging here those passages from his gospel which may be used in refutation of his cunning villainy, so that those who desire to peruse this work may use it as an exercise in acuity, with a view to refuting the strange utterances dreamed up by him.	2. ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ παρ' αὐτῷ εὐαγγελίου τὰ πρὸς ἀντίρρησιν τῆς πανούργου αὐτοῦ ῥᾳδιουργίας σπουδάσαντες παρεθέμεθα, ἵν' οἱ τῷ πονήματι ἐντυχεῖν ἐθέλοντες ἔχωσι τοῦτο γυμνάσιον ὀξύτητος, πρὸς ἔλεγχον τῶν ὑπ' αὐτοῦ ἐπινενοημένων ξενολεξιῶν.
7 We have also in opposition to the heresiarch included in this work of ours against him those <remnants of the truth?> of which we have found him in possession as well in his arbitrary version of the letters of the apostle Paul, not of all of them but of some (the names of which are listed by us at the very end of the treatise as they are contained in his collection of Paul's letters),	7. Ἔτι δὲ καὶ ταῦτα συνάπτομεν κατὰ τοῦ προειρημένου αἱρεσιάρχου ταύτῃ τῇ παρ' ἡμῶν κατ' αὐτοῦ πεπραγματευμένῃ σχέσει, ἅτινα παρ' αὐτῷ πάλιν ἐφεύρομεν, ὡς ἐν ἐθελοδοκήσει τῶν τοῦ ἀποστόλου Παύλου ἐπιστολῶν,
8. these letters as well having been mutilated in accordance with his usual mischief. <These remnants are still preserved in them? >, just as remnants of the true gospel [H/D2.118] <may be found?> in the so-called gospel cited above, if truth be told, even though he has falsified everything quite ruthlessly.	8. οὐχ ὅλων ἀλλ' ἐνίων ὧν ἐν τῷ τέλει τῆς πάσης πραγματείας αἱ ὀνομασίαι ὑφ' ἡμῶν ἐνετάχθησαν, ὡς παρ' αὐτῷ τὸ ἀποστολικὸν ἐμφέρεται καὶ αὐτῶν δὲ ἠκρωτηριασμένων συνήθως τῇ αὐτοῦ ῥᾳδιουργίᾳ, *, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῷ προταχθέντι ὀνόματι εὐαγγελίῳ [2.118] λείψανα μὲν τοῦ ἀληθινοῦ εὐαγγελίου *, εἰ δεῖ τὰ ἀληθῆ λέγειν, ὅμως δὲ τὰ πάντα δεινῶς μηχανευσάμενος ἐνόθευσεν.

Interesting stuff ...

DCH

maryhelena

Great work there, David.....

However, I don't read the last quotation the way you have done here, i.e. that "Christ was a son of the Creator God". The previous verses don't make this connection at all - they leave the question of the son's origin wide open - either the evil one or the demiurge/creator. And surely, if the idea of conflict is being brought into the picture - then conflict seems a more appropriate response to the evil god than to the creator god? Unless, perhaps, we are simply dealing with a dualism of good and evil - in which case a context of negative dualism - a context in which the son, the Lord, is the son of that dualism, the 'son', the outcome, of interaction, of 'movement' between the two principles. The 'son' as the new creation who ascends to the good god, i.e. becomes himself the new creation, the good god.

As I said in some earlier post - Marcion seems to have been on the right philosophical track - his downfall being his rejection, or downgrading, of the creator god - a god without which the whole philosophical/theological bang-shoot collapses......Can't have one without the other....the evil god is just as important as the creator god - both are necessary to produce that 'son'. Which is basically a philosophical take on that old mythological idea of a dying and rising god - birth, death and rebirth. Cycles not of physical human life but of human intellectual life.
Indeed.....

stephan huller

“I think Epiphanius ought to be the last witness we should trust uncontrolled, especially in his testimonies on heretics and heretical writings. He combines all kinds of notices, rumours, and calumnies into abracadabra often completely incomprehensible." Daniel Plooij A Primitive Text of the Diatessaron p. 78

Epiphanius is a compiler of sources. His information is often at odds with even the sources as we know them (take for example his dividing up of the account of the Marcosians in Irenaeus where the redemption baptism is ascribed to a Valentinian gnostic group by Epiphanius even though he claims to cite Irenaeus's account of the Marcosians verbatim. This doesn't mean that Epiphanius is always wrong. He's just stupid. In many ways he is like the fourteenth century Samaritan chronicler Abu'l Fath. We wish we had access to the sources that Epiphanius has available to him. It's just unfortunate that Epiphanius is such an idiot.

I do agree that Jesus was the son of something or some divinity. The difficulty is that Irenaeus (and Aristo of Pella and Tertullian) make clear that the Son is the Creator based upon the Hebrew scriptures (see Apostolic Preaching) and Irenaeus is so influential. I happen to think that the original idea that is getting kicked around and misrepresented is the old gnostic concept that the Creator wasn't aware that there was a divinity higher than him. This MUST be what the Marcionites believed in spite of all the misinformation. Otherwise we have two father and son pairings - i.e. the Jewish God and his 'Son' (= the logos) and the unknown Father and Jesus which is completely unworkable.

All we can be certain of is (a) that Jesus was the Son and the Son was the Logos and the Logos was the Creator and that created the world (b) Jesus/the Son/the Logos had a Father who was previously unknown before his manifestation among Hebrews at the beginning of the Common Era (= the gospel narrative). Jesus is walking around Galilee and Judea not to manifest himself as an unknown divinity (cf. John 1.11) - the gospel narrative assumes on some level that Jesus was supposed to have been known to the Jews (hence their condemnation) but his mission was to reveal his newly discovered Father (like a teenager who gets his adoption record).

The idea that we can simply use Epiphanius or anyone of the Church Fathers uncritically will go nowhere and that is why scholarship has went nowhere with this material for 100 years. Let's look at our initial supporting evidence. How do we account for the fact that so many of these people put forward as fact that the opening words of Genesis in Hebrew mean 'the Son in the beginning created ..."? This is illustrative with respect to Marcion on two fronts. The first is that someone is lying (= Irenaeus or Aristo; perhaps Irenaeus is Aristo?) about their expertise on a matter and then another complete moron like Tertullian or Epiphanius turns around and recycles that information assuming - probably - that the source (Irenaeus or Aristo) was infallible because he was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius ever saw a Marcionite firsthand. Like the example of the Hebrew meaning of the first words of Genesis they took the information at face value and passed it along to their readers as their own.

DCHindley

Do you suppose Epiphanius (or "Epi" as I call him when we channel over the Ouija board - he calls me "Impious Fabricator of Lies") is displaying a teeny tiny bit of bias? I often talk of filtering out the "color commentary" (loaded language) both when reading ancient texts and later/modern commentaries on those texts, and this guy is a case in point. Amidon (a Jesuit priest) has translated Epiphanius (a 4th century bishop & ascetic), who in turn is passing on fragments from Marcion's Gospel and Apostlikon (the source text). Epiphanius' book is like a huge Apologetics website - so beware. There is no sophisticated rhetoric going on with him at all.

I'm working on establishing a website for this kind of source material soon. Maybe 1st of year. The aim will be to allow the average reader of critical books about the bible and early church history to check the facts being interpreted by others. One can then interpret and evaluate to the level of one's ability. No apologetics or endless bickering.

For now, I'd be happy to respond to anyone who wants to bring up this or that scholar's assertions involving Epiphanius' presentation of Marcionite theology and scripture, with the relevant passages in the Panerion chapter 42 on Marcionites.

DCH

mountainman

Are there any 100 y/o English translations anywhere in the public domain?

mountainman

Heresiological bias.

DCHindley

I mean that he says M "falsifies" when M's version does not have a passage found in the orthodox version, and "adulterates" when the wording is different. We do the same when we say he "omits" or "alters" respectively, because these words impute motive. Same with the framing of the material. Examples: “Fabricated” “cunning villainy” ”mutilated" "his usual mischief” "strange utterances dreamed up by him" etc

DCH (break)

DCHindley

Other than translations of some subsections, no. First translated into English 1987-1991, 2nd edition 2009, by Brill = immensely expensive.

DCH (lunch)

stephan huller

As I am sure is true for you David I have spent many, many years thinking about the problem of Marcion WITHOUT having the difficulty of actually publishing anything on the subject (sort of like being a virgin for a long time so the idea that you are a bad lover doesn't get in the way of your delusions of being a playboy). The difficulty that arises from claiming that there was some massive misinformation going about the Marcionites at the turn of the third century is why were so many Church Fathers willing to go along with it?

The example of "in the Son ..." as the Hebrew words of Genesis is useful for demonstrating that Tertullian borrowed from Irenaeus uncritically. Yet the difficulty still remains - why was Irenaeus so willing to 'invent' or misrepresent information about the Marcionites? It is difficult to go anywhere without developing some massive conspiracy like mountainman unless ...

And I always come back to the same 'unless.' Unless, everything can be explained by the wide influence of Celsus's anti-Christian polemic the True Word. It is amazing to see how many times arguments resurface from that text in Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian and even Ephrem. We know that treatise was very influential because both Clement and Origen respond to it (even though in Origen's case it was over half a century later).

Determining what Celsus's treatise was and to whom it was addressed might explain why so much misinformation about the Marcionites became 'established fact' in the third century. In other words, if Celsus's treatise was written for an Imperial audience or at least an influential audience or was taken as fact by 'society' at large then Irenaeus et al may have only been developing their misinformation according to popular prejudices.

Much like the way anti-Jewish propaganda (the Protocols of Zion for instance) is influential among Muslim audiences without often being directly cited. The assumption of scholars that 'there must have been a Marcionite sect' isn't necessarily true or indeed the information about the sect must reflect contact with an actual heretical group. The actual reality is in fact is often overlooked.

Let's say something that never gets said often enough in the study of the sect. Rarely are there any treatises directed against an actual Marcionites (Apelles and another text mentioned in Eusebius but these don't survive). This is odd because so many of Tertullian's treatises (which are clearly copied from earlier material written by Theophilus, Justin and Irenaeus) are directed against specific people (i.e. Against Praxeas, Against Hermogenes) or those of Hippolytus (Against Noetus, Against Gaius etc). If we really look at the anti-Marcionite literature the audience is never the members of the sect itself but rather an attempt by the authors to distinguish Catholic Christianity from what is well known to be 'Marcionitism.'

In other words, Celsus's treatise or other material developed from it - a written report widely circulating in ancient society - could well be the reality that prompts this literature rather than awareness or contact with actual Marcionites.

Incidentally I have seen it argued in print that at least one reference to the name 'Apelles' is a corruption of (Aristo) 'of Pella.' I can look that up for you if you are interested.

stephan huller

I think the idea of treating both the Marcionites and the Carpocratians as some sort of invention or misrepresentation of a literary tradition rather than an actual group running around with name tags on them has a lot going for it - especially as Celsus seems to be the earliest source of both. I know there is Justin and Polycarp's alleged oral transmission of a tradition of an encounter or awareness of Marcion but Irenaeus is the source for both. The manuscripts of Justin filtered through Irenaeus's hand. Moreover, the dating of Celsus is also problematic. The reference to 'two Emperors' leaves TWO possibilities for the dating of the True Word - scholars only consider the 178 CE date but Origen explicitly references the earlier one as the correct date. That information can't just be swept under the carpet.

Moreover the title 'the True Word' makes it very possible that it was Celsus who is the source of the claim that the Marcionites 'hated the Creator' (= the Logos). This is clear in Origen's response in Book Eight where the Christians are said to hate the bounty of the earth and oppose its ruler. Again, Irenaeus is the closest thing to a real historical source of all the subsequent statements about the Marcionites being hostile to the Creator in Christian circles. Tertullian likely wasn't even aware of Celsus's treatise or Celsus as the source of these statements (if he was).

Why would Irenaeus put so much stock in Celsus's hostile account of certain sects of Christianity? Maybe it was politically expedient for him to do so to make Rome the head of the Church. It would be the first time that an ecclesiastic writer developed a self-serving argument from a source he knew to be factually untrue.

Incidentally Celsus is clearly the source for the idea that there were two Fathers and two sons with the Fathers as 'old men' too tired to fight so they sent their sons to do battle like a cock fight (as I remember). No Church Father is ever this explicit. Yet it has to be the formula for the Marcionites if you accept the idea that Jesus was NOT the Creator but the Son of the Unknown Father. In other words, it is only Celsus who actually formulates the entire formula. Irenaeus and the other Fathers speak about 'another God' when there has to be TWO according to the full logic of the model. Why don't the Church Fathers get it right? I think because it was bullshit and Celsus is just parodying a controversy for comic effect. There really was no 'unknown' Father and Son team version a 'known' Father and Son team. Religious people always stop short of recognizing that the Catholic system involved TWO beings because these difficulties were 'ironed out' in the fourth century. But in the second and early third centuries it was very much recognized that Jesus and his Father were two separate powers in Catholic circles.