stephan huller

Spin,

This has been by far one of the most useful discussions that I have ever participated. I am in agreement with almost everything here. The one thing that I hope you will also see - is that Tertullian's argument that Marcion removed things from his gospel which only appear in Matthew (this will make more sense if you read the text again) CAN ONLY be explained by the fact that the original author was using a Diatessaron. That's my only addition to this discussion.

There seems to be a conscious substitition of the real meaning of nazirite in Syrian Christianity which demonstrates that the argument in Against Marcionite comes from a Semitic Christian cultural milieu. Not only Ephrem but Aphrahat too betrays this characteristic. From Mediterranean Piety by David Levinsky:

I submit that the Marcionites and the followers of Tatian battled over the proper name. In other words, was a Christian properly identified as a 'consecrated one' (nazir) or 're-formed' (notzri) after a new flesh because of his 'purchase' by the stranger god.

Also, another axample of the so-called influence of the Nazirites over early Christianity in the pseudo-history of Acts 21:

The Marcionites would have found it difficult to control their disgust with this portrait of their man. But again I think it demonstrates yet another attempt to reshape the original terminology. Then again they undoubtedly didn't call him 'Paul' either ...

stephan huller

And one more bit of speculation - minim is most peculiar term. How did this become the most common label for heretics? I have always, always, always suspected it was a twist on the name the heretics used for themselves - i.e. ma'aminim the 'faithful,' those of the faith.

Just a thought.

spin

I don't know about this. We know that Tertullian, writing around 200, merely assumes that Marcion removed things from his gospel. I don't know about the omitted material relating only to Matthew: I was under the impression that it was supposed to have been Luke. Whatever the case, we don't know the source of Marcion's gospel, for things could have been added to it to match the gospel that Tertullian took as normative.

This last passage needs to be considered with Acts 18:18 in which we are told apparently for no tangible reason that Paul cut his hair for a vow. This would mark the start of his vow and would not cut his hair until it was completed. The four men had also made a vow. The purification seems to have marked the completion of the necessities for the vow which would also have brought about the cutting of the hair once more.

The writer mightn't have understood the details of what he was writing about, ie the practice of the Nazirate, but I don't see that there is anything necessarily wrong with the narrative (other than the insertion of things that cloud the issue). What am I missing here?

stephan huller

Everything is wrong with the narrative from a Marcionite perspective. The temple, Paul, his association with nazirites, his deference shown to the false apostles of 2 Corinthians, the acceptance of the authority of the Law and prophets. This isn't the Marcionite apostle which is why the Marcionites rejected Acts in its entirety as spurious.

I have always thought 'apostomos' the figure said to be responsible for the destruction of the Jewish temple is a corruption of the Greek apostolos and hence the Marcionite 'Paul' but there are a lot of theories about this name. From Wikipedia:

The meaning of the name "Apostomus" is not clear. Ewald (in his "History"), alluding to certain passages in the Bible and the Apocrypha[12], where reference is had to the boastful mouth of Antiochus Epiphanes, derives "Apostomus" from αἰπύς ("big") and στόμα ("mouth"). The appellation "big-mouth" is certainly appropriate, but αἰπυς is a rare word, used only in poetry.

More probable perhaps is Jastrow's derivation of "Apostomus" from ἐπιστομίζω ("to stop or stuff up the mouth") and ἐπιστίμος ("anything that stops up the mouth"), which may be connected with the Talmudic phrase ("May his mouth be stuffed full with earth!"), applied in the Talmud to the name of a man who had spoken boldly against the Deity[13].

The following are other explanations of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostomus

Jastrow offers a suggestion that it may be a corruption of ἀπόστολος ("ambassador"), and makes it refer to the envoy spoken of in II Macc. vi. 1, 2 as having desecrated the Temple.
Hochstädter sees in "Apostomus" a corrupted form of ἀποστάτης ("apostate") and identifies him with the high priest Alcimus.
Schwarz and Derenbourg consider "Apostomus" the name of the Roman soldier referred to by Josephus. The name there of the soldier who burned the Torah scroll was Stephanos, which, written in Hebrew, may have been corrupted.
Brüll connects him with Cornelius Faustus, who under Pompey was the first to climb the wall of Jerusalem.
Halberstamm is of opinion that "Apostomus" is the Hebrew transcription for the Latin "Faustinus," and that the name, furthermore, is to be connected with Julius Severus, whose surname was Faustinus, and who perpetrated the crime described in the Mishnah when he was sent by Hadrian to put down the Bar Kokba rebellion, in which case the setting up of an idol in the sanctuary would have to be taken to refer to the dedication of a temple of Zeus upon the consecrated ground of the Temple.

spin

Sorry, I was interested in what was wrong with the narrative itself. But yes, it is another dose of Naziritism in early christianity (ever thought about the name "Stephen" [stefanos = NZR]?), though I still have no idea when Acts was written, so I don't know how early.... The role of Acts as a normatising document though I thought was always clear. It is only indirectly related to Pauline traditions. The text, forced to deal with him, accommodates him the best it can within its own parameters. It's purpose includes establishing apostolic succession, which I'd guess makes the final product rather late.

stephan huller

As you can imagine having 'Stephan' as my given name I have given it some thought. I have always liked to think the name meant 'perfect' :Cheeky: if only by implication.

I don't know what the modern Hebrew equivalent of my name is believe it or not. German was the language in my house when I was growing up. The figure of Stephanos is quite interesting in Acts. I have heard it argued that his point of view is entirely Dosithean. There is was a martyr in the Dosithean tradition called Levi (Libi = Libi Samaritan) who bears some resemblance to Stephanos.

There is a story in Abu'l Fath about the death of Libi where it says they dipped a something in his blood after his martyrdom and wrapped this in defective Torah scrolls. Unfortunately it is difficult to make sense of the surviving manuscripts.

The Arabic word at this place is spelt SYSNH which does not mean anything. There have been a lot of futile guesses. We should know [as Maimonides words it] that when you see S in a long unintelligible Arabic word we have to suspect it of being the remains of three or two or four short vertical strokes with the dots missing. Sometimes a W can be involved. The letters with this shape are B Y N T Th.

Jamgotchian has shown that the St. Petersburg fragments give the correct reading here. It is T W N Y H tûnîyah meaning a tunic. The word is Arabic but borrowed from Greek. However, I think this to only be part of the answer. The word is not long enough. (we should remember S occurs twice, and each S represents at least two former letters).

I would guess that there was another word meaning strips or pieces of cloth. This makes “They took the [shreds] of Libi’s tunic etc.”. This guess is confirmed by the statement that they put this or them (the Arabic pronoun could be singular or plural) in faulty Torah SCROLLS PLURAL.

Anyway I don't know if those who claim a connection with Stephanos are correct. It's just another interesting possibility.

avi

Epiphanius of Salamis:
Two manuscripts are better than one:

I wonder what made them "difficult"?

I wonder when they were written....

Most of all, I wonder what Epiphanius himself wrote, and how his text differs from the text we identify as his, today,
Has anyone a reference (link) to the actual manuscript used by Holl? Where is it located? in Berlin? Is that the only extant copy of Panarion in Greek? From which date does Holl's parchment/codex originate?

avi

aa5874

You have a serious chronology problem.

"PAUL" is about 100 years BEFORE MARCION and the Marcionites.

"Paul" was supposed to be in Jerusalem about 3-17 years after the REIGN of ARETAS or about 40-60 CE.

Your suggestion is like saying Trajan was the Emperor of Rome in 1 BCE and every one forgot it was Augustus.

The supposed letters of "Paul" should have been documented historical markers for "Paul".

There could have been NO confusion about "Paul" by Marcionites and Marcion who LIVED around 100 years later.

DCHindley

Avi,

Epiphanius is famous for either quoting or paraphrasing a bewildering number of sources. Due to his Greek style, which while grammatically correct is full of long sentences with many clauses, it is sometimes hard to tell where he is quoting a source directly (which he does, and sometimes but not always says so when he does), or inserting his own comments, or paraphrasing a source. The sources and his analysis of them apparently vary in trustworthyness as well, ranging from important sources (like gnostic texts or Irenaeus) to hearsay and pure speculation.

There were apparently 11 Greek manuscripts used by K Holl, none of which contain all of the text.

Here is a link to A Dictionary of Christian Biography (vol II, 1880) edited by Sir William Smith, Henry Wace. From this source, I can identify 6, maybe 7 mss:

Editio Princeps of Greek text, Basle, 1544, by Joh. Oporinus.
1) Uses a ms dated 1304 in 2 parts, provided by Joh. Lange of Erfurt. Contains Panarion ("Medicine Chest" against Heresies) with Anacephalaeousis (an annotated list of sections in the larger Panarion, believed to have originally circulated independently as a sort of epitome), Ancoratus (a discourse on true doctrine), and De Mensuris et Ponderibus ("On Weights & Measures", which is actually an introduction to the Greek text of the Old Testament, and is preserved in Greek in spite of the Latin title). Has many lacunae and errors. This same text (both parts) was used by Janus Cornaruis to make a Latin translation of Epiphanius, Basle, 1543.
a) first part containing approx 1st 604 pages of Panarion, now lost
b) second part contains rest of the 1500 or so pages, at Univ of Jena

Second edition of Greek text, Paris, 1622, 2 vol, by Dionysius Petavius
Besides edition of Joh. Oporinus, also used
2) Paris Ms, 16th century, based in same source as Jena mss, Bibl. Nat. 833, 835.
Also used fragments from following mss, of "same class" as Jena ms (i.e., crappy), consisting of excerpts from Panarion and the Anacephalaeosis:
3) membr. saec. xv, Bibl. Rhedigerana, Breslau
4) Codex chart. Vindobonensis, saec xiv, #127 in Suppl. Kollarii, pg 738
Of a "better class" of mss than the Jena family, he also used:
5) Unidentified Codex from Vatican library, now lost, found as part of a collation of mss attached to a surviving copy of Oporinus' edition, prepared by Andreas Schott

At the time of writing, the "best" edition of Epiphanius was Leipsic, 1859-1862, 5 vol, by W. Dindorf.
Besides the mss and editions of Oporinus and Petavius, he used
6) Cod. Marcianus 125, dated 1057, St Mark's Library, Venice (text corresponds to 1st part of mss used by Oporinus). Much better quality than the Jena mss, allowing many textual corrections and filling of lacunae in the text used by earlier editions

Karl Holl apparently found more mss than these, but I'll bet some are fragmentary citations or only contain the Anacephalaeosis. Unfortunately, there are no Google previews for Holl's editions. The reason that we today do not have a complete text of the Panarion is that, as the above list illustrates, some of the mss available to earlier editors have become lost (this happens a lot, as mss are acquired by well meaning private collectors, who may subsequently die and their successors sell or donate the mss willy nilly so that they may exist unrecognized in some dusty library or storeroom, or they were destroyed in wars or fires, as shit does happen).

If you want to see an English translation of section 42 on Marcionites, based on the text of Holl, see The Panarion of St Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, Selected Passages (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Philip R Amidon (1990). About 10 years ago I found a remaindered copy for about $30, but right now Amazon says 8 copies are available for $99 or more. Better head to the library.

DCH

andrewcriddle

There is a substantial preview for Williams' edition Panarion

Marcionites

Andrew Criddle