maryhelena

A new book on Marcion by Sebastian Moll. What are the implications re this study for the developments surrounding early Christianity? Is it so that now it’s necessary to re-think the role of Marcion in the developing story of early Christianity? I know Stephan knows a lot re Marcion - so perhaps he might care to offer some insights re this new study....

(unfortunately amazon has no preview - but preview is available on google books - http://books.google.com/books?id=P3D...0TLfxF82G4Qann )


my bolding - of the comments that I found particularly interesting...

stephan huller

I don't have any problems with Moll. Like kabbalists say enlightenment is by degree. None of get to experience En Sof. Moll sees things from a better level than most.

For those who know nothing of what I am referencing here:

Before He gave any shape to the world, before He produced any form, He was alone, without form and without resemblance to anything else. Who then can comprehend how He was before the Creation? Hence it is forbidden to lend Him any form or similitude, or even to call Him by His sacred name, or to indicate Him by a single letter or a single point. . . . But after He created the form of the Heavenly Man, He used him as a chariot wherein to descend, and He wishes to be called after His form, which is the sacred name 'YHWH'.

Having a knowledge of Judaism helps us all communicate better.

maryhelena

And what has all that got to do with the OP? I'm interested in what Moll has to say in contrast to what seems to be the general position taken since Harnack. Your own position is a sideline - although of interest here.


It seems to me that what Moll is saying contradicts your position made in the above reference. Don't tell me that your saying that somehow or another Moll is agreeing with your own position? Or would it be that some mystic quotations are being used to obfuscate the difference between your position and that of Moll?

Stephan - I find Moll's study (at least what I can read on google books) to be interesting - I was hoping for some scholarly opinion from you not some airy-fairy mystic jargon...

stephan huller

I don't know what you want me to say. Do you want to set up a 'cage match' were I attack Moll? Why would I do that? Moll isn't mountainman. He is a real scholar who has come to his conclusions about the Marcionites through years of making himself familiar with the material. That doesn't mean he is right. It doesn't mean that I am right. It just means that he has reconstructed a particular understanding of Marcion.

I want to stress that there is no absolute 'right answer' with regards to the Marcionites until we uncover something directly related to their tradition. As it is all we have are the hostile reports of the Church Fathers, a general idea about what the shape of their canon looked like (but even this is debatable in the finer details) and a general idea of how they interpreted the material.

As long as someone possesses a moderate amount of intelligence and has read all the references in the Patristic writings about Marcion and has made himself relatively familiar with the New Testament and contemporary Patristic writers, that person can come off with a reasonable position on Marcion.

There aren't a lot of references. Von Harnack manages to squeeze almost 800 pages in his Fremden Gott devoted to the original sources and their implications.

All of the references are virulently hostile so you have to calibrate your interpretation of the surviving material (unless you want to accept the argument that the Devil inspired Marcion and the like).

So what are you left with?

If you take the Church Fathers at face value, Marcion didn't like the Jewish God so he took out SOME of the Old Testament references. Of course the difficulty is that he left many in. Is this then REALLY the product of an editorial effort on the part of Marcion to minimize the influence of the Jewish religion or a subsequent effort of the Catholic Church Fathers (probably Polycarp and Irenaeus) to BROADEN the influence of the traditional influence of the Old Testament in Israel?

I support the latter proposition but already by saying that you've left the company of almost all of the people who have written anything notable about Marcion. Why? Because then you have to start DISPROVING the Catholic canon and that's a Herculean labor (and most don't possess the skills to pull it off convincingly or in a way than more than five people might read and those five people who are capable of understanding a book like that WON'T READ a book based on that premise with an open mind).

So if your proposition is that the Marcionite canon was original and the Catholic canon was developed in the late second century by Polycarp and Irenaeus (a radicalized Trobisch position) another problem emerges - you attract all these morons who want to promote the idea that Jesus was just about love and 'being nice to one another.'

Like people were all 'mean' before Jesus came.

The only answer that makes any sense (to me at least) is to assume that the allusions to the OT that were present even in the Marcionite canon (as well as the Marcionite interpretation of Old Testament prophesy which shows up time and again in Adamantius's Dialogue and Ephrem) were there because the Marcionites themselves understood their tradition to have some relationship with Judaism.

Well how could the Marcionites have had a relationship with Judaism when the Jews believe in the 'Old Testament' and the Marcionites were somehow resisting a complete absorption of Jewish idea in Christianity?

Well the first answer is that they may have been opposed to a specific effort to 'Judaize' Christianity rather than the general idea that Christianity was related to Judaism. An example - the Marcionites are always reported to have resisted identifying Jesus with the messiah. Well, the Jews do the same thing to this day.

I happen to take the position that the Marcionite position is actually closer to Judaism than the Catholic tradition albeit filtered through a radical messianic interpretation which held that because the messiah, the one like Moses who was better than Moses, the old Law which was just 'very good' was now rendered effectively useless now that it had been overshadowed by the perfection of the Law.

The same idea still exists in Islam (which is the self-described 'perfect religion' and the Quran the 'perfect revelation'). I think it makes more sense to think the Marcionites thought the Law was useless rather than 'bad.'

The rest of my assumptions about Marcionitism follow from this distinction (which separates me from Moll and the Germans before him). The Marcionites understood Jesus to be God who came to herald the arrival of the messiah who was Mark (Marcion being the dimunitive form of the same name). As the messiah was supposed to be 'like Moses' Mark wrote the new perfect Law - the gospel. Mark also established the liturgy as the Alexandrians hold to this day.

If you limit yourself to the writings of the Church Fathers and take what they say at face value (and add a pinch of Protestantism) you end up with what all these German speaking scholars say about Marcion where he is a kind of precursor to Luther.

I don't think this makes sense. Marcion wasn't German or at least Marcionitism shouldn't be seen through a Teutonic lens. It shouldn't be seen throught he lens of the Catholic canon either because he didn't accept Acts.

But I am not going to trash Moll's analysis. It is good for what it is. He, like most New Testament and Patristic scholars just doesn't understand Judaism well enough to properly understand what I consider to be the first Christian tradition.

maryhelena

Thanks, Stephan, re your post and your position not wanting to "trash Moll's analysis". Actually, that was not what I was about......just wondering if you found any new insights within his study...

my bolding

Quite a hard-line position from Marcion re the evil god and the good god - a position that, seemingly, later writers saw fit to water down, or whitewash, re the later concept of a just god and a good god...Perhaps his later followers wanted to hang on to the OT, Jewish, heritage after all....But that Marcion himself seems to have cast the OT god as 'evil' looks to be the foundation of his radical theology. Christianity floating free - which did not, of course, get too far as the necessity for 'roots' ultimately gained the upper hand. Perhaps a point that some mythicists would do well in taking notice off re the gospel storyline...

Bottom line is that at that time and place, Marcion found some reason to reject the consensus position and become a heretic. Thus, any new study that can throw some light on his teaching is most welcome....

my bolding and color

dog-on

That Marcion derived his opinion of Yahweh from a rational reading of the OT does not seem too far fetched. That Marcion may have viewed the god described therein as Just, (of course, he made the law), though in fact, evil, seems to be a pretty good description of the referenced deity in the Bible sitting on my shelf.

What I would disagree with is that Marcion could not have found this exact idea within the writings of Paul. In fact, even with all the, imo, later catholic gloss and anachronistic gospel overlays, I find such an idea is still evident in Paul.

avi

As usual, I am befuddled.

How could the "dualist" Marcion, if that is an accurate descriptor (good god, versus evil god) have "developed his doctrines "exclusively" from the writings of Paul?

This notion seems completely wacko, to me.
But, obviously not to dog-on, who is about 99% correct, in what he writes on the forum.

To me, the sentence below is the single most important sentence I have found in reading maryhelena's EXCELLENT thread (thank you, for introducing Moll's book!!!)

Holy Cow.

We just devoted two weeks to rangling about Mani, and along comes stephan, and admits today, at last, what several of us have been arguing in vain with him, about Manichaeism, another DUALISTIC tradition, demonized by the anti-heretical authors, in the same fashion as the attack against Marcion, and all that time, stephan huller insisted on pointing at the very same authors of the very same anti-heretical documents, as supposedly representing "valid" evidence of this or that aspect of Mani's beliefs.

Why should the anti-Marcion writings be considered invalid, in attempting to reconstruct Marcion's true beliefs, and the anti-Mani writings, by the very same folks, be regarded as legitimate?

What I think we need, is for another of those elegant charts, such as the one spin constructed earlier last month, this time contrasting the writings of various "patristic" authors, with their supposed (or widely {aka "scholarly"} accepted) degree of integrity, for both Mani and Marcion.

How do we know this? How do we know that Marcion preceded Valentinus and/or Montanus? Why do Mark and Mathew warn against "false prophets"? (i.e. wasn't heresy, and anti-hereticism, already extant in the second century, when these two gospels first appeared, after the third Jewish war?) Isn't our oldest extant copy of the gospels, already dated well after "Irenaeus" and Tertullian and Origen? Then, were these warnings added to Mark and Matthew, in subsequent versions, in the late second century? Are the same warnings found in Paul's letters?

avi

dog-on

Paul is already warning of false gospels in Galatians.

avi

Thank you, dog-on.
If I am not wholly in error, again, Galatians is the epistle which focuses on the controversy between Paul and the Jews vis a vis the need for Christians to be circumcised, and obey the laws, re: food, and not eating with Gentiles, and ritual washings, and so on... Right, i.e. to become a Christian, one must first become a Jew--> and I gather that Paul was opposed to this tradition (which would make his writings heretical, it seems to me)? But, did Paul reference in Galatians, among the "false gospels", the teachings of Marcion, or was he rather, opposing the Ebionists--the "judaisers"?

How does one obtain Dualism, from the writings of Paul?

I gather that Moll is referring to Marcion (arch-heretic), but, how does Moll ascertain Marcion's system of thought, in order to regard as erroneous, Harnack's theory?

I remain confused....

avi

dog-on

I suppose one could take Paul's admonishment as something similar to Marcion's admonishment of those who would conflate the God Jesus Christ, or Isa Cresto, or whatever with Yahweh, the Lawgiver, God of the Israelites.

Of course, I happen to believe that Galatians is a Marcionite document that reflects the battle between two factions of early Christians, put into the mouth of Paul, but that is another story.