stephan huller

We had a raging debate awhile back about the apostle's use of the word 'received' in his letters. I noted back then that this section of 1 Corinthians 15 did not likely appear in the Marcionite recension of the text. I have just noticed something curious about the basic agreements between the Marcionite text and the Alexandrian text of Clement of Alexandria (which does not agree with Origen's later accepted text). The whole section where the apostle seems to inaccurately cite the gospel passage about Jesus reciting the Eucharist (comp. 1 Cor 11.23 - 25 with Matthew 26.26 etc.) does not appear in almost any of the reports of the Church Fathers in the Marcionite text. Instead there is this exchange between a Catholic (Adamantius) and a Marcionite (Marcus) in the Dialogues of Adamantius:

Let's leave aside for the moment the inescapable fact that the Marcionite gospel here retained material from what is now called 'the Gospel of John' (this is consistent throughout the Dialogues). What is more interesting for our purpose is that Adamantius seems to know that the Marcionites (a) deny that 1 Corinthians 10 had any reference to 'Christ the rock' (something Ehrman has written about in a slightly different way) and moreover seems to ignore or does not know the whole reference of 1 Cor 11:23 - 26 where the Apostle is passing on a tradition regarding the Eucharist:

Instead Adamantius and his Marcionite opponent only seem to be having a debate about the implications on 1 Corinthians 10:16 and the Marcionite gospel, which is odd because one would assume that if Adamantius simply used 1 Corinthians 11:23 - 26 to his advantage he could prove that it did not match the reading in the Marcionite gospel and thus disprove the central Marcionite thesis that Paul wrote the gospel.

Now we might think that Tertullian or Epiphanius might know something about 1 Cor 11:23 - 26 or use it to disprove the Marcionite tradition but in fact we surprisingly find that they also pass it up. Here is all Tertullian cites from the eleventh chapter:

This is again very surprising given the absolute proof it would afford that Paul was not citing from a written gospel.

Indeed when we compare Clement of Alexandria's knowledge of the passage we find that he too surprisingly never cites from 1 Cor 11:23 - 26 and only generally from the gospel eucharist formula. He says in only place the following:

This is very bizarre and the list of early Fathers who know of this material is equally pathetic. We have already seen Adamantius and Tertullian there are only the following:

I think this is very strong evidence to doubt the authenticity of 1 Cor 11:23 - 26 and moreover all the additions where the apostle says that he 'received' a human tradition about gospel material.

Sheshbazzar

Interesting observations steven. Thank you much.

(I do wish my poor old head would retain and recall more of the things that I have read in this forum. )

andrewcriddle

It is possible that Clement regarded the exact words used by Jesus at the Eucharist as too sacred to casually quote.

Andrew Criddle

Edited to Add

I would on reflection withdraw this.
Clement does not hesitate to quote the formula from the Synoptics clement-instructor-book2