schilling.klaus

of course Marcion doesn't know them as they are post-Marcionite antimarcionite forgeries,

Klaus Schilling

Ben C Smith

I mean knowing of epistles attributed to Paul. Not personal knowledge of the apostle himself. (If Marcion himself made Paul up, then this would also be kind of like Twain knowing Finn.)

Aa___: What is unbelievable is that you pronounce that Justin did not know of an apostle named Paul without even considering the evidence for what Marcion knew. See Tertullian, Epiphanius, Irenaeus. If I found you asking honestly about these topics about which you apparently know nearly nothing, your questions would engender respect. But your bizarre pronouncements, made without reference to any of the evidence for Marcion, engender the opposite.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I am also saying that the evidence is clear that Marcion referred to the apostle Paul in his Antitheses (preferring Paul to the others called apostles) and did not omit the name Paul from his publication of the Apostolikon.

Ben.

aa5874

Your statement is completely in error and mis-leading. You constantly mis-represent my position and distort my views. I have never ever pronounced that Justin did not know an apostle named Paul.

I asked you a question and you illogically call it a pronouncement.

Ben C Smith

Compare:

Ben.

aa5874

Do you see the words "APPEAR TO INDICATE" and "IT WOULD APPEAR TO ME", or "PROBABLY" the inclusion of those words in my statements clearly indicates that my statements are neither difinitive nor absolute.

You SEEM not to understand the difference between APPEAR TO BE and IS.

And, again, I never wrote that Justin never KNEW "Paul", I wrote that Justin never MENTIONED "Paul". I am not sure you know the difference.

Ben C Smith

You write appears to indicate or appears to me before or after a great many of your statements, and, even if you did not, I would quite naturally assume that you are making your statement based on how things appear to you (as opposed to, say, how things appear to the Pope or to Queen Elizabeth II).

Let us nuance your claim just as finely as you wish: Justin appears not to have known of Paul the apostle by name, and the apostle Paul appears to have been unheard of by name even up to 150.

Both of these forms of the claim are nonsense, since it is well-known that Marcion, before 150 and before Justin, knew and had heard of Paul by name; and Justin wrote a refutation of Marcion.

Well-known, that is, to anybody with even a passing knowledge of church history in century II. But not, apparently, to you, since it still appears to you that Paul was neither known nor heard of until after 150, and you feel free to repeat how things appear to you without ever making even the tiniest attempt to refute the evidence that Marcion knew of Paul by name.

Ben.

aa5874

You have not supported your claim in any way. Where is stated that Marcion knew "Paul" by name and not anonymous writings called "memoirs of the apostles", of which parts were later called epistles of "Paul", maybe after the death of Marcion.

"Paul"s conversion appears to be fiction, it is also likely that he did not recieve any gospel from Jesus as written in the epistles, therefore his ministry is likely to be fictitious and it is also likely that "Paul" himself was a fabrication. And there is no external non-apologetic source to confirm any one named "Paul" who was a Christian and missionary in the first century. Philo, Josephus or Justin Martyr never mentioned "Paul".

"Paul" appears to be a fabrication, and I think it may have been done after Justin Martyr's writing.

Toto

aa5874 - we only know of Marcion through his enemies, but Irenaeus is clear that his Apostolikon included the letters of Paul, and that Marcion himself thought that Paul was the only true apostle.

What is your position? That Irenaeus was forged? Why?

aa5874

Is this the same Irenaeus who was clear that Jesus was over Fifty Years old when he died? See Against Heresies 2.22 by Irenaeus.

Marcion's enemies like Irenaeus, Tertullian and Eusebius may have distorted the truth about Marcion.

Tertulliian in "Against Marcion" book 1.1.1 [quote] Whatever in times past we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of.

It is a new work that we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. My original tract, as too huriedly composed, I had subsequently superseeded by a fuller treatise. This latter I lost before it was completely published, by the fraud of a person who was then a brother, but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it.

The necssity thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise.

This present text, therefore, of my work--which is the third as superseding the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the third-- renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.[quote]

So Tertullian, in the very first chapter, tells us that there will be 3 works against Marcion scattered about, one done hurriedly, another full of mistakes, and another to amend the errors.

Now I am not sure which one of these writings I quoted from. Did Tertullian also makes mistakes about "Paul"? Did Marcion only make mention of anoymous "memoirs of the apostles" and never used the word "Paul"?

Against Marcion book 4.4 Is this why "Paul's history was fabricated?