Duvduv

They had an agenda. They had old enemies and they wanted to reinforce their dominant position. They heard stories about him or invented some. What's the problem?

Duvduv

Did you ever see a text of Marcion? Did I? Did anyone?
The answer is no. The consensus chooses to believe the claims of ancient propagandists with a bias and and agenda. C.P. Sense discusses all this in great detail in his book on GLuke.
If a consensus chooses to accept the claims of the ancients, and someone doesn't, what does that mean? That he is denying the "truth"?

Grog

The consensus tends to accept the accusation that Marcion edited Paul's original letters for his own purposes. There are those who are more critical of those accusations. After all, it could have been that Marcion's collection contained letters more closely resembling the originals that were then subsequently added to by later Christians. Who knows, really? I think there's a good case that Marcion's originals (as reconstructed by Harnack and others) does have a more original flow, but overall the evidence isn't compelling either way. I am not of the mind to accept a consensus because it is a consensus or is the received tradition, though.

This is different than the claim that there was no collection of Marcion's. Which does beg the question, why would critics then invent such a collection, along with charges against Marcion of tampering? Maybe there's a good reason to accept this...I just haven't seen it.

Grog

However, artisans (and it sounds like your are pulling from Crossan? Just a guess) have different economic interests than peasants. They rebel for different reasons, usually having to do with losing independence to mass production. Peasants, on the other hand, are always faced with the reality that they do the work while someone skims their fruits of their labor, be it through tenancy/rents or taxes. That is what makes the peasant class more likely to revolt. The artisan class is different in that they are contracted for their labor in a different way. They generally own their own tools, but do not own land. Getting work is their main interest. When a city like Sepphoris is built, that is a great boon--lots of work. The interests of artisan vs. peasant are different, that doesn't have anything to do with which is poorer. It often IS NOT the poorest in society that rebels.


I don't know who this Jesus may have surrounded himself with. I would just point out though, that like an artisan, all of the professions you name have different interests than peasants and all of them do have closer interests to artisans, and in fact, are possibly quasi-artisans themselves (a prostititute for instance, lots of independence, is looking for work, etc. Same for fishermen, unlike tenant peasants who have work all the time (depending on season), but are very brazenly exploited). (Just an aside, although I regard the Gospel stories as pure myth, I don't think it is fair to characterize Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.) One final point: tax collector? Really? Not the most revolutionary lot out there.


Living in poverty isn't the point. Class is the point. Give an artisan a job, he's usually happy. The building of Sepphoris could have been a great boon to an artisan like Jesus son of Joseph.

All I am doing is trying to point out to you that you "undebatable" point regarding Jesus's hatred of Rome is open to debate. So far, you haven't produced a shred of evidence that Jesus hated Rome.

Duvduv

Just like we had Osama Bin Laden, the Byzantine Church had Marcion.....it's that simple. And just like propaganda and exaggerations develop about today's bogeymen, the same thing happened then. Why should we be surprised?!

outhouse

great reply.


Only a little of Crossan, I dont follow any one scholar as one could devote his life into specialties and either be wrong or not cover it all, or be half right.


My reasoning for placing jesus as a poor peasant tekton living in poverty, is the scripture were left with that doesnt state anything remotely indicating talents, but, based on the possibility of him being raised in Nazareth that would have been a poverty stricken village at best in the first century, So no room for education there. But also by the friends he i ssaid to keep.




There wasnt much of a middle class in Galilee

Fishermen then were very low on the totem pole as well and lived as peasants, its said tektons lived below that. Matthew would have been scum of the earth jesus claims in Gluke as a "sinner and sick" And Mary I agree that prostitute is a stretch, but a possibility but not a upstanding jewish girl either. But we are also told one disciple is a zealot.


Now im not painting a picture of pirates or revolutionaries, that would be a death sentance and what romans were great at dealing with. By gospels jesus does preach to "all" tax collectors and converts Matthew and gets Zacc to give his profits back.

Take into account the scripture written for the roman audience downplays jewsih hatred for romans extremely. It would also downplay the extreme taxes levied as well.


jesus i ssaid to have told followers to give up property and their beggar bowls. So here we have no possesions to tax, and we have no money to tax. They lived on hand outs from town to town as he preached. The same poverty he was used to, all his life.




I dont buy the gospels either but theres no reason there isnt a historical core or a leader of a movement that carried John the babtist teachings.


This was in a time when hatred of romans ran deep and the hatred of the roman infection to the jewish governement in place in the temple.

Grog

No, I'm not following this. I have no agenda here regarding Marcion, I just want to be clear, but to me your argument is circular.

The Church hated Marcion because...?

So the Church made up facts about Marcion such as he created a collection that was false?

I can understand that the Church would call Marcion's collection false, but if it didn't exist at all, what interest would the church have in creating it? I would think that the charge of rape would be sufficient to discredit him without also inventing a collection of works.

To me, it makes more sense that Marcion did have a collection of works that he published and distributed including the Evangelicon and the Apostlicon. Whether he invented these works or had copies of originals or closer to the originals (if "original" really ever existed). It seems to me that for the Church to make a claim about this collection, that there must have been a collection.

I must be misunderstanding you, because this argument doesn't make sense to me.

Duvduv

I didn't say you had an agenda. The church propagandists had an agenda. It is entirely possible there was a person named Marcion who became an enemy of the propagandists and their attacks on him were simply part of reinforcing their own position as official Christianity regardless of what he really taught or didn't teach. All I am saying is that I don't have to take their word for it for every detail about him and the situation. There are too many holes in the swiss cheese, and he may just have been a convenient bogeyman.

Chili

Marcion was a Jesus worshiper.

Grog

Thank you...

Agreed. And the topic of early christianity is filled with quagmires anyway.


I'm not disagreeing that "Jesus" may have been a peasant. I am saying he may also have been an artisan.

However, I disagree with you:

“Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him." Mark 6:3

ουχ ουτος εστιν ο τεκτων ο υιος μαριας αδελφος δε ιακωβου και ιωση και ιουδα και σιμωνος και ουκ εισιν αι αδελφαι αυτου ωδε προς ημας και εσκανδαλιζοντο εν αυτω

τεκτων noun - nominative singular masculine
tekton tek'-tone: an artificer (as producer of fabrics), i.e. (specially), a craftsman in wood -- carpenter.

If we are going to rely on gospel evidence, here it is. This does seem to imply carpenter. My source for the greek and the translation is biblos.com

Every translation cited there has "carpenter."


I wouldn't argue otherwise.

Besides the reference to a single zealot, I don't see reason for concluding that Jesus hated Rome. If Jesus hated Rome, you would think his ranks would be filled with Zealots, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

And don't get me wrong, I was first interested in early christianity for this very reason: that it emerged as a peasant rebellion that got subsumed into a tame religion. I don't think that anymore.


Well, allegedly, Jesus did receive the death sentence! But there were plenty of pirates and revolutionaries during these times. Judas the Galilean would have been a contemporary or at least his sons who continued the tax revolt well into the 40's, according to Josephus. But otherwise, I am not sure what point you are making here.

One would think this, yes, but that would assume there was something to downplay. That case hasn't been proven yet.

That doesn't appear to be a requirement of the Jesus movement that is motivated by hatred toward Rome, though.

Well, the lack of contemporary evidence for it is one reason. I'm not saying that we should throw out the idea, but there are reasons to consider. What teachings of John did Jesus carry on?


Sure, no problem there. But again, you are going from the general to the specific case of Jesus. You can't prove that Jesus hated Rome. The German peasantry supported Hitler. That doesn't mean that Heinrich the Bavarian Peasant, son of Hermann, supported Hitler.