aa5874

You have not really addressed the Justin issue. You have not shown that Marcion did not exist in the middle of the 2nd century as described by Justin.

Now, how many times must I tell you that I consider "Against Heresies" under the name of Irenaeus as a compilation of fiction?

Justin did NOT write that Tatian was his faithful disciple. Please state exactly what Justin wrote about Tatian.

Why do you think the Philosophumena is PRISTINE?

When did Justinus live and what was the doctrine of Justinus? And was not Justinus a diminutive? Was not Justinus mistaken for some OTHER earlier non-historical character?

This is Hippolytus, who passed through the hands of the Church, on Justinus in "Refutation of All Heresies"

Chapter 5.18. Justinus' doctrine was completely DIAMETRICALLY opposed to Justin's.



But, Justin Martyr did not write anything like Irenaeus with respect to Marcion.

The writings under the name Irenaeus are fiction. Irenaeus could not even count.

Now, even if St Gregory was also a fiction writer that has NO impact at all on what Justin wrote about Marcion.

Justin claimed Marcion was alive when he was writing his "First Apology" at around 150 CE.


But, Irenaeus went FAR BEYOND what Justin wrote about Marcion.

But, do you realise that Irenaeus, a supposed bishop, did not even know or could NOT calculate the age of Jesus when he suffered even though he claimed Jesus was about 30 years old in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius and was crufied under Pilate.

Irenaeus claimed Jesus was OVER 50 years old when he died.

Irenaeus is NOT credible. He was a fiction writer.

These tactics of diversion are not going to work.

You are cherry-picking the Church writings that passed through the very Church and are accepting some as PRISTINE or CREDIBLE without any corroborative source.

Well, I am not asking for ABSOLUTE certainty.

I am putting forward the THEORY that your hypothesis is SERIOUSLY flawed.

Why do you persist in making blunder after blunder?

Your CERTAINTY that I am JPH may reflect the way you develop your hypotheses.

Petergdi

My mistake. I should not have assumed you mean the person with those initials who is mentioned here fairly often. People often do some very odd things when they "identify" someone. I seem to have made a mistake. I actually find your stuff somewhat interesting. I will probably read more.

My own personal interest in studying the NT is in the shared metaphors of the community that produced the NT (which possibly originate with Jesus). For instance, is "stone" a metaphor for scripture in Matthew 3:9, 4:3, 7:9 and Luke 19:40? It seems to make sense, but that's hardly proof. The "bread" metaphor for something like "doing God's will" is easier, because it is used far more often and is in all four gospels.

Peter.

stephan huller

AA: I am in the process of uncovering an uncanny pattern of substituting or transposing the names of 'those of Mark' and 'those of Marcion' in the writings of the Church Fathers dating back to the time of Justin Martyr. I suspect that this was ultimately because Marcion of Pontus was a fictitious character. Andrew Criddle has acknowledged that there is a 'paucity' of references to the Marcionites in the Imperial legal codes.

Now that I have looked up that word in the dictionary l have to take issue with it. It would be far more accurate to say that THERE ARE NO REFERENCES to the Marcionites in those same legal codes which is strange because there are references to Marcionites down through to the sixth century.

The fact that Gregory Nazianzen assumes that all that Irenaeus says about 'those of Mark' properly belongs to the Marcionites IS VERY SIGNIFICANT despite his being two centuries removed from Irenaeus.

I am currently attempting to trace this identification of the Marcosians as Marcionites back to Athanasius. I have found parts of Gregory's formulation (the idea that the Marcionites put forward three powers rather than two) in Athanasius. I will continue to inform members of this forum about my progress.

Again the issue of the Apology's citation of Marcion must be referenced within the context of PROBLEMS that have been noted with regards to the surviving manuscripts of the Apology. One such 'problem' from Schaff's note on the Apology:

namely, that the Second Apology precedes the First, as if a preface to it. Eusebius knew that Justin wrote two Apologies, but seems to quote from both of the preserved ones as the First. It may be that our Second Apology is a mere supplement to the First, and that Justin's Second, if there was one, is now lost. I think, however, it is more likely that the Second, which begins very abruptly, lost its opening in an early MS. and then was copied in the wrong position—rather like what is often supposed to have happened with II Corinthians.

It is also worth noting that all our information about Justin's writings from - as Schaff calls it - a single 'invaluable but defective' manuscript:

Justin would be known to us only by a few spasmodic quotations had not a Byzantine scribe copied an invaluable, if defective, MS., in the year 1364. This is now Codex Regius 150 at Paris, and is the almost exclusive source for editions of Justin, supplemented only by the quotations of Eusebius and John of Damascus and three chapters (65 to 67) in a manuscript at Rome (Codex Ottobonianus Graecus 274). Consequently the editing of Justin's text is almost entirely a matter of conjectural emendation, which is necessary in places but has certainly been employed too freely by some editors.

The situation is hardly one that offers confidence that what now passes as Justin's work is really by Justin. It is not as certain a witness to Marcion's existence as you make it to be.

aa5874

You have NOT uncovered any uncanny pattern of transposing names of "Mark" and "Marcion" in the writings of Justin Martyr.

1. Justin MARTYR did NOT even mention "MARK", the doctrine of "MARK" or the writings of "MARK". Justin wrote ZERO on "MARK"

2. Justin Martyr wrote the BAREST of info on Marcion. In ALL the extant writings from Justin there are ONLY 2 sentences on Marcion

"First Apology" XXVI

"First Apology" LVIII In effect, this is all Justin wrote about Marcion.

1. Marcion was alive.

2. Marcion was NOW preaching another God and another Son.

It was the writer called Irenaeus who wrote paragraphs after paragraphs of FICTION about MARCION in "Against Heresies" in ALL 5 books.

It is the writer under the name of Irenaeus who wrote chapters after chapters on MARCUS. See "Against Heresies"1. 13-15

It was the writer called Irenaeus who claimed the FICTITIOUS character apostle Peter was the 1st bishop of Rome and that he himself knew Polycarp who personally met and was instructed by the FICTITIOUS apostles of the FICTION called JESUS. See "Against Heresies" 3.3.4.

Again, the information about Marcion and Marcus in the writings of Irenaeus have virtually nothing to do with the writings of Justin Martyr. Justin writings do NOT support those of Irenaeus with respect to the following.

1. The authors of the Gospels

2. Acts of the Apostles.

3. The Pauline writings.

4. Marcion

5. Marcus

You seem to have NO idea that Justin Martyr's writings have DESTROYED the history of the Church.

Justin Martyr's writings have destroyed "Ignatius", "Polycarp", "Irenaeus", "Tertullian", "Origen", "Eusebius" and those who contributed to the FICTION called "Church History" by Eusebius

stephan huller

This is utterly ludicrous. I acknowledge that the name Marcion appears in the Apology. I have just cited Schaff to demonstrate that the writings of Justin only appear in a single DEFECTIVE manuscript with serious questions about the manner in which the Apology was preserved. I also cited the fact that the name 'those of Marcion' is preserved as 'those of Mark' in the Dialogue (if you were even paying attention to the Hilgenfeld example). Let's move on to something else. You are being pathologically disagreeable. We are at the end of the discussion for me.

dog-on

If, in fact, those of Mark are the Marcionites, the portrayal of Peter and crew in Mark's gospel actually makes a lot of sense.

Nice work, Stephan.

show_no_mercy

I agree. The only flaw I see is assuming that only one person in the entire history of early Christianity had the name "Mark". If there were multiple people with the name "Jesus" in early Christianity -- Jesus called "Christ", Jesus called "Justus" (Col 4:11) Jesus called BarAbba, and the Jesus who had a son (Acts 13:6) -- then there certainly can be multiple people named Mark.

Huon

The Catho Encyclopedy knows three gnostic leaders, named Marcus.

1 - The founder of the Marcosians and elder contemporary of St. Irenaeus, who, c. A.D. 175, in his refutation addresses him as one apparently still living (Adv. Haer., I, xi, 3, where the "clarus magister" is Marcus, not Epiphanes; and I, xiii, 21). Irenaeus, from whom St. Epiphanius (Haer., xxxiv) and St. Hippolytus (Haer., VI, xxxix-lv) quote, makes Marcus, a disciple of Valentinus.

2 - One of the two defenders of Marcionism in Adamantius's Dialogue "De Recta in Deum fide", the other is called Megethius; but whether these are fictitious or real personages is uncertain. Marcus's dualism is more absolute than that of Marcion himself: the demiurgus is the absolute evil principle. He inclines further towards Apelles, accepting salvation neither for the body nor the psyche but only for the pneuma.

3 -A Manichean Gnostic, a native of Memphis, who introduced dualistic doctrines into Spain about the middle of the fourth century.

Marcus 1 could be the good one ?

stephan huller

Thank you guys. I feel a little guilty about taking over a discussion of 'rulers of the age' with my theory. Just as a note to show no mercy, while there are two very famous individuals with the Roman name Marcus in the first century (Marcus Julius Agrippa, Marcus Julius Alexander) Jastrow's Dictionary of Jewish Aramaic has no other examples of Jews with that name. There is also the massively important Samaritan messianic figure Marqeh bin Tute (Mark the son of Titus) described as a prophet of parallel significance to Moses (M + R + Q + H = 345 = M + Sh + H). It is not clear to me at least that Marqeh is separate from the first two Marks. There are examples of Marqeh using the LXX (or Samaritikon) which suggests an Alexandrian origin of his writings.

It's the underlying Alexandrian (or Egyptian) connection with the literary remembrances of Mark that I find especially significant. Marcus the heretic is so identified by later Church Fathers. Marcion's canon had a letter to the Alexandrians (Muratorian Canon). The significance of this statement when coupled with the Philosophumena's rejection of the implicit claim by Marcionites that they have the true Gospel of Mark (Phil. vii.18; why else would the author say that the Gospel of Mark does not support Marcionite teachings?) begs comparison with the Mar Saba's reference to a 'secret' Gospel of Mark in Alexandria.

The very idea of a Marcionite 'bundling' of a single gospel (according to Mark) and the Apostlikon headed by or with a prominent 'to the Alexandrians' is nothing short of a Coptic wet dream.

I see the debate in Adamantius De recta in deum fide as a reflection of a consistent Coptic emphasis denying that the Gospel of Mark was according to Peter. I was lucky to have Roger Pearse compare the GCS edition with the Pretty page online. He found that at 830a is the pagination of some early edition, which appears on p.86-87 of the GCS edition which witnessed a clear deviation between the Greek and the translation of Rufinus at just this point; Rufinus doesn’t use the word “Jesus.”

On the previous page, the statement by Peter, “you are the Christ” has been raised. Eutropius the pagan arbitrator asks whether Peter wrote the gospel. The Marcionite Marcus replies “Christ, not Peter, wrote the gospel.”

Pretty: “What right has Marcus to say that Christ wrote the gospel. The Gospel writer did not refer to himself; he refers to him who he is proclaiming – Jesus Christ.”

Rufinus: “Deinde quomodo dicit Christum scripsisse euangelium? Non enim tanquam de se scribens loquitur scriptor euangelii, sed tanquam alium et qui extra se sit praedicans Christum.”

Greek: “πῶς δὲ λέγει τὸν Χριστὸν γεγραφηκέναι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον? οὐ γὰρ ὡς περὶ αὑτοῦ ὁ γράψας τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἐσήμανε, σημαίνει ὃν κηρύσσει Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν,…”

Pearse's attempt from Greek: “But how does he say that the Christ has written the gospel? For he who wrote the gospel did not indicate himself, he indicates the one he is proclaiming – Christ Jesus.”

I don't mean to drag this out to much longer but I find it particularly intriguing that we have - in what is a certainly a corrupt series of MSS - a debate about who wrote the (Marcionite) Evangelium. The Marcionite never says that it was according to Mark; this has to be noted. Nevertheless there is unmistakable confusion - almost a dark cloud which immediately descends ON ANY DISCUSSION of the Marcionite understanding of the apostle and his relationship with the gospel.

Rufinus's text which says that the gospel was according to 'Christ' can be taken together with Origen's statement that the Marcionites and Valentinians thought Paul was the Paraclete. Europeans have learned to take the term to mean Holy Spirit even though this is not original sense of the Aramaic menaḥem.

Manichaeus (Mani) clearly thought that the gospel announced him as the Menaḥem. Muḥammad is the Arabic equivalent of a title of the Menaḥem. I can't tell you the Hebrew form behind it right now, but it will undoubtedly be from the same root, ḥet mem dalet. It certainly has something to do with the passive participle ḥamud and the abstract noun ḥemdah.

I mean to look them up in a dictionary of Biblical Hebrew when I get a chance for attested usage as well as Jastrow. The verb nun ḥet mem in the nif'al usually means either to change your mind or to regret having done something, and in the pi'el to comfort someone, it can mean to take vengeance in the hitpa'el or nif'al.

Getting back to the Marcionites, there is a consistent echo of (a) the idea that the Marcionites read gospel passages to the effect that Jesus DENIED that he was the Christ while (b) Tertullian and others rejected the claim that Marcion was the one who was to come 'so long after Jesus was crucified.' This line of argument is ALWAYS used against Mani and Mohammed by later Christian apologists (i.e. how come the Paraclete took so long to come).

As I said one of the biggest mistakes that a scholar can make with regards to the Marcionites is to simply appropriate the portrait of 'Paul' from Acts and inserted into the Marcionite apostolic paradigm. For one, whenever we hear an emphasis of the title a single 'Apostle' - i.e. 'THE Apostle' - as the Marcionites were wont to do, it is impossible to imagine given the apparent Samaritan interest in 'Marcionitism' that the title would have been taken to mean 'the one like Moses' [Deut 18:18] i.e. the messiah. The very manner in which Samaritans call Moses 'the Apostle' and presumably also, as the title of the one to come.

For reasons that are impossible to dissect to anyone's satisfaction we hear that the Marcionites (i) 'attributed the gospel to Christ rather than Peter (above), (ii) that the title of the Marcionite Evangelium was something like 'the Gospel of the Lord' (Tertullian AM iv) which I take to be a common use of Mark 1:1 (including the Diatessaron) (iii) that they understood that when the Apostolikon refers to 'my Gospel' it means the Evangelium used in the NT canon of the Marcionites (iv) that Marcion's coming was announced by the gospel (v) that Jesus was announcing someone else as the Christ (vi) that the Apostle (although Origen says 'Paul') was the Paraclete (Hom Luc) (vii) that Irenaeus after rejecting the Marcionite claims about Paul references those who reject the name 'Paul' (AH iii.15.1 Harvey takes Irenaeus to refer to the Ebionites but this does not make sense in the context of the narrative) (viii) the Apostle's 'unspeakable' revelation (2 Cor 12) was given to Marcion (cf. Eznik cited previously) (ix) the repeated identification of Mark and Marcion as the Antichrist of the little Apocalypse (see Harvey for this in the section on Marcus).

The point is that once we accept that (a) the names Marcion and Mark are related (cf. Hilgenfeld) and that (b) the terms 'those of Marcion' and 'those of Mark' are frequently substituted in the Patristic writings it is impossible not to regard Irenaeus's statement about "those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified" (AH iii.11.7) as a ground out of which ALL SUBSEQUENT interpretations of Jesus announcing SOMEONE ELSE as Christ emerged (i.e. not only the Marcionites but also the Manichaean and Islam traditions).

show_no_mercy

I think yours is more interesting lol. Maybe it's time for a split?


But why would Jews be named after a Roman god?