No Robots

Excellent work, Ben. Calm, reasoned, relentless. The best.

RUmike

Marcion only accepted the 10 letters of Paul (same as the canon minus the pastorals), and a modified version of Luke. I would assume Marcion thought the other gospels were "additions" in the sense that he did not consider them scripture.

Amaleq13

I think I failed to convey my point because I was trying to suggest that krosero's question appears to be just as much of a brain-twister and may have had the exact same solution (ie faith).

TedM

Maybe, but I'd like to see a quote so we don't have to assume as much. Jake's comment made it appear that Marcionites actually were saying something like "you have taken the sacred scriptures and made additions to them to support a heretical concept of a flesh and blood Jesus." Now THAT would be quite a statement!

ted

Amaleq13

Did Marcion use kata sarka and, if so, how?

jakejonesiv

If, then, the apostles … composed the Gospel in a pure form, but false apostles interpolated their true record; and if our own copies [i.e. the catholic version] have been made from these, where will that genuine text of the apostle's writings be found which has not suffered adulteration? Which was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? … is that very edition which Marcion alone possesses the true one, that is, of the apostles? … Tertullian , Adv. Marcion, Book 4, chapter 3.

S.C.Carlson

He used it (ap. Tert. Marc. 5.4.5) in Gal 4:23 "But the one from the handmaid was born according to the flesh, and the one from the free woman (was born) through the promise."

jakejonesiv

Not in describing Jesus. That is the very point I am making.
None of these passages (Romans 1:3, 9:3; Gal 4:4, etc) are in the Marconite version of the Pauline material.

It is quite simple. If Marcion's version had spoken of Jesus "according to the flesh" the Heresiologists would have refuted his Docetism with his own words. As we have seen, they do appeal to these passages, but cannot afix them to Marcion.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

A good question. Tertullian does not appear to discuss Romans 1.3, or anything prior to Romans 1.16, in book 5 of Against Marcion, where he handles the Marcionite epistles of Paul. He does have this to say about Marcion and the epistle to the Romans in 5.13.4 of that work:

But what serious gaps Marcion has made in this epistle especially, by withdrawing whole passages at his will, will be clear from the unmutilated text of our own copy. It is enough for my purpose to accept in evidence of its truth what he has seen fit to leave unerased, strange instances as they are also of his negligence and blindness.

Not very flattering of our intrepid Pontic heresiarch, but it seems clear that Marcion had a much shorter epistle to the Romans than our received version (I know it omitted chapters 15-16, for example).

Whether all this means that Marcion omitted Romans 1.3 or that Tertullian just did not cover every single verse I am not certain.

Tertullian himself says the following about Romans 1.3 in On the Flesh of Christ 22:

Then, again, there is Paul, who was at once both a disciple, and a master, and a witness of the selfsame gospel; as an apostle of the same Christ also he affirms that Christ was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, which, therefore, was his own likewise. The flesh of Christ, then, is of the seed of David. Since he is of the seed of David in consequence of the flesh of Mary, he is therefore of her flesh because of the seed of David. In whatsoever way you torture the statement, he is either of the flesh of Mary because of the seed of David or of the seed of David because of the flesh of Mary. The whole discussion is terminated by the same apostle when he declares Christ to be the seed of Abraham, and if of Abraham how much more, to be sure, of David, as a more recent progenitor.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Ben,

Surely you didn't expect Tertullian to say anything flattering about Marcion did you? :grin:

If Marcion's version of Romans had contained 1:3, surely Tertullian would have used it to refute Marcion's Docetism, right? When you write five books on a subject, you aren't going to let anything this obvious get away!

BTW, I hope you have noticed that we agree on the meaning of κατα σαÏ?κα.

Jake Jones IV