Duvduv

Jake, since you believe Marcion had pauline epistles, and that he and Justin Martyr both lived in Rome in the mid second century, surely you could explain why Justin says nothing about any texts in the hands of his nemesis, much less anything about Paul or epistles in the hands of Marcion and his robust band of followers.

maryhelena

What do I think....

I think you are reading Acts and the NT Pauline story too literally.

I think you are placing too much faith, too much reliance, upon the story the early church writers were telling about a Marcion.

Ergo - you are playing one story off against another story....:huh:

aa5874

Your claim is wholly unsubstantiated. No writer of antiquity made such a claim.

It was claimed that Marcion mutilated or corrupted the Pauline Epistles but not that they originated with him.

Marcion lived 100 years after the supposed Paul.

You seem to have no idea that Tertullian's "Against Marcion" was unknown and was NEVER referenced at all by any Church writer for hundreds of years after it was supposedly composed.

You seem to have NO idea that "Against Heresies" is fundamentally NOT credible.

You seem to refuse to accept that Hippolytus SPECIFICALLY claimed Marcion did NOT use the Pauline writings but used the writings and teachings of Empedocles.

Galatians 1 and the Pauline letters do NOT support Dualism and no Pauline letters have ever been found mutilated or corrupted with the teachings of Marcion's Dualism.

In fact, the Pauline letters show NO sign of any significant theological corruption.

No Pauline manuscript have ever been found that support Dualism.

Again, you are promoting propaganda because you have no supporting evidence, no sources, no statement from antiquity for your claims.

There was NO emerging Catholic Church in the time of Marcion. The cults called Christians were NOT unified at all. There many, many, many cults of Christians and was getting more and more divided.

The Canon of the Church literally destroyed Peter--He will be denied entrance into heaven.

1. Peter was called Satan by Jesus of Nazareth in Matthew 16.23.

Matthew 16:23 KJV 2. Peter Denied Jesus and it is claimed by Jesus of Nazareth that those who deny him will be denied BEFORE the Father.

--Peter is DESTROYED.

Matthew 10:33 KJV3. In Acts 15, after the Showdown between Peter and Paul we hear virtually NOTHING else about Peter. He went from HERO to ZERO.

Before the showdown in Jerusalem Peter is mention 56 times--Paul 43 times

After the Jerusalem showdown Peter is ZERO--Paul 120 times

The author of Acts basically made Peter OBSOLETE from Acts 16 to Acts 28.

Peter was IRRELEVANT after the Jerusalem showdown in Acts 15.

4. The Pauline writer publicly BLAMED PETER for doctrinal problems in the Church in Galatians 2.

Galatians 2:11 KJV5. The 2nd Epistle of Peter did NOT belong to the Canon according to the Church.

The Canon of the Church is INUNDATED by letters under the name of Paul far in excess of Peter or any other writer.

The Roman Church ABUSED the character called Peter and used him to INVENT their fictitious succession of Bishops.

Prescription Against the Heretics The Roman Church ONLY needed the character called Peter to claim that it was the True Church from the supposed Apostolic Age.

The Roman Church used the Teachings in the Pauline letters.

Eusebius' Church History 3.3.

rlogan

Jake - Congratulations on a job well done. I very much enjoyed this whole section of posts and felt it was a strong contribution to the second century dating of Pauline material and its association with Marcion.

We can't make any progress whatever in understanding Christianity while chaining ourselves to the first century myth. I too find it curious that the Gospel Jesus is so readily rejected nearly everywhere you look and yet the propensity to cling so desperately to first century origins remains.

The Hebrew Bible too shows the same consolidation and co-option of separate traditions into one canon witrh doublets and so forth, from its very first page. One creation story follows immediately after another. So it is silly for anyone to be feigning surprise that we would see the same thing with Marcionite material being co-opted and subsumed into the Catholic redaction.

Thank you.

stephan huller

But at the same time we have to be able to answer the basic question - what evidence is there for Christianity being developed in the second century other than a lack of evidence for anything surviving DIRECTLY to us from the first?

James The Least

Why go to that much trouble, though? The Catholics were free to write their own set of "Pauline epistles" that were 100% in line with their current theology, as the Pastorals demonstrate. They could have just written 12 more and said here, this is the authentic Pauline corpus. Why the trouble of carefully redacting paragraph after tortured paragraph of letters belonging to a heretic church? They didn't do this with the Gnostics.

The Acts angle also imperils Richard Pervo's dating of that book to circa 120 as well as David Trobisch's dating of the publication of the entire NT to 150-160s. You're suggesting a late second century date for Acts.

stephan huller

It is important to note that Trobisch identifies this as the publication of the NT AS A SET. Like Steely Dan's Greatest Hits was released in 1980 but Reeling in the Years was first released much earlier.

James The Least

False analogy. The authorship of the books of the Hebrew Bible is measured in hundreds of years, while that of the NT is in decades. The paradox is not simply that there are conflicting ideologies, but that such conflicts were harmonized within such an incredibly short period of time.

James The Least

Well, the proto-orthodox had no problem writing off Valentinus, Basilides, et al. They did not try to redact their writings or pretend to write letters under their name. They instead went on the counter-offensive to the max, just like they did to Marcion. Perhaps the "tradition" that Paul was the 13th apostle was simply too strong to ignore or attack by that point? Whereas, they could do hatchet jobs on the others because they were living contemporaries. But how could the tradition have grown to such a proportion if it had only been ushered in a couple of decades before by Marcion?

rlogan

It is a lot more than mere analogy when we are talking about the same book.

Argument from personal incredulity is rather amusing. Incredibly short period of time? Wow, just look at me saying how incredible it is.

If it is actually an argument, and not just stating incredulity, then you explain why it is that decades is too short a time for whichever redaction/consolidation it is you are referring to.