aa5874

This passages summarizes your error, "Paul's message is NOT Marcion's message, at all.

Justin Martyr wrote the message of Marcion, while Marcion was alive, not while he was dead. And Justin wrote, "First Apology" 58 And this is the message from a "Paul" in Romans 1.1-4 So "Paul's" message is definetly NOT Marcion's message, "Paul's" Jesus is NOT Marcion's Jesus and "Paul's" God is NOT Marcion's God.

And if Justin knew about "Paul", why didn't he mention "Paul" and Paul's message to counter Marcion and his message from the devil?

spin

Stark enough.

It is proof of a past. What that past is needs to be ascertained.

Obviously not. Once contextualized they are proof of historicity of belief in a certain context.

My reason for commenting in the first place was the silliness of the conspiracy comment. Statues of gods merely show someone made them in a context. Statues of a person in a context obviously say more. Gilgamesh is too deeply part of a tradition to be able to extract any real content.

You see to be mixing cheese and chalk with the types of materials you want to process.

Perhaps.

I would love to cauterize the wounded brains that dribble "fiction" in most of the contexts we deal with.

At the same time, we can't use it merely because have it. It must be contextualized and evaluated as having some historical relevance.

Now you're stumbling over a vast sea of presuppositions. If you have a collection of traditions at some arbitrary point in its evolution, you have almost no idea as to the prime movers of the tradition. You can make no meaningful comments of the type you've just made. Otherwise you're merely talking through your hat.

If you've ever player chinese whispers then you'd know that there is no need for foolery or fraud to have data that may in no way represent the original data. The mediation of retelling changes the tale. Confusion, delusion, logic and illogic, all change the tradition. How things must have been or should have been shape the tale. Separation of tradition maintainers breeds varying traditions. Arbitrary cross-fertilization breeds varying and growing traditions. Accretions breed varying traditions. These ease with which a tradition hides its origins makes finding any grain of original reality extremely difficult.


spin

spamandham

We obviously don't have the same versions of Paul's writings Marcion had, but remants do remain. The docetism of Marcion could easily be derived from the writings we attribute to Paul, if you peel off the later pastoral layers in Paul's writings, so there is congruence between the writings attributed to Paul that we have today, and what Tertullian claimed regarding Marcion and Paul.

Justin's harsh words against Gentiles calling themselves Christians (note that Paul's ministry is to the gentiles) proves that Justin would not have abided by Paul, regardless.

Since Justin is not a follower of Paul, it wouldn't make sense for Justin to name drop Paul.

You have not explained why you would expect Justin to mention Paul. If Paul is not conspicuously missing from Justin's writings, then the fact Justin never mentions him is not evidence of a later fabrication.

andrewcriddle

I think you may be blurring two issues here.

a/ If all knowledge that Christianity had ever existed had been lost and then a few early Christian texts were discovered in a jar dated sometime before 100 and 150 CE. (Say Mark and a few of Paul's Epistles); then in that case I think it might be hard to know what to make of them. Part of the framework for interpreting the early Christian texts written from say 50 to 110 CE is our knowledge of the Christian movement of the 2nd century CE its literature and that of its opponents. If this was entirely missing (together with any later Christian and anti-Christian material) then we would have difficulties in understanding the purpose of the early texts, difficulties greater than those which we actually have.

b/ If things had continued as in our world till say 1700 but then Christianity had totally died out in the Enlightenment then those scholars interested in the origins of a dead religion would still IMO tend to interpret the 1st century texts in the light of how 2nd century supporters and opponents of Christianity understood them. IE they would believe in some form of historical Jesus. Given that in this scenario nobody is interested in refuting Christianity (it is no longer a living religion) then IMO few would bother to construct a scenario of Christian origins radically different from any version found in any surviving text.

Andrew Criddle

schilling.klaus

that would be a fraud,
as the falsely so-called Pauline epistles and Mark's gospel
are later forgeries


there aren't any surviving Christian texts from that time

there are absolutely no first century texts to begin with,
only fraudulent forgeries, thus the scenario is absurd to the extreme.
Also, true researchers of truth wouldn't care whether a religion is deemed to be dead or not by the ignoble masses, as only the hypocrisy of a charlatanic society differentiates between alive and dead religions.

this is desinformation spread by positivists.
Metaphysical Idealists know that this is not the case.

Klaus Schilling

DevilsAdvocate

[QUOTE=spin;5174317]All agreed. I fail to see significant differences in principals. Perhaps you can help.

The original conspiracy comment was referring to earlier propositions by others that the entirity of the new testament canon was invented from whole cloth by 3rd-4th century authors and/or by creative scribes conspiring to support Constantine. It was suggested that all of the NT characteres had been proven to be fictitious.

It seems to me that the little evidence suggested to support this was insufficiently definitive to support the claim of fiction or conspiracy, rejected evidence had not been understood and contextualized before it was rejected, and that a simple explanation of some degree of historicity whispered through time and "re-interpreted" by translators and scribes is just as likely. Also, that proof in such a context was not really possible.

DevilsAdvocate

Klaus,

You have referred to thse proven forgeries more than once, and at least once referenced the Dutch Radicals as one source of proof.

Can you summarize the proof of the fictions of the Pauline epistles and Mark? I would like to know what you find so convincing.

aa5874

Again, if Marcion's message was "Paul's" message, why would Terullian write this in Against Marcion 5.2? "Against Marcion" was written by Tertullian when Marcion and Justin Martyr were already dead. Did Justin and Marcion ever see the Acts of the Apostles? Tertullian claimed that the promise of the Holy Ghost was fulfilled as recorded in Acts. When did this Holy Ghost event occur?

This is the Holy Ghost event in Acts 2.1-4 But, if Acts was already in circulation and in possession of the Church when Marcion was alive, and Marcion himself had read Acts, he would have known the "history" of "Paul". Marcion would have read about "Saul/Paul's" conversion to Jesus Christ the son of the God of the Jews and about his gospel ,not of man or of man, but by revelation from Jesus, the crucufied one.

Only if you have lost track of the history and chronology of "Paul", as described by the NT, Tertullian and Eusebius, would you think that Marcion would ever have used the epistles. "PAUL" WAS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, the very Church Marcion was ex-communicated from. PAUL WAS NO DOCETIST, PAUL WAS MARTYRED FOR JESUS, the son of the God of the Jews and there was 100 years of history to verify his doctrine.

But, it is now known the history of Paul in Acts is likely to be fiction, it is therefore also likely that Marcion never saw Acts, only anonymous "memoirs of the apostles" as written by Justin Martyr.



But Justin is not a follower of Marcion, Simon the magician, Meander, Bacchus, Apollo, Prosperene, Venus, Aeculapius, Hercules, Jupiter, Mecury and a host of other gods that he mentioned.

I did not claim that I expected Justin to mention "Paul". I claimed that it is likely that the name "Paul" was added at some time to anonymous writings called "memoirs of the apostles" and later Acts of the Apostles was written to fabricate a fictitious history of "Paul".

spin

Sorry, I don't buy the Jesus fraud stuff: besides being wishful thinking, it doesn't reflect believers as within a continuum of beliefs. However, you seemed to me to be swaying to the opposite to counter the crap, asking questions whose answers you can never know, suggesting reality where no reality is necessary.


spin

DevilsAdvocate

Again... I think we agree, and I think you are perceptive. One way to understand the other point of view is to try and prove it, looking for questions that can shed light on the validity of the arguments. If they can be answered, the point can be illuminated, following the answers can lead to some interesting logical conclusions, and if they cannot be answered they demonstrate that point and maybe provoke thought and discussion. Plato's Socrates has some hilarious examples of this. Mostly, I'm am looking for balanced thorough reasoning.

It seems the fraud story is implausible in a number of ways, but I am trying to understand why people buy into it. I am looking to be enlightened. A good argument can convince me, but I haven't seen one yet.