jakejonesiv

The Pauline texts were altered by the proto-orthodox because the heretics found them authoritative, and were using them against the proto-orthodox. The Marcionites taught that the truth was given to Paul exclusively.

As I stated earlier, almost none of the usual texts used to demonstrate a "Historical Jesus" from the Pauline epsitles were in Marcion's text. There is no "ulterior" motive, it is simply a text critical observation.

You can read how painstakingly Marcion's text is recreated, e.g. The Epistle to the Galatians , see HERMANN DETERING: THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS – EXPLANATIONS.

You will need some German for this, but here is how Marcion's Epistle to the Romans is reconstructed.
Der Römerbrief in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt
Einleitung
Rekonstruktion
Übersicht über die marcionitischen Textvarianten zum Römerbrief
MR und KRed – unterschiedlicher Sprachgebrauch - Tabellen - Marcionitische und Katholische Rezension des Römerbriefs – ein Vergleich
Rekonstruierter Text
Appendix: Real and perceived Paul quotes from the apostolic fathers

My position is that all of the Pauline Epistles are inauthentic. The first Pauline epistle was 1 Corinthians and dates to the very late first century or early second century. It was written posthumously, long after the many legendary deaths of the Apostle, and records the hostile invasion of the Pauline community by the Cerinthians.

Best,
Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Hi Vinnie,

Yes, I know you enjoy studing new ideas.

It is quite obvious that Galatians 2:7-8 is an interpolation. See THE NON-PAULINE ORIGIN OF THE PARALLELISM OF THE APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL. GALATIANS 2:7-8 by Ernst Barnikol.

Now, about 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

1 Corinthians 15:3 did not in the first instance contain the phrase "what I also received". Here is the text Ireneaus had.

He was likewise preached by Paul: "For I delivered," he says, "unto you first of all, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures." Irenaeus AH 3.18.3.

See {Note 1} below.

Marcion's reading did not have "which I also received." In addition, Marcion did not have "according to the scriptures." Here is Marcion's text from Tertullian, AM 3:8.
"I have delivered unto you before all things," says he, "how that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day."

See {Note 2} below.

The witness lists that follow 1 Cor 15:3 are a post-Pauline interpolation. {See Note 3 below}. Credal formulas developed and harmonized to this extent are anachronistic to the traditional dating of Paul. We find the combining of three separate traditions that put us on the far side of the secterian divisions that flared in the second century.

1. Cephas and the Twelve (The Roman Church)
2. James and the Apostles (the Ebionites and other Judaizers)
3. Paul (The Apostle of the heretics, i.e Marcionites and some Gnostics)
The witness lists were augmented by yet another interpolation, that of the five hundred brethren. (Acts of Pilate)

Please notice how the interpolator cuts Paul down to size. The original Paul, who showers curses upon any who disagrees with his gospel (Gal. 1:6-9), would never describe himself as an the "least of the apostles" or "one not fit to be an apostle." He would not diminish himself as an "abortion." See {Note 4} below.

Original reading of 1 Corinthians 15:1-12
1 Corinthians 15
¹ Now I am reminding you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you
indeed received and in which you also stand.
² Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached
to you, unless you believed in vain.
³ For I delivered to you first of all: that Christ died for our sins;
⁴ that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day.
¹² But if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

________________
{Note 1.}The Old Latin manuscript b 89 supports the omission of "what I also received." Old Latin b — (Manuscript 89), 800 CE, Széchényi National Library Budapest Hungary

{Note 2.} It is evident that Marcion and the Jews were right. There is no scripture that states Christ will die, be buried, and rise after three days. It is often asserted (Matthew 16:1; Luke 24:25-27, 32, 44-46; Acts 2:27-31; 13:29-39) but never explicitly defined. One can only with great trouble read it in the Hebrew scriptures after the fact. Christians constantly struggle with this key fact and end up begging because it is not found in Psalm 2:7; 16:8-11 or Isaiah 52:13-53:12 or Hosea 6:2. Even Jesus in the gospels is reduced to pleading for "the sign of Jonah" which is a singularly ill fit.

Lying behind 1 Cor. 15:3 is a redeemer myth. 1 Corinthians 15 employees the famliar language of the Eleusinian nysteries, i.e. Demeter and Kore. The mystery of the resurrection is likened to a seed of grain that dies and then rises; the same cycle of grain that was dramaticized in the death and new life of Kore --
and by extension to the initiates of the Christian mysteries. Thus, the resurrection of Christ is the firstfruits of the harvest.

We find "three days" between death and resurrection explicitly in the [vegetation] myth of Inanna.

{Note 3} Robert Price, "Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11"
ANTIMARCIONITISCHE INTERPOLATIONEN IN 1 KOR 15, 1-11 by Hermann Detering,

{Note 4.} Indeed, it is precisely against such accusations from Cerinthus that Paul/Sosthenes responds to in 1 Cor. 9:1. "Am I not free? am I not an apostle? have I not seen Jesus our Lord? are not ye my work in ..."
Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Romans chapters 15 and 16 are also late additions. See link here.
Times up!!!

Jake

rlogan

Thanks jakejonesiv. Nice stuff.

Doug Shaver

I don't know about "we," but what I'm attempting to do is employ the benefits of 20 centuries of intellectual progress in figuring out what we should believe about Christianity's origins.

We don't know that. What we know is that no surviving document records such a debate. That absence of evidence might or might not be evidence that there was no such debate.

Not that we know of.

Assuming that there never was such a document, are you suggesting that the only plausible explanation is that nobody ever said Jesus was crucified in the sky?

It has been noted for several centuries. Paul's silence on the historical Jesus is not news.

Steven Carr

What we do see are very standardised names for these letters.

Which means one source collected and named the collection we have now.


If the collections had come from different sources, we would expect to see names of the letters like 'Paul's letter from Damascus' , 'Paul's letter to Silvanus', whatever.

But the letters are named uniformly, using a pattern that Paul himself would never have needed to use.

So all the collections we see now must have come from one anthology, so we should not expect to see other heavily mutated versions, no matter what changes that original collector made (or which versions of competing manuscripts he may have had available to choose from)

spin

Which of course puts an obligation on you if you want to use Paul to reflect a later orthodoxy.

Given that Mark is written so much later than Paul it is a secondary source in christian literature. You can convince yourself about Mark, but I th ink you are playing to your own biases.

Seriously, how much of this is apologetics? Authors may change their minds, but there are always discourse concerns when analyzing text. What you are saying is an attempt to sweep discourse rough cuts under the carpet.

It would be hard to have a Pauline corpus without having some Pauline content, wouldn't it? Our major problem is that Paul has been in the hands of orthodoxy for a very long time, an orthodoxy which enforced apostolic succession, the priority of Peter, the lordship of Jesus, and various other features not necessarily reflected in Paul.

Yup.

Try here for a presentation on the side-tracking of Paul's Jewish supper. (Most of the others I've dealt with in the archives, but finding them is an issue.) If you want to go on with the Pauline supper, you could start another thread and I'll handle it with you there.


spin

dog-on

Perhaps Paul's editor simply wanted it to seem like Paul referred to a non spiritual Jesus.

GakuseiDon

How would Paul's editor accomplished that? What did he do to show that Paul referred to a non-spiritual Jesus?

dog-on

Gal 4.4 for example...