mountainman

We have been told that Marcion was a christian heretic. Does this imply he was not a pagan? Where do the lines of authodoxy get drawn? Did Paul for example, think of himself at any stage as a pagan?


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

schilling.klaus

That's because the Christian god is not the god of the Jews, the latter being just an ignorant or malicious demiurge. Fake Christians since mid second century such as Roman Catholics absurdly identify those deities, but their writings subtly betray the distinction made by their pre-canonical precursors.

Klaus Schilling

xrey

Agreed.

Another question would be: could Christianity have developed if it hadn't borrowed concepts from earlier pagan stories (virgin birth, resurrection, Dec. 25th, etc.)? In other words, would the Gospels have survived at all without the first and last couple chapters?

Ben C Smith

Mark survived without a birth narrative or resurrection appearances.

Ben.

Solitary Man

Mark wasn't all that popular a gospel, however.

Ben C Smith

Oh, readily granted. But survival and popularity are not the same thing.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Irenaeus tells us somewhere that Mark was popular among the adoptionist groups. The idea of a virgin birth, or indeed any real human birth at all, would not appeal to everybody.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
This is misleading by itself for a number of reasons. Probably the biggest reason is it fails to address the Forged ending which Directly disputes Ben. The closely related reason is it appears that "Mark" was never considered Authoritative by orthodox Christianity until the Forged ending which gave it a resurrection appearance and "Matthew's" Edit of "Mark" including a Forged birth narrative. More Direct evidence that "Mark" would not have survived as originally written.



Joseph

Ben C Smith

I do appreciate the clarification. Yes, it is quite appropriate to argue that the gospel of Mark was sanitized, as it were, for many by the secondary ending.

The first half of this statement may well be true. But the issue was the survival of the gospel, and Mark did indeed survive without the longer ending. (It also survived and even thrived with the longer ending.)

The second half is confusing. Mark survived in all its forms without a birth narrative. If the main problem with Mark is that it lacked what Matthew had, why preserve Mark?

My view is that Mark survived because very early on the authority of Peter was attached to it (rightly or wrongly does not matter in this context).

Again, Mark did survive without the longer ending and without any birth narrative. It survived in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. It survived in manuscripts known to Eusebius and Jerome. It survived in manuscripts known to Victor of Antioch and Severus of Antioch.

There may be plenty of reasons for why Mark survived without a birth narrative and in some manuscripts (many up to the time of Eusebius and Jerome, at least according to these fathers) without even resurrection appearances (Tertullian thinks it fitting, for example, for the followers, Mark and Luke, to be flanked on both sides by the apostles, Matthew and John). But the fact is: Mark did survive in that form.

If your point here is that the longer ending of Mark really helped things along, I agree with you. You just may not be wording it very well.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
This is not "surviving" Ben. Find a Christian who accepts original "Mark" as Scripture but rejects "Matthew", "Luke" and "John". Original "Mark" survived because Forged beginnings and endings were added to it. Your stumbling block is that instead of leaving the Name the same the Forgeries were called "Matthew", "Luke" and "John". Exactly the point originally made that you claim to dispute. There is no surviving significant Christian belief in original "Mark" without some belief in the others.



Joseph