2nd Ed. of the English Trans of Matthias Klinghardt's Reconstruction of the Marcionite Gospel

[Secret Alias]

As you all know I am very stupid. Trobisch is sending a copy of this book. It is published by Quiet Waters Publications quietwaterspublications@gmail.com or http://www.quietwaterspub.com/. I didn't understand what he wanted. At first I thought it was spam. Now we are going to have a beer in Germany in a few weeks. I didn't want to tell anyone at the forum because I thought he wouldn't want it know he was seeing me in public. But then I thought, maybe he's giving me the book so I tell people. So know I am telling you about it. Sometimes I overthink things. Trobisch noticed I have a habit of always getting the last word in emails. So if he says "goodbye" I have a tendency to write something stupid like "ok, goodbye see you then." Anyway now that I am a German I should have at least one German friend. I remember when I was trying to get Swiss citizenship that was a requirement. But now that I am a German citizen it's not a requirement as much as it is normal. How can you be a citizen of a country where you don't know anyone from that country? Maybe I should begin all my emails with lowercase letters like they do in German emails. Anyway, I thought everyone would be interested in the second edition.

The alternative is to spend $250 on this book https://www.amazon.com/Oldest-Gospel-Fo ... e904010ad0

[Peter Kirby]

Sounds great. Do you know how to order the 2nd edition of the book? The website seems pretty sparse.

[Secret Alias]

I will get it this week I think. May 3 - 5 or something like that. I will let you know.

[mlinssen]

I think that the Greek is much more helpful than anything, and Mark Bilby has done an incredible job in that regard with even morphologically tagging it all

https://zenodo.org/record/7795764#.ZFBd13ZyY0E is the latest version, April 3rd

[Secret Alias]

I received it today (I didn't open it until now but I've had it all morning). It's amazing. It's not what I expected. It's not the argument Klinghardt uses to make the Marcionite gospel but the order of the Marcionite gospel as he sees it. Very cool. Kind of like a gospel for Marcionites or Marcionophiles. If you think Tertullian had before him the Marcionite gospel and was commenting on it (and care about Marcion) this is really good for you. It's what all of us Marcionophiles have done in private. Only Klinghardt published it and now it's translated into English. I highly advise everyone to get a copy. Will give us something to talk about.

[Secret Alias]

I should note that Trobisch didn't translate the text. Klinghardt did it himself apparently. It's interesting. Holding on to someone's reconstruction of the Marcionite gospel is kinda cool. I think there was a conscious effort to say "here it is" and take it from abstraction to something tangible.

[Peter Kirby]

I will get it this week I think. May 3 - 5 or something like that. I will let you know.

The anticipation builds. I guess I will have to read this! Let me know.

[Secret Alias]

I got it. I guess I am the worst writer. I received the book. It's like 95 pages. I think I am going to attempt this before I die. Will look completely different.

[Secret Alias]

[Stuart]

I received it today (I didn't open it until now but I've had it all morning). It's amazing. It's not what I expected. It's not the argument Klinghardt uses to make the Marcionite gospel but the order of the Marcionite gospel as he sees it. Very cool. Kind of like a gospel for Marcionites or Marcionophiles. If you think Tertullian had before him the Marcionite gospel and was commenting on it (and care about Marcion) this is really good for you. It's what all of us Marcionophiles have done in private. Only Klinghardt published it and now it's translated into English. I highly advise everyone to get a copy. Will give us something to talk about.

This is true. I have my own private versions and commentaries on nearly every verse of Paul and Luke in Marcionite form, plus the reasoning for Catholic additions. What surprised me was the dramatic difference in vocabulary and even grammar. For all practical purposes the attested and likely passages in the Marcionite text are completely devoid of everything identified as Lukan style. It's very strikingly different read. There are many interesting differences in Paul as well. (I have done much the same for the Johannine literature; because of Turmel's Le quatrième évangile, and his claim of Marcionite origins; I however found something very different going on.)

Of course, since it's a private collection I'm free to edit. So, every now and again I adjust the content as evidence requires. Unlike Turmel, Rüpke, Vinzent and Klinghardt however, I have found the evidence not so much of Marcionite priority, rather that they were the traditors of an intermediate collection, reflective of the state of the text at the point of their separation from the main church. But I'm off subject.

Keeping your own version is a lot of work, if you seriously evaluate every line and every word. And you'll come to recognize that it's an eclectic exercise, where you are making a lot of subjective judgement calls. If you are an honest scholar, you'll be hedging everything with an "if the observation is correct, then ...," much as you'd love to say this is the facts! But I'm all for a baseline being established in scholarship for the probable Marcionite texts. Having that as a baseline makes life a lot easier than having to reconstruct an entire text of a section and then show it's defense over the entire collection, just to make some point. Although I think Klinghardt's conclusions about the origins are not correct, it is good to have another version of the text published. A big thanks for that.

But that price is obscene. I'm not buying it. I'll find a library copy in a few years and scan it (I don't circulate books I scan, my private use only). Hey, I'm Scottish blood, we're pretty cheap. BTW secret, one of the things I love about Germany is good beer for barely more than €1