Marcion saute

[JarekS]

Marcion saute
One of the major problems for competent professional biblical scholars is the need to go beyond their area of expertise. This is especially visible in the reconstructions of Marcion's character. This is advanced to such an extent that for Harnack Marcion brought to Rome Pauline Corpus - "the light of faith", for Vinzent Marcion is the author of the gospels, for Detering he is the author of Paul's letters. And for everyone, he is a theologian who accidentally managed to build a great alternative structure of Christian congregations.

Marcion is none of these people.
Marcion was an outstanding leader. It's hard to make a complaint about this. To discredit him, he was made a theologian - a heretic.
Attributing some theology to him, based on hostile propaganda, is a counterproductive action. It is like a reconstruction of Osip Mandelstam's poetry based on reports from the Lubyanka interrogations.
Marcion as a leader - his theology is market, competition and success. It's a matter of responsibility for the project and for own people. Without this attitude he would not have achieved success.
Marcion's theological views are the creation of publicists financed by his enemies - other unknown leaders who were threatened by his activities.
Marcion took the best products existing on the market and they became the basis for the content of its offer and training system.
He built his network of congregations using NT version 1.0. Competitors began to criticize him after the NT 2.0 version was released. Marcion's structure, like the Orotdoks, used the entire early Christian literature, which, if Larry Hurtado is to be believed, consisted of one-third of the LXX, one-third of the NT writings, and one-third of the Apocrypha. The role of NT in this period was growing but not dominant. The fact that we do not know of any "specific manuscripts" of Marcion shows that his structure offered the same as the competing Orthodox. What mattered was the effectiveness in building and developing the structure. It was a real field of competition.
There was no conflict during Marcion's lifetime. The canonical Gospels are not anti-Marcian. They were created as a consequence of the success of the first one. Publisher, as a responsible person, did not care about any conflicts among the leaders, he just did his job. With his team of ghost writers and redactors.
Anti-marcion was only the propaganda of those who were looking for every possible reason to attack Marcion.
It quickly turned out that Marcion organization was a threat to local, sluggish, poorly managed structures. He was able to operate on a large area and financial development from current revenues.

Marcion is not unique. There are plenty of examples of Christian leaders creating great works and enterprises outside the structures of large churches. In Catholicism, such a leader was Marcial Maciel Degollado. It is enough to look at his designs of the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi to be able to make a proper reconstruction of Marcion.

[Giuseppe]

There was no conflict during Marcion's lifetime. The canonical Gospels are not anti-Marcian. They were created as a consequence of the success of the first one.

I agree with the general idea. Only, I think that sometimes and rarely, the hand of Marcion (and enemies of Marcion) is evident: for example, the descent from above (i.e. from heaven).

Another case of pure marcionism in action is the physical absence of people claiming to be relatives of Jesus.

Another case is the fact that the Parable of the Vineyard is placed by Mark, Luke and Matthew after that Jesus has left without answer the question on the origin of the his authority, against the background of the authority of John the Baptist being known in its origin.

Another case is the ambiguous answer before the religious judges: you say (that I am the Christ), implicit: not I. Which in Mark becomes: I am (the Christ)!

[JarekS]

In my first text on this forum, "Anonymous Team authorship", I put forward the thesis that the same team compiled both the *Ev and the Synoptic Gospels. Marcion was the first to use the gospel as a tool because he needed books to operate in a dispersed structure. For Klinghardt or Vinzent, the synoptic gospels are a response to *Ev made by other authors and editors. Marcion reached for a product available at the time when he launched a large-scale missionary campaign. Tertullian compares *Ev with another later version which also has strange properties - it contains texts from Matthew that are absent in Luke. The differences you point out are real, but they are just an excuse to attack Marcion. They simply appeared as a result of further editorial work independent of Marcion

[Giuseppe]

the same team compiled both the *Ev and the Synoptic Gospels.

Some idea about their intention in doing so?

[JarekS]

The Gospel is a content product. Since Gospel 1.0 has been a success and the market expects more, further versions are released. The publisher *Ev did not abandon the project after the first success because the market wanted more.
He released subsequent versions, each of which offered some added value. This is a classic product practice - another version, another functionality. Despite the differences, subsequent versions of the gospels continued to present a consistent vision of the historical Jesus.
The publisher was the most important - ghostwriters and editors did not make decisions, they only implemented his requirements.

The direct recipients of the gospel were the clergy. Content can be a differentiator from others, it can improve the effectiveness of a missionary campaign, it can improve the effectiveness of retaining acquired recipients, it can give an advantage over competitors.

[Giuseppe]

What do you think was "Jesus" for the early Christians before that the publisher *Ev started to release new versions one after the other?
Have you some paradigm in mind among those known (Jesus man of the distant past, outer space theory, amalgama theory, etc)?

[StephenGoranson]

"The publisher" ????

[JarekS]

The historical apparatus does not allow us to definitively rule out the real existence of the person about whom the testimony was written. I don't know whether Jesus is a figure from historical tradition or an invented one. But the entire earthly biography of Jesus, locating him in a specific time and space, is a bold, strong literary concept, the culmination of several stages of character development.
1. Paul's resurrected Jesus was a man on earth, born of a woman, born under the law. The earthly Jesus was a sacrifice, not a teacher. What mattered was the resurrection and the revelation after the resurrection.
2. The next step in character development - since he was a human, he probably said something, did something, had some friends, although we don't know where and when. Some symbolic pericopes without exact location, collections of quotations spoken by Jesus, unknown where and when.
3. Comprehensive narrative and location in time and space - the gospels.Jesus is crucified by the Romans and betrayed by the Jews because the author of the story was Greek - there is some thought in this innocent joke.

[StephenGoranson]

So you don't wish to tell us about your putative "publisher"?

[JarekS]

Publisher.At some point, someone decided to go to a higher organizational level to divide the tasks in the project. He substantively distributed responsibilities and authorities to ensure the best possible effectiveness of the organization at every level. This is how the publisher emerged.
The Gospels are not the work of a single author - they are products written to meet the publisher's requirements