Implications of Marcion for early Christianity?

[andrewcriddle]

He became a Christian, by interacting with Christians.

As this was the first generation of Christians, they *all* became christians by interacting with Christians!

By the same place I mean "the Land of Israel."

When you say "the Land of Israel" I wonder if you are having a similar experience as Elaine Pagels talks about when she went to school--how disappointed she was that she didn't find what one of her professors called "Play Bible Land." Where fishermen and carpenters enjoyed walking around the peaceful lake of Galilee, surrounded by farmers, who were sowing their wheat, or tending their vineyards and olive trees...on the hillsides, the sheep could safely graze, tended by good shepherds....the Romans are bumbling but benign rulers...the centurions love the Jews so much they build Synagogues for them out of own pocket....and Pilate would have *never* crucified Jesus if it hadn't been for that jewish mob, because he gave Jesus a fair trial and found that he did nothing wrong....

By the time Jesus beamed down to Capharnaum, there hadn't been any place called "Israel" for about 7 centuries!!! The region of Galilee was never part of the territory that the 12 tribes of Israel were said to occupy in the OT. Neither was the region of Idumea. If Jesus actually lived, he might not even have ethnically been a Jew--him being from Galilee and all.

Galilee is roughly the area supposedly occupied by Zebulun and Naphtali in the OT.

Andrew Criddle

[RandyHelzerman]

Galilee is roughly the area supposedly occupied by Zebulun and Naphtali in the OT.

Andrew Criddle

I stand for corrected!! Thanks for the clarification.

[Joseph D. L.]

As Peter noted, the thread isn't about trying to prove one theory or another, but rather what is people's best guess about how Marcion fits into early Christianity? I'm interested in reading the range of views people have developed based on their intuition, and not challenging anyone to 'prove' that point of view. There is a lack of clear-cut evidence anyway so any view is going to be speculative.

If this is what you want then I will go all out, put all of my chips onto the table, and give my definitive opinion, i.e. best guess, on Marcion, who he is, what he is, and how this fits into Christianity.

Marcion, Man of Pontus

Marcion must to be viewed under the lens of a radical new approach of Biblical criticism. Hitherto most New Testament scholars have failed in this call because they are require to pay, to a certain respect, lip service to the prevailing culture that allows them to work and live the way they do. I understand this completely. If the choice was between revolutionary hermeneutics and possibly being ostracized or worse, exiled from your profession (as has happened to many such scholars), or working within the system while occasionally offering milquetoast criticism of Biblical literalism and getting paid on top of it, then the choice is not only clear by relatable. I will be open: I am inwardly torn between an awe and respect for the work these men and women have done over the centuries as someone who, let's be honest, has no right or even reason to discuss this with the amount of arrogance or reckless abandon as I have in the past; and a frustration that knows no end over what I perceive to be a disconnect between things that are obvious to me while being ignored and dismissed by these yielders authority. Maybe this belies something about myself I haven't told.

My history with this subject began all the back in the halcyon days of my late teens and early twenties. Unemployed and with a lot of time on my hands, and just getting into real philosophy as opposed to the my sophomoric tryst with nihilism in high school. My first brush with what would be my passing interest in the field of Biblical history and scholarship was not some revered scholar of days long sense unspoken of, or even a mild mannered Superman of scholarship--for 2006 standards--like Bart Ehrman, No. It was Michael Tsarion and Jordan Maxwell. Yes. I was steeped in conspiracy theories about Illuminati, Federal Reserve, Freemasons, the architects of control, Rosicrucians, and the mass indoctrination of people into psychological slavery. I still have books by Tsarion, Maxwell, and Icke. (Yet strangely, William Cooper was always a bridge too far for me!) And you know what is the most alarming about all of this? Not that I believed it, but that I was able to rationalize all of these various and contradictory thoughts, ideas, concepts, and paranoid delusions. It all made sense to me! It made me feel that I had a sense of control over my life; and more alluring, a power no one else had access to: knowledge of things occult and esoteric. It made me feel like I was above others.

My reading, studying, and researching, was for no other purpose but to ingratiate myself by a standard only I could know and could hope to achieve, but more often than not fail to live up to. Of course I can look back and say, "hey! I was just a dumb 17 year old who didn't know anything about the world, let alone the lives and hardships of others. Now I do." But do I really? Surely that same neurological and synaptic network is still operating somewhere in my brain and influencing me still. I guess a question to take away from that, do people really change? and if so, to what degree?

So is my dissonance for mainstream Biblical scholars a continual symptom of my dogged youth as a conspiracy theorist? I no longer read Tsarion, Maxwell, or Icke; but the last couple years I have become enamoured with the post-structuralist philosophies that are no less conspiratorial of Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, as well as Mark Fisher (and many others) and ideas about the consequences of vicious cybernetics as the artifical environments we have incubated for millennia are now taking over us, creating an apocalypse of our subjectivity and epistemology in the rhizomatic guise of "AI" and "AGI" which not only brings us face to face with the horror of the living uncanny that is hidden in the very molecular structure of the Real, but forces us to question and finally reject our own place in this economy of unRealness. We have created tools; now tools will recreate reality, and our sense of the real is emptied out of meaning; of quantative reference, and lastly of qualitative inference.

That, I think, is Marcionism. I am Marcion, the Man of Pontus, because we are all Marcion, Man of Pontus. Each of us attempts to recreate the world to fit how we can best economize it to suite our understanding of it so we can cope and survive. Marcion is human psychology. Marcion is human philosophy. The limits of Marcion is the limits of my world. Marcion is whoever you choose him/her to be. Marcion is the center and the peripheral, both blight and clear to all and to others.

You can see it here firsthand. Marcion is essentially this forum. Almost all subjects regardless of distance or scope, include Marcion in some compacity. He is inescapable. For Tim Morton, he is a hyperobject; for Deleuze and Guattari, he is the Body without Organs; and for Baudrillard he is watching us by our watching of him. A living, breathing simulacrum; not real, but not not real.
Marcion has become so replete that he seems to be devoid of any meaning now. I remember 10 years ago delving into the controversy over Marcion and Luke of being swept away by it. Not I am Marcion weary. I don't see what more can be said or discovered about him or how his existence undermines or reaffirms Christianity.

Maybe there is a greater point hidden in this stream of consciousness nonsense. I did earnestly what to summize my genuine thoughts about Marcion (probably related to traditions of Marcellina and Marcia; probably some Noahide symbology in his theological system; maybe he was Aquila of Sinope, a Jewish proselyte; perhaps there is more of him in Paul than there is of Paul; and maybe his gospel was a preexistent document rather than a biography of some guy named Jesus), but I've already made these arguments before and I scarcely doubt anyone would want to read them again and I think and hope this can offer a more interesting reflection.

[GakuseiDon]

That, I think, is Marcionism. I am Marcion, the Man of Pontus, because we are all Marcion, Man of Pontus. Each of us attempts to recreate the world to fit how we can best economize it to suite our understanding of it so we can cope and survive. Marcion is human psychology. Marcion is human philosophy...

You can see it here firsthand. Marcion is essentially this forum.

Yes indeed. In fact, I see the interactions on this forum as providing a hint to how the Church Fathers interacted with themselves and the heretical groups, except those interactions occurred over decades rather than weeks. Everyone with their own ideas about earliest Christianity, trying to recreate the 'original' documents based on those ideas, no-one really knowing since there are too many gaps in the evidence. By the start of the Second Century, Jerusalem was gone and the first Christians dead or scattered. Even if some traditions went back to the earliest apostles, schisms had been around from the time of Paul.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that Marcion did what everyone else did then and now: he took the texts that he found and created what he thought were the originals. I believe he didn't know better than anyone else. Like a Christian believer who becomes a mythicist (or even vice versa), he took the texts and decided he was able to deduce what was there originally. While I take what Tertullian writes about Marcion with a large grain of salt, I believe Tertullian when he wrote that he had a letter written by Marcion stating that Marcion had started out as proto-orthodox:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... an121.html

Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past.

Everyone was updating the earliest texts. The only difference between Marcion and the leaders of the proto-orthodox was that the latter had the ability to make the updates official.

So yes, this forum is Marcion. It is also the Church Fathers and the other heretics.

[Peter Kirby]

One possibility (possibly wrong) is that Marcion (or his literary aid/s) worked from a manuscript of Luke and from a manuscript of Matthew to attempt to present the authentic, un-interpolated original Gospel.

[GakuseiDon]

One possibility (possibly wrong) is that Marcion (or his literary aid/s) worked from a manuscript of Luke and from a manuscript of Matthew to attempt to present the authentic, un-interpolated original Gospel.

Assuming he worked from those manuscripts, then: what was he working with? Insight, revelation, earlier traditions? Did he work with knowledge , or with deduction based on his own belief in a higher God? I think he didn't know anything more than what others knew, and that he was reconstructing based on his beliefs. Since there were no official orthodox Gospels at the time, he would have been free to take from whatever sources he wanted. But, like other groups of his time, he had decided to use one particular Gospel as the base.

[Peter Kirby]

One possibility (possibly wrong) is that Marcion (or his literary aid/s) worked from a manuscript of Luke and from a manuscript of Matthew to attempt to present the authentic, un-interpolated original Gospel.

Assuming he worked from those manuscripts, then: what was he working with? Insight, revelation, earlier traditions? Did he work with knowledge , or with deduction based on his own belief in a higher God? I think he didn't know anything more than what others knew, and that he was reconstructing based on his beliefs. Since there were no official orthodox Gospels at the time, he would have been free to take from whatever sources he wanted. But, like other groups of his time, he had decided to use one particular Gospel as the base.

Completely hypothetical, but don't many modern scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke "interpolated" the Gospel? Just not in those words. The basic source hypothesis of such work could possibly have some truth to it.

Again, completely hypothetical.

[JarekS]

Sophisticated argumentation often leads to the creation of a cognitive tunnel from which it is difficult to exit without proposing bold theses that contradict common opinion or consensus. In the face of sophistication, people are afraid of being ridiculed. Such a psychological effect.

Marcion's case is a successful project of building his own network of congregations in a structure independent of Rome. This is not a unique thing, such projects are commonplace in Catholicism.
They are always accompanied by a theological discussion, because this is the only way to accuse someone who achieves success at our expense. No one will write that he is losing influence and followers. In the 4th century, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa invented their sister Macrina the Younger for very mundane reasons - it was for the good of their careers. Pedophile Marcial Maciel Degollado created the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi, structures worth Microsoft, and successfully bribed the Roman Curia for 40 years. Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, through his foundation (private!!!), collects money from the faithful all over Poland over the heads of bishops for Radio Maryja, Telewizja Trwam, university, museum,... Until Pope JP2 said that he thanks God every day for the works of Father Rydzyk, he was the object of attacks by the church hierarchy. It was the same with Pentecostal theology in the Church. In the 1990s, communities of renewal in the Holy Spirit they were expelled from the parish and now in the stadiums the same church that previously guarded the Catholic dogma is organizing retreats led by a priest who allegedly resurrected 20 people, as he himself says.

Biblical research and even science develop through the funerals of authorities, who often block the independent thinking of subsequent generations of researchers from beyond the grave.
Newton postulated that time in the universe is constant and runs at the same pace everywhere. In a preserved letter to Newton, Leibniz wrote to him that this was an exaggerated conclusion. It took almost 200 years to refute this unauthorized conclusion.
Recently, physicists have learned the hard way that the sophistication of arguments can be deceptive. But they were lucky - they convinced governments to build the LHC accelerator near Geneva and could see if they were right. They were wrong - thousands of sophisticated theoretical works based on sophistication went to waste paper.
Biblical scholars' research on Marcion was detailed and comprehensive in terms of the fields and methods of text criticism, philology, theology, papyrology, and manuscripts.
The conclusions are sophisticated and completely wrong.
Marcion was accused by some of being a disciple of Simon Magus, meaning that he knew Peter and chose his Enemy. Marcion was accused by others of being rejected by John. It was claimed that he financed Rome but that the money was returned to him. Marcion was to deliver letters and writings from Pontus that were not his. He was to seduce a virgin and his own father was to reject him. Did the Orthodox write the truth about their opponents?
For comparison, the question is - Were Kamenev, Zinoviev and Trotsky British and Japanese spies in the Bolshevik Party?
Can we really not see the desperation of those who lost the competition with Marcion for a successful missionary action? That they were losing their own staff to a better organizer like Marcion and his structure.
Is this the same competition as between Walmart and Target for the same customers in offering the same FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) goods?

[Leucius Charinus]

In fact, I see the interactions on this forum as providing a hint to how the Church Fathers interacted with themselves and the heretical groups, except those interactions occurred over decades rather than weeks.

These interactions occurred over centuries for those including citations about Marcion from Epiphanius.

So yes, this forum is Marcion. It is also the Church Fathers and the other heretics.

And "The Index"

[lsayre]

Philo's understanding of the logos lends itself to a proposal that he was (likely unwittingly) the founder of Christianity. Quoting Wikipedia:

Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term logos to mean an intermediary divine being or demiurge.[10] Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.[32] The logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo "the first-born of God".[32] Philo also wrote that "the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated".[33]

Plato's Theory of Forms was located within the logos, but the logos also acted on behalf of God in the physical world.[32] In particular, the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the logos by Philo, who also said that the logos was God's instrument in the creation of the Universe.[32]