Implications of Marcion for early Christianity?

[Ken Olson]

Please. Why not read Mein Kampf and draw from it the "essential characteristics" of the Jewish people or Luther's "The Jews and their Lies"? It's a joke these theses. No one knows what the "Antitheses" were. No has the original text of Irenaeus's Adversus Marcionem upon which Tertullian's copy was based. Lot of BS here.

What sources do you have other than the patristic witnesses? I know of one inscription.

[Ken Olson]

Thesis 11

Many of the passages in the synoptics labeled as Anti-Marcionite can very plausibly be understood otherwise, as common Christian supercessionism (of Judaism) or as Matthew or Luke's theological corrections of Mark (or Luke's of Matthew).

Best,

Ken

[Secret Alias]

BS on top of BS. The problem with Patristic reporting is that it wasn't conducted in the modern university setting. Outside of wherever Irenaeus was writing the original edition of Adversus Marcionem, pagans were spreading BS about Christians and Christianity. They were eating babies, engaged in orgies, etc. Patristic sources were including these charges into their reports about "the sects" to deflect the charges being leveled against THEIR Christianity. As part of the overall effort to distinguish the sects from "the true Church" a myth there were always four gospels and that individual heresies "preferred" one gospel over the whole set of four was created (because there was never time that there was a four gospel "set" before Irenaeus said there was). That Marcion had all four gospels available to him and chose to falsify only Luke is an obvious part of this myth that was developed around 190 CE. The reason why so many citations of the Marcionite gospel are attached to Lukan gospel readings is because of the ultimate source of these accusations, Irenaeus of Lyons and his efforts to claim that there was always a four gospel set (writing at 190 CE when no one had ever heard of this set. So by having the Marcionites as falsifiers of Luke it made Luke have a back history which it didn't have before the writing of Adversus Haereses and later Adversus Marcionem. But the fact that the Marcionite gospel is always referenced with respect to Luke has little to do with the characteristics of the Marcionite gospel but rather the influence of Irenaeus.

[Giuseppe]

Also, Jesus' claim that the people will doubtless say 'Physician, heal thyself" is a presupposition that there is something wrong with Jesus, which in all likelihood is that he is possessed by a spirit, which he is.

Very easy confutation: verse 4:14-16 explains enough well the part 'heal himself' (=Jesus is possessed by an evil demon), surely it cannot explain the phrase 'Physician' since Jesus has never healed none before verse 4:23 in canonical Luke.

[Ken Olson]

Also, Jesus' claim that the people will doubtless say 'Physician, heal thyself" is a presupposition that there is something wrong with Jesus, which in all likelihood is that he is possessed by a spirit, which he is.

Very easy confutation: verse 4:14-16 explains enough well the part 'heal himself' (=Jesus is possessed by an evil demon), surely it cannot explain the phrase 'Physician' since Jesus has never healed none before verse 4:23 in canonical Luke.

As often, you have come up with a reading that works for your theory and insist it is the correct one and only reading. In this case you want to interpret Luke 4.14 in light of the following verse 4.15, and limit the 'power of the spirit' to Jesus' teaching in the synagogues (plural) though that is certainly not made explicit in the text.

Luke 4.14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out through all the surrounding country.

How should we understand what it means that Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and what the report contained? Let's Luke at how Luke uses the word δύναμις (power elsewhere):

4.36 with power and authority he commands the unclean spirits
5.17 the power of the Lord was with him to heal
6.19 power came forth from him and healed them all
8.46 I perceive that power has gone forth from me ... (8.47 and she was immediately healed)
9.1 he called the twelves together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases
10.13 if the mighty works (powers) done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon
19.37 praise God for all the mighty works (powers) that had been seen

I think there is exactly one case in Luke-Acts where power refers to inspired speech only, in Acts 4.33 in which the apostles give testimony to Jesus' resurrection of the dead in great power.

Luke also uses Power in 1.17, 1.35, 10.19, 21.26. 27, 26.29, and 24.49, in a sense which I do not think is pertinent to the sense used in 4.14 (feel free to make a case otherwise if you wish), as well as many more times in Acts.

I think it is at the very least inconclusive to argue that the power of the Spirit in 4.14 is not referring to Jesus having worked miracles becuase the following verse talks about teaching.

The other pertinent fact is that when Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll in Luke 4.18, it begins: T'he Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor' and Jesus says:''Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing', so he is claiming to have been anointed.

It is not at all clear that Luke chose to say Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the spirit and meant only it to refer only to his teaching described in the following verse and not his miracles as well, or that the residents of Nazareth would have understood the report that way. They seem to realize that the Jesus in 4.16-30 is somehow very different from the Jesus who had been nourished in Nazareth, and that is most probably because he was baptized with the holy spirit and returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.

Best,

Ken

[Giuseppe]

The argument is not that verse 4:15 is designed to explain completely the verse 4:14.

The argument is that the explicit epitet of 'physician' requires an equally explicit exorcism story before the episode of Nazareth.

It can't require an implicit hearsay about previous exorcisms, because even the name of the place of the previous exorcism is explicit: Capernaum.

In other works, flashbacks work only in presence of explicit stories being told explicitly before.

[Ken Olson]

The argument is not that verse 4:15 is designed to explain completely the verse 4:14.

The argument is that the explicit epitet of 'physician' requires an equally explicit exorcism story before the episode of Nazareth.

It can't require an implicit hearsay about previous exorcisms, because even the name of the place of the previous exorcism is explicit: Capernaum.

In other works, flashbacks work only in presence of explicit stories being told explicitly before.

So you now accept my argument that Jesus' explicit statement that the deaf hear in Matt 11.4-5 and Luke 7.22 works only if there were an explicit story of Jesus curing a deaf person earlier, which Matthew has at Matt 9.32-34, while Luke has no such story?

Luke is presuming something which Matthew has, but he does not, and Matthew is therefore the better ordered and more original narrative?

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[Giuseppe]

So you now accept my argument that Jesus' explicit statement that the deaf hear in Matt 11.4-5 and Luke 7.22 works only if there were an explicit story of Jesus curing a deaf person earlier, which Matthew has at Matt 9.32-34, while Luke has no such story?

a thing is the comparison between actions and sayings,

i.e. Jesus is called "physician" but he has only spoken sayings before that moment,

...and another different thing is the comparison between specific actions,

i.e. the healing of a blind versus the healing of a deaf.

I have not even checked, but Luke has surely stories of generic healings before the quote of Isaiah. They are enough.

[GakuseiDon]

4) Marcion was, by his own standards, honest. He was trying to restore the gospel to what he thought was its original form. He worked with existing material, omitting a great deal of material from Luke, and some form Paul, and perhaps occasionally using readings from Mark or Matthew, as well as editing for narrative readability. He did not create new pericopes to serve his theology in the way the canonical evangelists had all done Mark (e.g., Mark’s Empty Tomb 16.1-8), Matthew (e.g., Matt 6.9-13 Lord’s Prayer, 8.5-13 Centurion’s Boy), and Luke (e.g., Luke 7.11-17 The Widow’s Son of Nain, 15.11-32 The Parable of the Prodigal Son).



5) Some of the readings that scholars have placed in their reconstructions of the Evangelion are probably from the Antitheses.


...
7) The Marcionites were neither more honest nor better informed regarding the origin of their gospel than the orthodox patristic authors were regarding their gospels. All of them made decisions about literary history based on what they considered theologically necessary. They inferred history from theology.



8) Much of the biographical information about Marcion found in the patristic witnesses is probably correct. Marcion was probably active in Rome in the 130’s and 140’s CE. Mark, Matthew, and Luke had already been written at that time, as Luke (with the infancy narrative) was known to Basilides c. 130.

I loved all your points, but especially the ones above, in particular (7). When one mixes theology and history, they are left with theology.

[Peter Kirby]

The demiurgist idea wasn't inherently offensive to most. It was indeed popular. It had the stamp of approval from Greek philosophy. And something about it was intuitive and appealing to many Christians. As Jesus said in John 8:19 (something quoted in these controversies), they didn't know God the Father, who is revealed by Jesus in the Gospel:

“You do not know Me or My Father,” Jesus answered. “If you knew Me, you would know My Father as well.”

Origen frequently mentions Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides together, and also often Marcion especially. So it's noteworthy when Marcion is omitted here. (Homilies on the Psalms, p. 434)

And it is possible to add something else in connection with the statement—as often as it comes up in confronting those who misconstrue Scripture—that I consider appropriate to bring up just as we are dealing with “My people did not hear my voice.” Such- and-such a logos of the Savior has been written in the Gospel according to John: “You have never heard his voice, nor have you seen his form; and you do not have his logos abiding in you, because the one he sent, that one you do not believe.” What is said is unexceptionable and well said. But followers of Valentinus and of Basilides have seized on the wording and say, “Thus he introduces another god besides the god of the law and the prophets. Jesus Christ is speaking against the Jews, to whom the law and the prophets are well known: ‘You have never heard his voice, nor have you seen his form.’ Therefore, the Jews have not heard the genuine God ever at all, the one different from the god of the law, but the Lord Jesus has introduced a new god different from the god of the Jews.”

It's not a very remarkable point because it's widely accepted already, but unlike Valentinus or Basilides, Marcion didn't accept John, and so Marcionites didn't make argument from the choice passages that would otherwise be particular to John, which thus were not in the Gospel used by Marcionites.

Marcionites were notable for using the one Gospel. And because allegorizing was sometimes used to find meaning once contradictions are detected at the literal level, having only one Gospel was also an aid in resisting allegorical interpretations.