Clement on the Dating of Paul's Ministry

[Secret Alias]

Notice the verb in 2 Cor 12:2 ἁρπάζω “take by force; take away, carry off; catch up. In Marcion Paul is "snatched" by Jesus as part of his conversion. Now we see it was likely at a common ascension where in Paradise the two became one reversing the division of Adam.

[andrewcriddle]

Another possibility is that Clement has a tradition in which the ascension is not dated forty days after the resurrection but considerably later.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

But isn't that just moving the goal posts to keep Clement within the fold? I don't think the ascension was dated forty days after originally. Acts is ignorable. The Marcionites didn't use Acts and Clement likely held views more in keep with Marcionism - i.e. a heavenly ascent immediately following the crucifixion after a visit to the underworld.

[andrewcriddle]

But isn't that just moving the goal posts to keep Clement within the fold? I don't think the ascension was dated forty days after originally. Acts is ignorable. The Marcionites didn't use Acts and Clement likely held views more in keep with Marcionism - i.e. a heavenly ascent immediately following the crucifixion after a visit to the underworld.

FWIW the Ascension of Isaiah has the Ascension of Christ at 545 days after the resurrection

And when He hath plundered the angel of death, He will ascend on the third day, [and he will remain in that world five hundred and forty-five days].

(absent in Latin and Slavonic)
And the Apocryphon of James has 550 days

And five hundred and fifty days since he had risen from the dead, we said to him, "Have you departed and removed yourself from us?" But Jesus said, "No, but I shall go to the place from whence I came. If you wish to come with me, come!"

Irenaeus says

The other eighteen Æons are made manifest in this way: that the Lord, [according to them,] conversed with His disciples for eighteen months after His resurrection from the dead

and

But after his resurrection he tarried [on earth] eighteen months; and knowledge descending into him from above, he taught what was clear.

etc

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Yes you're right. It is a possibility. I think Epiphanius throws up the Valentinian year and a half date too (18 months). Probably from Irenaeus.

[Secret Alias]

But that would still mean that Clement was a heretic. A Valentinian rather than a Marcionite.

[Secret Alias]

It isn't just Clement. The Excerpts of Theodotos hold that Paul preached immediately after the Passion:

23. In the type of the Paraclete, Paul became the Apostle of the Resurrection. Immediately after the Lord's Passion he also was sent to preach.

[Clive]

The difficult might be overcome by thinking in terms of Jesus being 'improved' by his crucifixion and subsequent ascension. Since all evidence points to a tripartite division of humanity (animal, psychic, spiritual) Jesus's message in the gospel might well have precluded the 'unspeakable' knowledge given to Paul because Jesus himself had been perfected yet through the Cross.

If we imagine that Paul = Christ (a thing often referenced in his letters viz. 'speaking in Christ' etc) the original Pauline ascension was Paul going up to the third heaven/Paradise. 'Enmity' was crucified on the Cross. Jesus was crucified say all the heretics while Christ stood by impassibly watching. The Basilideans understood some sort of transmigration of the soul of Christ or Jesus to have entered into the body of someone partaking in the Passion.

Jesus as the Demiurge must die on the Cross. But the heretics in some form thought he was 'resurrected' as Christ possibly in another body (cf. the Alexandrian and later Coptic notion of the Incarnation). When Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the first time he came to them he only let them know about the Cross it is quite easy to imagine that he is speaking of his being Jesus or the 'first man.' This is the knowledge that the gospel repeats was passed onto Peter and the apostles. This is the level of psychic knowledge.

What Paul and the Pauline heretics must have thought was that immediately following the ascension (whatever that meant) Paul was the Christ. He ascended with/as Jesus but Jesus raised to a higher level possibly through witnessing the superior god the Father something Jesus the Demiurge never actually saw until that point. To that end, they must have/may have imagined that a superior knowledge was now given to Paul.

[Clive]

But then why did Jesus chose Peter?

Maybe rocks, foundations upon which to build churches were thought by various good Romans with engineering and imperial backgrounds to be important, in contrast to this airy fairy third heaven oriental cult marshy gnosis stuff?

Anyone who served in the Roman Army knew how to build roads, forts, bridges aqueducts etc.

[Secret Alias]

But at the very least it is clear that Acts did not have the last word (or even the first word for that matter) on Paul