Marcion and Monarchia

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

“It is the doctrine of the presumptuous Marcion to sever and divide the Monarchia into three origins (ἀρχάς).” - Cyril Jerusalem
“If God is not one, then there is no God ... Truly, whatever other god you suppose exists, you can on no other plea defend his divinity, but only by ascribing to him that essential attribute of divinity, eternity, and with it supreme greatness. How then can there co-exist two things supremely great, when it is of the essence of supreme greatness to have no fellow, while to have no fellow is contingent upon unity, and in duality is utterly impossible?” Tertullian, Against Marcion 1.3

But these are stupid arguments which are absolutely divorced from good scholarship pertaining to what the Jews believed about their god in the period. In fact I'd love to see a single example from an early Christian source that says 'the Jews have one God ...' Instead we get 'Jews worship angels.'
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

"Overthrow of monarchia you should understand as when there is superimposed another kingship of its own character and its own quality, and consequently hostile, when another god is introduced to oppose the Creator, as with Marcion, or many gods according to people like Valentinus and Prodicus : then is it for the overthrow of the monarchy when it is for the destruction of the Creator." - Tertullian Adv Prax 3.

Really? If my son decides to paint his room red instead of blue like the rest of the house - that's 'hatred'? But this is what we are dealing with friends ...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

An interesting point from Evans in his study of Adversus Praxean "In Liddell and Scott, uμουναρχία is quoted only in the political sense ..."

μοναρχ-ία , Ion. μουναρχίη , ἡ,
A.monarchy, government by a single ruler, Alc.Oxy. 1789 Fr.12, A.Th.883 (lyr., pl.), Hdt.3.82; “λαβὼν χώρας παντελῆ μ.” S.Ant.1163, etc.; καὶ γὰρ κατέστησ᾽ αὐτὸν (sc. τὸν δῆμον)“εἰς μοναρχίαν” E.Supp.352; “ὦ μισόδημε καὶ μοναρχίας ἐραστά” Ar.V.474; including βασιλική and τυραννική, Pl.Plt.291e: in pl., “οἱ ἐν ταῖς μ. ὄντες” Isoc.2.5, cf. Arist.Pol.1311a24, 1279a33, Rh.1365b37; of the Roman Dictator, Plu.Caes.37; supreme command, of a general, X.An.6.1.31.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Giuseppe »

fact I'd love to see a single example from an early Christian source that says 'the Jews have one God ...' Instead we get 'Jews worship angels.'
but you are making so the my case: that monarchianism was an effect of the war of 70 as a way to cement the Jewish identity in a time of struggle for life and loss of identity.
The difference is that you think that the Imperial authorities were to move towards monarchianism while I think that they were the same Jews to want monarchianism after 70. Polarizing the conflict between mainstream Jews and Jewish marginal sects as the Christians who adored angels.

My hypothesis is more expected if not other for the simple reason that any blaming of the Romans is pure atwillism (imitation of Joseph Atwill 's view).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

But where is the evidence for your assertion? Anyone can make up shit. Brent points to the late second/early third century for the emphasis and reshaping of traditional religion in line with the Imperial cult and monarchianism. But he, unlike you, provides evidence.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Giuseppe »

But I have that evidence. Wait a moment and I will quote it....
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

Well against whatever you are going to quote is well recognized fact that in the same period Brent identifies as being influenced by an Imperial effort toward monarchianism (late second/early third centuries) also sees the Jewish liturgy use equivalent terminology to 'kosmokrator' https://books.google.com/books?id=BjtWL ... si&f=false
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Giuseppe »

So Rylands (and I agree fully with him!):
Before the fall of Jerusalem, then, the Christian mystery sects were purely and simply sects of the Jews, though Gentile converts were accepted, and between them and the Jews there was no hostility. They held various doctrines and their mysteries, though similar, were not identically the same. There was as yet no organized Christian Church. The fall of Jerusalem quickly brought about a great change. As a result of that catastrophe the very life of the Jewish nation was threatened. The Jewish leaders felt that their religion was now the only bond that could hold the race together and preserve its national existence. Strict observance of the Jewish law was accordingly insisted upon. No one who rejected it could be allowed any longer within the Jewish community. Possibly also the Pharisees believed that the fall of Jerusalem was a punishment from God which the people had incurred by tolerating within their communion men who would not conform to the Jewish standard of legal righteous- ness. Consequently they would no longer tolerate the Jewish Hellenistic sects. All such Gnostic writings as the Odes of Solomon and all the Apocalypses were condemned. If they had not been taken over by the Christians they would have perished. There is reason to think that to some of the Jewish Gnostics their exclusion from the Jewish community in general was painful. In spite of differences of doctrine they had still felt themselves to be Jews and were probably proud to be able to name themselves such. And they had hoped to convert to their Christological doctrine the Jewish race. But, however reluctantly, they had to separate. The mystery cults were forced to turn more and more to the Gentiles, and hostility between themselves and the orthodox Jews rapidly increased. Then it was, in the last decades of the first century and during the second, that the situation arose of which we have evidence in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The invective against the Scribes and Pharisees put into the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels was an expression of Christian hatred which had only begun to exist late in the first century. The prophecy of Jesus to his disciples, that they would be scourged in the synagogues and persecuted from city to city represents the actual state of affairs at the time when the Gospels were written.1 The Christian sects soon became conscious of themselves as a new force in the world; and they were drawn or driven together by a common purpose and a common persecution.
(Did Jesus Ever Live?, p. 100-102, my bold and my color red)

Therefore the real historical drama is that the post-70 Christians were moved by the same mainstream Jews to hate them and to take distance from them.

According to Rylands, the same original epistle of Galatians — written after the 70 CE and towards the end of the I CE — is evidence of this polarizing of the conflict:
The statement made above that G [The original author of Galatians in 100 CE, my note] probably distinguished between the Creator and the Supreme Being is deducible from the fact that he was writing chiefly for Jews. After writing in verse 8 of chapter iv, "not knowing God, ye were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods," he proceeds immediately, without any break : "but now that ye have come to know God how turn ye back to the weak and beggarly rudiments, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage over again? Ye observe seasons," etc. In the immediately preceding passage also he had been addressing Jews, saying that the heir who had been in wardship to the law had now received the sonship. Such terms, as before observed, are quite inapplicable to Gentiles. He, therefore, is telling his Jewish readers that they had not previously known God, and were in bondage to them which by nature are no gods. These that are no gods are the weak and beggarly elements, new moons, sabbaths, and seasons depending upon the heavenly bodies, with which perhaps angels were connected. The Preaching of Peter says the same thing : before Christ the Jews had not known God any more than the Gentiles had. As the latter worshipped metals, stones, and beasts, so the former worshipped angels and archangels and observed the month and the moon. [Quoted by Clem. Alex. Strom., vi, 5, 39 to 41.] But if the opinion of the writer was that the Jews had not known God before Christ revealed him, then also in his opinion Jahveh was not God. He is included among those which by nature are no gods.
For this writer, then, Jahveh was not the Supreme Being, but the Gnostic Demiurge. The phrase in verse 9, "or rather to be known of God," is really conclusive on this question. What do commentators make of the statement of the writer that his readers had not previously been known by God? We have here what scientific observers term a crucial fact, one, namely, which decides imperatively between two theories. Yet theologians have passed it by as if it had no significance. It is implied throughout the Old Testament that all the nations of the world were within the knowledge of Jahveh, however little they might know him. He was their Creator, and, in the view of the prophets, he would one day bring them all to a knowledge of himself. They would then learn to know him; but he was already acquainted with them. It cannot be of Jahveh that the words "or rather to be known of God" were written. Note, too, that the knowledge of men by God is regarded by the writer as a fact of greater doctrinal importance than their knowledge of him. That idea has no place in Judaic or catholic theology. [ The double aspect of gnosis, knowledge of God and God's knowledge, has been well brought out by Prof. Drews, Die Entstehung des Christentums, pp. 66-72.] On the other hand, some Gnostics believed, as this verse states, that before the coming of Christ into the world, which was the special domain of Jahveh, separated from the highest heaven of the true God by seven heavens under the rule of the "archons of this aeon," men, the subjects of Jahveh, had neither known the true God, nor yet been known by him. [He was, of course, supposed to know that men existed.]
(A Critical Analysis of the four chief pauline epistles, p. 360)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

This is the weakest sort of evidence. More like wacky interpretation taken earnestly owing to bad judgment. There is no evidence supporting a change in normative Judaism toward monarchianism in the first century owing to the war.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Marcion and Monarchia

Post by Secret Alias »

And I'd like to take a moment to critique your methodology Giuseppe. When something agrees with your POV THAT'S WHEN YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO BE MORE RIGOROUS in order to determine whether or not you accept the information or the study merely because it agrees with you. There is a surprising amount of information out there that people ignore merely because it goes against their presuppositions. In this case, the question - what is the evidence in favor of supposing that Judaism wasn't as monotheistic or monarchian after the middle of the second century as opposed to before. Philo does not seem to be a strong witness for one absolute 'monarchy' in heaven. Sure he says things which suggest that's the case. But if his logic is taken to the ultimate point viz. where each divine name in the Pentateuch = a separate power then there were two principal powers coming and going having distinct characteristics and operating independent of one another. Not pure monarchianism.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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