How Paul’s Letters Survived Marcion

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Post Reply
robert j
Posts: 1007
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:01 pm

How Paul’s Letters Survived Marcion

Post by robert j »

The focus of this post is to present a reasonable scenario for how Paul’s extant 5 letters addressed to his communities may have come down to us reasonably intact.

My discussion here will also address my position that any attempts to construct Marcionite recensions that were significantly different from the versions of Paul’s letters already existing at the time, or even assuming there were different Marcionite versions at the time, are based on all-too questionable assertions of the polemicist heretic-hunters.

The basic assumption underlying this evaluation is this --- A Jewish evangelist named Paul worked in Gentile territory and wrote letters to the Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians and Corinthians in the early to mid-1st century CE.

One of the most difficult questions facing the concept of reasonably authentic canonical letters of Paul is how the letters could have survived the century or two intact --- the century or more between Paul’s writing and the oldest extant Pauline manuscript. A remarkably complete manuscript of Paul’s canonical letters, p46, has a consensus dating around 200 CE, with a range of 150 to 250 CE. This gap between autographs and the earliest manuscript is reasonably short compared to a great many other ancient works.

Marcion apparently used Paul’s letters, perhaps first encountering them in Asia Minor. It would be difficult to expect that Paul’s letters would garner much authority for Marcion’s evangelizing efforts among people that were not already aware of some Pauline traditions. And it wasn't just the Marcionites that found useful material in Paul's letters, the Valentinians did as well and Elaine Pagels devoted a book to that topic.

Prior to the 2nd century acceptance of Paul’s letters as scripture by the proto-orthodox (2 Peter 3:15-16), there is evidence of Pauline-oriented congregations in Christ.

The author of 1 Peter addressed his letter to the “elect strangers of the dispersion in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Asia, and Bithynia”. Totally missing in the entire letter 1 Peter is an earthly Galilean sage, but instead one finds an updated version of the Pauline Christ myth. Both 1 and 2 Peter have characteristics of proto-orthodox recruitment letters to Pauline oriented congregations.

One might conclude from these associations that by the early-to-mid 2nd century, several Pauline oriented congregations existed in the northeastern Mediterranean regions. And it was these congregations that were put into play --- along with the letters of Paul. What ensued was competition for authority between the Marcionites (with leadership centers in the Pauline oriented northeastern Mediterranean regions?) and the proto-orthodox (with leadership centers in Alexandria, Antioch and the Western Empire?). If nothing else, the testimonies of the Church Fathers tell of intense competition for authority between the proto-orthodox and the Marcionites.

In order to exert authority and leadership in the wider empire, the proto-orthodox needed to exert Pauline authority --- that is, they needed Paul’s letters within their realm of influence and control.

Using the testimony of the Church Fathers, different proposals have been put forward on the Paulines. However, many investigators are careful to point out the difficulty in using the patristics because the testimonies of heresiologists like Tertullian and Irenaeus are rife with apologetics and polemics, and they appear to be more concerned with defending their own 2nd century proto-orthodox traditions and doctrines than presenting historical facts. It is certainly not clear that these Church Fathers even knew the real history of the development of early Christian thought beyond what their 2nd century church traditions held.

Some take the patristic heresiologists at their word --- that Marcion cut-out portions of Paul’s original letters in order to bring the letters more in-line with his heretical doctrines.

Others do a “Costanza” --- they take the opposite. Where Irenaeus and Tertullian accuse Marcion of cutting-out passages from Paul’s letters, these investigators claim the proto-orthodox added those passages to letters in which the passages did not originally exist --- redacting and interpolating Paul’s letters, attempting to bring the letters more in-line with emerging catholic traditions.

Other permutations of these scenarios, as well as quite different chains of events, have been proposed.

It is entirely possible that accusations about Marcion butchering the letters of Paul were just a rhetorical device used by Irenaeus and Tertullian and their ilk (Irenaeus, Adv Hear 1.27.2 and Tertullian, Adv Marc, Book 5). After all, would Marcion hesitate to chop-up the scriptures? --- just like Marcion's people chopped-up the dead bodies of their parents along with sheep to devour at their feasts as Tertullian claimed in the opening paragraphs of the Five Books Against Marcion (Adv Marc 1.1).

I am persuaded --- primarily based on the testimony of Clement of Alexandria --- that Marcion took the letters of Paul essentially as Paul wrote them, and found in Paul's antinomian arguments what he considered to be a kindred soul. Marcion only put his own spin on Paul’s letters and applied his own interpretations to support and promote his own further doctrines. It was just Marcion's selective interpretations that the patristic heretic hunters attacked and refuted using their accusations of butchery.

Clement of Alexandria is generally believed to have written between the times of Irenaeus and Tertullian. Clement refuted the doctrines of Marcion with primarily philosophical arguments in several sections of his lengthy Stromata. Clement accused the heretics of selective use of the scriptures (Stromata, Book 7, chapter 16), but surprisingly, Clement did not accuse Marcion of chopping-up or altering Paul’s letters. And Paul was Clement’s doctrinal hero, citing his letters extensively and referring to Paul as “the apostle”, “blessed", “noble”, even “divine”. If Marcion had mutilated them, why didn’t the prolific writer Clement defend the letters of his hero Paul?

With a number of Pauline-oriented congregations that likely held Paul’s letters in the highest esteem --- congregations the proto-orthodox were trying to bring within their own sphere of influence --- the proto-orthodox were not likely to significantly alter those treasured letters and risk losing the very congregations they were trying to win-over.

So the proto-orthodox, the emerging catholics, implemented a multi-prong approach. They attempted to discredit Marcion with over-the-top accusations of savagery, and accusations of butchering the letters of Paul. They attempted to bring the person and doctrines of Paul within the realm of their own traditions with the church legends presented in the Acts of the Apostles. And they attempted to tame Paul’s letters and impose church authority by penning the Pastorals. They claimed Paul’s letters as their own scripture and warned against heretical readings --- in the purported words of Peter no less (2 Peter 3:15-16).

The attempts and claims of the emerging catholics eventually won the day --- and the centuries.

robert j


Why Pauline Christianity was slow to spread ---
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1399
Post Reply