Why Capernaum had to be "his own town" in Mc 2:1 (even before Nazaret)

[Giuseppe]

Better answer: because "Capernaum" allegorizes the heaven of the Demiurge, where the marcionite Jesus descended from the heaven of the good god.


The idea that hell is below us, perhaps in the center of the earth, comes from passages such as Luke 10:15:

“And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell”

Capernaum was exalted to heaven of the Demiurge. There the Hades was localized for Paul and the early Christians.

To make clear that Jesus came from the creator god (and not from an alien god), the interpolator ("Mark", in this case) introduced the passage:

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

(Mark 2:1)


The coincidence is too impossible to be true.

This is real evidence that even Mark was written against Mcn.

[Giuseppe]

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

(Mark 2:1)

The passage could be written by Marcion himself insofar you note the irony:

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

The same people who "called" Jesus as "the Christ" without really knowing that Jesus was not the Jewish Christ. Now the same people believe that Jesus had "his own town" (i.e. his "home" and origin) in the heaven of the creator god. This is very hardly a coincidence.

[DCHindley]

Everyone has a "home town" that is, where they currently live or often grew up, but where you live, or grew up, does not have to be where you were born.

I was "born" in Willoughby, Ohio, USA (well, at a hospital in Euclid, Ohio), but grew up in both Willoughby (8 yrs) and Euclid (8 yrs), and have also resided in Westerville, Ohio (6 mos), Mentor, Ohio (3 yrs), Avon Lake, Ohio (a couple years), Huntington, Indiana (1 yr, if you count college), Columbus, Ohio (1 yr, graduated college), Los Angeles, California, USA (1 yr, wrecked car & lost my job), Lakewood, Ohio (1 year), Belle Isle, Florida, USA (south of Orlando, 1 yr), Merritt Island, Florida (of space shuttle fame, and seen several NASA launches but from 10 miles away because Merritt Island is pretty damn big, 1 yr), Cape Canaveral, Florida (home of Saturn 5 rocket launches of spy satellites, very interesting to see up close at night to keep "commies" from seeing what the payload is, 2 yrs), North Ridgeville, Ohio (3 mos, until my girlfriend kicked me out), Broadview Heights, Ohio (sold or leased cars, 1-2 yrs), Solon, Ohio (sold cars, 1-2 yrs), Willoughby, Ohio (2nd time, insurance services field rep, 1 yr), Garfield Heights, Ohio (married now, bungalow, various insurance company field auditor positions including with 2 major carriers, 20 yrs!), Newton Falls, Ohio (finally a nice house, workin' fo' the state guv'mint as an insurance auditor, 11 yrs).

So, where is/was my "hometown?" Where I was born? Where I grew up? Where I got married? Where I live now? The answer is: "All of them!" Why should Jesus be any different?

If I said "I was born in a crossfire hurricane," because I identify in some way with the Rolling Stones' song "Jumpin' Jack Flash," would that be my "hometown?"

But it's all right now, in fact, it's a gas!

DCH

[Giuseppe]

Everyone has a "home town" that is, where they currently live or often grew up, but where you live, or grew up, does not have to be where you were born.

Obviously this is a literalist reading of ''Capernaum'' as ''his own town''.

But please note the following situation:

1) The fact that the people believed that Jesus was returned to ''Capernaum'' (where he went to the first time in the incipit of the Gospel) and that ''therefore'' (note the false implication) he was from ''Capernaum'' is a coincidence.


2) the fact that ''Capernaum'' allegorizes the heaven of the demiurge for the Gnostic Heracleon is a coincidence.

3) but the occurrence of both 1 and 2 is not more a coincidence.

[DCHindley]

G,

I think you are making far more of these two things than can really be warranted.

Point #1 (that people called Capernaum Jesus' "hometown") is just an element in a in a literary source.

Point #2 (that the Gnostic Heracleon thought that Capernaum was "code" for the heavens of the Demiurge (a creator-god unaware of the higher god) is a later interpretation of point #1. Heracleon, I am sure, saw many passages in the NT, Gospels and Pauline letters, suitable for interpretation by means of allegory. This is a second order interpretation, as the proto-orthodox had themselves used allegory to re-interpret passages in the Judean scriptures (Hebrew for the earliest royal messianists, and the Greek Lxx translation of same for the later "Christians" as we have come to know them) to produce point #1, among the many others folks like Heracleon saw as indications of the redeemer myth.

Point #3 is not correct. Points #1 & #2 can not be "coincidental" in themselves, but only in relation to one another, if that is how one wants to interpret these two points. Same goes for your interpretation that they are not coincidental. You have become Heracleon in the way you are thinking.

I prefer to attempt to understand the rationalization process by which interpretation takes place. If Leon Festinger's theory of 'cognitive dissonance" is correct, folks either try to reduce the dissonance they perceive by means of 1) reduction of the importance of the elements that produce the dissonance (circling the wagons to create a defensive position or "bubble," or attacking the elements to do away with them), or 2) synthesize them into their interpretive framework for understanding how the world works.

The latter is clearly what early Christians ended up doing with passages considered part of sacred literature (predicting a royal end-times leader who would usher in a millennial age of Judean dominance and prosperity), which came to clash with the real-world events that overtook them (the Judean war, the crushing defeat of the rebels and the subsequent loss of confidence that a Judean state could be imposed), producing a "spiritual kingdom" to be imposed by God, but not through war and military might, to be led by an already resurrected Jesus waiting in heaven at God's side to come back to take ceremonial command. Of course, he (as Jesus) was also believed to have instituted a new spiritual means of "sin removal" by his vicarious sacrifice, replacing the need for bloody temple sacrifices on Yom Kippur (the annual Day of Atonement practiced by the Judeans until their temple was destroyed).

Heracleon also did this, but created a new interpretation that something more was going on, that the national God worshipped by Jews and the creator God worshipped by Christians, was actually a secondary god and not the supreme one. In fact, the created world was a mistake and a poor copy of divine models at that, and that the true Supreme God was moved to take corrective action, sending Christ (an anointed - or officially sanctioned - representative) from the Supreme God's realm of existence to redeem the souls imprisoned in the material world who were capable of being reunited with the realm of the Supreme God. So, Jesus was much more than simply a redeemer sanctioned by the creator god. Now what events overcame Heracleon's circles to produce this new synthesis probably have to do with Egyptian politics, history and philosophy of which I am not fully familiar.

Why should we treat the third order interpretations of Heracleon as somehow implied by the earlier authors of second order interpretations in the NT books? Are you suggesting that the NT was in fact a production of Heracleon's time (that is, later than Christian tradition places them)?

Successive synthetic rationalizations by different parties over time seems to be more like the real world than books composed in the 2nd century CE that were artificially set in the 1st century, before the Judean rebellion, which suddenly becomes a "hit" with everybody because it was imposed from above (Gnostic illuminati, Constantine, etc.)?

Seems conspiratorial, not rational.

Gotta go measure appliances (our refrigerator died and the stove is already a piece of junk) for replacement. At least $1,500 going down the drain! DCH

[Giuseppe]

The point is that not only Heracleon said that Capernaum allegorizes the heaven of the demiurgical archons etc.

Tertullian reported explicitly that Marcion interpreted the his same Gospel incipit (that Jesus descended from heaven to Capernaum etc) to mean that Jesus descended from the heaven of his father to the heaven of the demiurge, therefore implying (my personal inference) that Capernaum has the same meaning described by the later Heracleon: it is the heaven of the demiurge, the our heaven.

So it cannot be a coincidence the fact that the people (who adore the Demiurge and expect his Messiah) see Jesus return to Capernaum and infer (wrongly) that Jesus comes from Capernaum (i.e. the heaven of the demiurge).

I see a lot of irony in that, the same irony I would see in the episode of Caesarea Philippi, if the answer of Peter was been: "the people say that you are the Christ (of the demiurge)".

[Stuart]

Giuseppe,

Just a small note: Luke 10:12-15 was probably not in Marcion's Gospel. Zahn omits it in his reconstruction and I concur. Verses 10:16 follows naturally verses 10:3-11, with the digression of the doom of the cities Capernaum, Tyre and Sidon an intrusion. These verses likely came originally from Matthew 11:21-23a (and later expanded upon in Matthew) and found their way into Luke by revision. Tertullian (AM 4.24.7-8) comments on verse 10:11 and then 10:16 without pause, indicating they were connected without the digression in the text before him.

Yet the commentary upon Capernaum as being on high, does fit Matthew's general anti-Marcionite tone and intention. You could be onto something about Capernaum being the entry point from on high and descended into (AM 4.7.1-2). The Nazareth commentary by Tertullian (AM 4.8.1-4) may not reflect the passage being in the Marcionite Gospel, as he quotes nothing, but mere argument about how the creator's Christ is Nazarene and comparing that passage to the Capernaum one in Marcion's Gospel - so Nazareth might have not appeared in Marcion's Gospel.

I have to give this idea some thought. Hum.

[Giuseppe]

Yet the commentary upon Capernaum as being on high, does fit Matthew's general anti-Marcionite tone and intention. You could be onto something about Capernaum being the entry point from on high and descended into (AM 4.7.1-2).

Matthew would have condemned the pride of Capernaum as "entry point" between heaven and earth given to it by a marcionite Jesus descending just there, in the "village of the comforter".

[Ben C. Smith]

You could be onto something about Capernaum being the entry point from on high and descended into (AM 4.7.1-2).

Out of curiosity, what do you make of the two texts which seem to locate Jesus' Marcionite descent in Judea instead of in Galilee?

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.2: Succedens autem ei Marcion Ponticus, adampliavit doctrinam, impudorate blasphemans eum, qui a lege et prophetis annuntiatus est Deus ; malorum factorem et bellorum concupiscentem et inconstantem quoque sententia et contrarium sibi ipsum dicens. Iesum autem ab eo Patre, qui est super mundi fabricatorem Deum, venientem in Iudaeam temporibus Pontii Pilati praesidis, qui fuit procurator Tiberii Caesaris, in hominis forma manifestatum his, qui in Iudaea erant, dissolventem prophetas et legem et omnia opera eius Dei, qui mundum fecit, quem et Cosmocratorem dicit. Et super haec id quod est secundum Lucam evangelium circumcidens et omnia, quae sunt de generatione Domini conscripta auferens, et de doctrina sermonum Domini multa auferens, in quibus manifestissime conditorem huius universitatis suum Patrem confitens Dominus conscriptus est; semetipsum esse veraciorem, quam sunt hi, qui evangelium tradiderunt, apostoli, suasit discipulis suis; sed particulam Evangelii tradens eis. Similiter autem et apostoli Pauli epistolas abscidit, auferens quaecunque manifeste dicta sunt ab Apostolo de eo Deo qui mundum fecit, quoniam hic Pater Domini nostri Iesu Christi, et quaecunque ex propheticis memorans Apostolus docuit praenunciantibus adventum Domini. / Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord.

Excerpt from Origen, On the Epistle to Titus, quoted by Pamphilus in his Apology for Origen: ...vel secundum eos qui Deum quidem eum fatentur, non tamen assumpsisse animam corpusque terrenum; qui sub specie quasi amplioris gloriae Iesu Domino deferendae, omnia quae ab eo gesta sunt, visa geri magis, quam vere gesta esse testantur: quique neque de virgine natum fatentur, sed triginta annorum virum eum apparuisse in Iudaea. / Or a heretic may agree with those who indeed confess that he is God, but not that he assumed humanity, that is, a soul and earthly body. These heretics, under the pretext of ascribing greater glory to Jesus the Lord, claim that all his actions seemed to have been done rather than were truly done. Moreover, they do not acknowledge that he was born of a virgin, but say that he appeared in Judea as a thirty-year-old man.

Is this just a general clumsiness about geographical boundaries? Or what?

[Secret Alias]

Harnack mentions another fragment which supports the idea that the Marcionite gospel begins with a descent to Judea.