Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Giuseppe »

If the marcionite dualism is a chimera, then also the manichean dualism has to be a chimera, also the Cathar dualism has to be a chimera. Simply, if the marcionite dualism is a chimera, then the dualism - and precisely a dualism where the evil god is the god of the Jews - has to be a chimera in any occurrence of it. Because what Secret Alias is saying is that there can't be a "true" religion or a "true" spirituality where Satan is the god of the Jews.

So who recognizes that the Cathars hated the OT god is only following an anti-Catholic agenda, according to Secret Alias's logic derived to the his extreme conclusions.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Secret Alias »

But that's once again a bad argument - it reminds me of the 'everyone's a whore except your mother and your sister' concept that was fashionable for two millennia. Women and men aren't monolithic concepts. Their are many kinds of women and many kinds of men just as there are many kinds of Jews and Christians. The facts are that you 'like' - for whatever reason - the reports of the Church Fathers which characterize the Marcionites as anti-Jewish. That doesn't necessarily mean you are anti-Semitic. It just means you 'like' it.

The problem with you and Detering and others is that you aren't strictly 'accepting' what the Church Fathers say about everything in early Christianity. You cherry pick details - accepting this about Marcion but not the claim that Marcion falsified Luke or the dating of Marcion, early Christianity. It seems - at least to me - that what you accept and what you reject in the early Church Fathers is governed by your agenda. It seems irrational to me to assume that the Church Fathers were thoroughly dishonest except when they describe a movement which is/was hostile to Judaism.

You have consistently argued for a proto-Christianity which was free from Jewish origins. In that sense it is not surprising that you choose to embrace Marcion as described in the Church Fathers. Nevertheless that portrait isn't as straightforward as you would like. Vinzent for one has found enough material to write a monograph on Marcion the Jew. But where your position becomes ludicrous is that you haven't thought sufficiently about WHY the Church Fathers present Marcion in this manner.

The purpose of the Church Fathers was to discredit Marcion. Throughout AM for instance every effort is made to present Marcion as being inconsistent with respect to his claim about Jesus or Christ and his/their relationship with Judaism. Why would this argument have been estimated to be a successful argument if Christianity began as a religion wholly outside of Judaism?

Indeed it has to be acknowledged (by a rational personal not necessarily you) that Tertullian's audience assumes that Christianity is a development from Judaism. If you accept my thesis that the text as it stands now dates to the late second century this means that in the late second century the influence of Judaism within Christianity was so great that it was taken for granted that Christianity wasn't just a 'Jewish sect' but the true Israel. This means that even if you suppose that Marcion lived in the middle of the second century - again taking the claims of the Patristic writers at face value - this effectively pens Marcion into a corner.

If Christianity and AM's Christian audience took for granted that Christianity was the 'true Israel' then it is hard to argue that just a generation or so earlier Marcion could have represented anything resembling an 'orthodoxy' and that in his day another author could have looked out over the same vista and assumed that Marcion's 'wholly devoid of Jewish influence' Christianity was in any way ever 'an orthodoxy.' It was because Judaism was so self-evidently a part of Christianity at the time of the composition of AM that the author chooses to EXAGGERATE the radicalism of Marcion. He is trying to discredit Marcion by making it seem as Marcion was a radical dualist who opposed Judaism and the Jewish god rather than being a faithful reporter of the facts.

Where I think the break from reality took place was in the absolute monarchianism of the author. This is where we trip up too because we have been pre-conditioned by the Church to see the Jews as monotheistic allowing for a stark dualism between 'the Christian god (Jesus) and the Jewish god (Yahweh). One god is 'mean' and the other god is 'nice.' But if you accept the preponderance of evidence from the first century that Jews willing embraced two gods - one 'mean' and the other 'nice' - the dualism of Marcion breaks down. It's not that Marcion 'hated' the god of the Jews for being 'mean' but rather he said the god of the Jews was mean and posited another god who was 'nice' which offended the monarchian sensibilities of the author of AM. The fact that you don't like Jews or don't like the Jewish god or the influence that Judaism had on early Christianity should be immaterial to the acknowledgement of what AM actually says and why it says it. But it is hard for people to think and act with objective truth as a standard. Freedom is attainable only by the few.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
“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: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Secret Alias »

Again you can't simply point to the AM or Epiphanius and say 'it says THIS.' The texts say a lot of things. The fact that you only accept certain things from the sources but ignore others is problematic IMHO.
“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: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Secret Alias »

where Satan is the god of the Jews.
This is not a Marcionite position or if it appears in the sources it ALWAYS appears alongside a contradictory report that the Jewish god was not evil but just. Hegemonius mentions a pre-history to Manichaeanism which runs through a certain Scythianus. Oddly enough the AM also begins with Marcion's Scythian roots. I don't know why this situation exists but it appears as if an early heresy associated with 'Scyths' which promulgated a radical form of dualism is referenced by the sources. I don't know what we should make of this. But it seems that this radical form of Christianity was confounded with Marcionism at a relatively early date. Marcionism did not hold that the demiurge was evil but rather just. I see this as an extension of the dualism of Philo - i.e. 'two powers in heaven' - rather than Persian dualism.
“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: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Giuseppe »

You have consistently argued for a proto-Christianity which was free from Jewish origins.
not precisely. Couchoud argued that the Pillars, Paul and Hebrews preceded the 70 CE. They served the god of the Jews and a mythical Jesus. The anti-Jewish dualist Marcion was simply the first evangelist who euhemerized this mythical Jesus on the earth. So the Christ Myth is 100% jewish. But the Jesus Legend is "free from Jewish origins" (since the inventor of the terrestrial Jesus was a gentile from Sinope and Marcion was his name).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Giuseppe »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:33 am
where Satan is the god of the Jews.
This is not a Marcionite position or if it appears in the sources it ALWAYS appears alongside a contradictory report that the Jewish god was not evil but just.
Even so, you can't explain the entire Gnosticism "thing" around Marcion: Basilides called the god of the Jews "god of war". So even if you are correct about Marcion being "moderate" about the his view of the Jewish god (being just but not evil), you have still to explain why some Gnostic Christians hated so early in the second century the god of the Jews.

Why did the Fathers distinguish a moderate "not-Gnostic" Marcion from more radical Gnostics who hated YHWH as Satan? According to Price, in this sense even our Marcion was on the way, despite his proclaimed dualism, of the growing Catholicism: a compromise was necessary.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Secret Alias
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Secret Alias »

Basilides called the god of the Jews "god of war"
I think it is fair to say that the Romans loved war. Not sure what you are trying to argue again
“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
lsayre
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by lsayre »

In the 'Dialogues of Adamantius', Megethius (the Marcionite) states that there are three powers. The good, the just, and the evil. These would presumably correlate with the Father, the Demiurge (God of the Jews), and the Devil.
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DCHindley
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by DCHindley »

lsayre wrote: Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:30 pmIn the 'Dialogues of Adamantius', Megethius (the Marcionite) states that there are three powers. The good, the just, and the evil. These would presumably correlate with the Father, the Demiurge (God of the Jews), and the Devil.
If Marcion saw the matter as a philosophical issue (like Plato did) these three entities would be Marcion's "principals" (beings that are top shelf gods):
1) The Good (the God preached by Jesus),
2) the Just (the God who gave the Law and chose Judeans for his special people), and
3) Matter (originally neutral, but which is sometimes later on called Evil).

In Platonism, the principals are:
1) The One, from which all governing entities are emitted.
2) The Creator (Craftsman), always there and does not do anything other than fashion useful things using pre-existing/eternal patterns.
3) Matter (neutral unformed matter, without any inherently evil attributes), which forms the raw material out of which all physical things are fashioned by the Craftsman.

DCH
Secret Alias
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Re: Antithesis: What do we know of Marcion's 'Antithesis'?

Post by Secret Alias »

... all of which questions the anti -Jewish claims about Marcion. Clement basically identifies Marcion as a Christian Platonist. Why is he wrong? Where is the compelling evidence to the contrary?
“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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