Antithesis (Clean thread)

[Secret Alias]

On the 'striking parallels' between Marcion and the rabbinic exegesis of the Exodus narrative - https://books.google.com/books?id=wbO7b ... on&f=false I'm telling you, there's no 'there there' here. Marcion's exegesis can be explained as entirely Jewish. The Matthean antitheses derive from an understanding (still held among the Samaritans) that only the ten commandments came from God. The Exodus thing is quite Jewish too. That God was blind, this sort of absurd literalism would have been entertained by Ibn Ezra. I don't see a hostility with Judaism in any of this.

[Secret Alias]

And at least one after an early version of Matthew was released.

But how do you explain why Marcion 'agreed' with Matthew. His arguments (5) (8) and (12) are right out of Matthew. Marcion's antitheses are Matthew's antitheses. And why aren't they in Luke?

[Stuart]

I think you should try again with the antitheses referenced in Book 2. A stronger case can be made from that. This is garbage. Not your argument but the Dialogues of Adamantius - they are a bad source.

No your argument is garbage. (Wow third grader argument I have to counter) AM2 does not go through the Marcionite Antithesis, it is T giving his own as counter. But not as a series of sayings, rather as a typical Patristic exegesis exercise. I will grant he does address one, which I will mention in 2.17.4-5 of no man seeing God. He attempts to flip the Marcionite position. But he quotes nothing from the Marcionite antithesis, not one line.

You seem to be under the impression the Antithesis was some kind clean apology style of document. Yet you cannot even describe this document, outline it or reproduce it. You give no alternative. I guess you think it magically wrote itself.

You have talked yourself into circles here. Arguing Terullian is a poor source for years, you now flip and say he is the best source for the antithesis. Yet can cite not a single example or give resemblance of a passage from the Antithesis. You have no theory at all of the antithesis.

[Stuart]

But if you removed (11) then you are down to 11 'citations' where 3 of them are more or less directly from the Matthean antitheses. So 8 vs 3? I think when we trim them down it gets even worse than that. Why should we believe that De Recta in Deum Fide is referencing a text as you describe when it doesn't even claim to do so. These are ghosts in your own head. There is nothing in any of this regarding a book as you want to believe.

I would not remove it. I would say my reproduction of the wording is perhaps faulty.

This is an example of how you create stawman arguments. Bad logic Stephen. Incompetence

[Secret Alias]

But Adamantius doesn't even know the existence of this book. At least Tertullian refers to it by name.

[Secret Alias]

Anyway I never told my son there wasn't a Santa Claus. I won't stop you using Tertullian's reference to the existence of the Antitheses (while rejecting T's explicit reference to various Marcionite sounding antitheses) only to identify the contents of the work in Adamantius who never mentions a work called "the Antitheses." Why not? Knock yourself out.

[Secret Alias]

I think a better case can be made that this http://gnosis.org/naghamm/testruth.html is closer to the Antitheses

[Secret Alias]

Again the question at the heart of the Antitheses mentioned at the end of Book 2 and 4 and 5 of Tertullian's Against Marcion:

1. did Marcion write something which the author refers to as Antitheses?

The answer has to be of course - it makes little sense to imagine that he'd make this up from scratch. But the next question:

2. can we know what is meant by Marcion's Antitheses?

I am not so sure. There are two issues at the heart of the difficulty (and again I couldn't bring this up because of the restrictions you placed at the beginning of the thread:

a) the state in which Against Marcion is preserved as outlined in 1.1 (viz. we have a thrice copied and altered version(s) of various texts written by not one author but many translated into Latin)
b) the fact that the gospels and Paul have antithetical arguments which are preserved in very unusual ways

Since I am not allowed to discuss (a) - even though it is critical to understand the context of 'Marcion's Antitheses' - I will move on to (b). It is very strange that Matthew should preserve 3 of the 12 'antitheses' that you point to from De Recta in Deum Fide (most of the others don't really qualify as 'antitheses' as defined by Tertullian). Again if we can't discuss the orthodox preservation of older literary material I can't go down this road very far but I strongly suppose that Matthew is preserving most of the original 'Antitheses of Marcion.' In other words, Marcion wrote the gospel and the 'apostolic' (again not debating whether the name applied to one section of the canon or the canon as a whole as I hold).

It makes much more sense to me that Tertullian used an original source which had a gospel which did not have the Matthean antitheses http://sermononthemountcommentary.blogs ... 21-48.html and the bit about Moses allowing divorce but not God nor used or accepted the Pauline antitheses (1 Corinthians 15) much like Justin Martyr. In other words, as I have noted again it is the age old Jewish problem emphasized and discussed ad nauseum by Heschel (viz. the heavenly Torah versus the Torah of Moses). I see Clement of Alexandria preserving the Marcionite understanding when for instance he reduces or summarizes all ten commandments as 'thou shalt not lust' (or do not lust). 'Do not lust' already in Philo is understood to be the form of the tenth commandment and this becomes the gateway to asceticism which Marcionism epitomized (in other words, not lusting = the essence of the ten utterances from heaven).

Again Tertullian is very specific about the nature of the Antitheses. Most of the things you mention from De Recta in Deum Fide don't exactly fit that classification. I want you to try to get out of your inherited mindset and ask you to envision for a moment the scene at Mount Sinai. Moses and the Israelites see a god on top of the mountain. There is fire and smoke. And then they hear another god in heaven. Let's call the God in heaven (god 1) and the one seen on the mountain (god 2). While Jews debated whether this meant there were two powers let's move on to the other debate.

If there were two powers (which of course is obvious) the question comes down to - did the ten utterances come from god 1 or did god 2 act on his own giving these utterances to Moses. Do you see where this leads? If god 2 was a 'mediator' to use the words of the Pauline corpus then it is interesting that the tablets are broken and then replaced. It seems to suggest (i) the laws are not meant to be permanent (because they are ultimately 'broken') but also (ii) it necessarily opens the door for a second revelation from the higher power, the power in heaven = god 2. At least that's the way Christians must have read the narrative.

I know it is difficult for some to understand that Judaism isn't a monotheistic tradition. I know it is very convenient to read the dualism at the heart of the Patristic attack against Marcion nodding your head. The Jews now are monotheistic. They exclusively venerate the war god Yahweh who is cruel and jealous etc etc. But clearly this was not always the case and it is hard to believe that Marcion did not this. Once we know this it necessarily changes the context of the document at least one Church Father referred to as 'the Antitheses of Marcion.'

Who was Marcion? Did he write a gospel and the apostolic? Were the antitheses separate from these documents or contained within this documents? These are the relevant questions here.

PS One more thing. Another related question has to be - why did the Jews consolidate their religion in favor of monotheism? Was this a natural process or - as I would suggest the evidence points to - that the Imperial government effectively 'encouraged' monarchianism within all traditions including the Samaritans, Jews and Christians. In other words, was monotheism an exclusively 'Jewish thing' or was it a preference of the Imperial government for political purposes? Perhaps the tendencies for the lower classes to 'only know kurios, the god of bad men' as Philo says somewhere. Perhaps only the priests had access or recognized 'theos' or Elohim, the power of mercy and benevolence. Nevertheless the Imperial government necessarily had an indirect hand in wiping out the priestly class and with it remembrance of the second god.

[Secret Alias]

What is also curious is that Origen who's master/patron was a Marcionite often times explains the relationship between gospel and law in antithetical ways which seem to echo what Tertullian criticizes Marcion for:

And that same providence which of old gave the law, and has now given the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not wishing the Jewish state to continue longer, has destroyed their city and their temple: it has abolished the worship which was offered to God in that temple by the sacrifice of victims, and other ceremonies which He had prescribed. And as it has destroyed these things, not wishing that they should longer continue, in like manner it has extended day by day the Christian religion, so that it is now preached everywhere with boldness, and that in spite of the numerous obstacles which oppose the spread of Christ's teaching in the world. But since it was the purpose of God that the nations should receive the benefits of Christ's teaching, all the devices of men against Christians have been brought to sought; for the more that kings, and rulers, and peoples have persecuted them everywhere, the more have they increased in number and grown in strength.

Again 'Marcion' seems to be a catch-all label to understand any who interpret the relationship of the law and the gospel in an antithetical manner. But it was not just 'Marcionites' that engaged in this sort of exegesis. This antitheses wasn't limited to 'sectarians' who lived in Marcionite monasteries (the Marcionite interpretation of 'pray unceasingly' necessarily requires a monastic setting) or attended Marcionite churches. In short, I don't think that the 'antithetical' relationship between Law and gospel was specifically 'Marcionite.' It was the most sensible way of understanding that relationship. And so I am uncomfortable and hence resist 'pegging' that understanding on a mid-second century document written by an apostate from the Catholic Church.

There must have been hundreds of 'examples' of Christians developing or outlining the difference between the Law and the gospel and the Christian god and the Jewish god. The former litter the debates between Jews and Christians for at least 1400 years since the founding of Christianity. Not all of these individuals - nor even 'some' of these individuals were 'Marcionites.' We have to be very careful to grab hold of every 'antithesis' or juxtaposition or contrast or negative attribution for Judaism or Yahweh and say 'this is one of Marcion's Antitheses.' This however is exemplary of the reckless of Marcionite scholars. You say you study or revere Detering. But this is how scholars of Marcion work. They build castles made of sand on the weak unconvincing work of previous generations.

There simply is no solid evidence for the contents of Marcion's Antitheses or better yet what Tertullian means by 'Marcion's Antitheses.' You latch on to De Recta in Deum Fide - a text you are just as ready to disparage whenever convenient. All the Marcionite scholars do this because there simply is so little information about the Marcionites. The fact that it is a Marcionite uttering the disparaging comment is encouraging. But surely with the wide range of Marcionite sectarianism reported in Rhodo Marcionites were capable of creative thought. They weren't limited to dogmatically citing 'the naukleros' Marcion. He was the ship-master to a late second century audience IMHO because he epitomized the Platonic figure used in the Republic to demonstrate why rulers need to be gnostikoi or have 'gnostic' capabilities (if we connect what is written in the Republic with what is found in the Politikos). I think the underlying situation which led to Marcion being called 'the naukleros' was that in this Platonic community the entire Marcionite tradition itself as a kind of realized 'ideal republic' was looking for a leader to guide the ship of the ship-master, to navigate the rough waters of a post-Marcion environment which necessarily meant going beyond the literal word on the page handed down from their master.

The Testimony of Truth is a document which resembles what scholars have understood for the 'Marcionite Antitheses.' Read it carefully and many of the examples appear. There were doubtless many others. But just because a Marcionite is portrayed spouting 'antitheses' or contrasts or juxtapositions it is reckless to assume that every instance of this sort of behavior is a preservation of Marcion's Antitheses mentioned in Tertullian. In short I think scholars - and perhaps Tertullian - confounds original references to Marcion writing a gospel designed to be 'antithetical' to the Law with later texts like the True Testimony and things said by Megethius - i.e. developed by neo-Marcionite figures.

IN SUMMA - Marcion's antitheses were strictly speaking the gospel antitheses now 'ghettoized' in Matthew (the safest place in the canonical four). The reference was likely made originally by Justin or someone in his circle who didn't have the Matthean material preserved in stark antithetical terms. Later the terminology came to be associated with 'shit Marcionites say.'

[Stuart]

So you are saying that Matthew Sermon on the Mount was greatly expanded and built upon at a much later date than the rest of the Gospel. Or are you saying Matthew is a much later dated Gospel? But an immediate problem is the consistency of the SoM material with the rest of Matthew, in style and word choice. So that pretty much rules out the first option. That leaves you to be a very late dater of Matthew. And if you maintain Matthew's relative order, then probably Luke and John have to be very late as well.

So why, given you are a Markan priority theory advocate, were the other Gospels written after a significant time gap your theory would require? What changed in Christianity's development to require them?

Your theory implies this much at a minimum to not collapse.

Why the conspiracy to write many Patristic works that fictitiously and so consistently recast a particular sect? Why would that hold up for 200 years of writing? This gets rather crazy to think it could be kept up, especially when the church leadership had more serious fractures to deal with such as the Arian controversy and Easter debate that split the church. It just doens't make much sense.

Of course your theory is complete garbage. Based on too many false assumptions and leaps in logic to hold together. But whatever, we'll just pretend.