Antithesis (Clean thread)

[Secret Alias]

8) in the Law it says, "cloak for a cloak"
But the good Lord says, "If anyone should take your cloak, give him your tunic also"

Not a commandment in the Pentateuch or anywhere in the OT https://books.google.com/books?id=KI6Bu ... ta&f=false The gospel cited according to Roth is Matthean not Lukan. It is again unlikely that Marcion would cite the Law inaccurately.

[Secret Alias]

9) The prophet of the god of Creation records, "My bow is bent, and my arrows are sharpened."
But the Apostle says, "Put on the armor of God, that you may be able to extinguish the fiery darts of the wicked one."

Not even sure what the purpose of this argument is. It isn't really an antithesis. Not from the Pentateuch. Not an antithesis as outlined in Book 4.

[Secret Alias]

10) The God of Creation, after Isaac became partially blind, did not restore his sight,
but our Lord, because he is good, opened the eyes of many blind.

Again not an antithesis as outlined in Book 4. I mean it could be argued that Moses's skin became luminous from meeting his god and no one had magic skin from meeting Jesus. Not sure these sorts of arguments carry much weight or more importantly that they were the kind of argument which Marcion would have made in the Antitheses - assuming he wrote such a work.

[Secret Alias]

11) The God of Creation was known to Adam and his contemporaries – this clear from their Scriptures
But the Father of Christ is unknown, for our Lord says, “No one knows the Father, except the Son, neither does anyone know the son, except the Father.“

But this is most perplexing. One would have expected a juxtaposition between the God of the Jews and Jesus judging by 1 - 10. Now suddenly we are comparing Yahweh with God the Father. This speaks to the fact that the antitheses were originally contextualized in the two powers controversies.

[Stuart]

- you don't find it odd that the passage in question isn't a citation from the Pentateuch? Would Marcion really have been so sloppy to cite a loose inaccurate passage from the Books of Moses and juxtapose against it a verbatim passage from the gospel? Not sure such sloppiness allows for this to be verbatim citation from a book by Marcion. Quicker something heretics or Marcionites were heard to have said.

You are making a few false assumptions here, and have ignored my preamble to ask the above questions.

1) paraphrase, not quotations. This is the form of the Antithesis. It is a series of shorthand notes developed for polemic debate and for making points. Think of it as more crib notes, or marginal notes we sometimes find in manuscripts.

2) The pairs were very brief crib notes. Look at how the Gospel of Thomas has some strange quotes in it, some stuff you don't find anywhere else. Yet it was supposedly a compilation of NT quotes. The only purpose was to give backbone to arguments. Paraphrase and briefness were the key. They even paraphrased the verses from Luke/Marcion and Paul to be more compact (as well as changing voice from 1st to 3rd person). Why would the OT be any different?

Another thing consider and compare with is the strange concept in 1 Corinthians 10:1-12 where Christ is the spiritual Rock that dispenses Mana. Where the heck did that come from? It is an extremely loose retelling of the desert wandering. Precision was obviously not the aim here or with the antithesis.

3) Why do you presume any of the antithesis was written by Marcion [a]? There are elements even in the dozen pairs I gave that are rather late, almost certainly a full generation, even more after the eruption (he'd have been very old). It seems unlikely that the debate was his game, and so this likely fell on others in the school.

4) The Marcionites rejected the LXX, so it seems unlikely they would have propagated copies of it or purchased them for their schools/monasteries. So they were probably much rarer than those held by proto-Orthodox and other sects in their schools. So like the Muslims to come later, their knowledge was likely to be somewhat general and vague hearsay, rather than specific quote based. If it wasn't in some midrash they saved, they may well have lost it. OT exegesis was probably something they lost much quicker than their competitors.

Notes:
[a] perhaps I should say "the founder", since Marcion, Paul, Matthew, Irenaues, Pappias, Tertullian, et al, are legends and monikers. But in general when I give a name I mean it in the sense of the one who took the role traditionally assigned to the moniker and legend. (Swapping legends seems utterly pointless)

[Stuart]

11) The God of Creation was known to Adam and his contemporaries – this clear from their Scriptures
But the Father of Christ is unknown, for our Lord says, “No one knows the Father, except the Son, neither does anyone know the son, except the Father.“

But this is most perplexing. One would have expected a juxtaposition between the God of the Jews and Jesus judging by 1 - 10. Now suddenly we are comparing Yahweh with God the Father. This speaks to the fact that the antitheses were originally contextualized in the two powers controversies.

I'm not convinced my recreation of this one is as accurate. I state so at the top.

This is an example of a late 2nd century (or early 3rd) Antithesis bullet developed from polemic. It shows a distinct development in the debate. We are now rather far from the original eruption and the conditions of that time, and debating a more fixed argument between sects.

[Secret Alias]

12) in the Law it says, "Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce,"
But the good Lord says, "every one who divorces his wife, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

This (12) and (5) and (8) argue for the antitheses being derived from or identical with the gospel (of Matthew) antitheses. They are the only one's which fit the MO as outlined in Book 4 - i.e. a juxtaposition between the gospel and the Law. As such I am still very convinced that the antitheses are the Matthean antitheses which have now been removed from both Luke and the gospel of Matthew.

It should be noted that Heschel pointed to this saying as arguing on behalf of the rabbinic reports of those who argued that only the ten commandments were from heaven.

[Secret Alias]

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.

[Stuart]

Stephen,

I know you have a hard time with this concept. But the Marcionite Paul was not all written when the sect erupted with the Gospel. At least two of the books were written later. And at least one after an early version of Matthew was released. The Antithesis was a document that developed to counter opposition. I would hazard to guess it developed a full generation after the eruption and continued to add material fro a century. So roughly 160-260 AD.

It is not a fixed document, and it was not written by a single person at a single time, for a single purpose.

[Secret Alias]

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.