Justin, Marcion, Matthew's Antitheses and Against Marcion

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Secret Alias
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Justin, Marcion, Matthew's Antitheses and Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

I didn't want to continue to clog up the other thread so I started a new thread over here. Andrew and I have surmised that Justin is the likely author of the original 'proto-text' of Book 4 of Against Marcion. The reasons for this are manifold. But the idea that with respect to AM Tertullian has inherited a work which was 'initiated' by Justin and altered as it passed hands on its way to Tertullian has several points in its favor. Many have suggested that the third book of Marcion likely originated with Justin - Skarsune being the most recent - https://books.google.com/books?id=-G_ox ... in&f=false. Another line of argument is the surprising claim of an official census preserved in Rome which references Jesus's existence - posting.php?mode=quote&f=3&p=10301 Another line of argument would be the common - and ultimately perplexing - interest in the Acts of Pilate - https://books.google.com/books?id=01A7A ... ny&f=false. Another shared anomalous understanding is both men claiming the Magi were from Arabia - https://books.google.com/books?id=R25AA ... ny&f=false Indeed as I have noted many times elsewhere the reference in Justin betrays an editorial 'correction' at the time of Irenaeus. Craig Evans points out, there exists a similar tradition in the aforementioned text of Tertullian ascribed originally to Irenaeus. “Damascus was reckoned to Arabia until it was brought into Coele Syria, on the division of Syria by Septimius Severus between 193 and 198 (Dio Cassius 53.12): Justin, dial. 78, seems to have previous knowledge of this rearrangement unless the observation is a later addition.”

What I have always suggested is that 'things written in the middle of the second century' (Justin) were 're-calibrated' at the end of the second century (Irenaeus) and then that orthodox text was slightly 'polished' again and translated in Latin by Tertullian. The clearest and least controversial example can be traced with respect to Tertullian's Against the Valentinians. This text is a Latin reshaping and translation of an original portion of Irenaeus's Against Heresies Book One a work which originally found inspiration and origin in Justin's Syntagma against the heresies. A footprint of a possible association of Against Marcion with Justin can be found in the fact that Irenaeus references such a text in Against Heresies. It is there also where Irenaeus in another section makes reference to his intention to write a treatise against Marcion which generally resembles Tertullian's end product. Perhaps most interesting of all Tertullian prefaces Against Marcion with the acknowledgement that the 'final text' he is releasing began as an orthodox text but fell into the hands of an apostate and was re-worked again by himself in order to purge it of 'errors.' This introduction may have been written by Tertullian or Irenaeus -at least in theory.

Of course Tertullian loved and admired both Justin and Irenaeus and says so much in one of his works. It would not surprising that Tertullian had access to works of both men and effectively reshaped those originals and passed them off as his own. In this thread. I have added a new wrinkle to that understanding by arguing that 'the antitheses' mentioned throughout the early parts of the work are the Matthean antitheses. In order for that meta-argument to make any sense we would have to suppose that Justin's gospel did not have Matthew 5:17 - 45 or at least the core 'antithetical parts' of that argument or at least a version of the commonly held material in a form which is noncontradictorial.

This is paralleled but not identical with Luke's re-calibration of the same material. For instance Bellinzoni's analysis of the material from Justin leads him "to the conclusion that Justin seems to have used ... a carefully composed gospel harmony of elements from Matthew, Mark, and Luke." Scholars have long noticed that Justin's gospel is a harmonized text - i.e. one which appears (at least from the perspective of an assumption of priority of the canonical four) to fuse together bits of Matthew and Luke. While there are innumerable allusions to Matthew 5/Luke 6 fused together in Justin, the antithetical portions of Matthew 5 are never cited.

Yet what is perhaps even more telling about an underlying relationship between Justin and Against Marcion is the fact that we find very similar Matthew/Luke 'coupled' references in both sources which lie at the edges of the Matthean antitheses. I demonstrated in the other thread that AM perplexingly 'draws a line in the sand' with Marcion's 'excision' of Matthew 5:17 from his gospel. This scripture introduces the antitheses in Matthew. While Justin does not cite Matthew 5:17 he does make a harmonized reference to the 'other end' of the antitheses section of Matthew - i.e. Matthew 5:45b/Luke 6:36 - a cluster which is paralleled in AM:
And in addition to all this we pray for you, that Christ may have mercy upon you. For He taught us to pray for our enemies also, saying, 'Love your enemies; be kind and merciful, as your heavenly Father is.' For we see that the Almighty God is kind and merciful, causing His sun to rise on the unthankful and on the righteous, and sending rain on the holy and on the wicked; all of whom He has taught us He will judge. [Dial 96]

He it is who now for a second time gives me the name of son, while he brings me to birth not this time as soul but as spirit. Because, he continues, he is kind unto the unthankful and evil. Well done, Marcion. Cleverly enough have you deprived him of rain and sunshine, that he might not be taken for the Creator. Yet who is this kind one (= original GK Chrestos?), who has never been heard of until now? How could he be kind when from him had proceeded no good gifts of this sort of kindness with which <he had acted> who gave us the loan of sunshine and showers without expectation of any return from the human race? This the Creator has done, who in return for all his liberality in works of nature even until now bears with men while they pay their debt of thanksgiving more readily to idols than to himself. Truly kind is he, even with spiritual benefits: for the judgements of the Lord are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.e He therefore who has here put the ungrateful to rebuke, is he who had the right to find them grateful, and his sunshine and showers you too, Marcion, have enjoyed without gratitude. Your god however had no call to complain of the ungrateful, as he had made no provision for having them grateful. Again when he teaches of mercy and pity he says, Be ye merciful, even as your Father has had mercy upon you.[AM 17]
The parallel isn't just a confirmation of the likelihood that AM has some original relationship to Justin - i.e. the harmonized 'coupling' or 'interest' in Matthew 5:45b and Luke 6:36 even where it is peculiar in a text (i.e. AM) which is devoted to the argument that Marcion solely corrupted Luke to make his gospel. There is a clear intimation in AM 17 that Marcion deleted or altered something in the cited scripture from Matthew.

Moreover it is worth noting that in AM 17 there seems to be an awareness of an underlying Greek terminology in the shared material which isn't evidenced in our surviving gospels - i.e. χρηστός. The Marcionite inscription from Deir Ali makes clear that χρηστός was the name of the unknown Marcionite god. We should pay careful notice that an understanding in the Latin text of AM seems to go back to this very understanding in the section - "Yet who is this kind one , who has never been heard of until now? How could he be kind when from him had proceeded no good gifts of this sort of kindness with which <he had acted> who gave us the loan of sunshine and showers without expectation of any return from the human race?" The manner in which this references isn't explain or developed in any way to make a Latin audience understand what is being said against Marcion suggests that Tertullian simply copied it out of a Greek original.

In other words, the context suggests that the Marcionite gospel had a harmonzed version of Matthew 5:45b/Luke 6:36 where the term χρηστός appeared and was used by the Marcionites to suggest χρηστός was an epithet of the god unknown to the Jews or at least Jews of the second century. Given that χρηστός and χριστός were homonemes in contemporary Greek and were represented in Christian texts with the same nomen sacrum - i.e. χς - one can see a parallel understanding of an underlying and shared harmonized text in Justin where we read in Dial. that χς may have mercy upon you prefacing the same scriptural 'cluster.' This understanding opens the door to an earlier version of AM written by Justin where orthodox and heretical churches were essentially arguing and accusing one another of manipulating a shared harmonized gospel.

Indeed in a second perplexing allusion to Matthew 5:45b in AM we can see how the author of the proto-text of AM essentially drew a line in the sand as it were at the fringes of the 'Matthean antitheses.' Although on the surface at least we should expect that material in chapter 36 of AM would have little to do with the 'Matthean antitheses' given the fact that in our canonical gospels the Question of the Rich Man/Youth appears near the end of the gospel and the Antitheses near the beginning we shouldn't be so certain that the early harmonies followed our canonical order of narratives. Indeed it is here in a pericope which very much has an 'antithetical context' - i.e. Jesus pontificating on the commandments - that we have clear references to both 'fringes' of the Matthean antitheses (i.e. Matthew 5:17 viz. 'the introduction' and Matthew 5:45b 'the conclusion'):
It is another matter if as a god supremely good, and of his own nature kind, he does not wish even to be worshipped. Who, he asks, is supremely good, except one, that is God? Not as though he has indicated by this that one out of two gods is supremely good, but that there is one only supremely good God, who is for this reason the one supremely good because he is the only God. And indeed he is supremely good,
sending rain upon the just and the unjust, and making his sun to rise upon the good and the bad—bearing with, and feeding, and helping even Marcionites.(Mt 545b) So then when he is asked by that certain man, Good Teacher, what shall I do to obtain possession of eternal life?, he inquired whether he knew—which means, was keeping—the Creator's commandments, in such form as to testify that by the Creator's commandments eternal life is obtained: and when that man replied, in respect of the chief of them, that he had kept them from his youth up, he got the answer, One thing thou lackest; sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. Come now, Marcion, and all you companions in the misery and sharers in the offensiveness of that heretic, what will you be bold enough to say? Did Christ here rescind those former commandments, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother? Or is it that he both retained these and added what was lacking? And yet, even this commandment of distributing to the poor is spread about everywhere in the law and the prophets, so that that boastful keeper of the commandments was convicted of having money in much higher esteem. So then this also in the gospel remains valid, I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil.[Matthew 5:17] At the same time also he relieved of doubt those other questions, by making it clear that the name of God, and of supremely good, belongs to one only, and that eternal life and treasure in heaven, and himself besides, pertain to that one, whose commandments, by adding what was lacking, he both conserved and enriched. So he is to be recognized as in agreement with Micah, in this passage where he says, Hath he then shewed thee, O man, what is good? Or what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice, to love mercy, and to be prepared to follow the Lord thy God?c For Christ is that Man, declaring what is good[AM 36]
The point here is that - whether or not the order of the harmonized gospel resembled our canonical gospels - we have further evidence that Marcion's antitheses were in fact linked with Matthew's.
“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: Justin, Marcion, Matthew's Antitheses and Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

The conclusion that I am being drawn toward in light of all the evidence is that in some form the 'antithetical' character of material in Matthew 5:17 - 45 and the parallel 'non-contradictorial' form of this material in Luke bear some relation to the dispute regarding 'Marcion's antitheses' in a proto-AM text associated with Justin. I have to tread cautiously here as I elaborate because it is difficult for most observers to imagine a universe where the canonical gospels were not apostolic (a key argument of the Marcionites cf. De Recta in Deum Fide). It would necessarily be supposed by my understanding that rather than being sources of the early harmonies the canonical texts were 'separated' (= Evangelion Dampharshe in Syriac) from the gospels now called 'harmonies' owing to our inherited presuppositions about the canon.

This is not a radical unheard of position in the history of the study of the Christian scriptures. Clearly the Syriac terminology - developed by a community which originally preferred a 'harmony' until the fifth century when it was forcibly taken from them by authorities beholden to a Roman tradition and part of a melkite campaign against native 'regional' traditions such as this - presupposes this position. Moreover it is also alluded to in various diatribes against the Romans (preserved for instance in Marutha) where the fourfold nature of their canon was deemed reducible to their 'worldliness' (i.e. reflecting the 'fourfold nature of the cosmos.') The perceived 'radicalism' of assuming the canonical gospels were 'separated' from original 'super-gospels' is simply owing to unfamiliarity with ancient sources.

Of course Justin did not use either Matthew or Luke. He had a harmonized gospel which used bits and pieces - or 'appeared to use' (based on our inherited presuppositions - of both gospels which was non-contradictorial in nature. He was horrified to discover a parallel version of his sacred 'apostolic' text which was antithetical in character and was used to edify heretical ideas about (a) the nature of the godhead (b) the end of the Law and other 'talking points' of the Marcionites. It was assumed by Justin that Marcion took his gospel and changed the 'non-contradictorial' nature of this section of his holy book and made them 'antithetical' in order to further his pre-existent ideas. This position assumes necessarily that Justin did not know the gospel of Matthew as we have it or Matthew's 'antithetical' section.

It should be noted that when we debate or argue with someone who holds a different perspective on causality of a particular thing (let's say an argument with your spouse about who or what prompted the argument you are presently having - one of my favorites) each side can accuse the other of the very same accusation. For instance both you and your wife can accuse the other of 'speaking in an insulting or mocking tone' and come to an impasse over who 'caused' the situation . In a similar manner since Justin accuses Marcion of manipulating his own gospel (" I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion's Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is" AM 4.1) and essentially 'adding' or the antithetical character in the shared section, a parallel counter-argument necessarily must have been promulgated by the Marcionites that Justin and his church altered the pre-existent 'antithetical' character of the passage to make it more agreeable with contemporary Judaism.

The point here is that it must have been impossible to satisfy everyone in the Christian world at that time. As such both a non-contradictorial and antithetical version of the section is preserved in the canon but clearly not in its original context. We no longer possess either Justin's or Marcion's gospels. The inferred orthodox claim of course is that Marcion's gospel is roughly approximate to canonical Luke. But this is plainly contradicted by this discovery. Why does Luke preserve a non-contradictorial version of the section and Matthew - the supposed Jewish-gospel which the same orthodox sources trace back to the earliest Jewish-Christian communities - preserve an antithetical version of the same material? Clearly the canon as such was artificially created or purposely created to establish and foster ecumenism. The various gospels are not authentic representations of the communities they are said to align with but rather are faux documents aimed at the illiterate, ignorant members of those communities in order to mislead them as to what was previously (previous to invention of the four) accepted by their communities and force them to reach beyond their traditional (and traditionally hidden) gospel to other gospels in order to 'find' passages which were of central significance to their community.

In other words, if I am a Marcionite layperson or catechumen who was used to hearing appeals to the 'antitheses' as part of my weekly sermons once the leadership of my community was decapitated or estranged/banished from the community and replaced by new leaders and this new set of scriptures if I went to find 'the familiar antitheses' - having previously never seen the secret gospel of my community - I would be surprised to find Luke (allegedly the original form of 'our' gospel) actually preserved the material in a noncontradictorial form. Indeed I would be left with reaching out and moving beyond our 'apostolic' gospel (a term now denoting inferior source material) to a gospel 'written by a (full) apostle - Matthew. This 'trap' would demonstrate that in fact the 'original context' of the antitheses both began with Matthew 5:17 - a clear declaration that the material should not have been used by previous authorities to further inferences of 'another god' or the end of Judaism or separation or end of the Law and prophets and ended with Matthew 5:45 a clear pronouncement that 'our God' was the Creator (in charge of weather, and the movement of the planets and not an alien).

Of course such an individual, having grown up among the Marcionites and now forced to accept a new orthodoxy poses as the true orthodoxy wickedly corrupted and encouraged by Marcion and his successors, would have to chose between accepting this canon and proceeding in 'heresy.' Perhaps the unrepentant heresies were further forced to chose between continuing in 'illegal associations' as Celsus refers to them and facing the death penalty or fleeing to parts of the world were the original faith was allowed to flourish such as in Osroene or Armenia or some such place outside the Roman Empire. But clearly not all members of the Marcionite faith ran away or chose martyrdom. Some must have accepted - tacitly or otherwise - this new 'harmonized' faith which intended to reinforce monarchism through enforced ecumenism of the various Christian sects. Perhaps over time some were completely brought over to the idea that the orthodox faith was the true faith. Others however only pretended to embrace the new faith - a problem for which Against Heresies and other texts were written to 'solve' i.e. identify heresies by offhanded remarks made by the hypocritical.

Finally this was the purpose for the introduction of the creed. Much like the tactic used by conservatives against Bill Clinton. You take something seemingly innocuous - in this case 'what you believe' - and force every member of the Church to 'confess' that you accept a particular set of principles as 'your faith.' Just as the Republicans got Clinton to 'confess' that he did not 'know' Lewinsky the members of the Church who confessed a certain set of principles and then were subsequently 'caught' contradicting those principles the charge changes from a disagreement over interpretation to dishonesty and unfaithfulness. The former is something that is difficult to prove, the latter something easily demonstrable allowing for appropriate disciplinary action.
“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: Justin, Marcion, Matthew's Antitheses and Against Marcion

Post by Secret Alias »

One more thing. It is very interesting to consider that while AM's claim of Marcion's 'exclusive tampering with Luke' necessarily assumes a consistent excision from a pre-existent gospel, the argument that Marcion altered commonly held section in Luke 6:27 - 36/Matthew 5:17 - 45 necessarily challenges this understanding and moves us toward Marcion adding things to Luke 6:27 - 36 to make it appear 'antithetical.' You can't simply 'cut' things from Luke and end up with something like Matthew's antitheses. The author necessarily speaks of changing the gospel "by his process of interpolation" (= “Evangelium interpolando suum fecit"). The meaning of interpolo is plain:

- give a new form, shape, or appearance
- polish, furbish, dress up
- alter, falsify, insert text

These are the first words of AM 4 and contextualize how the antitheses were added. It necessarily means that the antitheses were 'added' or 'inserted' as Lightfoot notes "Interpolare ' is used loosely by Tertullian in the sense ' to corrupt or falsify - whether by omission, insertion, or alteration, e.g. adv. Mare. v. 21, ' Affectavit, opinor, etiam numerum epistularum interpolare.' https://books.google.com/books?id=OX1CA ... an&f=false

Indeed Davidson notes that Tertullian clearly uses the terminology in the sense of 'added' with respect to the anonymous epistle commonly referred to as 'to the Ephesians' in our canon:
The Muratorian fragment, enumerating the epistles, speaks of one to the Laodiceans forged in the name of Paul to favour Marcion's heresy. Much stress has been laid upon Marcion's testimony by the advocates of the encyclical theory. It is assumed that he gave the address on critical grounds ; and that Tertullian's interpolare implies the filling up of a blank space in the MS. of the episile. The exact words of the African father should not be insisted on, as he was neither accurate nor fair to opponents. All that Tertullian says is, that Marcion sometimes desired to interpolate in it the title to the Laodiceans ; the inscription, not the filling up of an empty space in the text of the first verse. Whatever was the view of Marcion, Tertullian believed that he tampered with the true title.
Clearly if the sense of the term here means 'insert something' which wasn't there before with respect to the situation with the epistles in Book 5 it likely has the same sense with respect to the gospel in Book 4. In other words, at the core section of the treatise - the context by which the author introduces Marcion's editorial methodology - it was introduced with the idea that Marcion insert the 'antithetical character' of his antitheses into his gospel. This wasn't achieved by simply 'excising things from Luke.'

To this end, the fact that what follows focuses on (alleged) 'things Marcion excised from Luke' this consistency is at odds with the opening words of the treatise. Indeed while most of the explicit allusions to Marcion's use of Matthew align with his excision of that material from - oddly - a gospel supposedly developed exclusively from Luke -the statement which initiates the entire discussion assumes an insertion. In other words, Marcion took something which the author assumed was not part of his gospel and inserted it - and indeed 'them' (they are clearly many such insertions, the 'antitheses' are plural) to make the gospel agree with his heresy. Nothing in what follows assumes that this insertion is from Matthew and if our reconstruction of Justin as the original author of a proto-AM is accepted 'the gospel of Matthew; either as a name or as a 'separate' canon gospel was not known to him. Nevertheless Justin necessarily begins his entire treatise by assuming that Marcion made this section appear 'antithetical' by inserting the antitheses into a commonly held gospel.

The fact that AM begins with one assumption and makes that the centerpiece to its worldview and then suddenly switches to a whole different understanding - i.e. one which supposes a series of 'excisions' from Luke is quite eye-opening. In the end we are left with:

1. an overarching claim of 'antitheses' being inserted into the gospel or things which help establish an antitheses between the Jewish god and the Christian god, the Law and the gospel etc.
2. this is followed by a systematic demonstration of Marcion's excision from Luke relative to the structure of AM which meticulously follows the order of Luke chapter by chapter starting midway through Luke chapter 4. With this framework established (IMHO 'reshaping' a lost original narrative which was not dictated by the shape or order of Luke) the text periodically 'dips back into' or retains the original pool of accusations regaridng Marcion's editorial tampering on behalf of a cosmic antithesis by means of literary antitheses or 'antitheticizing' or making antithetical passages which Justin regarded as noncontradictorial in the 'true gospel.'
3. periodic (and seemingly incongruous) allusions to Marcion excising things which only appear in Matthew
4. period references to Matthew in a treatise which becomes entirely defined by the priority of Luke

It would seem that these features also reinforce the idea of an original treatise developed from a gospel harmony written by Justin but which accused Marcion of both addition and deletion in order to further his theological purposes. Indeed it seems perversely dogmatic to assume that editorial manipulation could be achieved wholly through deletion. Why was such an argument made in the first place? There seems to have been rhetorical reasons for identifying Marcion as a 'cutter' - perhaps owing to some underlying association between Marcion and the ritualized practice of castration among his sect members. It doesn't make sense for anyone to assume that a literary 'polishing' could take place simply by cutting things from an original text.
“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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