The Debates Over the Proper Text of the Gospel Reflect Concerns of the Pagan Elite

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Secret Alias
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The Debates Over the Proper Text of the Gospel Reflect Concerns of the Pagan Elite

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The literary works, (a) Marcion worked text-critically. He purified the
“genuine” text of the Gospel and the Pauline letters from Judaizing
“interpolations.” To venture upon such a text-critical endeavor presup¬
poses education. One who completed the school of the grammarian had
sufficient education for this. When the teacher in the grammar school
analyzed the classical texts, the copies which the students held in their
hands had first of all to be brought into agreement with each other.
“Corrections” of the text were made before any commentary and ex¬
egesis. The text was purged of mistakes. 73 Formally, Marcion’s text
restoration consists primarily of deletions; additions are rare. Changes
occasionally betray linguistic skill: one word is replaced by another in
which the letters are similar (e.g., ccyopdoavxo^ — aya7tf|aavTOQ Gal
2:20). Active and passive pronouns and particles are interchanged in
order to purge the text of alleged “Judaizing adulterations.” 74 Marcion
presumably gained the knowledge for such finesse in the grammarian’s
school. However, that he at some time corrected the text on stylistic
or aesthetic grounds, as occasionally occurred 75 in the grammarians’
schools, is not demonstrable. 76 Marcion’s changes were motivated by
dogma and as such original. They deviated from the ethos of grammar.

This ethos is revealed in the ancient critique of Zenodotus, which
accused the old master of text criticism from Alexandria of arbitrary
changes on false internal grounds and according to subjective opinion. 77
If a decision according to aesthetics and individual stylistic taste was de¬
spised by conscientious grammarians, 78 although it was often practiced,
even more despised was the conscious effort to purify texts according
to an “ideological” and dogmatic point of view. Such was Marcion’s
unabashed method. And he even was not consistent in how he himself
applied it. 79

We can conclude that Marcion’s education originates from the time
he was a seventeen-year-old student in the school of a grammarian. His
procedure, however, is “ungrammatical.” [Lampe p. 252 - 53]
“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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