YHWH, not Judas, was the original betrayer

[Giuseppe]

and he said what I said, that the definition of ἐναντίος has two meanings; and that you are using the one because it's more convenient for your argument, while I'm using the other because it fits the context of Book V, chapter 61.

I am obliged to use that (the metaphorical meaning of ἐναντίος) because in the other occurrence of ἐναντίος there is also the Greek term for "accursed", emphasizing the antagonistic nature of the god known already as an "opposed" god. You need too much coincidences to claim that Celsus is talking about a different god of a different theology, despite of his use of ἐναντίος in both the cases to refer that god.

Now Book VI, chapter 51, you might have something. But again I point out the problems with Clesus: he absolutely doesn't have a full, complete understanding of these theologies--because he doesn't care

Also this is not true, that he "doesn't care". I have quoted that precise passage, among all, just because it says the exact contrary of what you are claiming: because in that precise passage Celsus claims that he cares - exclusively for polemical reasons - to point out the existence of so craziest Christians who hate YHWH and make "opposed" in an antagonistic/dualistic way YHWH to the supreme god.

--and he is talking about traditions in his day, 175 ad - 220- ad (pick your flavour). Did the Marcionites by then have a hatred for YHWH? For sake of argument, I will say yes. I won't even try to give myself wiggle room. I will say yes, all of them did. But Giuseppe, my interest isn't what later Marcionites believe. Again that's why I don't use Esnik or Ephraim. I'm not saying that they're wrong for what they know. Only that my interest is Marcion himself, and those in his time, 120 ad - 150 ad. You would be surprised how quickly traditions begin to evolve, even when the leader is alive.

Again, the onus probandi is on you to prove that Marcion, the man from Sinope, didn't hate YHWH, differently from his followers.

So I'm not disagreeing with you fully, and honestly I never have. I just think you should be more cautious and sceptical.

I am ok with your pacific intentions. But about the putting in discussion of my views, I would like to have more evidence. The problem I have with, is that a ditheistic (as opposed to a dualistic) reading of any reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel is too much identical to a Catholic/Judaizing reading of the same gospel, hence my suspicion: where is the so much exalted Catholic embarrassment for Marcion, if we assume that a Catholic embarrassment was there? And this question is raised by the same Giuseppe who is able to recover a lot of polemical disiepta membra in the Gospels pro and/or against anti-demiurgism (i.e. using the anti-demiurgism as key to decipher the Gospels).

[Joseph D. L.]

Again, the onus probandi is on you to prove that Marcion, the man from Sinope, didn't hate YHWH, differently from his followers.

I've got a headache and am coming down with something. I'm just going to address this point.

The onus is on those who are saying Marcion hated YHWH because that is the positive claim. My claim is that he was ambivalent, and didn't think one way or the other because that wasn't his goal. His writings, or rather what we call his writings, don't show any hostility towards YHWH or Judaism, in fact it uses Judaism as a bridge between the Father and Marcion. Why would he invoke Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, and not Sabazios, Zeus and Attis? Marcion saw his religion as Jewish. I don't see how that fact is controversial.

[Giuseppe]

You would need also to prove why the presumed evolution you have conceded, from ditheism to dualism, would have the man Marcion from Sinope still in the ditheistic phase and not in the next dualistic phase.

The Naassenes co-opted also Attis in their theology just as Jesus, without being neither Greeks nor Jews. So also Marcion co-opted Jesus without being a Jew, I think, even if I think he inherited Jesus from Cerdon and Satornilos, other anti-YHWH Christians.

[Joseph D. L.]

You would need also to prove why the presumed evolution you have conceded, from ditheism to dualism, would have the man Marcion from Sinope still in the ditheistic phase and not in the next dualistic phase.

I didn't concede such a thing. I don't know if an evolution from ditheism ordualism, or vice versa, can be determined.



Marcion's theology is neither dualist (good and evil equally divided) or ditheistic (two gods coexisting equally). Marcion's theology is hierarchical, meaning that YHWH is below the status of the Father. This is what Justin, the earliest witness to Marcion says. He doesn't say anything about Marcion hating YHWH, acknowledges Marcion's system still operates in the Jewish mode (YHWH is the creator, meaning Marcion granted his existence as self-evident).

Marcion is an Old Testament literalist, meaning he accepted the creation account, the genealogies, the patriarchs, the history, all of it. What he didn't accept was YHWH being the supreme god. Anything else is just presumption.

The Naassenes co-opted also Attis in their theology just as Jesus, without being neither Greeks nor Jews. So also Marcion co-opted Jesus without being a Jew, I think, even if I think he inherited Jesus from Cerdon and Satornilos, other anti-YHWH Christians.

What? The Naassenes were Jews, used Jewish texts, and Hippolytus even says they venerated James (the heavy hitter for Jewish Christianity) and Mariamne. That they used the serpent as their symbol also points to an acknowledgment of Moses as the Law giver (his staff turning into a serpent, and the brazen serpent upon a pole).

Now, I do have a theory which you will probably dismiss, but Marcion came from a region where Judaism and the Sabazios-Attis cult had become syncretized, and when Marcion is speaking of YHWH, he's speaking about YHWH-Sabaoth, another name for Sabazios. Attis, the Shepherd of Many Stars, the Logos, who died and is reborn, resurrects and rises to new life.



Sabazios, the Hand of God

Attis, the Shepherd of Many Stars, the Logos, who died and is reborn, resurrects and rises to new life.



The reborn celestial Attis

To make the point even more blatant, Attis is even called Adam in the Phyrgian Hymn used by the Naassenes, and the link is to the hermaphroditic Adam of Genesis ch. 1. Attis was likewise androgynous. So there is zero question about it. The Naassenes are Jewish-Galatian hybrids. Marcion was probably a priest of the Naassenes starting out.

The reason why you're making these errors is because you're not thinking at all like the way these people thought back then, and I'm sorry but that has a lot to do with the kind of people you read (Couchoud, Ory, even Carrier). These men might have good arguments about mythicism, but they don't understand the socioreligious dynamics that men like Marcion, Cerdo Menander, or Saturnilus (none of whom had a hatred of YHWH) lived and experienced daily. I'm sorry man but you have a completely skewed idea about how religions operated back then.

[Joseph D. L.]

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

[Giuseppe]

I see a great contradiction in your argument. For you, the Naassenes would be Jews who co-opted easily a Gentile deity (Attis) by making him allegory of the Primal Man etc, but you don't concede the existence of Gentiles who co-opted just as easily the Jewish Joshua and made him the son of a gentile god enemy of YHWH, without even knowing that "Joshua" means "YHWH saves".

Effectively, there is no reason to assume that ditheistical Jews called "YHWH-saves" one who was the son of a supreme god who is not YHWH. This ignorance of the meaning of the name is 100% expected if Marcion didn't know enough the Hebrew to realize that Jesus means "YHWH -saves".

Aggiuntive note: in this discussion we are using, I hope, "ditheism" as the view that YHWH was not an enemy of the supreme god
(and vice versa), while with "dualism" as the view that YHWH was enemy of the supreme god (and vice versa).

[Joseph D. L.]

I see a great contradiction in your argument. For you, the Naassenes would be Jews who co-opted easily a Gentile deity (Attis) by making him allegory of the Primal Man etc, but you don't concede the existence of Gentiles who co-opted just as easily the Jewish Joshua and made him the son of a gentile god enemy of YHWH, without even knowing that "Joshua" means "YHWH saves".

There is no contradiction. This is merely a consequence of your misunderstanding of the religious dynamics that existed back then.

For you religion existed as a gradient with clearly defined boarders, partitions, and walls that kept them sequestered and thus easily definable.



But religion, probably more so back then than today, existed in a state of flux, adaptability, where such simplistic reductionist thinking is not readily applicable.



So your statement is loaded, based on a false belief that there was this wall of separation between gentile and Jew. Maybe for the more orthodoxy and rabbinical, but they likely made up the minority.

After all, Jews as far back as the second century had been introduced to the cult of Dionysus, and writers like Diodorus Plutarch and Tacitus wrote that Jews still worshiped Dionysus in their day, as well as evidence that shows they conflated Horus with YHWH, and called him IAO, another name for Abraxas.

So the religious matrix is far, far more complex.

As for gentiles "co-opting" a Joshua cult and making him the son of a gentile god? No. For starters, Joshua/Jesus is a later development that took place in the Nazarene sect; and a gentile is meaningless as--as I noted above--such a distinction would not be made. Zeus and YHWH had already been conflated with one another by then.

And you would need to explain why these gentiles would attach impotence onto Jewish rites and customs, only to call them meaningless. It is far more intuitive to see this as a reaction within Jewish culture, then as someone outside influence that crept in and took over.

Effectively, there is no reason to assume that ditheistical Jews called "YHWH-saves" one who was the son of a supreme god who is not YHWH. This ignorance of the meaning of the name is 100% expected if Marcion didn't know enough the Hebrew to realize that Jesus means "YHWH -saves".

Marcion didn't call Jesus Joshua. He called him Isu. Really you're ad hocing here. Marcion may very well have known Jesus/Joshua meant Salvation comes from Jah. But again he didn't call Jesus that. As for what Isu means, it could be an abbreviation of Ἰησοῦς, ג'ושוע, or it could be a corruption of אישו. My theory is that it has something to do with Ἠέλιος, but I haven't gotten far with that. Marcion isn't here to tell us.

Aggiuntive note: in this discussion we are using, I hope, "ditheism" as the view that YHWH was not an enemy of the supreme god
(and vice versa), while with "dualism" as the view that YHWH was enemy of the supreme god (and vice versa).

That's right on a technical sense.

[Giuseppe]

As for gentiles "co-opting" a Joshua cult and making him the son of a gentile god? No. For starters, Joshua/Jesus is a later development that took place in the Nazarene sect;

that "for starters" is bullshit coming from Secret Alias (of which you are the only fan in all the world). The Joshua cult was pre-Christian. In another thread I am collecting the real evidence. It is a point on which I don't return. Not Joshua, but Joshua Christ was a late fabrication.

Marcion didn't call Jesus Joshua. He called him Isu.

that is still Secret Alias who talks. I see that you are totally flattened on his anti-consensus views on Marcion.
Isu or Man or Son of Man are only judaizing labels to "prove" that Jesus was "true god and true man", when he was really neither god nor man. For starters, Paul didn't know no Son of Man. Zero. Nicht. Nada. Niente. Nothing. Null. Nihil. Show me a Son of Man, and I will show you a Judaizing Jesus of paper.

It doesn't matter at all if the first who hated YHWH was a Jew or a Gentile. What it matters is that it was a fact that some Gentilizers - and Marcion among them - hated YHWH. Celsus confirms it, independently from fool Patristics. Really, even a historicist as Paula Fredriksen, one confuted by Earl Doherty, realizes the real nature anti-YHWH of the Gentilizers as Marcion:

Paul's Jewish identity, Acts tells us, was already being called into question by the early second century. In that same century, Paul's god underwent a similar identity crisis. The ethnicity of the high god shifted: God the Father lost his Jewish identity too.
Though some pagans continued to identify the high god as the god of the Jews, educated ex-pagan Christian theologians increasingly thought otherwise. In the work of Valentinus (fl. 130s), of Marcion (fl. 140s), and of Justin Martyr (fl. 150s), we can trace the process whereby God the father of Christ became no longer Jewish. The point of orientation shared by all three thinkers - a point fundamental to the theology of Middle Platonism - was that the highest god was radically trascendent and changeless, and that another, lower god, a demiurgos, organized the material cosmos.

(Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagan's Apostle, 2017, my bold)

[Joseph D. L.]

Marcion didn't call Jesus Joshua. He called him Isu.

that is still Secret Alias who talks. I see that you are totally flattened on his anti-consensus views on Marcion.[/quote]

What???

http://www.marcionite-scripture.info/EGalatians.PDF

One such creative liberty is the name for the Marcionite Savior,
"Isu Chrestos" - "Isu" derived on the designation of Syrian
Marcionites, the spelling for "Chrestos" (=the Good one )
derived from an ancient inscription to a Marcionite synagogue.

This very thing, too, still further demonstrates their opinion false, and their fictitious system untenable, that they endeavour to bring forward proofs of it, sometimes through means of numbers and the syllables of names, sometimes also through the letter of syllables, and yet again through those numbers which are, according to the practice followed by the Greeks, contained in [different] letters — [this, I say,] demonstrates in the clearest manner their overthrow or confusion, as well as the untenable and perverse character of their [professed] knowledge. For, transferring the name Jesus, which belongs to another language, to the numeration of the Greeks, they sometimes call it Episemon, as having six letters, and at other times the Plenitude of the Ogdoads, as containing the number eight hundred and eighty-eight. But His [corresponding] Greek name, which is Soter, that is, Saviour, because it does not fit in with their system, either with respect to numerical value or as regards its letters, they pass over in silence. Yet surely, if they regard the names of the Lord, as, in accordance with the preconceived purpose of the Father, by means of their numerical value and letters, indicating number in the Pleroma, Soter, as being a Greek name, ought by means of its letters and the numbers [expressed by these], in virtue of its being Greek, to show forth the mystery of the Pleroma. But the case is not so, because it is a word of five letters, and its numerical value is one thousand four hundred and eight. But these things do not in any way correspond with their Pleroma; the account, therefore, which they give of transactions in the Pleroma cannot be true.

2. Moreover, Jesus, which is a word belonging to the proper tongue of the Hebrews, contains, as the learned among them declare, two letters and a half, and signifies that Lord who contains heaven and earth; for Jesus in the ancient Hebrew language means heaven, while again earth is expressed by the words sura usser. The word, therefore, which contains heaven and earth is just Jesus. Their explanation, then, of the Episemon is false, and their numerical calculation is also manifestly overthrown. For, in their own language, Soter is a Greek word of five letters; but, on the other hand, in the Hebrew tongue, Jesus contains only two letters and a half. The total which they reckon up, viz., eight hundred and eighty-eight, therefore falls to the ground. And throughout, the Hebrew letters do not correspond in number with the Greek, although these especially, as being the more ancient and unchanging, ought to uphold the reckoning connected with the names. For these ancient, original, and generally called sacred letters of the Hebrews are ten in number (but they are written by means of fifteen ), the last letter being joined to the first. And thus they write some of these letters according to their natural sequence, just as we do, but others in a reverse direction, from the right hand towards the left, thus tracing the letters backwards. The name Christ, too, ought to be capable of being reckoned up in harmony with the Æons of their Pleroma, inasmuch as, according to their statements, He was produced for the establishment and rectification of their Pleroma. The Father, too, in the same way, ought, both by means of letters and numerical value, to contain the number of those Æons who were produced by Him; Bythus, in like manner, and not less Monogenes; but pre-eminently the name which is above all others, by which God is called, and which in the Hebrew tongue is expressed by Baruch, [a word] which also contains two and a half letters. From this fact, therefore, that the more important names, both in the Hebrew and Greek languages, do not conform to their system, either as respects the number of letters or the reckoning brought out of them, the forced character of their calculations respecting the rest becomes clearly manifest.

Joshua, ג'ושוע, ayin vav shin vav yod gimel

In Aramaic and Syriac it's ܝܫܘܥ, yeshu, and ܝܫܘܥ, isho, but Ephraim says that Marcionites deliberately called Jesus isu to distinguish between their saviour and their surrounding Christian neigbours's saviour.

The view that you are espousing is anti-consensus.

Isu or Man or Son of Man are only judaizing labels to "prove" that Jesus was "true god and true man", when he was really neither god nor man. For starters, Paul didn't know no Son of Man. Zero. Nicht. Nada. Niente. Nothing. Null. Nihil. Show me a Son of Man, and I will show you a Judaizing Jesus of paper.

Giuseppe, I have to stop you here and now about your obsession with "judiazers". Why does Marcion himself include references to the Old Testament if he himself wasn't a "judiazer"? Why does Paul in the Marcionite recension make constant equivocations between his theology and Judaism? Paul doesn't need to use the term "Son of Man", because he directly compares Isu to Adam Kadmon.

But where is this Joshua cult? Show me it and I'll show you an invention of your own making.

It doesn't matter at all if the first who hated YHWH was a Jew or a Gentile. What it matters is that it was a fact that some Gentilizers - and Marcion among them - hated YHWH. Celsus confirms it, independently from fool Patristics.

You are given all too easily to sensationalism. You've given no evidence that Marcion hated YHWH, actively ignore evidence to the contrary, and hold to Celsus who is not a witness to Marcion and whose perspective is not to be trusted.

Yeah, Lucian also said he was a witness to Peregrinus. Yet his portrait of him is one of a farce and thus is readily dismissed.

I don't trust either Lucian or Celsus. Just as I don't care either for what Paula Fredriksen or Earle Doherty have to say about anything.

Marcion was Jewish. End of discussion.

[Joseph D. L.]

Also, just to clarify, I came to the conclusion that Marcion was partial to Judaism long before I came across Stephan Hullar. Anyone who reads his so-called canonical texts for himself can see the claim that Marcion was antijudaism is overstated. But you have turned into the central pillar of your model. If you have to actively twist evidence to fit your model, then your model is false at bottom.