YHWH, not Judas, was the original betrayer

[Joseph D. L.]

Hey Stuart. I was just copy/pasting a copy of Marcion online because I didn't feel like going through BeDuhn's book and writing it out.

I also can't argue against what you're saying. Reconstructing Marcion isn't an interest of mine. BeDuhn's book is pretty much my go to, even though I think Marcion himself had a completely different text.

My major contention with Giuseppe is that Marcion saw his religion as a fulfillment of Judaism, which he thought was obsolete. Does that mean he hated YHWH? That seems superfluous and doesn't answer anything. Atheists are accused of hating God (a god they don't believe even exists). It just seems arbitrary to add that into the equation.

[Joseph D. L.]

1) Celsus's use of ἐναντίος is the metaphorical, secondary meaning
2) Celsus was referring solely to the Marcionites in Book V, chapter 61
3) Celsus is referring to Marcionites in Book VI, chapter 51

The thesis that has to be proved is: (1).
The premises (conceded by you and Ben, above) is: (2).
The proof derives from proving the truth of: (3). I prove that (3) is correct by pointing out the fact that it cannot be absolutely a mere coincidence, that Celsus uses "opposed" (enantios) in two different points, and even (!) as reference to a god. Therefore If Celsus talks about Christian who curse YHWH in 6:51, then he means these same Christians in 5:61, in virtue of the fact that the reference is made even there to an "opposed" god.

I am sorry, but you ignore the argument from a coincidence-that-is-too-much-impossible-to-be-a-coincidence.

I cannot abide by this. All three points are dependent upon themselves and their surrounding contexts. The last point is from an entirely different argument of Celsus's. In the first two he is talking about Christian groups who are opposing to each other and their theologies.

The last point could give credence to you, but Celsus could be talking about a number of different groups.

Here we are talking about men cursing a god. Not the contrary. It is absolutely different.

Is it though? A person can hate what someone does and yet still love the person. (I don't want to give away too much of my private life, but it is possible). Hate is not an end-all qualifier.

[Stuart]

Joseph,

I have no idea what the real person Marcion believed. I am coming to some agreement with Robert Price that Marcion predates the literature and the sect in his name. Price only sees Galatians 3-6 as being written by Marcion himself, and beyond that only some scraps found in Paul. He says Marcion had an oral gospel. I personally do not think the oral gospel ever existed, it's a scholarly invention to keep the composition of the letters (at this point only the "authentic Pauline core") prior to the Gospels (although I think this concept is partly correct, but not entirely).

So who was Marcion? My view of Marcion is now that of John and Paul, that is legend. Paul and John seem to have first appeared in the consciousness of Christians as patron saints of rivals for patronage (i.e., familial claims to bishophood). Marcion probably traces back to the Mark legend (the whole Mark a follower of Peter as opposed to Marcion a follower of Paul make sense as stories for rival claims of authority). Price sees Marcion as basically the first Catholic, who formalized the wild west of traveling charismatic preachers, appointing bishops and establishing an orthodoxy. I'm not so sure, rather I see him as the patron by which one sect started this trend. But the trend was inevitable.

Sects took names of great legends. Mark/Marcion was a follower of Paul in the lore of the sect that took their name from him. Anyway, the sect followers did "yelp at the God of truth" as Tertullian put it, calling them "dogs"(AM 2.5.1). There are elements in the Gospel of John and in Paul that indicate YHWH, "the Archon of this world" is doomed to judgement, and will pass away along with everything material. The greatest emphasis the followers placed on YHWH was that he is ignorant of even where he stands among the Gods, although this may be the later Marcionites represented by Megethus in DA. But YHWH takes on the aspects of evil in those with just two principles, such as Markus in DA. Which is earlier, two principles or three?

[Joseph D. L.]

Yo Stuart.

I respect your erudition and will concede that you are far more knowledgeable on this stuff than I am.

The issues I take with reconstructionism is that they are necessitated by the biases of the reconstructor. One reason I dropped off trying to reconstruct Ur-John, besides being wholly unqualified for it, I realized that I was just seeing what I wanted to see in it. No amount of reconstruction and guesses, even well founded guesses, can make up for an actual copy dated to the relevant period. Ur-John, Gospel of Peter, Secret Mark and Marcion, they're just gone, lost to time and history. That's unfortunate because it means there's an entire area that is permanently left grey and ambiguous, two things that I don't like and I'm sure no one else here does. But even piecing together everything and arranging it in a certain way is just not good enough for me. It still looks like a Picasso painting or something from the Dadaist school.

So when Price says something like "Galatians 3-6 [was] being written by Marcion himself," I just have to shake me head and ask, how can he prove it? That's the sad thing about this field, is that a lot of it cannot be proved. It can be argued, but that's not the same.

As far as identifying Marcion, I can get behind John or Paul, but then who are these guys? My model, hell even if it's absolutely wrong, is about identifying these figures with historical, or semi-historical, people. So James? Easy, r. Akiva. John? A little harder, maybe Yohannan ben Zakkai, or even Simon bar Kochba himself. Matthais/Matthew/Levi? Josephus-Hegesippus. John and James bar Zebedee? Julian and Pappos. Even if I'm completely mistaken at least this gives me a workable and concrete frame of reference. Most of the methods used by scholars, be they professional or amateur (and I definitely fall in the latter category), are too abstract. Too nebulous.

So Marcion? You will absolutely disagree, but Hadrian. And if not Hadrian then Aquila.

And I don't see Marcion as a misotheist towards YHWH, and saying that he was lower in stature to a greater god is both a very gentile and Jewish interpretation of the Genesis creation accounts. Even documents like Dialogue Adamantius, and writers like Esnik and Ephraim... I mean they're useless. What can they tell us about Marcion, who he was, where he came from, and what he believed? It's like asking Joe McCarthy his thoughts on Marxist-Leninist ideas. And saying they're "independent witnesses" doesn't mean anything either.

Am I being selectively sceptical? Most likely yes. I just don't have the same confidence in the tried and true idea that Marcion was anti-Judaism. Where has this idea gotten us? We're almost a hundred out from Harnack and we're still going over this. Maybe we should brush everything away and start over?

And yeah, I agree with the Mark and Peter thing being claims of authority. I kinda went on a tirade.

Peace.

[Stuart]

Am I being selectively skeptical? Most likely yes.

This quote wins the honesty award. I respect that.

Nearly all biblical "scholarship" falls into that category. Everyone wants to hang on to a piece of the official story. Eventually some outgrow that.

[Giuseppe]

Joseph D.L., I don't know why you insist so much on the Jewish origins of anti-demiurgism. What surprises me, is that you reject even a reconstruction of the origins of anti-demiurgism in a Jewish milieu, as that proposed by scholar Carl Ben Smith (distinct from our Ben with an identical surname) in No Longer Jews: The Search for Gnostic Origins.

So I read this from a review of the book:

For Smith, Gnosticism is a radical dualism wherein the Jewish God and his creation is negatively evaluated, thereby evoking a radical anti-Jewish and anticosmic attitude as quintessential for Gnosticismís identity. With this essentialized view of Gnosticism in hand, Smith proceeds to construct a possible intellectual and historical context within which such a radical anti-Jewish attitude might have emerged. By arguing against a pre-Christian or first-century Gnosticism, again following Yamauchiís lead, he proposes that the Diaspora revolts 115-117 C.E. offer the best context for such a development (i.e., the first revolt was too early and the revolt of
132-135 C.E. too late to account for the emergence of this gnostic attitude). Smith walks us through the historical background of the Diaspora revolts, highlighting the anti-Jewish attitudes that typified Gentile reactions to Jews. Smith continues his argument by surveying polemics in early Christian texts and the Nag Hammadi tractates, attempting to argue that Christian texts, especially in the first quarter of the second century and before, were not overly anti-Jewish. Rather, it is within gnostic polemics that we find a radical and sustained denigration of Judaism. This analysis of chronology and polemics is rounded off by a survey of possible geographical locations for the emergence of Gnosticism. Smith, not surprisingly, claims Egypt as the most likely location (rather than, for example, Syro-Palestine, Asia Minor, or Samaria). Smith holds that some, though not all, Jews in North Africa would have reacted to the disruptive effects of the revolts by negating much of their own religious heritage, developing a radical dualistic system
influenced by possible affiliations with Jewish intellectuals (who were highly critical of revolutionary forces within Judaism), Jewish Christianity, and Platonism.

https://www.academia.edu/529211/REVIEW_ ... l_B._Smith

You are free to disagree with this author, but even so, I would not justify a so dogmatic and insistent negation of early anti-demiurgism as dualism. Especially when so many scholars seem to be inclined with that idea.


My difference with Stuart is that I think Cerdon or Marcion wrote the Earliest Gospel, de facto making Jesus descending on earth and not more only in outer space and Sheol. The Barabbas episode is the smoking gun, in my view, that proves this marcionite priority and marcionite dualism in the field of gospels. About the epistles, I follow humbly Earl Doherty without no claim of originality.

[Giuseppe]

Stuart, you argue for this reason behind Marcion's fixation on Capernaum:

The calling of the fishermen was moved until after Jesus' arrival in Capernaum, and the Baptism story through verse 1:15 removed (and replaced by Luke 7:16-35). Why? Because in Marcionite theology they could not accept Jesus being Baptized by John, whom they agreed was Elijah reborn, as this would tie Jesus to YHWH

I have argued that Capernaum, per Heracleon (contemporary of Marcion and anti-demiurgist), is allegory of Sheol and it appears in the incipit of Mcn because Jesus descends to Sheol after his death in outer space. And you know already what the marcionite Jesus did in Sheol.

[Stuart]

Stuart, you argue for this reason behind Marcion's fixation on Capernaum:

The calling of the fishermen was moved until after Jesus' arrival in Capernaum, and the Baptism story through verse 1:15 removed (and replaced by Luke 7:16-35). Why? Because in Marcionite theology they could not accept Jesus being Baptized by John, whom they agreed was Elijah reborn, as this would tie Jesus to YHWH

I have argued that Capernaum, per Heracleon (contemporary of Marcion and anti-demiurgist), is allegory of Sheol and it appears in the incipit of Mcn because Jesus descends to Sheol after his death in outer space. And you know already what the marcionite Jesus did in Sheol.

Jesus arriving in Capernaum was already extant in the Marcionite author's source document, the lost ur-Gospel. It's basically paralleled verbatim (Mark 1:21-39 = Luke 4:31-44; then after the calling of the fisherman Mark 1:45-3:6 = Luke 5:12-6:6). You have to go back to claiming the Marcionites wrote the ur-Gospel. But that doesn't work, since John's Baptism of Jesus is found in that, and the Marcionite text removed it. Either that or you have to claim Mark used the Marcionite Gospel rather than a common source and added John the Baptist. But explain why Luke 20:1-8 is present if the Baptism was not in the source of Marcion, but added by Mark.

The name Capernaum is a Greek rendering (Kαπερναούμ) of the Hebrew Kfar Naḥūm (כָּפָר נַחוּם) meaning the village of Nahum, see the OT prophet Nahum, the book of Nahum. Josephus rendered it closer in his Greek transliteration, Kαφαρναούμ. Yes Nahum means comfort in Hebrew. But there is no indication anywhere else of Hebrew meanings being chosen over Greek by the Marcionite sect. You're in a linguistic quagmire.

[Giuseppe]

Kαφαρ means expiation, also. Hence, place of expiation, i.e. Sheol.

The original marcionite author (Cerdon, Satornilos, or Marcion) assumed that Jesus was already dead in outer space and so the gospel started with Jesus descending in Sheol as his first action. It was in Sheol where all the original Gospel episodes happened.

[Giuseppe]

But explain why Luke 20:1-8 is present if the Baptism was not in the source of Marcion, but added by Mark.

Luke 20:1-8 is a Judaizing passage based on Marcion's Sheol myth:



The OT prophets being perplexed about Jesus's identity ("is he a tempter sent from demiurge to test us?") become the pharisees being perplexed about John's identity ("is he from heaven or from men?"). Hence, the passage was not found in the Earliest Gospel.