Marcionite agreements with Matthew against Luke?

[Secret Alias]

True. But how can our canon so perfectly line up with Irenaeus's "misunderstanding" of Papias? Unless it is argued that it was Papias who was just too dense (as Eusebius has it) to understand the facts and Irenaeus "helped clarify" what he was reporting two generations later. Our canon is an unmistakable representation of Irenaeus's "correction" or interpretation of Papias. Papias doesn't say Matthew's gospel was first. Papias doesn't say that John wrote a gospel or that his gospel helped "contextualize" the gospels relationship to Isaiah 61. Irenaeus in effect bends Papias's testimony to allow for a canon to show that John did all this. The prophetic Lordly oracles needing to serve as grounding for the gospel Lordly oracles is all Papias. Papias in effect ascribes this "rule" to John. But the Frankenstein use of this formula to make the canon is all Irenaeus.

[Secret Alias]

Here's the ultimate proof of the fakeness of the canon = how did the Antitheses end up in Matthew? I defy anyone rationalize this. It's clearly the ancient equivalent of finding a Jewish spokesman for Nazism. If we believe Papias, the placement of the Antitheses can't have happened naturally. Matthew improved Mark by connecting 'the Lord's oracles' from before (the Law and the prophets) with 'the Lord's oracles' from now (the gospel). THAT Matthew couldn't have added 'formerly the Law said X but the gospel says Y.' Impossible. We know the Marcionites had these Antitheses. It's obvious even without Irenaeus and Tertullian. But which of the remaining gospels in our canon would be the 'precursor' (allegedly) of that Marcionite gospel with the Antitheses. We've already crossed out Matthew. It can't have been Luke. The editor of Against Marcion doesn't even bother to tackle the issue saying only that Marcion 'added' his Antitheses to 'the gospel.' Clearly the author or the source knew of a Matthew without the antitheses and a Marcionite gospel with them and said Marcion just added the antitheses on his own initiative. The only remaining possibility is that the Antitheses were in some form of Mark which predated our castrated canonical version of Mark. Similarly Marcion is a castrated before, his followers can't get married because they're castrated but Matthew is the place the business about Jesus's love for eunuchs is placed? Fake, fake, fake.

[Stuart]

I have a very different view of the antithesis. I think it was a small instructive document, probably something not much bigger than the gospel of Thomas. It would have been carried by Marcionite itinerant preachers (and others from similar sects) sent out to evangelize. It was something of a primer of key points to debate proto-orthodox, and more importantly to convince interested lay people why their gospel and Christ were the right one.

Stephen, I know you have in the past suggested that it was something of a large commentary on the OT, something akin to Jewish Targums or a small Mishnah. While I think it's entirely possible and even likely that a collection of OT exegesis was kept in primary base camps (church or monastery) of the Marcionites, I don't think this would have been either unique to the Marcionite sect, nor was it the antithesis.

It had to be small, compact, and utilitarian. It was this document which Tertullian had some contact with. What we can gather from it was that it contained not exact quotes of the OT verses, and sometimes NT verses in parallel for comparison, but rather paraphrases of those verses, adjusted to fit a form. What is more it was not a static document, but like the gospel of Thomas or the Didache, it was a living document which added lines over time. We find some of the exact same arguments and wording used even by the Manicheans, such as that in pseudo Hegemonius Acta Archelai chapter 40, and also in a some places by Simon Magus in the pseudo Clement Homilies and Recognitions. This suggests the document passed on to other movements, most certainly the Manicheans by the late 3rd century.

Chapter 5 of Matthew appears to contain twists on several of the cited Marcionite antithesis quoted by Tertullian. Only instead of supporting the concept of a 2nd god and of the separation of the NT from the OT, they have been turned to support the unity of the two.

As for Luke being built off the Marcionite gospel, the evidence is pretty strong, especially in the lack of Lukan special words in the attested passages, and their concentration in verses attested not in Marcion. Further many Marcionite readings are found in the variant manuscript readings of both Luke and Paul. The agreements with Matthew over Luke in a few verses simply attest to the early state of the text in Marcionite hands, and that the Lukan redactor made changes "large and small" (flipping Tertullian's words to apply to the Catholic editor instead of the Marcionite collector), not only adding material but also adjusting text. The earlier text common with Matthew (e.g., 9:16-17) may simply reflect that the earlier version of Luke agreed more with the common prototype gospel.

Chapter 5 of Matthew suggests to me that it's posterior to when the Marcionites left the church, and a few years after, as some of the antithesis elements are paraphrases from the Marcionite gospel, meaning the antithesis had to have a few years to adjust to account for that.

[Secret Alias]

If you read my post my question is simple. How could the Antitheses Matt 5:18 to whatever have ended up in Matthew? There is clearly something Marcionite about this section of text 'formerly (the Law) said X, but I say Y.' It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there is something Marcionite about it. It is the most Marcionite thing Jesus is recorded as ever say. So why it is in Matthew?

If Papias isn't full of shit then Mark wrote something first and then Matthew 'improved' on Mark by rooting the gospel in the Law and prophets. As such the Antitheses can't have been original to Matthew.

[lsayre]

Stephan, is it your opinion that (so called) 'Secret Mark' is likely to be the 'pre-castration' Gospel of Mark?

[Secret Alias]

Jerome says that 'ad exemplum' Mark convinced the Alexandrians to embrace celibacy AND that he brought the gospel from Rome. There is nothing in Jerome which confirms the existence of Secret Mark per se. But the notion in the Letter to Theodore that Mark came into his own as a teacher in Alexandria seems to be confirmed by Jerome. If 'ad exemplum' means something like 'the image of God' (i.e. a phantasmic being of Christ that was left in the world after Jesus's crucifixion) something implied in Irenaeus's criticism of the original exegesis of the gospel of Mark, then the inspiration for Mark's celibacy teaching was Christ.

But to answer your question - the gospel mentioned at the beginning of Stromata 3 (which cites a different version of Matthew's discussion of eunuchs and the kingdom of heaven) is likely Mark. Yes.

[Secret Alias]

But I am more interested in the basic paradigm of the gospel of Mark and its relationship to Marcion.

The usual way of looking at Papias's testimony is something like this. Mark wrote a gospel. Matthew put it in the right order. But let's look at it in another way. There are three ταξις references in the Papias passage

Μάρκος μὲν ἑρμηνευτὴς Πέτρου γενόμενος, ὅσα ἐμνημόνευσεν, ἀκριβῶς ἔγραψεν, οὐ μέντοι τάξει (= in order) τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ κυρίου ἢ λεχθέντα ἢ πραχθέντα
ὃς πρὸς τὰς χρείας ἐποιεῖτο τὰς διδασκαλίας, ἀλλ' οὐχ ὥσπερ σύνταξιν τῶν κυριακῶν ποιούμενος λογίων, ὥστε οὐδὲν ἥμαρτεν Μάρκος οὕτως
ἔνια γράψας ὡς ἀπεμνημόνευσεν
Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο

Kok explicitly denies that ταξις meant chronological order:

Scholars disagree on whether ταξις refers to a chronological or literary arrangement. Chronology was a desideratum of historians and Papias may have borrowed the platitude on neither subtracting nor adding falsehood from them ... The difficulty with this is that historians rarely chose the term ταξις for chronology. Instead, they preferred χρονος or καιρος for sequential time

I have argued that Clement's discussion of the 'Lordly oracles' undoubtedly from his familiarity with Papias is that τάξις here means arranging the gospel to prove that Jesus fulfilled the Lordly oracles of the Law and the prophets. In other words, that Matthew 'Judaized' the gospel. The positive affirmation of Matthew's 'Judaizing' of the ur-gospel sounds remarkably similar to what the Marcionites considered to be the corruption of their gospel by Judaizers. Thus the Marcionite gospel was undoubtedly from this perspective related to, similar, identical with the gospel of Mark known to Papias.

I find it hard to believe that at the time of Papias there all different theological controversies going on. If Papias was saying it was a good thing to make the gospel of Mark 'more Jewish' you can imagine that there were 'gospel of Mark believers' who said, no it's not such a good idea to mess with our gospel. I assume those people were Marcionites. The idea that there were Marcionites with a whole different gospel - i.e. Luke - in 120 CE or something like that is just stupid. Rather, I would argue that Luke was invented because Irenaeus had to have somewhere to put the Antitheses. He put them in Matthew. But if you let the Marcionites say 'the Antitheses were in Mark' then by Papias's own testimony the Marcionites could claim that they had the original gospel and it contained the Antitheses. By inventing Luke as a bastard gospel essentially, you ghettoize all the Marcionite controversies into a ghetto.

[Ben C. Smith]

If you read my post my question is simple. How could the Antitheses Matt 5:18 to whatever have ended up in Matthew? There is clearly something Marcionite about this section of text 'formerly (the Law) said X, but I say Y.' It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there is something Marcionite about it. It is the most Marcionite thing Jesus is recorded as ever say. So why it is in Matthew?

Because not everything Marcionite derives from Marcion. He was part of a line of thought and theology just like everybody else was.

[Secret Alias]

But clearly the quintessential Marcionite characteristics, the things that are Marcionite like driving a Cadillac and being a rude SOB are American, are 'the Law says X, the gospel or Jesus says Y' and castration. These can't be ancillary things. These are core Marcionite identities (i.e. not having a dick and thinking the gospel speaks differently than the Law). Both of these end up in Matthew, the gospel which Papias says/implies was the Judaized gospel. This couldn't have happened naturally. This was done because it furthered ecumenism. The editor of the canon didn't know what to do with the Antitheses and the bit about Jesus loving guys without dicks. So he put it in the gospel furthest removed from the community most closely associated with the Antitheses and Jesus loving guys without dicks.

[Secret Alias]

I am listening to the Golden Ass on Audible to go to sleep at night so please excuse my crudeness. I've also had the Latin play on words between beaver and eunuch all day in my head.