'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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MrMacSon
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'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Markus Vinzent, Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel (Mcn). The Example of the Lord’s Prayer’, in Jan Heilmann, Matthias Klinghardt (eds), Das Neue Testament und sein Text im 2. Jahrhundert, TANZ 61 (Tübingen, 2018); pp.183-222.

https://www.academia.edu/45436831/Metho ... rds_Prayer

There's quite a lot in this article including a lot of history of Marcion studies in the first 10 pages.

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3.2 The Lord’s Prayer in Mcn based on the Priority of Mcn [to] the Synoptics

... If Mcn is placed prior to the Synoptics, then the manuscript witnesses for Luke, but also those for Matthew, Mark and John are potential witnesses for Mcn too, if one accepts the suggested literary dependency of both Luke and the other canonical gospels on Mcn. Moreover, if Mcn is, as suggested by Klinghardt, ‘the oldest gospel’, one even needs to compare the rest of the gospel-tradition with Mcn as potentially influenced by it. And, indeed, as one has known for a long time already, particularly the so-called ‘Western’-text of Luke (with its main representatives D it sy, but also copt and aeth) shows a significant reflection of Mcn, let alone the many early Christian writers who reflect remnants of the variant readings of Mcn.

Klinghardt has collected the parallels between the Lukan text in these manuscripts and Mcn, as given by the witnesses Tertullian, Epiphanius and Adamantius in his Appendix III and compared it to the textus receptus of Luke as found in NA27. He counts 528 variants, of which 329 (=62%) have a correspondance in one or more manuscripts of the so-called ‘Western’-text. Further 67 variants (= 13%) have parallels in Greek, oriental (particularly Coptic and Ethiopic) manuscripts, and only 132 Mcn variants (= 25%) have no correspondance in the canonical tradition.

Already Harnack, as quoted by Klinghardt, drew the conclusion that Mcn (both Greek and Latin) was a ‘purely’ Western text.
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Giuseppe
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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In p. 222 I read:

Tertullian explains, as shown, that Marcion understood this expression [FATHER], however, to distinguish his god as the entirely transcendant, unknown god from the Creator, the God of Israel

hence: Bar-Abbas is the "Son of Father", the Marcion's Jesus. :cheers:
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Section 3: the additional ε᾽λθε´τω σου η῾ βασιλει´α

Tertullian almost cryptically starts his reading of this passage of Mcn: ‘He had been praying in a certain place, to that higher-class father, looking up with eyes above measure presumptuous and audacious towards the heaven of that Creator by whose sternness and savagery he could easily have been struck down by lightning and hail’.

With this glamorous description, our heresiologist does not only want to ridicule Marcion’s Gospel which in its opening is not too different from Luke, he particularly stresses the intention of Marcion which he thought to have grasped. Jesus’ prayer was not a dialogue with the God of Israel, but a vision where the viewer and the viewed could hardly been distinguished and Jesus as a visionary was likened to Paul in his heavenly rapture.

As seen before, this commentary presumes that in the following address the ‘Father’ had been called a ‘Father … in heaven’, as this is the direction towards which the Lord was praying. That Tertullian calls him a ‘higher-class father’ which he in the same chapter calls Marcion’s ‘different god’ who, therefore, needed a ‘different’ prayer, proves that our rhetor had a good grasp of both text and content.

The Lord’s Prayer was meant to be an alternative prayer to that of John and it was directed to a different god than to the god of John. The novel character was not only marked by the shorter text, it was also recognisable by Marcion addressing the ‘Father’ as the Father of his community, not the Creator of this earth, but the higher God of the heavens: ‘Our Father who is in heaven’. The opening of the pericope, hence, was meant to distance Jesus from John, his disciples from those others of John (οι῾λοιποι´), this other, previously unknown god who was made public by Christ, from the one of John.

Tertullian retorts, that contrary to Marcion’s reading, one should understand this passage – and he certainly thinks like some modern scholar shave done too, as shown above– that the καθω` ςκαι` ᾽Ιωα´ννης refers to a disciple asking the Lord for teaching him a Johannine prayer to address the God of John. He concedes, however, and acknowledges, as he does in his De oratione, that the Lord’s Prayer is a new form of worship in which God is praised differently. No surprise, therefore, that Tertullian only mentions the term ‘Father to stress the familiarity with him as the God ‘who by making me and fashioning me became my begetter’.
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4 The Lord’s Prayer in Mcn

What, then, was the content of the Lord’s Prayer in Mcn? We have to start with the frame: First, Mcn had recounted the coming down of the Lord and his sudden and unexpected appearance in Capharnaum, then he introduces Jesus with his many titles: ‘the medic’ (Mcn 4:23 ᾽Ιατρο´ς ), ‘the Holy of God’ (Mcn 4:34 ο῾ α῞γιοςτου῀ θεου῀ ), the ‘Prophet’ (Mcn 4:24 προφη´της), ‘the Son of God’ (Mcn 4:41 ο῾ υι῾ο`ςτου῀ θεου῀), ‘the Christ’ (Mcn 4:41 ο῾ Χριστο´ς ), ‘the Αngelic Messenger for the kingdom of God’ (Mcn 4:43 α᾽ παγγελι σασθαιτη`νβασιλει´αντου῀ θεου῀),‘the Preacher’ (Mcn 4:44 κηρυ´σσων), ‘the Teacher’ (Mcn 5:5 διδα´σκαλος , ‘the Groom’ (Mcn 5:34 ο῾ νυµφιο´ς), somebody who prays (Mcn 6:12), one who sees, who is perfect just like his own teacher (Mcn 6:39f.), ‘the Son of Man’ (Mcn 9:18), ‘the Master of David’ (Mcn 20:41–44, not David’s son), ‘the Son’ (Mcn 9:20), the ‘beloved Son who is to be followed instead of following Mose (or the Torah) and Elija (or the Prophets) (Mcn 9:28–36).

When he is introduced as ‘the Great Prophet’(Mcn 7:16 Με´γας προφη´της), a message that has made its way everywhere into Judaea and to John the Baptist, the reaction of John is made plain: ‘When he heard of his deeds, he was scandalized’ (Mcn 7:18).

As stated before, this statement was cut out by Luke, yet John’s rejection of Jesus sets the tone for the pericopes that follow. In these, Marcion explains what kind of a Great Prophet Jesus is: The Lord is not one like John who claimed to prepare the way for the Lord (Mcn 7:27), he is not a prophet who shrinks away from sinners and women. Instead Jesus is the one who teaches and commands the powers of this earth (Mcn 8:25), who works wonders and who himself is the sole revelator (Mcn 10:22). The frame of the Lord’s Prayer, therefore, is picking up on the previous passage on John and the contrast set between John and Jesus.

The Lord’s Prayer in Mcn, therefore, develops further the newness of Jesus’ message and introduces this text as a novel prayer which in its conciseness contrasts with the long prayers attributed to John, although the antithesis relates less to the content of the prayer, but rather to its performance. It is more about the ‘how’, less about the ‘what’. While the Didache had left the question open who the hypocrites are that are criticised, Matthew was more to the point, when the hypocrites are identified with those who prefer long prayers in synagogues and streets, in order to be admired by people.

In Mcn, however, it is John and his disciples who are the targets.

This antithesis fits, as we have shown, the distinction that Marcion introduced be-tween John and Jesus, and on which he insisted in his preface (Antitheses) between ‘Christ who in the time of Tiberius was revealed by a god formerly unknown, for the salvation of all the nations, and another Christ who is destined by God the Creator to come at some time still future for the reestablishment of the Jewish kingdom’, ‘between justice and kindness, between law and gospel, be-tween Judaism and Christianity’, hence, between old and new.

The performance of the Lord’s Prayer, then, becomes the new practice of Jesus and his followers who believe in their transcendant Father of the heaven who comes onto them, purifies them, establishes his kingdom, offers his heavenly bread, removes debts and bewares from temptation. One may wonder how the performance of such a short prayer creates a contrast to John. Unfortunately, we do not know of a specific prayer of John.

And yet we find the title in Philo related to God’s creation, in Qumran (within the book of Tobit), and even in Rabbinic literature we read the ‘Father in heaven’. Tertullian explains, as shown, that Marcion understood this expression, however, to distinguish his god as the entirely transcendant, unknown god from the Creator, the God of Israel ...

Instead of an all forgiving god of Marcion, as expressed in this prayer, Luke 3:1–9 and Matth. 3:1–10 (see also Mark 1:2–6)...introduced John the Baptist who preached repentance. Purification does not come from above, as in Mcn, but is mediated by the Baptist, even to Jesus, hence we are faced in Luke and Matthew with radical corrections not only of Mcn, but of its author Marcion.

This is not the place to give a synoptic reading and interpretation of all these texts, instead, I wanted to show, how assumptions on the synoptic relation between them impacted on the qualification of the relevant source material and the subsequent use of it for the reconstruction of Mcn. Reconstructing (and interpreting) Mcn is, therefore, not primarily a matter of available sources, but rather of a methodological decision.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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I read too:

I am approaching Mcn from the hypothesis, based on Tertullian’s view that ‘every sentence, indeed the whole structure, is arising from Marcion’s impiety and profanity’.104 This, however, does not lead to deploying Marcion’s theology in order to reconstruc this Gospel, because, as widely shown by Rothand Schmid, such a hermeneutical approach would necessarily produce a circular reasoning one would reconstruct a Gospel according to an assumed theology and, then, interpret a thus constructed text in extracting the theology of Marcion which one has set into the text. To avoid such circularity, particularly as I am suggesting Marcion as the author of this Gospel, I start from the same principle framework as Klinghardt who does not think that Marcion had written this Gospel.

If prof Vinzent concedes already that the "Father" in Marcion is the Alien God, then how can he accuse me of circular reasoning if I say that Barabbas is a caustic Judaizing parody of Marcion's Jesus therefore Barabbas cannot be found in an authentic Marcionite Gospel?

I am tempted to ask directly to him this question.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Done. My question is expecting approval before to be published.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:02 am
I read too:

I am approaching Mcn from the hypothesis, based on Tertullian’s view that ‘every sentence, indeed the whole structure, is arising from Marcion’s impiety and profanity’ [Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 1,1]. This, however, does not lead to deploying Marcion’s theology in order to reconstruct this Gospel, because, as widely shown by Rothand Schmid, such a hermeneutical approach would necessarily produce a circular reasoning — one would reconstruct a Gospel according to an assumed theology and, then, interpret a thus constructed text in extracting the theology of Marcion which one has set into the text. To avoid such circularity, particularly as I am suggesting Marcion as the author of this Gospel, I start from the same principle framework as Klinghardt who does not think that Marcion had written this Gospel.

If prof Vinzent concedes already that the "Father" in Marcion is the Alien God, then how can he accuse me of circular reasoning if I say that Barabbas is a caustic Judaizing parody of Marcion's Jesus therefore Barabbas cannot be found in an authentic Marcionite Gospel?

I am tempted to ask directly to him this question.

He's not accusing you of circular reasoning. What he's saying there has nothing to do with 'Father' in Mcn. He's only talking about the principle of separating reconstruction of the Mcn gospeltext and extraction of its theology; and about doing such extraction on the basis of Klinghardt's reconstruction or method of reconstruction (or both) and, I think, his method of extractions.

He goes on to say, immediately after the passage you cited -

Hence, fundamental for my reconstruction, as for his and all others mentioned before, are the main heresiological witnesses (Tertullian, Epiphanius, Adamantius). Different from the scholars of the first framework of the posteriority of Mcn, I maintain with Klinghardt that variant readings in the Gospel-tradition and in Patristic works have a great weight, particularly the variants (though not all) of the so-called Western tradition (D it sy).

On the basis of my position which I have substantiated in earlier studies, that Marcion seems to have produced at least two versions of Mcn, one unpublished and non-authorized by him which, however, had left his classroom and was copied and altered to produce the later canonical Gospels, and the other version of Mcn which Marcion in reaction to the fact that plagiarism (aemulatio)105 had occurred, published with a warning preface, the ‘Antitheses’, and the supporting collection of ten Pauline Letters, it is well possible that readings from both versions are not only preserved in those canonical Gospels, but also elsewhere.

The copy that Tertullian had access to, however, is the one that I would like to reconstruct, hence, I am putting more weight on his witness than Klinghardt would do when there are conflicting readings between those Tertullian is suggesting compared to those of the textual tradition and reception of the Gospels. In this, I come closer to the scholars of the posteriority framework. As one will see, however, most of the (rather few, but not unimportant) corrections of Klinghardt’s reconstruction that I am suggesting, simply follow Klinghardt’s own approach which in a number of places he will easily accept.

ie. he will use mostly Tertullian's reconstruction, not his own.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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MrMacSon wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:36 am He's not accusing you of circular reasoning. What he's saying there has nothing to do with 'Father' in Mcn.
obviously my person is not meant in the article, but I have done merely 2 + 2:

1) Vinzent concedes that "Father" in Marcion refers always to the Alien God. In this, and particularly in his recognition that the Lord's Prayer is Marcionite in essence, he agrees with Jean Magne. Please don't ignore this point.

2) the word "Father" appears in "Bar-Abbas".

Hence my question is justified. If Vinzent insists in claiming that Barabbas was original in Marcion, then this will be sufficient for me to reject definitely his approach as basically apologetical.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:44 am
2) the word "Father" appears in "Bar-Abbas".

Hence my question is justified.
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bar abba means 'son of the father,' not 'Father' (or perhaps 'son of the teacher' as in a distortion of bar rabban)

Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:44 am If Vinzent insists in claiming that Barabbas was original in Marcion, then this will be sufficient for me to reject definitely his approach as basically apologetical.
You're making a mountain out of a molehill, if that ie. if it's even a molehill.
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

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Giuseppe wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:44 am
2) the word "Father" appears in "Bar-Abbas".

Hence my question is justified.
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The name Barabbas in the Bible
Barabbas is the name of the notorious criminal who Pontius Pilate released from the prison in Jerusalem instead of Jesus. His name is mentioned 11 times in the New Testament; See Full Concordance.

This affair is so dubious that it should be considered a red herring, or a comic insert into the story of Jesus' trial to strongly mark a jubilant commentary. Read our article on the name Pilate for more on this.

Etymology of the name Barabbas
The name Barabbas is Greek transliteration of a Chaldean or Aramaic name ...

https://www.abarim-publications.com/Mea ... abbas.html

Giuseppe
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Re: 'Methodological Assumptions in the Reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel (Mcn): The Example of the Lord's Prayer'

Post by Giuseppe »

MrMacSon wrote: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:53 am You're making a mountain out of a molehill, if that ie. if it's even a molehill.
I think that the best absolute explanation of Bar-Abbas has it as anti-marcionite parody. Really, sincerely, candidly, I have no doubt about that. Hence, Barabbas can't come from Marcion's hand but only from an anti-marcionite hand.

As also Jean Magne observed, the Barabbas episode is evidence of an early resistance against the idea that Jesus has to be identified with the Jewish Christ.
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