Just slightly tongue-in-cheek, or perhaps not even that: Revelation is presumed to be written by John, I hear (I know less than nothing of it, haven't even finished reading it).gryan wrote: ↑Sat Aug 07, 2021 6:57 am Re: Is Rev. 2:2 referring negatively to Paul?
Rev. 2:2
I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.
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I had not noticed that verse before. This language strikes me as Pauline in character, and so it could represent a judgement against Paul's opponents:
2 Cor. 11:13
"For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ."
John was a great fan of the Thomasine core material (yes that needs some explanation but I'll skip it at the moment, feel free to ask though), whether he read that there or in Marcion - and this could very well be about Marcion really. The threat to remove the lampstand from its topos...
If we look at Tertullian, in the splendid words of van Manen:
46. The Home of Paulinism
Where that circle, under the patronage of "Paul," must be looked for cannot be said with certainty. Probably it was in Syria, more particularly in Antioch; yet it may have been somewhere in Asia Minor. We may be practically certain, at all events, that it was not in Palestine; it was in an environment where no obstruction was in the first instance encountered from the Jews or, perhaps still worse, from the "disciples" too closely resembling them; where men as friends of gnosis, of speculation, and of mysticism, probably under the influence of Greek and, more especially, Alexandrian philosophy, had learned to cease to regard themselves as bound by tradition, and felt themselves free to extend their flight in every direction. To avail ourselves of a somewhat later expression: it was among the heretics. The epistles first came to be placed on the list among the gnostics. The oldest witnesses to their existence, as Meyer and other critics with a somewhat wonderful unanimity, have been declaring for more than half a century, are Basilides, Valentinus, Heracleon. Marcion is the first in whom, as we learn from Tertullian, traces are to be found of an authoritative group of epistles of Paul. Tertullian still calls him hereticorum apostolus (Adv. Mar. 3.5) and (addressing Marcion) apostolus vester (1.15).
Where that circle, under the patronage of "Paul," must be looked for cannot be said with certainty. Probably it was in Syria, more particularly in Antioch; yet it may have been somewhere in Asia Minor. We may be practically certain, at all events, that it was not in Palestine; it was in an environment where no obstruction was in the first instance encountered from the Jews or, perhaps still worse, from the "disciples" too closely resembling them; where men as friends of gnosis, of speculation, and of mysticism, probably under the influence of Greek and, more especially, Alexandrian philosophy, had learned to cease to regard themselves as bound by tradition, and felt themselves free to extend their flight in every direction. To avail ourselves of a somewhat later expression: it was among the heretics. The epistles first came to be placed on the list among the gnostics. The oldest witnesses to their existence, as Meyer and other critics with a somewhat wonderful unanimity, have been declaring for more than half a century, are Basilides, Valentinus, Heracleon. Marcion is the first in whom, as we learn from Tertullian, traces are to be found of an authoritative group of epistles of Paul. Tertullian still calls him hereticorum apostolus (Adv. Mar. 3.5) and (addressing Marcion) apostolus vester (1.15).
