I'm going to rearrange these references in the order of Marcion's canon and underline those references that are probably not in it, if we don't include what I have identified as shorter readings of Paul in that canon. I will also put bold on the Lord's Supper passage, with reference to
viewtopic.php?t=2019 and
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2650 from spin and Smith, respectively (even though I remain conflicted about it). And bold also on the 1 Thessalonians passage that several think is an interpolation (although "killed the Lord" is attested in
Against Marcion 5.15).
Gal. 1.1 ("from the dead")
Gal. 1.19 (James the "brother of the Lord")
Gal. 2.20 (willingness to die)
Gal. 3.1; 6.12 (crucifixion)
Gal. 3.16 (descendent of Abraham)
Gal. 4:4 ("born from a woman")
Gal. 4.4 (a Jew in ethnic terms, "born under the Law")
Gal. 6.2 (bearing's other's burdens)
Gal. 6.14 ("cross" of the Lord)
Gal. 6.17 ("wounds")
1 Cor. 1.17–18, 23; 2.2, 8 (crucifixion)
1 Cor. 2.8 (condemned by rulers)
1 Cor. 5.7 (sacrifice, passover lamb)
1 Cor. 7.10 (teaching against divorce)
1 Cor. 7.25 ("mercy")
1 Cor. 9.5 ("the Lord's brothers")
1 Cor. 9.14 (workers should be paid)
1 Cor. 10.16 ("body")
1 Cor. 10.31–11.1 (imitation of Christ)
1 Cor 11.20 ("Lordly meal")
1 Cor. 11.23–26 (the Last Supper)
1 Cor. 11.23–26 ("blood")
1 Cor. 11.24 (breaks bread)
1 Cor. 15.4 (was buried)
1 Cor 15.5–7 (implied to be known to Cephas and James)
1 Cor. 15.12; 15.20 ("from the dead")
1 Cor. 15.20–22 ("man," "Adam")
1 Cor 15.47 ("the second man" from heaven)
1 Cor. 16.23 ("grace")
2 Cor. 1.5 ("sufferings")
2 Cor. 1.19–20 ("faithful")
2 Cor. 5.14 ("love")
2 Cor. 5.21 ("knew no sin")
2 Cor. 8.9; 13.4 ("poverty" and "weakness")
2 Cor. 10.1 ("meekness and gentleness")
2 Cor. 13.4 (crucifixion)
Rom. 1.3 ("born of the seed of David according to the flesh")
Rom. 3.21 ("But now" God has revealed his righteousness)
Rom. 3.25–26 ("in the present time")
Rom. 4.24; 6.4; 6.9; 7.4; 8.11;
10.7 ("from the dead")
Rom. 5.6 ("died")
Rom. 5.15 ("man")
Rom. 5.18–19 (obedience to God)
Rom. 6.4 (was buried)
Rom. 7.4 ("body")
Rom. 8.3 ("likeness of sinful flesh")
Rom. 8.3 ("in the flesh")
Rom. 8.17 ("suffering")
Rom. 8.35 ("love")
Rom. 9.5 (Israelite stock)
Rom. 15.3 (verbal abuse)
Rom. 15.3 (Jesus fulfilled: 'as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”')
Rom. 15.5 (bearing with and serving others)
Rom. 15.8 ("a servant of the circumcised")
Rom. 15.12 ("root of Jesse")
1 Thess. 1.10 ("from the dead")
1 Thess. 1.6 ("suffering")
1 Thess. 2.14–16 (disbelieved by Jews)
1 Thess. 2.14–15 (Judaeans were responsible for Jesus' death)
1 Thess. 4.15–16 (instruction about coming in the future)
Phil. 1.8 ("compassion")
Phil. 2.1 ("love")
Phil. 2.5 (bearing with and serving others)
Phil. 2.8 (obedience to God)
Phil. 2.8; 3.18 (crucifixion)
Phil. 3.10 ("sufferings")
Now consider the shorter list of verses that Gathercole cites in his summary of important points:
Gal. 3.16
2 Cor. 10.1 (‘meek’ and ‘gentle’)
1 Cor. 11.23–25
1 Thess. 2.14–15
Rom. 3.25–26
1 Cor 15.5–7
Gal. 4.4
Rom. 9.5
Gal. 3.16
Rom. 1.3
Rom. 8.3 (flesh)
It's clear to me that Doherty and Carrier could have done more to address the question of interpolations generally and the version of Paul used by Marcion particularly. While I understand that there are always those who will refer to these hypotheses as a "refuge," that's only sometimes apt if they're a parenthetical part of the investigation, invoked whenever a difficulty is encountered. If these problems are placed front and center as the crux of the matter, it's no longer apt. The question of the interpolations into letters of Paul becomes the whole point.
Some people jump from this data to the conclusion that Marcion excised these passages, usually with far too much comfort in immediately going on to ignore it all and treat the epistles as though we practically possess the originals in our very hands.
Here are the arguments remaining after removing the underlined and the bold:
- He was known as ‘meek’ and ‘gentle’, which implies interaction with the vulnerable. (2 Cor. 10.1)
- Jesus is designated a man, an ἄνθρωπος.
- He is given a human, Jewish name.
- He had a body with flesh (Rom. 8.3), a body diferent from his post-resurrection body.
- He belonged between his death and resurrection to the realm of the dead, as implied by the language of resurrection from ‘the dead’ (οἱ νεκροί)
Or as he says in the body of the article:
Here the parallel between Adam and Christ is underscored by reference tothem both being ἄνθρωποι. (Paul appears clearly to think that Adam was also historical.) ... To add to this, Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 15 to contrast Adam, the first man, with Jesus who is destined as ‘the last Adam’ (ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδάµ), drawing attention to their analogous positions (1 Cor. 15.45). The passage goes on to contrast the ‘first man’ made from the dust, with Jesus ‘the second man’ (ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος) who comes from heaven (15.47). ...
To begin with Philippians 2.7–8, the statements that the heavenly redeemer(i) ‘came in the likeness of men’ (ἐν ὁµοιώµατι ἀνθρώπων ενόµενος), and (ii) ‘was found in appearance as (or, like) a man’ (σχήµατι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος) could betaken to attribute an unreality to Jesus’ humanity. Likeness and appearance in these Greek terms, however, need not be in contrast to reality; they can justas readily imply reflection of an underlying reality.
To come to Romans 8.3, it is notable that Paul talks there of the ‘likeness of sinful flesh’, which suggests that he may well be thinking that there is a pointof discontinuity between Jesus and other humans in the matter of sinfulness. 2 Cor. 5.21 probably confirms this. Moreover, in Romans 8.3, the ensuing references to Jesus as a sin-offering, and especially the statement that sin is condemned ‘in the flesh’ (i.e. in the flesh of Jesus) mean that it is very difficult toattribute to Jesus a non-human or non-physical constitution.
With respect to his personal name, Jesus is a very standard Jewish name. It is the same as the biblical Hebrew name “Joshua”... whose name in the Greek versions of the Old Testament is spelled Ἰησοῦς, as Paul spells Jesus’ name. According to one calculation, it is the sixth most common male name among Palestinian Jews between 330 BCE–200 CE. Never, as far as I know, is Joshua-Jesus the name of an angel. Here Gullotta’s observations about the prosopography of angels are important. In Paul’s day,the process of naming good angels was not very far advanced among Jews, butthere is a consistent pattern: Daniel mentions Gabriel and Michael; Tobit adds Raphael; 1 Enoch has these three as well as (again, leaving aside demons) Uriel, Raguel, Michael, Sariel (or Sarakiel or Suriel), Jerahmeel, and Fanuel (Penuel),as well as Zateel. Even if there may occasionally be other kinds of names for angels, the overwhelming impression is that these names are formed with the –el suffix. From Jesus’ name, by contrast, everything suggests he is a human being and a Jew.
The view that ‘the brothers of the Lord’ just means ‘any baptized Christian whatever’ does not work for 1 Cor. 9.5, since if Paul weretalking about the right of every Christian he could simply have used that gen-eral category without adding apostles and Cephas; it would be especially oddif the most general category of the three were sandwiched between ‘apostles’and ‘Cephas’
First, Paul draws a distinction between the normal physical body which Jesus possessed prior to his death, on the one hand, and his glorious risen bodyon the other. ... References to the glorious body of Jesus are to the resurrection body. In Phil. 3.21, his glorious body is the body he possesses in Paul’s present, and this is also a kind of body attainable by other normal human beings who are Christ-followers. In other words, Paul is not talking here about an exclusively divine or angelic substance unique to Christ. The analogy of Jesus’ resurrection and that of Christian human beings more widely is common in Paul. This analogy suggests strongly that, during his pre-resurrection life, Jesus possessed a body like those of other humans. One can go further and say that the resurrections are not just analogous but organically linked, that of Jesus being the ‘first-fruits’ of the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15.20).
Secondly, to return to the analogy of angels, we can note that the kind of experiences which Jesus goes through according to Paul (birth, suffering, death, etc.) are not typically attributed to angels. In the book of Tobit, the angel Raphael calls himself Azariah but is only pretending to be human, and admitsit in the end: ‘All the days I was visible to you, you watched me, but I did notreally eat or drink anything. You were seeing a vision.’ (Tob. 12.19). There is no sense of Jesus being like this in Paul.
The first and second examples above, about divorce and wages, would to my mind be remarkably quotidian and casuistical as candidates for revelatory material (even without knowledge of the Synoptic parallels).
Jesus is also known for his πραΰτης and ἐπιείκεια,‘meekness and gentleness’ (2 Cor. 10.1); there is a strong probability that this re-fers to an earthly ministry, as it suggests an interaction with the vulnerable.
That Jesus’ life seems to have been characterised by sufferings is sufficiently clear from Paul’s letters on their own. As has just been noted, Jesus was poor and weak in his pre-resurrection life (2 Cor. 8.9; 13.4). Paul’s statement about suffering (θλῖψις) in 1 Thess. 1.6, implies an imitation of Jesus’ suffering, and Rom. 8.17 has the same idea (‘we share in his suffering’). Some of the references to suffering might be confined to his execution (on which see below),but the facts that (a) missionaries see their own non-fatal sufferings reenecting the sufferings of Christ and (b) Christ’s sufferings are plural (e.g. 2 Cor. 1.5: τὰπαθήµατα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, and cf. Phil. 3.10), suggest something more broadly characteristic of Jesus’ life. Similarly, the enigmatic reference to the wounds of Jesus which Paul shares (Gal. 6.17) are perhaps a reference to beatings (cf. Paul’s in 2 Cor. 11.24), though they may refer to the crucifixion specifically. A more extensive sense of suffering is implied in the embracing of poverty for the sake of others’ salvation (2 Cor. 8.9, as noted above).
Other passages strongly imply the physicality of the death. Jesus was a corpse: the language of resurrection ‘from the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν) after burial (on which see below) shows that Jesus belonged, temporarily at least, to the realm of the dead. This is language which Paul uses frequently. It is instructive because it is a standard way of talking about the sphere of the dead: Jesus is not just raised from death, but from the realm inhabited by multiple dead people (νεκρῶν).
To understand the argument being made, we have to understand what is being said about the "mythicist" interpretation of Paul. Most of this comes, ultimately, from interpretations of Doherty and Carrier.
Carrier made the references to angels and a crucifixion in outer space, so that explains the argument about the name Jesus and resurrection from the sphere of the dead. These are arguments specifically against Carrier's view.
Carrier offered this interpretation of "the Lord's brothers," but Doherty thought of them as a particular subgroup.
Doherty made an argument from Middle Platonism that we can understand that some people (e.g. Plutarch) believed that myth "hides esoteric philosophic wisdom within its symbolic covering" (
https://shwep.net/podcast/plutarchs-myt ... ic-ascent/). Doherty also made an argument from Hebrews that the myth of a perfect sacrifice there is depicted as taking place in the heavenly Jerusalem (other exegetes essentially agree and believe it's a second sacrifice after his death on earth). It's not necessarily easy to see what kind of language would be "allowed" or "not allowed" if some kind of theory like this were true.
At a minimum, I think the reference to ἀνθρώπων, for example, would have to be allowed, especially when sometimes paired with langauge like the "man from heaven" or "likeness of" or "appearance as." A reference to "the last Adam" has to be allowed, especially when contrasting with the first Adam from earth. A reference to "flesh" has to be allowed, especially when it also says "likeness of." A reference to a "body" has to be allowed, especially when man is made in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). A reference to "sufferings" and "death" has to be allowed, especially when a myth of a dying-and-rising savior necessarily must have some kind of mythic content to it. A reference to teaching "from the Lord" has to be allowed, especially when Paul says he has been called by a direct revelation.
The reference to making himself "poor" (2 Cor. 8.9) must certainly be allowed and shows how these words are often wrested from their original context. This is part of a description of how Jesus made himself humble in his death, not a reference to money. The reference to being "crucified in weakness" has the same kind of context.
Should a reference to ‘meekness and gentleness’ (2 Cor. 10.1) also be allowed?
Does a resurrection ‘from the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν) for Paul fit into such a scheme?
Are sayings about divorce and wages too quotidian to be from a revelation?
Is the best explanation of the name Jesus here that it refers to a Jewish contemporary of Paul?
These are interesting points, but the interpretation isn't as easy as it is implied.
