Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

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Sorry.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

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No problem, but, since you brought it up, how much validity do you actually assign to the notion that Marcion played secretary to John?
Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

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Who knows. It depends if Eisler's assumptions about the vulgar Latin text hold weight, right? He repunctuates the Latin and that's beyond my pay-grade to determine how plausible his reconstruction is. The appeal is that you have Polycarp vs Marcion because Polycarp is John's doppelganger. Without Polycarp John dies deep in the first century. This crazy notion that John lived into Trajan's reign seems totally connected with Polycarp's school and then you have the bizarre double citation in Irenaeus of John in the bathhouse and then Polycarp not recognizing Marcion back to back. Sort of fits. But who knows. Above my pay grade.
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

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I'm thinking perhaps the correspondences between the Johannine letters and Mark and Matthew could be due to them all being Nazarene writings and thus that the letter writer(s) may not have needed to know Mark and Matthew and could even pre-date them and been known by Mark and Matthew. And while I think the letters were written by the pillar John, the same would hold if they were written by John the Elder, at least with respect to their being Nazarene writings. 1 John 2:3-5, for example, sums up the Nazarene position regarding Torah observance well:

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected.
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

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could be due to them all being Nazarene writings
Of course you do.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:43 pm Who knows. It depends if Eisler's assumptions about the vulgar Latin text hold weight, right? He repunctuates the Latin and that's beyond my pay-grade to determine how plausible his reconstruction is. The appeal is that you have Polycarp vs Marcion because Polycarp is John's doppelganger. Without Polycarp John dies deep in the first century. This crazy notion that John lived into Trajan's reign seems totally connected with Polycarp's school and then you have the bizarre double citation in Irenaeus of John in the bathhouse and then Polycarp not recognizing Marcion back to back. Sort of fits. But who knows. Above my pay grade.
So far as the punctuation of the Prologue is concerned, it does not help that there are so many textual variants, either. One of those variants at the crucial juncture, descripsit vero evangelium dictante Iohanne recte verum Marcion hereticus, could certainly be read as Marcion writing down a gospel while John dictates, but it bothers me a bit that the subject, Marcion, comes so far after the main verb, given that the word order in the rest of the Prologue seems to be the somewhat more typical (for Latin) subject-verb.

Another variant, qui hoc evangelium Iohanne sibi dictante conscripsit... verum Marcion hereticus..., probably refers back to Papias with that qui.
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Re: Papias, the Elder, Mark, & Matthew.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

I do not know much in detail about the textual history of the Prologue, though. I would have to get my hands on Jürgen Regul again.
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