Bernard Muller wrote:to Ben,
I covered this either in the OP or in an ensuing post. Your observation would explain the kai; what it fails to explain is the emphatic pronoun humeis.
I do not know where you addressed that.
I wrote in the OP:
Ben C. Smith wrote:The "also" might be explained as leading to a new action required of the readers: you read fig trees just fine, so now you ought also to read the signs of the times. But the emphatic ὑμεῖς does not easily yield to this explanation.
But I want to make another point: I looked at your OP and "men" appears here:
Reflect, in short, on the picture presented in the parable: "Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they produce their fruit, men know that summer is at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is very near." Now, if the fructification of the common trees be an antecedent sign of the approach of summer, so in like manner do the great conflicts of the world indicate the arrival of that kingdom which they precede.
I am not sure Tertullian extracted that saying from gMarcion.
Sure looks like a quote to me. The translator even has quotation marks.
However, certainly, there is no guarantee that this was the wording of the Marcionite gospel. If it is not, then obviously this example is void. Most of any reconstruction of the Marcionite gospel is derived from this kind of evidence, however. Tertullian seldom claims to be giving the exact reading, and Epiphanius does so only about 78 times, many of those being omissions, not actual text.
So sure, Bernard. Tertullian may not be reproducing Marcion very exactly here; that
may be all there is to it, and case closed. On the other hand, it just seems unlikely to me that someone, composing freely, would come up with
you followed by
so also you, which means that. And that would mean that
somebody managed to reproduce what appears to probably be the original form of the text, with miscellaneous
humans (or at least third-person others) followed by
so also you. Was it Marcion? Was it Tertullian? Or was there a gospel text which was actually written in the expected way to begin with?
Furthermore, if you disregard
this level of evidence for the Marcionite text, you also probably lose passages like Luke 16.17, on which you have based certain arguments (
http://historical-jesus.info/53.html). Tertullian does not clearly state he is quoting the Evangelion
there, either. This is a game of finesse.
He probably paraphrased the saying & made some changes, having fruits being "shoot forth"....
I doubt the fruits are Tertullianic paraphrase;
τὸν καρπὸν αὐτῶν is a Western reading of this verse (codex Bezae, for example), and the Marcionite gospel bears many other affinities to the Western text.
So either Tertullian is paraphrasing carelessly (and replacing a "you" by "men"), or Marcion made a stupid mistake by having all other trees producing fruits, a mistake not done in gLuke (it has only "shoot forth" with no mention of fruits).
I would opt for the first option: why would Marcion write "all other trees, when they produce their fruit"?
I think you are taking this bit way too literally and scientifically. I believe there is a sense in which all trees are at least
regarded as bearing fruit, or in which fruit and trees naturally go together in pithy sayings. (Even grains are called fruit.) "For each tree is known by its own fruit" (Luke 6.44), for example. Each tree? Even though not all trees bear what we scientifically regard as fruit? Is that a stupid mistake, too? See also Matthew 3.10 - Luke 3.9; Matthew 7.17, 19; Matthew 7.18 = Luke 6.43; and Matthew 12.33, none of which seem to take into account that not all trees bear fruit.
Also, I want to point out another reconstruction of gMarcion does not agree with you on that passage:
29 And he spake to them a parable;
Behold the fig tree, and all the trees;
30 When they already shoot forth,
ye see it, and know your own selves
that summer is already near.
31 So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass,
know ye that the kingdom of God is near.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... cion5.html
Does it not appear to you that this reconstruction has simply copied that part of Luke without reflection? Or can you find evidence for this reading in Tertullian?
Ben.