(21 votes, average: 4.81 out of 5)
Loading...I’ve said something about Marcion’s canon of Scripture in the past couple of posts, and last time I did that — many years ago — some people got confused. The issue has to do with what at first seems a different issue. Did the apostle Paul (during his ministry) know about the Gospels? My answer to that is no, he probably did not. Especially since, well, he was writing before they were written! And he shows no knowledge of any written Gospel (even of ones we don’t have.)
But then when I say elsewhere that Marcion promoted only Paul’s “gospel.” Uh…?
Here’s the original question and my response.
Question:
You wrote: “The apostle Paul – well-connected and well-traveled and familiar with lots of churches – shows no knowledge that such a thing as Gospels exist.” I should have asked you about this earlier. I was surprised when, back in a post on Marcion, you said the other “gospel” Paul talked about was “a version of our Gospel of Luke.” Would you explain?
RESPONSE:
OK, so how can I have it both ways? How can I say that Paul did not know about any Gospels AND say that Marcion used the gospel that Paul talked about, the Gospel of Luke?
So the deal is this. Paul really did not
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Earliest surviving epistle is Thessalonians? Paul wrote to people who knew what the ‘Gospel’ was, urging them to ‘imitate Christ Jesus’ WITHOUT NEEDING TO ELABORATE. The ‘same people’ who mistreated Jesus also drove Paul out. Paul refers to a number of statements we read in Matt and Mark.
Most people are fine accepting that the author of Luke was shipwrecked when he wrote, “On the fourteenth night we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea…”
This author was with Paul, mid sixties. He quoted Matthew and Mark’s Gospel.
An astonishing website I just found suggests the wealth of fine detail in that journey.
The Apostle Paul’s Shipwreck: An Historical Examination – jeffersonwhite.com
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Paul doesn’t need to elaborate what he says about Christ in the letter becuase he’s reminding them what he taught them when he converted them, in the not too distant past.
Do we know how well gospels (or any other Christian book) circulated around the time of Marcion? For most Christians? For someone with interest, initiative and resources such as Marcion?
Distribution/circulation was very random and arbitrary. Basically, if someone was visiting another location and had a book with him, or found a book where he went, he could have a copy made and leave it there or make a copy to bring it back home. Marcion’s home church appears ot have a collectiohn of Paul’s writings and one of the Gospels; other churches had fewer or more and sometimes different books.
Re: Paul’s written Gospel
According to NT Galatians, Paul wrote:
Ὦ ἀνόητοι Γαλάται, τίς ὑμᾶς ἐβάσκανεν, οἷς κατ’ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος;
Oh unperceptive Galatians, who bewitched you–before whose eyes Jesus Christ was formerly written as having been crucified.
Could the word προεγράφη refer to a formerly written text (or even a textual dictation process), that had been presented (or taken place) before the very eyes of the Galatians?
Perhaps he was speaking of a prototype of GMark 16:6, and speaking specifically of a formerly written annunciation at the empty tomb?
ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς Μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε· Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον· ἠγέρθη, οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε· ἴδε ὁ τόπος ὅπου ἔθηκαν αὐτόν.
And he says to them, “Do not be amazed. You seek Jesus, the Nazarene, the One having been crucified. He is risen! He is not here! Behold the place where they laid Him.
Perhaps also it was this formerly written text that provided a basis for Paul to write in 1 Cor 2:2,
οὐ γὰρ ἔκρινά τι εἰδέναι ἐν ὑμῖν εἰ μὴ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν καὶ τοῦτον ἐσταυρωμένον.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him having been crucified.
Could it be?
It’s usually taken to be a metaphor for a verbal picture that has been written or “painted” by the evangelist (Paul) when he preached to them, a reference to the ancient practice of “ekphrasis,” where a word picture is so detailed that it invokes an image, in this case of Jesus being cruirfied.
Dr. Ehrman, do you give any credence to Joseph B. Tyson’s work (I believe building on John Knox’s work) suggesting that Marcion was using some proto-Luke, and that the final version of Luke-Acts that we have come to know (possibly as well as the pastorals) was done in response to Marcionism? That some of those differences weren’t Marcion cutting from canonical versions, but that future-canonical versions added to what Marcion had? (We can give Irenaeus and Tertullian the benefit of the doubt in this scenario and assume they just didn’t realize who did what.)
Obviously you don’t AGREE with that, based on what you’ve said already. But do you find it at all plausible? Possible? Interesting?
THere’s been a lot of scholarship on Marcion’s text of the Gospel since Tyson’s work, but in one respect I’m still drawn to it; I think it is indeed possible that Marcion’s Gospel lacked chs. 1-2, and that they were added if not to counter Marcion then to counter others who were uncomfortable with how Luke’s account may have looked (e.g., adoptionistic) without a birth narrative.
Dr. Ehrman,
The reason that I find it hard to believe that a traveling companion of Paul wrote Luke and Acts is because the writer of Luke and Acts seems to have an understanding of this new religion that conflicts with Paul’s. No one did more than Paul to promote the idea that salvation does not come from the law but that it is achieved through the belief that Jesus died on the cross as atonement for sins. The Gospel of Luke and Acts say that salvation comes to those who follow the law, are baptized, and repent and that the crucifixion was merely a coincidence. I can’t see how Paul could have gotten along with the writer of Luke.
I have the same problem understanding how Marcion could create a canon that included Pauline letters and this Gospel. When Marcion was removing OT references, did he add anything to make it more align with Paul’s understanding of salvation? Maybe something like Luke 22:19-20?
I’m afraid we don’t really know. Our evidence far Marcion’s precise text is sparse in places, and it appears he was not entirely consistent in his editing….
Dr Ehrman, is there a recent book about Marcion that you would recommend? (He is a fascinating character).
Yes indeed. Judith Lieu’s.
I suspect we don’t know which 10 letters of Paul were in his Canon? Do you have a guess? Maybe all but the pastoral letters?
YEs, we know. All but the pastorals.
Dr. Ehrman: Which is the oldest BOOK of the New Testament, at least concurred upon by Biblical Scholars such as yourself?
1 Thessalonians; written ca. 49 CE.
Quote -Paul doesn’t need to elaborate what he says about Christ in the letter becuase he’s reminding them what he taught them when he converted them, in the not too distant past.’
Are you saying that Paul was solely responsible for the conversion of Thessalonians? AND that Paul created the narrative of the resurrected Christ? If so then you would need some serious evidence.
Yes, that’s right. Paul converted them. But no, why would you think I’m saying that Paul invented the narrative of the resurrected Christ?? Before he was a Christian himself he was persecuting people who told the narrative. It had been around from the beginning.
Mr. Ehrmann,
I’m not sure if it is OK to mention/ask this here, as I’m a new member and the topic is about Marcion, but as you know even though scholars state the Gospel of Mark was written around 70, bishop Papias around 100 refers to Mark as a set of events of the life of Christ out of order, which doesn’t seem to match a description for Mark, and Matthew as a set of “logia”, which doesn’t match Matthew either, as this Gospel repeats Mark 91% and adds some stuff seeming to be a kind of Mark with additions. So what is your view about this? Couldn’t the Gospel we know today as Mark be written much later than 70? If there is a link that explains that here please send me. Thank you.
Papias is more commonly dated around 120 or 130 I think. I don’t think he was referring to our Matthew, and I doubt he was referring to our Mark. But that would have no bearing on when Mark was written, so I don’t use Papias as a guide for the date.
The passage from Galatians is an interesting one.
Ὦ ἀνόητοι Γαλάται, τίς ὑμᾶς ἐβάσκανεν, οἷς κατ’ ὀφθαλμοὺς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς προεγράφη ἐσταυρωμένος;
I understand it to mean that some of the Galatians were in Jerusalem during the Passover feast and personally wintessed the crucifixion, or at least parts of it. The προεγράφη I take to be physical, not temporal, with an emphasis on the physicality of pro prefix. The reference would be to the title enscribed on Jesus’ cross, a regular Roman practice.
That’s one of the reasons Paul loses his temper with the Galatians. Some of you THERE, you silly people, and now someone is talking you out of what you saw with your own eyes?!
Marcion has provided us with all of the “original” Pauline letters, which appears to be a remarkable achievement in itself. He discovered a letter to the Galatians. No one else found anything else, unless he wrote some fake himself. Not even one unique little quote.
All the quotes used by the apostolic fathers are from the corpus completed by Marcion. On the other hand, Marcion could not find any other gospels that the authors knew about themselves, copying the text in all directions or rewriting the ideas of colleagues. Rome knew no gospel, neither did Antioch. And being an extreme dochetist, he organized mass congregations with such a sublime, sophisticated product. He was winning with the offer of Jesus, which had been present on the market for 50 years, tailored to the needs of a mass audience. I love such consensus.
The analysis seems to assume that Macion knew there was more than gospel. Scholars seem to believe that he chose one gospel over the others, but it isn’t clear to me that he knew of others. It’s said that Marcion cited a “gospel” in several places in his writing, but nowhere is it said that the cites or subjects of the cites are found in all four (and also any of the non-canonical gospels, since at the time he wrote, all gospels were non-canonical). So, like a standard logic problem, it should be possible to eliminate some gospels from contention by cross-matching whether Marcion’s cite or its subject fails to appear in a particular text. Yes?
Yes, I myself do not think Marcion knew of other Gospels until he had already decided on how to handle the one he did know, probably from growing up with it.
Marcion was a rude sort of fellow, as was Paul, his chosen model for life and faith. Marcion couldn’t even let Luke reside as a testimony without altering it to fit his needs, which is what Paul did with the Hebrew Scripture. Why are we focusing on the liars, instead of the truth tellers who had the disciples of Paul alter their account (Matthew)? Even Jerome knew the reports of the Hebrew Gospel, even the Jews, via Shem Tob recounted the Hebrew Gospel (evidently Matthew) in their refuting and arguing against Christians up to when they altered their own Hebrew Scriptures in 900 CE.
Have you read “The Valediction of Moses” (proto Deuteronomy) yet? I think the way they are approaching the evidence of alterations of Scripture makes the most sense I’ve heard to date. Why aren’t “we” Christians doing likewise? There is no doubt we’ve been “hoodwinked” by Rome and the “Pharisee” Paul, who only proved he is a Hebrew Scripture ignoramus. (seed versus seeds; also “the great inversion” ).
I would appreciate any feedback on my site, should any have time to review…thanks in advance
http://www.onediscipletoanother.org
No, haven’t read it yet. And I’m afraid we don’t really have any information on Marcion’s personality. Wish we did!