You showed remarkable intuition. I was selling content to mass recipients based on licenses and merchandising agreements. I accounted for copyrights, production rights. I had contracts with EMI, Sony, Warner Bross, Universal, BMG for music. LoTR, Shrek, Dilbert, Peanuts, Shark’s Tale, Suicide Girls (!), And more … As I didn’t have to buy a license, I produced the content myself based on copied ideas. Our Host Bart Ehrman publishes most of the books for Harper One and is present in Myth Vision. I respect his choice and have nothing to do with it. But I know exactly what it is. It is a show business
Steve Campbell, Argumentation Specialist
1) Given the characters of the Paul figure and three men of similar character in the second passage after the Testimonium Flavianum, were the letters of Paul more for evangelizing rich Roman women for sex and money than for sincere religious integrity? Is there some lack of legitimacy about the letters of Paul? Who is claiming that the seven authentic letters of Paul are 100% original/pristine, unedited?
2) Paul’s account of the Lord’s supper is a later interpolation?
Reply:
Since the Pauline Corpus of Marcion could not be eliminated, Plan B was to reissue them in a sanitized edition, domesticated by means of the Pastoral stratum. From there on in, it became easier to destroy rival versions of the Pauline letters. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew were added. and so was John once it had undergone “ecclesiastical redaction” ( Bultmann), just like Laodiceans and Ur-Lukas.
Stephen said
Incoherent self-contradictory conspiracy theories. They claim too much yet rely on a lack of knowledge.
What ARE you talking about? Either you know the history of Marcion and the Pauline epistles are you do not.
Address your misgivings to the original poster. As for me there is no theory: I am not accepting 1 Corinthians Chapter 11 as 100% legitimate. One question I have is, without Paul being at the Last Supper, how does he know what Jesus said about body and blood? If Chapter 11 is 100% legitimate, what scholars are saying Matthew, Mark, and Luke used Chapter 11 as a source? What scholars are saying when and how did Paul pick up the ritualistic, verbatim, text from the Jerusalem Community? Ehrman said body and blood in Chapter 11 could have come from disciples keeping the Last Supper tradition as religious ritual. What scholarly articles/books discuss this?
Number 1: what is your problem with Markus Vinzent’s book, if you have one?
Do you really think argumentation specialists and experts are impressed with your put-downs? Do you think we are persuaded by trash talk?
News Flash: no we are not persuaded by that tactic. Your reputation for reading books gives you carte blanche AND the power of persuasion? No.
Conclusions are won by excellence in work, skill, and a sound line of reason. If you choose to be lazy or dishonest, that’s your prerogative, but I am here to improve morally and intellectually even though. astrologically, I am in the age range of elder–that age range starts after the second Saturn return.
What ARE you talking about?
Friends there are a lot of big blank spots on our map. Let’s not be in such a damn hurry to fill them up. And wind up convinced that we’ve discovered something. Let us be good Buddhists. Let us contemplate the void. Let it sink in. Then go to work if you want to. But you have to learn to be comfortable with not knowing.
These hypotheses I’m not against. Grist for the mill. What I object to is the thought process. In order to make the arguments you have to ignore the strengths of one text in order to ignore the weaknesses of another when in the end they’re the same strengths and the same weaknesses! We’re no closer to Marcion than we are to the Apostle Paul. After all we have Paul’s letters. And forgeries to compare them to. “Reconstructions” of Marcion are pseudo-imaginary. (And to be fair I don’t like “Q” reconstructions either.)
Robert said
Jarek said
after 4 days of commenting, nobody questioned anything and only Steefen asked substantive questions .. Interesting
I think you got a few good questions about your claims of proof. I haven’t seen any answers to those questions.
I checked the course of the discussion. Unfortunately, I can’t see. Maybe it’s a language problem. I should be obliged if you point such questions
Robert said
I questioned your claim of proof ** you do not have permission to see this link **) over scholarly consensus is an implicit question about proof. Scholars know the state of the question, what can be proved and what cannot, and the various positions that scholars have taken to explain the evidence we do (and don’t) have. Fringe theorists abandon any pretense of scholarly methodology and propose wild ‘solutions’ which they oftentimes then seem to embrace as certainties.
Thank you Robert. The only indication of Paul’s missionary activity 40 years before the first quotations from his letters are the contents of his letters. Nothing more. The first Pauline Corpus already contains 3 fakes and the allegedly original letters are stuck together in many cases from different pieces. The fact that one author wrote 7 letters does not prove anything. The author of the correspondence to Seneca wrote 24 letters impersonating both of them. And Marcion found a letter to the Galatians. There is no trace of tradition in the existence of Paul’s churches. They didn’t exist, because 40 years is not enough to completely obliterate all traces of tradition. And the letters were written by a professional. The question is when? It is not even important because the time of their appearance on the market around the year 100 is important. It is the same for us and for the Church Fathers from the 2nd century CE. Paul’s mission for them was also a legend
What never ceases to amaze me is a combination of A) how many theories there are and B) that many people seem to think that propounding them is going to have a notable impact on anyone. The usual target seems to be Christians, particularly of a conservative and evangelical sort, and it should already be clear that people of that inclination are highly resistant to ideas that they do not already hold. Even if there were a very strong argument with a lot of evidence to support it, and they rarely are either, I doubt it will have the desired effect.
Robert said
Almost all of this is well known, but what exactly do you think has now been proven, that Marcion wrote the letters of Paul? Except Galatians? That someone else wrote them? That they were all written together at the same specific time? That none of the churches supposedly founded by Paul actually existed, except perhaps those in Galatia?
Letters were written and edited and then added to others to create a universal collection called the Pauline Corpus. From its inception to the present day, Corpus has served exclusively priests in two applications. It was a textbook for new missionaries. He was a source of content for the faithful, administered in small doses and widely discussed. The letters were not used for any crisis management or relations with specific assemblies. These are testimonials to help all the faithful in their dilemmas and troubles. An invented tradition, badly needed for a new venture.
Marcion did not write any letters, but took them from the market. Why didn’t he write? Because his goal was to build a network of congregations, not to write. Then you take the best material available, and you don’t waste time on crap. And he succeeded. If he was from the vicinity of Rome, we would have the Shepherd Hermas in the NT instead of Paul’s letters.
Even if he lost. Rome accepted Paul’s letters because he had to. Marcion created a whole host of these congregations. There was no point in overturning the mission cannon, only Marion himself, and taking over the congregations.
Writing something yourself and counting that it will be a good product is a completely different business, different risk, different goals. Not for Marcion. He left nothing behind, allegedly wrote some kind of introduction called Antithesis. And everyone makes him a theologian. Interesting, isn’t it. The Pauline congregations have disappeared immediately, and everyone is making Paul a missionary. Yes you can. Only what it has to do with common sense?
Consensus makes Paul an unprecedented giant. Radical critics tried to do the same with Marcion.
There is no tradition of organized Christianity in the first century. And it’s not some freak showing it, but a diagram by Gunther Zuntz.
Jarek
The fact that one author wrote 7 letters does not prove anything.
There is no trace of tradition in the existence of Paul’s churches. They didn’t exist, because 40 years is not enough time to completely obliterate all traces of tradition. The time of the appearance of the seven authentic letters on the market is around the year 100.
Steve Campbell, researcher, argumentation specialist, and author of Historical Accuracy
The authors of the gospels would ignore the greatness in the authentic Pauline letters?
Really?
Not one gospel writer included: And this part of the Last Supper, has already been reported in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
Not one gospel writer included: As we already know, there was Paul who became another apostle of Jesus. The gospel authors (Mark, Matthew, and John) could go back 40 or more years to Jesus and say absolutely nothing about Paul, his persecutions and conversion. Author/s of Luke, of course puts Paul, not in passing in his gospel but in the second half of his Acts of the Apostles.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
When I asked, Did the Church of Rome, already there when Paul arrived, put a copy of his Letter to the Romans into their library–Did that Church keep a copy of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, no one put forward evidence of that. Did Clement or Flavia Domitilla read Paul’s Letter to the Romans, no one put forward evidence of that.
Did Josephus mention the great piece of writing, Paul’s epistle to the Romans?
No.
Acts 19: 30-31 – Asiarchs were friends of Paul. Surely, the Asiarchs would preserve the great Pauline epistle to the Romans. The Asiarchs of the Commune Asiae could have been the agents of tradition for their friend Paul, yes? But, no.
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Marcion accepted the following Christian writings in this order:
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