Alexander Gorchakov is the author of this phrase. This statement is extremely popular in Poland. Probably because after 45 years of the communist regime, we knew exactly how the media feed us almost exclusively lies and fake news. For reasons unknown to me, this tradition somehow survived.
Marcion’s opponents made classic PR mistakes. The first of these was made by Tertullian, who in two places referred to the matter of Marcion’s donation to the Roman congregation. Once he wrote that Marcion had given the money and the second time that the congregation had returned the money to Marcion. No one believes it except Marcus Vinzent because he builds his arguments that Marcion is the author of the first gospel on the credibility of Tertullian’s message.
The second PR error was made by the anonymous author of the prologue to the Gospel of St. John, who stated that Marcion had been rejected by John, but had brought “letters and writings from the brethren of Pontus”. In this way, this untrained author wanted to show that Marcion’s book collection was not his. So the Roman congregation did not appropriate Marcion’s books because they were not his. A bold concept. It is strange that only Jan Wierusz Kowalski found the correct interpretation of the prologue.
And this is the end of the real information about Marcion. The whole criticism of Marcion was based on all sorts of fabrications. Marcion was allegedly rejected by the evangelist John. Marcion was to listen to Peter himself. As if they lived at the same time. Marcion was supposed to be a pupil of Simon Magus’ apprentice. Marcion was supposed to be a disciple of Simon Magus himself. The author of the concept of two gods was supposed to be Marcion, or Cerdo, or Simon Magus. All these are made-up arguments with only propaganda significance in the fight against the competition. Extremely efficient competition.
Marcion’s organizational efficiency resulted from many factors. Firstly, the business complementarity of the missionary activity with his commercial and transport business. Christianity was another recipient of these services. The missionary activity received ready-made services for transporting people, correspondence and money. These were not trivial problems in antiquity. There were no convenient and cheap systematic solutions to these problems in antiquity. If you want to find out about it, all you need to do is send another birthday wishes to your aunt who lives 300 km (200 miles) from you by a special messenger who will cover this distance on foot. It’s gonna cost a bit.
For Marcion, break-even analysis, planning, determining revenues and costs, lending investments, predicting the effects of his own decisions were everyday duties. Building an organization is based on ensuring stable investment financing, on the right selection of the offer, on training and onboarding staff and on managing the process.
And here is the man who launches a large, comprehensive project is to be at the same time an intransigent, uncompromising theologian, because that’s what his enemies wrote.
BTW. This logic is missing from Paul’s story. Pauline Corpus denies the entire narrative layer of the letters by its very existence. According to this contrived narrative, Paul is like Atlas condemned to repeatedly pushing a boulder up a hill. And he does it cyclically from scratch in each new place for 20 years. Too bad for such a smart guy.
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Markus Vinzent claims that Marcion constantly controlled these capital funds and simply took them when he left Rome. In general, Vinzent puts a great deal of trust in Tertullian, but not so much as to claim that the Roman community gave these funds of its own accord. Why would they do that anyway? The donation is not legally bound by any obligation. As for Marcion’s book collection taken over by the Romans, a subterfuge was used – it was not Marcion’s property, but letters and writings brought by him from the brethren of Pontus. Such primitive PR in both cases.
I asked some historians and theologians privately. Some of them are Catholic priests. None of them believe in a refund and no one will say so publicly.
It is clear that in Rome the parties were unable to establish parities and 5 years of efforts, negotiations and bribery did not result in an agreement.
The use of the gospel and the Pauline Corpus by both Christian structures clearly indicates that the direction was set together, perhaps thanks to Marcion’s missionary successes. But both the gospel and the letters, and many more gospels, letters, acts, apocalypses, were in the public domain. They were about alleged past events and were written by ghostwriters. This made it possible to build a content base based on own and enemy writings.
Marcion probably did not write the Apostolicon contrary to what Detering wrote. Marcion probably did not write the Evangelikon, contrary to what Vinzent claims. Marcion certainly chose this content from all available offers circulating among Christians. Klinghardt dates *Ev to the 90s CE.
The success of selected literature was determined by people who wrote nothing. Church leaders deriving their rights from apostolic succession. It was their decisions that made orthodox writers and theologians often become haretics. They’re just telling the world that they’re the ones who make the decisions, not the creative people. This is how they maintain order and discipline.
Wierusz Kowalski stated that Marcion donated money (Tertullian) and donated part of his book collection. The money was returned (Tertullian) and the books were kept. Wierusz did not claim that these were letters written by Marcion. Sorry, my fault.
The Christian literature market was independent in the sense that works by anonymous ghostwriters were attributed to supposedly historical figures from the past. The question of who wrote this gospel or that letter is illegitimate. The work was put into circulation and used by whoever wanted. Orthodox and Gnostics are our categories. These people were just arguing over interpretations and competing with each other.
Stephen made an important point – they all knew what they were dealing with. These were not holy books, but competitive productions
I am a pre-evangelical, literate Christian. For 10 years I have been listening to different stories about Jesus. And I know the LXX, I read all sorts of things. And suddenly I get the gospel in my hand. My first thought about the author: ” Oh you cunning son of … Nice touch.”
Almost all criticism of Marcion boils down to theological aspects, but it is purely propaganda. Marcion drew content from the same literary output as his opponents. Also later – that’s why you can’t find any characteristic Marcian literature. Because this literature simply did not exist. There was no other God, just a deliberately distorted Marcion’s interpretation of the description of divine nature. An invented hostile concept atributed to arch-heretic Simon Magus (pseudo – Clementine literature)
What was behind it? There was money, there was a collection of books, there were Ireneus’s students who joined Marcion’s structure. There were two lines: costs and income, the slope of which shows how much capital/credit you need to survive until you become financially independent. And a race in the field to see who will create the next congregations first.
What about literary development?
If you have willing buyers, it would be a sin to limit the available products. They will buy them and what will you tell people when they ask for new ones? You get along with the ghost writers/ redactors and more productions are coming. I don’t know why we invent Q source, M, L, .. and not invent writers and editors working at the behest of some scriptorium owner – one or more. They write almost the same thing in different guises, swapping texts to keep to the line and not fly off too far with the made-up narrative.
We define Mark’s primacy assuming the primacy of archaic Q. And simple literary techniques (kai, primitive language, vulgar vocabulary, praesens historicum) are treated as evidence of primacy of a work distinguished by excellent narration and excellent composition.
All FMCG/mass market projects are the same in principles. Rick Warren is just honest.
Let me begin with Irenaeus. Although the bishop of Lyon is writing a good 40 years after Marcion, and certainly after the latter’s death in the 60th of the second century, he reveals that Marcion’s views had attracted not only the attention of many, but also persuaded “his disciples.”That Marcion had a large following is reported in older and younger witnesses. More important however is that we know of Marcion living and undisputedly teaching within the Roman community for several years until he decided to leave it and create its own.
Markus Vinzent Marcion’s Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity
From what I understand, a collection of Jesus sayings called Q is supposed to be the oldest element in the gospels. Regardless of whether Q as a document existed or not. But that’s irrelevant for now. I will discuss this in a separate topic
The most important thing is that in each content based project we have the same structure and division of tasks and rights. The author and performer are important but not the most important. Until recently, it was easy to cut them off from the stage, from the audience. Only the internet has changed that.
The situation with Marcion is strangely similar to the situation with H. Weinstein. Almost everyone talked about him: actors, actresses, journalists, bloggers, …
Opinions from one group of people who benefited most from his downfall were lacking. Other film producers remained silent.
BTW. I spent the last week in the Netherlands cycling between cities and for the first time I was in an old big church taken over by Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation. Right next to it stood a Catholic church from the same period with its original decor and structure. Luther, Calvin and others have done a remarkable thing by remodeling Christianity.
I think they were aware that Scripture is like a church that they took away the altar, the paintings, the statues, the frescoes. But they had no choice. Some of the content still had to be sacred.
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