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  • From: "Fabrizio Palestini" <fabrizio.palestini AT tin.it>
  • To: <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: The Priority of Marcion 1
  • Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 12:35:37 +0200

Dear CP's members,
 
As I wrote to David Hindley some time ago, I'm trying to present a set of evidences that points towards marcionite origin of Pauline Epistles.
Unfortunately I haven't enough time to do the whole work in one time, so I decided to present it in "instalments"!
 
EPISODE 1
 
 
1) PRIORITY OF THE MARCIONITE VERSION OF GALATIANS
 
On dr. Detering's site (http://www.hermann-detering.de/Aktuelle%20Texte.htm) there is a reconstruction of the Marcionite text of Galatians, with an impressive comparative analysis between it and orthodox version.
As in any other field of human knowledge, definitive proofs don't exist at all. Any comparative analysis trying to show the primitivity of a text over another (e.g. Markan priority) is simply the cumulative acquisition of a great number of evidences that point more easily towards a kind of dependence than another.
The study of Detering analysis appears to be nevertheless amazing.
Some examples?
 
(Note: I translate German to English with the aid a translator software (GE Trans, downloadable from http://www.theabsolute.net/sware/files/getrans.exe), so I apologize in advance for the errors and the very poor english. I cannot insure the conformity of the arguments below to Detering's ones, as well as my understanding of the latters, so please refer to the original German text. Moreover the following is not a literal translation)
 
 
A) As we know from Tertullian and Origen (through Jerome), marcionite Galatians 1,1 lacks the words "kai theou patros" and presents au\ton instead of au/ton.
  
For HARNACK (Marcion. Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, 1921), 68*, the change goes on the account of Marcion and it is for »Marcionite God's and Christ's teachings characteristic«; in particular for HARNACK the change is arranged for Marcion's modalistic interest. Marcion want to lead to the _expression_, that Christ wasn't raised from God, but he raised himself (following John 2,19; 10,18).
Also according to BLACKMAN (Marcion and his influence, 1948) this is »a significant  Marcionite omission «, 81, the verse in this form is »indicative of Marcion's modalistic christology «, 44. That omission »gives _expression_ to his theory that Christ raised himself from dead, and depended for nothing on the Creator«,44.
 
Nevertheless the marcionite version appears to be the more primitive text, on the following grounds:
 
1) Marcion had no reasons to discard the "kai theou patros"
 
Against HARNACK's and BLACKMAN's thesis, i.e. Marcion, with the omission of the _expression_, having the intention to underline that Christ wasn't raised by the Demiurge, we must remember that on other places of marcionite Corpus Paulinum, as far as this is testified through Tertullian, the thought resurrection through God is by no means rejected.
 
a) Rom 8,11 o egeiras Criston ek nekrwn, qui suscitavit Christum a mortuis, Marc 5.14.
b) 1Cor 6,14 o de theos kai ton kurion hgeiren, qui dominum suscitavit, Marc 5.7.
c) Eph 1,20 egeiras auton ek nekrwn, suscitando eum a mortuis, Marc 5.17.
 
Already ZAHN, 496, noticed that the »omission [of kai theou patros] was not necessary for Marcion «, also if it corresponded »well« to his Christology; cf. also BAARDA (Marcion's Text of Gal 1,1, 1988), 244, who rightly asks: »If Marcion were a modalist in the strict sence of the word, he apparently did not revise other passages in which Paul spoke of God having raised Christ from the dead. Why then would he have demonstrated his modalism so explicitly in Gal 1:1 and not elsewhere?«.
By the way Marcion didn't need to think at kai theou patros necessarily as the Creator-God, as BLACKMAN did, but he would be able to easy cover the place, in the case, with Jesus Christ's father, i.e. the marcionite Good God.
 
2) Linguistic problems: the preposition "dia" in Gal 1,1:
 
Actually the preposition dia is assigned, as it isn't locally, temporally or modally understood or it doesn't stand by urgent petitions (Bl.-D. § 233, ThW II, 65), by gen. instrumental on a »mediator« and can be then represented for instance with »through mediation«. This translation could be suggested because of the contrast of the foregoing di'anthrwpou, but because of kai theou patros it fails.
LIETZMANN, 227: »as dia in the second limb of a sentence must be oriented as well as to Jesus as to God, it cannot be translated as di'anthrwpou 'through mediation'...« Differently SCHLIER 27f. considered kai theou patros not a priori as an original part of the text, that is he sees therein the lemma of later redactors, so that the preposition can stand also very well in this place in its actual sense and be translated in contrast to the anterior di'anthrwpou »through mediation Jesus Christ«. With the work of redactors the theological tendency has frequently the precedence over the linguistic exactness (see also the discussion on Gal 4,6).
 
3) Theological problems:
 
a) In the canonical setting the vocation of the apostle is led back not only to Christ, but also to God, kai theou patros. The situation, as e.g. also for SCHMITHALS, Das kirchliche Apostelamt, 15f, is rightly understood in opposition to many other places in pauline letters, in which Christ is considered as the only initiator of the vocation: [Rom 1,4f]; 1Cor 1,1 (Paulos klhtos apostolos Cristou Ihsou dia thelhmatos theou, not dia theou); 2Cor 1,1; 1Thess 2,7; cf. Eph 1,1; Col 1,1; 2Cor 11,13; 1Cor 1,17; 1Cor 9,1.
SCHMITHALS, 15f infers from this: »Marcion omits kai theou patros, obviously for the correct observation that Paul ordinarily leads back the vocation to the apostle merely on Christ.« – The more reasonable consequence would well be that the marcionite text is more primitive.
 
b) Through the double negatives form ouk ap'anthrwpwn oude di'anthrwpou the human parentage of pauline apostleship is in a more explicit way denied. The entire formal architecture and the inner logic ask that with Ihsous Cristos was designates an absolute godly force, to which the human sphere stands in opposition. Actually this thought in the canonical text is not consequently carried out.
In fact, that the God-father stands, through the lemma kai theou patros, beside Jesus Christ, moves the latter absolutely not toward God, but the opposite: the common presence accents the difference between both, between he who awakened from the dead, and he who was awakened.
In sum, therefore, the emphatically accentuated opposition between more divine and more human sphere, which is prepared through the beginning of the verses, is again attenuated through the lemma »and God-father, who raised him from the dead«, because Jesus Christ is ancillary of God-father.
The lemma kai theou patros cloud, as already VAN MANEN, 456ff., firmly found, the original flux of thoughts on the divine vocation of the apostle, for it decreases the ouk ap'anthrwpwn oude di'anthrwpou.
 
Continues...


  • The Priority of Marcion 1, Fabrizio Palestini, 08/26/2001

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