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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 3
  • Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 12:42:07 +0200

C) As can be seen from Tertullian, who cites Marcion’s text, in which only one visit by Paul in Jerusalem is mentioned, the verses 1,18-24 seem to have been missing.
Which is, between the marcionite and the orthodox, the more primitive version?
 
Relation from 1,18 and 2,1
 
In verse 2,2, anebhn de kata apokaluyin kai anethemhn autois to euaggelion o khrussw en tois ethnesin, kat'idian de tois dokousin, the pronoun autois hangs clearly in the air, indeed one must go back to 1:17 to understand that the reference here is obviously to pros tous pro emou apostolous.
SCHLIER, 66, and the most part of the exegetes refers the pronoun certainly not to that, but on the further information from 2,1 eis Ierosoluma: Autois could be referred, »according to a well-known use of the pronoun, to the residents of a previously mentioned city«. But this explanation is not convincing, since Paul hardly laid his gospel before all the residents of Jerusalem, but only the leaders of the Jerusalem church.
O'NEILL, 27: » This reading seems very strained. The particle de loses all its adversative force, and would require to be translated 'and also privately', which is scarcely possible «. Faced with these and other difficulties O'NEILL decides finally to abandon the autois (with codex Y) and to argue therein for an interpolation.
The sole and simplest solution of the problem can however simply be: not the autois, that is necessary from the majority of the textual analysis, but 1,18-24 is a clear insertion, that breaks the original relation between 1,17 and 2,1.
 
Linguistic Peculiarity, concerning the difficulties of the section 18-22 as arguments against its originality
 
a) the often discussed verb istorhsai, 1,18 (confer. KILPATRIK, Galatians  1,18 istorhsai Khfan) is an Hapaxlegomenon  and is present as v.l. evt. [?] again only in the Areopagus discourse in Acts 17,23.
 
b) ou yeudomai 1,20: The formula is present also in Rom 9,1; II Cor 11,31 and I Tim 2,7. Apart from I Tim 2,7, in which the flowery phrase of Rom 9,1; II Cor 11,31 or Gal 1,18 offer no problem, the ou yeudomai stands in — more or less wide — editorial insertions. This applies particularly for Rom 9,1 — a passage that, with the entire section Rom 9-11, missing in Marcion, is interpolated — as well as for II Cor 11,31. It is surely not accidental, that the assurance-formula ou yeudomai is present also there in a place where again in a Pauline Letter is becoming an information from the Acts of the Apostles (the story of the flight from Damascus, Acts 9,22-25).
 
c) O'NEILL, 25: » The verse 23 pistis is used of the Christian religion, as in Acts 6,7, and the only possible parallels in Paul are at 3.23-5, 6.10 and Rom. 1,5 all passages that are of doubtful authenticity «.
 
d) BRUNO BAUER, 16: » If he [Paul] spends fifteen days in Jerusalem, visits with Peter and James, and the presence of the other apostles in the holy city was something entirely taken for granted, as he shows by his oath, it would have been impossible for him not to see them«.
 
 
Explanation of the insertion
 
O'NEILL, 26, explains the insertion from 22-24 as follows: »The author possessed Judean traditions about Paul, the persecutor who became the champion of the faith, and he inserted them into Galatians at the appropriate points in the story. His source was Judean as opposed to Jerusalemite, so that he has to explain that, although they used to say 'He who once persecuted us', they did not knew him by sight«.
But he acts however on the section also for the attempt to bring in agreement the story of Acts, with the biographical data that Galatians refered about the apostle.
 
In other words, the insertion functions to remove sovereignty from Paul and make him dependent on Jerusalem. The letter to the Galatians, in whose introduction it is explicitly said that Paul is an apostle called by God, and indeed “not by men nor through a man,” and in which his independence from Jerusalem continues to be emphasized, has been reworked on the basis of the Catholic Acts of the Apostles. The tendency is the same: Paul had no revelation of his own (as the Marcionites claim with their solus Paulus), but had been with the apostles, or at least Peter. As a representative of the Jerusalem church, Peter (and not God) instructed him. [Bauernfeind, who notices this tension, rightly observes with reference to 1:18-1:20: “A remarkable shadow thus lies over Paul’s memory of the first meeting with Peter: If the gap in the apologetic proof were not insignificant, then the entire proof, on which everything else depends, could not be derived from such a strong position as Paul obviously thinks he has” (Die Begegnung, 270)]
Two weeks is a long time. Consequently, the Marcionites could not appeal to Paul (“solus Paulus”)! Because they have no independent revelation, they have no right to be an independent Church! As Paul was dependent on Jerusalem, so also they are dependent on Rome (the legitimate follower of the Jerusalem church)! There can be no true Christian without Rome’s blessing!

To make this clear was not an easy task for the Catholic redactor, but also not entirely hopeless, since the period of time between Paul’s conversion and his first visit in Jerusalem had not been precisely set forth in Acts. 
Acts 9:23 speaks only of “many days.” Now it was certainly impossible to understand this as referring to the fourteen years spoken of in Gal 2:1, nor was it possible to place the journey to Jerusalem all too soon after the conversion, since in Gal 1:16 it is explicitly said that Paul did not immediately establish a connection with those who were apostles before him.
As between Scylla and Charybdis, the redactor decided for a period of three years, perhaps believing thereby to conform somewhat with Luke’s reference to “many days” as well as not to expressly contradict the emphatic assertion in Gal 1:17 that Paul did not immediately establish a connection with those in Jerusalem  (which he would have done had he taken over the Lukan formulation). 
The view that he correlates Gal 1,18 on Acts 9,23 and that he acts so by the specification of the lukan hmerai ikanai in 3 years of Gal, was already represented by LOMAN, Nalatenshap 118f.
Certainly he saw there the work of the author of Gal and not of the Redactors.
 
That below the mediation of the divergent data, which Gal and Acts present about the life of the apostle, stand an eminent interest on the side of catholic Christianity, is made clear by Irenaeus Haer 3.13.3: »If, then, any one shall, from the Acts of the Apostles, carefully scrutinize the time concerning which it is written that he went up to Jerusalem on account of the forementioned question, he will find those years mentioned by Paul coinciding with it. Thus the statement of Paul harmonizes with, and is, as it were, identical with, the testimony of Luke regarding the apostles«.
 
Also Tertullian is clearly interested on that the data of Galatians agree with those of Acts of the Apostles: Marc 5.2.7 underlines that the events of the conversion of Paul from himself was just the same as in the Acts of the Apostles (»Exinde decurrens ordinem conversionis suae de persecutore in apostolum scripturam Apostolicorum confirmat«).  
The agreement of the statements of Galatians with those of Acts is, for Tertullian, the definitive proof that the Paul of Galatians preached the same God as in Acts of the Apostles: the creator - God and relative Christ.
 
Possible objections
 
As an objection to the explanation advanced above, one could ask why the redactor emphasizes with great force that in Jerusalem Paul saw only Peter and James, when his own interest consisted precisely in connecting Paul as closely as possible with the apostles in Jerusalem? The explanation for this is very simple, if one keeps before his eyes the difficult task that the redactor faced.
In Gal 1:17 Paul expressly denies that following his conversion he made contact with those who were apostles before him. The redactor could have deleted this sentence – or reinterpreted it. As a skillful redactor, who wanted not to write a new text, but rather to modify the existing text, he chose the latter alternative. Therefore, he interpreted 1:17 so that although Paul did see Peter and James, he saw none of the other apostles. This concession was necessary because of the context. This splitting apart, of course, was a rather artificial construction (as B. Bauer already saw: had the other apostles then just left on a journey? Did Paul then intentionally avoid them?), but in this way Paul was nevertheless connected with the Jerusalem tradition. Paul had seen Peter and James and was together with Peter for fourteen days! That should suffice to provide proof (for the Marcionites) that the Paul of Galatians, like the Paul in Acts, received no independent revelation.
 

...And so on. The rest of the analysis is online (in German). I'll continue very slowly my translation, if anyone is interested or better would give me aid let me know! ;-)
 
 
I have the intention to continue this JHC's theses' esposition (which is obviously wider than a simple comparation between marcionite and orthodox versions) in a near(?) future.
Thanks a lot in advance for the patience, and apology in advance for the errors!
 
Best regards
Fabrizio Palestini
 


  • The Priority of Marcion 3, Fabrizio Palestini, 08/26/2001

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