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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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