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