This post is the final in my series discussing Nina Livesey’s The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship.
Nina Livesey (NL) sees the letters of Paul being composed and published in a philosophical school setting in Rome in the second century CE. There were many schools of this type in Rome at this time. We are to imagine a teacher, a philosopher, who attracted student followers. The teacher-philosopher would often hold public meetings to read work they had put in writing; discussion and new ideas would follow; and a final written work then submitted to contracted sponsors who would make copies for distribution to interested persons.
It sounds strange to our ears that Christian teachings should be categorized as a “philosophy” but Christian teachers were described in the same way: teachers of certain doctrines and heads of schools. The physician Galen referred to a “school of Moses and Christ”; the “church father” Justin spoke of one such Christian teacher facing the death penalty (as some philosophers experienced because of indiscreet public pronouncements – discussed by Secord). Many such Christian teachers are found in our sources: Saturninus, Cerdo, Marcion, Tatian, Justin, Valentinus. . . The Latin word translated as “heresy” might be as well understood as a “school” (NL, further citing Vinzent).
We have evidence of mutual exchanges among these various schools. Some would denounce other teachers; others would engage in less heated debate; the surviving writings also demonstrate various means of persuasion, such as listening respectfully to challenging questions and addressing hearers as close friends or even family.
Comparing Paul with the philosopher Justin
One of these teachers or Christian philosophers was Justin, known as Justin Martyr – mid second century – who identified himself as a philosopher. Justin taught that his understanding of the prophecies in the Jewish Scriptures came from an encounter with “an old man” who inspired him to turn his back on all his previous knowledge. The pattern echoes the callings we read about in the gospels and Acts of the twelve disciples and Paul who come to understand the Scriptures through listening to Christ or his servants. NL reminds us of an article by Andrew Hofer, “The Old Man as Christ in Justin’s ‘Dialogue with Trypho'”. NL in fact refers to a host of earlier work discussing the nature and workings of these “Christian” philosophical schools (interested readers might like to follow up some of these in the insert box).
- Dillon, John. “Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity.” In Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards, 401–18. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Georges, Tobias. “Justin’s School in Rome–Reflections on Early Christian ‘Schools.’” Zeitschrift Für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 16, no. 1 (May 15, 2012): 75–87.
- Lieu, Judith. Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
- Schott, Jeremy M. “General Introduction.” In The History of the Church: A New Translation / Eusebius of Caesarea, translated by Jeremy M. Schott. University of California Press, 2019.
- Dillon, John. “Philosophy as a Profession in Late Antiquity.” In Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards, 401–18. Oxford University Press UK, 2003.
- Eshleman, Kendra. The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- Nasrallah, Laura. “Mapping the World: Justin, Tatian, Lucian, and the Second Sophistic.” The Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 3 (2005): 283–314.
- Rubenson, Samuel. “Early Monasticism and the Concept of a ‘School.’” In Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia, edited by Lillian I. Larsen, 13–32. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- Secord, Jared. Christian Intellectuals and the Roman Empire: From Justin Martyr to Origen. Penn State University Press, 2020.
- Snyder, Harlow Gregory. “‘Above the Bath of Myrtinus’: Justin Martyr’s ‘School’ in the City of Rome.” Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 3 (July 2007): 335–62.
- Snyder, Gregory H. Christian Teachers in Second-Century Rome Schools and Students in the Ancient City. Brill, 2020.
- Ulrich, Jörg. “What Do We Know about Justin’s ‘School’ in Rome?” Zeitschrift Für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 16, no. 1 (May 15, 2012): 62–74.
- Walsh, Robyn Faith. The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
- Wendt, Heidi. At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire. Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Wendt, Heidi. “Marcion the Shipmaster: Unlikely Religious Experts of the Roman World?” In Marcion of Sinope as Religious Entrepreneur, 55–74. Studia Patristica., Vol. XCIX. Peeters, 2018.
- Vinzent, M. Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Peeters, 2014.
- Vinzent, Markus. “Orthodoxy and Heresy: Misnomers and Misnamers.” Forum: Foundations and Facets. Third Series 10, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 91–108.
- Watts, Edward J. City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria. University of California Press, 2006.
Such schools evidently had access to many writings such as the Jewish Scriptures and commentaries on them.
Our reading of Justin’s work, NL points out, alerts us to similar approaches and aims in Paul’s letters:
The assessment of the [Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho] as protreptic teachings redolent of a school setting allows for additional parallels with the letters. Like Justin, the Apostle Paul’s call to “Christian” teachings arrives through other worldly means (Gal 1:13-16). Both Justin and the Apostle Paul are seen to depart from former philosophies (Justin) or a former way of life (Apostle Paul) to embrace the new teachings (Gal 1:13-2:2; Phil 3:4-11).160 As indicated in Chapter 3, the Pauline letters contain numerous instances of the language of friendship and posit community members as family (“brothers”). In the letters, issues of theological import are made applicable to communities, as are community members cautioned against the influence of others.
Furthermore, like the Dialogue, Pauline letters also make extensive use of the LXX161 in support of “Christian” principles. . . Like the Dialogue, Pauline letters contain verses cited verbatim but also those that are strategically amended. This use of scripture, is an indication of their ready availability . . . and thus provides an additional indication of a school like setting. (NL, 235f)
The School of Marcion
NL argues that the letters attributed to Paul were most plausibly produced by the school of Marcion.
Marcion is associated with an influential school in Rome and is known as having advanced “Christian” doctrines, and as having produced and published various compositions. In addition, among the second-century school heads (writer/intellectuals) in Rome, Marcion is regarded as having a nearly exclusive interest in Paul as being the one true Apostle from among all other “Christian” apostles and figures. Marcion’s ten-letter collection of Pauline letters (the Apostolikon) is our earliest evidence of Pauline letters.
Among the “Christian” intellectuals and heads of schools in second-century Rome, Marcion is arguably the most well-known. . . . According to [Judith Lieu], Marcion may have been the first among the “Christian” school heads operating in Rome . . . It has likewise been suggested that the codex form may have derived from Marcion. Vinzent notes that “no other teacher in the history of the Church until Martin Luther received during his lifetime (and continuing after his death) a comparable literary response.” (NL 236f)
All indications are that Marcion moved to Rome shortly after the Bar Kochba war. NL cites David Balás and I’ll quote a little more from Balás than NL specifically mentions (bolded highlighting and formatting is mine):
Marcion’s doctrines are marked by a certain simplicity, not to say single- and simple-mindedness that distinguish them from the elaborate speculations of other Gnostics or the metaphysical analyses of leading philosophers. John G. Gager has recently shown, however, the similarity of some of Marcion’s arguments, as reported by Tertullian, to certain philosophical (notably Epicurean) proofs against providence.19 The difference is that, whereas for Epicure the (especially physical) evils of this world excluded divine providence (the gods dwelled unconcerned in the intermundia) and lead, according to the Skeptics, to doubt of the existence of god(s), Marcion accepted (with the Old Testament!) the existence of a Creator, but concluded from the popular-philosophical arguments that the Creator was neither omniscient nor truly good.
19 The evidence considered above indicates that Marcion was also familiar with philosophical issues of his time and that Epicurean philosophy in particular provided an argument which Marcion used to support the key element of his thought. (Gager, “Marcion and Philosophy”, p. 59)
Of course, Marcion’s opposition to matter, body, and passions was also close to contemporary philosophy (Stoic and Neo-Pythagorean). . . .
What seems constant in all the above instances was Marcion’s tendency to provide a simple solution, without much concern for either the complexities of the data or the consistency of the system, a tendency which may explain the popular success and enduring strength of Marcionism.
Besides the Gnostic and popular-philosophical sources, I believe Marcion’s “point of departure” was deeply influenced by his and his fellow Christians’ relationship to Judaism in the middle of the second century. Marcion came to Rome around 136-140 and was expelled from the Roman Church in 144. These dates coincide with the period of the bloody suppression of the great Jewish revolt in 135. R. M. Grant has argued that the disillusionment of Jewish sects with the seemingly powerless and deceptive God of the Old Testament was one of the reasons for the Gnostic reduction of Yahweh to an imperfect or even hostile deity.
Whether this is wholely or partially correct or not, Grant’s similar hypothesis concerning Marcion seems quite possible. Grant said that Marcion “…wanted to dissociate Christianity not only from apocalyptic Judaism, but also from Judaism in general.” Politically and socially, the Christians, especially hellenistic Christians with no national or cultural roots in Judaism, found at this time their association with Jewish history an embarrassing and dangerous liability. Marcion may have found a way to effect this desirable separation by using Jewish self-interpretation at several main points. For instance,
— by accepting the anti-Christian contention of some Jews that Jesus Christ was not the Messiah promised by the Old Testament, a Messiah the Jews rightly expected to be political and warlike, Marcion made a counter claim that Christ was in fact the self-revelation of a previously entirely unknown, all-good God.
— Secondly, the Jewish rejection of Christian typological or spiritual exegesis of the Old Testament, which seemed to threaten Christianity’s claims to historical legitimacy, was now seen as a liberating insight.
— Finally, the shaken confidence of many Jews in the confirmed goodness, omniscience, and all-powerfulness of Yahweh (incompatible as it seemed with the historical realities of the time) was taken as an admission that the God of the Old Testament was inferior to the all-good and perfect God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Paradoxically, it was precisely by having accepted Jewish scriptures and history, at least to a large extent, in their contemporary Jewish interpretation that Marcion arrived at his radical dissociation of the [Old and New] Testaments! (Balás, 98f)
If, as has been argued, Marcion came from a proselyte Jewish family we can scarcely avoid wondering about the impact on him of the total destruction of Jerusalem to the extent of the emperor Hadrian banning Jews even from entering the city and the widespread massacres of Jews that had been carried out under both Trajan and Hadrian. Though Marcion reduced the god of the Old Testament to an inferior deity beneath the higher and more merciful Good God of Jesus and the New Testament, he nonetheless retained key Jewish foundations:
Vinzent comments, “Marcion’s message … built on the Jewish foundations, on the Jewish Scriptures, the messianic hope, Jewish ethics, rituals and the Jewish people.”191 That his was a “book-religion” likewise owes to Jewish influence.192 (NL, 240. Note 191 = “Marcion the Jew”; 192 = Marcion and the Dating)
I’ll quote a little more from Vinzent:
Marcion did not want Christianity to disinherit the Jews and incorporate their Holy Scriptures into its own canon, but saw only one heritage, namely that given by God in his revelation to Paul. Christianity was simply incomparable to anything that the creator had made, be it the universe, its history, the Law or the prophecies of Judaism. And yet, Marcion could not free himself from his Jewish and Greco-Roman roots. That Christianity would be a book-religion in its own right was one of Marcion’s Jewish ideas and objectives, and one that he achieved. And that Christianity would be a thoroughly Hellenized religion without being lost in this world of the creator, in the sphere of apocalyptic religious politics and prophetic cults, Marcion secured by rooting the sayings of a faintly remembered Jewish messianic rabbi into Greco-Roman history. Jesus, who had come down from heaven as an angel-like human being under Emperor Tiberius and procurator Pontius Pilate, delivered his message through a new literary form, a combination of startling sayings and surprising deeds, through unexpected aphorisms and mind-blowing miracles, performed on Jesus’ journey towards the shame of the cross and the unbelievable resurrection. Marcion created a powerful narrative of a transcendent, pre-existing figure who appeared on this alien earth, in the midst of history, to liberate human beings from these physical chains of ignorance, greed, law, sin, judgement and the need for repentance, to rescue humanity through buying men back by paying the price of death on the cross, through his descent to the utmost depths of hell, in order to save all who wanted to accept this helping hand, and to let them be where and what the Risen is. In the same way that this cosmic creation was a despicable horror without end, unfolding as a tragic history, in the eyes of creatures, even of the elect and chosen disciples, the Saviour was regarded as a tragic hero. The only exception was Paul, who understood because he was granted the grace of divine insight. He followed Christ and developed the good news. Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, describes this tragic history of Jesus’ life, the failure of calling and the rejection of the elect. In contrast, among those who follow Jesus are people nobody would have dared to admit, and like the paralytic, these become co-sufferers and equally co-hated with Christ.
. . . . Before Marcion was made the ‘arch-heretic’, he seems to have been the arch-theologian, ‘the founder of a religion’ and of a new cult, Christianity. . . . (Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating, 134f)
Key points noted in this context by NL:
- Marcion was a publisher
- He published the first New Testament (a gospel similar to our Gospel of Luke and the ten letter collection of Paul)
- He published Antitheses, apparently an explanation of his philosophical principles and commentary on his gospel, a list of oppositions between the Law and Prophets on the one hand and the gospel on the other.
Our surviving witnesses to Marcion, coming from the writings preserved by the orthodox church, opposed Marcion as “a heretic”. But in the middle of the second century there was no authoritative judgment seat from which to distinguish truth from error. It is unlikely that in his own day Marcion could be “banished as a heretic” in the sense we imagine such a process of later times. The Marcionite and “Catholic-to-be” communities surely overlapped one another, as NL notes.
Rivals of Marcion produced alternative texts, presumably revising what Marcion himself had written. See, for example, the series of posts discussing Joseph Tyson’s grounds for believing that our version of the Gospel of Luke is an anti-Marcionite revision of Marcion’s gospel.
When we read in the early Church Fathers apparent quotations from the gospels and letters we find that they very often vary in some way from the canonical versions we read in our Bibles. This is especially so in the works that are critical of Marcion’s texts. NL outlines the various theses to account for these differences:
- Marcion used and edited an existing copy of the Gospel of Luke (the opponents of Marcion adhered more closely to the original gospel)
- Catholic writers and Marcion each revised independently an early form of the Gospel of Luke
- Marcion edited an earlier shorter version of the Gospel of Luke and Catholic revisers expanded Marcion’s version to produce the Gospel we recognize today
- Noting the lack of evidence of any gospel text prior to the second century, and further suggesting that the first gospels emerged in post Bar Kochba school settings, Vinzent takes the next logical step and proposes that Marcion produced the first gospel.
Vinzent maps the production of the gospel onto what is known of the way the schools functioned. A text was composed, read publicly and discussed and argued among close associates and student followers, revised with a final version being published more generally. The gospel and letters were written in an environment of free exchange of ideas and underwent a number of revisions. In this way the variant early versions of gospels and letters can be explained.
In other words, the explanation for the absence of evidence for any gospel or epistle prior to the middle of the second century is that they did not exist prior to the time of Marcion. Opponents of Marcion claimed he “discovered” or “found” Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. If that motif sounds familiar, it may be because we have come across it in the story of King Josiah discovering the Book of Deuteronomy: see my post showing that this claim was not at all unusual when one sought to introduce a new authoritative text as if it had the authority of antiquity.
According to modern epistolary theorists, the suggestion of finding a letter is what one would expect of an editor of a pseudonymous letter collection who wanted to provide a sense of the letter’s authenticity. If, as argued, Marcion created a gospel, a new literary genre, he – with the help of those in his school – could certainly have crafted and overseen the composition of mock letters in the name of the Apostle Paul, deploying a known and popular literary genre. (NL, 248)
For Marcion, Paul was the only apostle who truly understood the gospel of the Christ who had come from the “unknown god” who was higher than the creator god of the Law and the Prophets. That Marcion published his Gospel and Letters of Paul side by side might be seen as an indicator that he saw his “New Testament” as an “antithesis” of the Law and the Prophets of the “Old Testament”. NL indicates that such factors strongly suggest that Paul’s letters were, like the gospel, originally composed by Marcion himself. If so, then it is also likely that the letters of Paul were written with a clear knowledge of the gospel narrative. They did not precede a written gospel, in other words, but were produced alongside the gospel.
The Marcionite authors were active in the years following the calamity of the Bar Kochba war. NL finds appropriate Jason BuDuhn’s observation:
Whatever the internal developments within Christianity that prepared the way for the creation of a New Testament . . . it is simply impossible to dismiss the coincidence in time of Hadrian’s anti-Torah campaign and Marcion’s call for the establishment of a distinct and separate Christian sacred scripture. (NL, 251, quoting BeDuhn’s The First New Testament)
Letters were a popular means of teaching new philosophies; philosophical schools in Rome were common and responsible for the publications of and readings of rival teachings; the social and psychological dislocations that resulted from the Bar Kochba war provide a plausible background to the “Jewish but not Jewish” religious ideas of Marcion; and Paul, the only apostle said to have understood the gospel of an all-loving and non-judgmental god, was Marcion’s ideal alter-ego.
NL’s argument thus removes the Pauline letters from being in many ways unique in the ancient world, as many biblical scholars have thought, and places them in a social and ideological setting that seems to make them emerge quite “naturally”.
In an appendix NL explores in depth the educational background required to compose the letters. The production of texts that were persuasive, that could be emotionally gripping, that were instructional at the same time, was the work of highly educated persons. They did not emanate from the typical wandering preacher or tent-maker as Paul is supposed to be according to Acts of the Apostles.
My Concluding Thoughts
I have raised a number of open questions along the way of my re-reading and writing these notes on Nina Livesey’s book, but now I’ll offer something more conclusive. I think Livesey’s explanation of the evidence we have for the earliest New Testament writings has two major advantages over many others: Occam’s Razor and Explanatory Power. One does not need to hypothesize earlier versions of the texts for which we have no evidence. What we see at the beginning — gospel and Pauline letters in the hands of Marcionites — was the beginning of the gospels and New Testament letters. The evidence likewise informs us that the first “Christian schools” and teachers arose from among migrations to Rome in the wake of the Bar Kochba war and of Hadrian’s “final solution” punitive measures against Jews and their ideological base of Jerusalem. Such timing opens up a very plausible explanation for both the form (letters) and the content (presented as a “higher antithesis” of “Judaism”) of teachings that we find among the earliest Christians.
(As has further been discussed in other posts relating to Jesus and the Rank-Raglan hero class, mythical narratives do not evolve from illiterates telling stories around campfires over a generation or two: they are born from the minds and pens of the literate. That is one more point that is consistent with NL’s proposal of a school origin of the gospel story.)
Balás, David L. “Marcion Revisited: A ‘Post-Harnack’ Perspective.” In Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible and Early Church Fathers, edited by W. Eugene March, 95–108. Trinity University Press, 1980.
Gager, John G. “Marcion and Philosophy.” Vigiliae Christianae 26, no. 1 (March 1972): 53–59.
Livesey, Nina E. The Letters of Paul in Their Roman Literary Context: Reassessing Apostolic Authorship. Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Vinzent, Markus. “Marcion the Jew.” Judaïsme Ancien – Ancient Judaism 1 (2013): 159–201.
—- Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Peeters, 2014.
Neil Godfrey
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Excellent!
I wonder how much of a step is required to suggest the hero character, Jesus himself, was also nothing but a narrative construct?
There is no doubt that the Jesus in the gospels is a narrative construct — by definition. The question is whether there was in addition to that character a historical person who was in some way an inspiration for that narrative. I am still struggling with trying to understand the origin of the Jesus idea (with or without a historical figure behind him). That to me remains unanswered. I don’t buy the notion that he originated as a heavenly figure crucified in the heavens. At least I have not seen any undisputed evidence for that Doherty-Carrier view.
“At least I have not seen any undisputed evidence for that Doherty-Carrier view.”
“undisputed evidence” is always going to be a hard bar to reach. Even if we found a version of The Ascension of Isaiah with the text saying without doubt that Jesus was crucified in the firmament, I would expect this evidence to be challenged, or its relevance downplayed.
Regarding Asc of Isaiah, it does seem to be another interesting path not mentioned here. If Marcion’s canon contained a gospel, I have always assumed it must have been something like Mark or Luke (ie synoptic, to fit in with Tertullian), but given that the epistles do seem to reference Jesus descending and Paul himself gets to level 3 in one verse, Then Asc. of Isaiah might be a better match here?
Don’t forget that Paul talks about the Galatians deserting him for another gospel. I wonder if this could be taken literally as an anachronism (ie refering directly to a 2nd century controversy) for Marcion rejecting the latest gospel? Did NL address this issue?
The most cogent (in my view) argument for the rival gospel being attacked in Galatians is Hermann Detering’s case for the Elchasites being the target. See the links to translations of his relevant works at https://vridar.org/hermann-deterings-works-translated-to-english/
As for undisputed evidence — yeh, a lot of the disputes are patently apologetic based. Like trying to stretch the date for a manuscript to early very second century. I was not counting that group in my “undisputed” remark.
Elkasites – had forgotten about them!
They do seem to fit the description.
Wikipedia puts the date of “Book of Elchasai” as time of Trajan (Revelations contemporary, and some similarities). Of course, if wikipedia says so it must be correct 🙂
So would that then put the circumcision issue a bit earlier than Bar Kochba, and provide some scope for the ‘authentic’ epistles to also be from around that time? (still much later than most mainstream dates).
Also, with all of this NL scholarship, does it bring us any closer to identifying what Marcion’s gospel would have been? Does NL still go with the ‘cut-down’ Luke hypothesis?
I seem to be firmly in this camp, now, but re “The evidence likewise informs us that the first “Christian schools” and teachers arose from among migrations to Rome in the wake of the Bar Kochba war and of Hadrian’s “final solution” punitive measures against Jews and their ideological base of Jerusalem.”
So, Jews were being hunted down and killed by Romans and so they fled to Rome?
The book I am reading claims that Marcion’s “NT” was published in 144CE, very specifically. Do we have a clear date for that? Other sources imply or state that Marcion’s publications goaded others to publish their works thereafter.
I don’t mean to give the impression that Jews were being hunted down after the Bar Kochba war. The destruction was in Palestine itself during the war, especially Jerusalem. (There had been widespread Jewish revolts earlier under Trajan.)
144 CE is more usually given as an approximate date for Marcion’s split from other Christian groups in Rome, from what I recall.
>What we see at the beginning — gospel and Pauline letters in the hands of Marcionites — was the beginning of the gospels and New Testament letters.
Where does the Letter to the Hebrews fit among this? Was it a particularly good forgery of a pre-70 CE Christian text? And what about itrs claim that Jesus was a heavenly high priest?
1 Clement, because of some kind of intertextuality with Hebrews, has been the primary source by which Hebrews has been dated to the first century — with 1 Clement being considered a late first century or very early second century work. But as Nina Livesey points out, with reference to other scholars (Welborn, Rothschild) there is no reason to date 1 Clement before the mid or second half of the second century. As Welborn writes,
The allegory of Hebrews relating to the Temple and priestly practices don’t require the Temple to be standing at the time any more than understanding the allegories requires the Temple to be functioning today. The entire comparison is built around what is known from the Scriptural account. What is critical is what is happening in the heavens today for the believer — whenever the believer is living.
Though I find it hard to accept the idea that Jesus was crucified in heaven, I don’t have any difficulty with the idea of a heavenly Jesus high priest who in some sense makes atonement with his blood there.
With all due respect, I (and others) have dated Hebrews to pre-70 CE because even though citing the earthly temple’s destruction would be an excellent point to raise in its argument about Jesus’s sacrifice’s superiority, such a difference is not raised within Hebrews – causing me and others to think that for Hebrews’s author, the Earthly temple was operating peacefully with no threat.
If the temple was long gone generations earlier, the moment of its destruction was itself lost from view and would have added nothing to the allegories being made. It’s physical absence could be taken as a general assumption to author and readers alike — as it is today. We may have to disagree with each other on the argument of what an author would or should have written.
“[T]he Jewish rejection of Christian typological or spiritual exegesis of the Old Testament, which seemed to threaten Christianity’s claims to historical legitimacy, was now seen as a liberating insight.”
Is there any discussion in Livesey of interaction or inter-awareness between Justin & Marcion? When I read Justin’s exegesis of Jewish scripture, he comes across as a charlatan. Marcion avoids this problem altogether, in the ironic way noted, by replacing the old with the new, rather than trying to harmonize them as prophecy & fulfillment, and thereby making Marcion both more and less Jewish.
The issue of doceticism is interesting, too, because if Marcion produces Paul the character of Paul in the letters is perhaps more easily understood as a Catholic/Gnostic hybrid. Originally a Gnostic or quasi-Gnostic, but worked on by the monks over time.
I have been reading the Britt & Wingo book (about halfway thru) referred to by Mr. Ruis in earlier comments, and you might want to review it, Neil, despite its not being a “scholarly” work, i.e., no signs of the academy, written in a folksy style with “would’ve” and “could’ve” but making what seems to me (so far) a solid argument for Marcion’s school as the source of both Evangelion (gospel, source of Luke) & Pauline letters (Apostolikon). An interesting case is made for a B.C. sourcing of a portion of Romans, which may be a 2d C. use of the earlier source. There is also a reference to Tertullian 5 saying that Marcion created Paul, but I haven’t checked this for accuracy. I am definitely going to comb back through Irenaeus & Tertullian.
The only discussion NL has of Justin that is related to your question is a comparison of Justin’s methods (in Trypho) with those of Paul — the brotherly tone, introducting objections as a foil for a new teaching, the reliance on an LXX source, etc.
One detail I had difficulty with in NL’s conclusion concerns the idea of Jesus. NL notes how Paul/Marcion rejects the Jewish idea that Jesus had been the anticipated conquering messiah and reinterprets him as an “antithetical” messiah. The only pre-Marcionite source that I know of that speaks of Jesus as a conquering messiah is the book of Revelation (and I’m thinking in particular of Witulski’s Hadrianic dating as you probably guess.) Couchoud explicitly opposed the Pauline epistles and their sacrificial Jesus to Revelation and its conquering Jesus.
So what was the source of Revelation’s Jesus? Is it an earlier rebranding of Jesus in the light of the way the Bar Kochba war was heading?
If so, where did that Jesus come from? Some will call me perverse for not accepting a historical Jesus from the time of Pilate, but I need evidence or good explanatory power before going there. (Many commentators, as you know, think of the “where our Lord was crucified” line to identify Jerusalem to be a gloss. Why hide the identification of Jerusalem behind metaphors only to then make it literally explicit?)
Did Marcion take the idea of Jesus from gnostic schools/teachers before him?
As you can tell, I am “writing/thinking ‘aloud'” here and have no idea.
Yes, I have read the Britt and Wingo book and liked much of it. I began to discuss with them how I could download and use the same program to apply it to a number of other ideas I had, but I look back and see how I have a very short patience when I cannot get something technical to work despite being patiently instructed. I must get back in touch to try to point out where I got stuck (near the very beginning) and was unable to follow through. Or if you can see where I might have had difficulties let me know.
I notice NL’s quote from Balas: “Marcion’s doctrines are marked by a certain simplicity, not to say single- and simple-mindedness …” That right there would rule out Marcion as being the author of the Pauline letters. There is nothing single and simple-minded about the Paulines. They contain a mysticism that is way over Marcion’s head.
And I note also NL’s three key points:
• Marcion was a publisher
• He published the first New Testament (a gospel similar to our Gospel of Luke and the ten letter collection of Paul)
• He published Antitheses, apparently an explanation of his philosophical principles and commentary on his gospel, a list of oppositions between the Law and Prophets on the one hand and the gospel on the other.
But I’m not sure if a school would be needed just in order to publish. Would he have needed one for his source material? Not if the early heresy hunters were correct in identifying him as a disciple of the Simonian Cerdo:
“To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two first causes, that is, two Gods — one good, the other cruel: the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the creator of the world. He repudiates the prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered, but undergone a quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he approve, denying that of the body. The gospel of Luke alone, and that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul takes neither all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false.
After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion by name, a native of Pontus … “ (“Against All Heresies”, Ch. 6).
I am more inclined to see a school needed in the case of the proto-orthodox. Not only to sanitize what Marcion had published, but also to produce a New Testament in response to his.
Ooh yes — that crossed my mind as I read NL and I should have taken a note to bring it up later. Thanks for pointing it out. My thoughts on this question have been along the lines of a Stoic philosophy idea of mysticism, with being “in Christ” as a counterpart to living “in Reason” — both being “in Logos”. But so many other questions about the letters follow.
One other thought, when we read in 2 Peter that the letters of Paul contain “some things hard to be understood”, might not the difficulties have arisen as a consequence of the zig-zags — of an original “zig” countered, as you described it earlier, by a revisionist’s “zag”?
But from where does the Cerdo Christ originate? The account in Irenaeus is surely not based on a real human. I may be asking you to remind me of other details you have posted here in the past.
>But from where does the Cerdo Christ originate? The account in Irenaeus is surely not based on a real human.
2 points:
1. Why not consider that Cerdo invented this Christ figure but that other Christians (including himself, perhaps?) made Cerdo seem to be merely working with (and for Cerdo’s opponents, corrupting) earlier Christian traditions? This is merely an idea which I throw out.
2. Why is Irenaeus’s account not based upon a real human? People are willing to believe all sorts of docetistic things about real people (consider breatharians), so the possibility remains that Cerdo’s Jesus was a real person who had died and whom Cerdo claimed to have been some type of phantasm.
Neil,
No doubt some of the difficulty of understanding the material in the Paulines is due to correctives inserted here and there by the proto-orthodox revisers. But when I say that much of the original content was over Marcion’s head I am thinking of the mystical type of material that pervades the letters and cannot be pinned on the revisers. The letters present Paul’s gospel message as the revelation of a Mystery that God has hidden from the world and its princes from the beginning. And the terminology and ideas of Mystery religion turn up again and again throughout the letters. And so, for example, when in a mystical section of 2 Corinthians we read, “But we have the ‘Nous’ [i.e. the mind] of Christ “, this betrays a knowledge of how ‘Nous’ was used in the Mysteries and Hermetic circles. I find it hard to believe that simple and straightforward Marcion would have been so knowledgeable about such esoteric matters. Certainly, the heresy hunters don’t accuse him of such, and even today many are reluctant to lump Marcion together with the kind of Gnostics who indulged in such.
So, the question becomes: Then what was the source of the material he published? And to answer that I again look first to what Irenaeus says, for he is the only author of the second century who gives any detailed account of the early Christian diversity and chronology. It doesn’t mean Irenaeus has to be right, but he should be checked first to see if his answer makes sense. And in this case it does, for he ties Marcion to the earlier Cerdo who originated with the Simonians. And it is in the Simonian circles that we find the kind of mystical interest we are looking for, including a role for ‘Nous”:
“For since he (Simon) was an incorporeal power and the ‘Nous’ of the unborn Father, he was transformed in any way that he pleased, and in this way he ascended to him who had sent him, laughing at them… “ (“Against Heresies” 1, 24, 4).
I suspect that the mysticism in the Pauline letters was originally Simonian, but was repurposed and repackaged probably by Cerdo, thus transferring to Jesus what originally applied to Simon. And why not, since in the eyes of the Simonians Jesus had in fact been Simon in disguise. This would explain how material from the letters is attributed to Simon (e.g. “by his grace men are saved not by just works”). And it would explain why the ‘Pauline’ letters appear to have only surfaced around 140 CE when Cerdo went to Rome. Before that the material used in them was material about Simon and likely only circulated internally among the supposedly secretive Simonians.
This scenario makes me wonder whether Marcion even knew how Cerdo had put together the letters. Was he the first innocent dupe regarding the true nature of the Paulines? Or was he knowingly part of the deception? I like to think the first option is the correct one.
Most interesting. Thanks.
Neil,
I want to add a clarification to what I wrote above. Although I see the so-called authentic Pauline letters as really being in large part of Simonian origin, I do still think that there is a bare-bones authentic core to them. That core at a minimum consists, as Turmel and Loisy first put forward, in the parts that appeal to “the just man lives by faith” verse and the example of Abraham as Scriptural proof that Gentiles need only faith to share in the imminent Reign of God. To me, a historical Paul with such a message makes sense in the context of a mid or late first century eschatological Judaism. We know there were Gentile Godfearers, and once the belief arose among some Jews that a Reign of God was imminent, the question could not help but arise among the Godfearers: Is there anything we have to do to be a part of that? So, if we strip the Paulines of their mysticism we are left, in my opinion, with a Scriptural argument that, in context, would make sense.
But I am less confident about the timeframe for such a Paul. Because that depends in part on whether there was a historical Jesus or not. If there was, of course, we could leave Paul where he has traditionally been situated. But suppose the Jesus story (for convenience I’ll call it the Nazarene Gospel) was created to be a symbol of the Jewish Reign of God movement. That is to say, suppose the Nazarene Jesus was just a symbolic composite of the many first century Jewish would-be prophets and resistance figures (e.g. Theudas, the Egyptian, Judas the Galilean). In that case the Nazarene Gospel could have been composed as late as, say, CE 80 after the Jewish War. In this scenario the destruction of the Temple itself could have been used as yet further proof that Reign of God was at the doorstep, because the Temple’s destruction had been prophesied by someone somewhere in the movement.
So, it seems to me, in this latter scenario a historical Paul could have been going around with his message for Godfearers as late as the 80s or 90s.
Hi Roger — This is half way to what I have been mulling over some time now. A question that uncomfortably arises for me is: how to explain the step from such a “Nazarene gospel” as you describe (and as I have tended towards) to the type of Jesus we find in Marcion, let alone other gnostic systems?
Yes, I remember your posting something similar, but I don’t recall if you did it in a standalone post or as comment(s).
I think you can guess my thoughts about how the step was taken from a such a Jesus to the one in gMark. I think it was either Basilides or someone in his circle who “Simonized” the story. The Simonians apparently had no qualms about taking and modifying the beliefs of others to suit their own purposes. I think gMark is basically the Basildean gospel but with the further proto-orthodox touch-ups needed to make it safe for their own adepts. The genealogy would be: Nazarene Gospel begets Simonian (Basilidean) Gospel begets gMark.
I know this is largely conjectural but I take comfort in the words of Samuel Johnson: “We must consider how little history there is; I mean real authentick history. That certain kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.” (“Life of Johnson” by James Boswell)
I was pulled up by Merlin Sheldrake’s comment that I read in his book — I posted it a day ago. Sheldrake describes taking LSD — in a legal hospital setting — in an attempt to see the world he was studying in a new light, to try to break away from the familiar perspectives. It made me wonder if we could see the data differently and afresh if we tried that route, too.
Fascinating, thank you Neil.
And what about Markan priority?
If Marcion, or his school, wrote and published an early version of Luke as the first ever gospel, then how do you overcome widespread scholarly support for Mark writing first?
Makan priority is gone. Mark’s gospel was, like our canonical version of Luke, an apparent anti-Marcionite, or if not anti-Marcionite, an alternative to the Marcionite gospel.
Widespread scholarly support for various positions has a history of changing over time and generations of scholars. (Note Q no longer holds the near total dominance it once did.) We study the arguments, not the head counts.
Without Markan priority we can now have a better undertanding of why Matthew and Luke sometimes chose to differ in the way and the what they “copied” from Mark. We also have a new understanding of that “great omission” in Luke (where Luke skips Mark 6:45-8:26).
I think a Marcionite precursor is the most promising alternative explanation, but I wouldn’t throw out MP until we have a reasonable and reliable text of a gospel before it, and we don’t have that yet, IMO. Underscore yet.
The 140s argument is really tempting. It explains so much. I still think we’re missing a crucial step somewhere of which the manuscript record has left no discernible trace, though. Figuring out exactly what shadows are being cast by Irenaeus is a tough game.
Have you seen Matthias Klinghardt’s reconstruction of Marcion’s gospel?
I have and I’m familiar with Vinzent’s work; the interpretation of the witnesses isn’t pushing me over the edge… yet. I still think they’re trying to have it both ways; use them as reliable witnesses to a Mariconite gospel and yet simultaneously have them both be dead wrong/deceptive about the order. I can’t get around that. I would like to, but not yet.
It’s not important to me at all that we trust Tertullian et al blindly; it’s that they being wrong about the order suggests they are not honest or inaccurate about the text (or have a corrupted copy/reconstruction themselves) and vice versa. A pre-Luke or pre-Mark Mariconite gospel requires the witnesses are wrong about the order, and if so, trusting their witness to a gospel they claim is a hack job on Luke doesn’t follow. The reconstruction is really interesting… but so is Q.
More good points I must keep in mind. Thanks
In response specifically to Mike and Gordon above, but also as a more general remark relating to Klinghardt’s reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel, I consider the following note by Markus Vinzent encouragement to look closely at the work K has done:
As a preliminary remark, it should be mentioned here that I base the following considerations on the Gospel of Marcion (*Ev) as reconstructed by Matthias Klinghardt. It is accommodating to our task here that Klinghardt based his construction of *Ev almost exclusively on literary and text-critical principles, that is, on the attestation and non-attestation of whole pericopes and connected units, then looked at individual verses, and finally at individual words and word forms, combining these principles with tradition-historical observations. For the reader, this means that the content of the texts and, particularly, theological motifs are largely disregarded in Klinghardt’s work, so that philology prevails without a preconceived theological assumption to avoid any circular reconstruction.
Vinzent, Markus. Christ’s Torah: The Making of the New Testament in the Second Century. Routledge, 2023. p. 112
I had previously dismissed Detering and Price because I thought they had jumped the shark when they identified Paul as the Magus. Clearly, they need to be reexamined after I read this book.
Dkystra and others convinced me that Mark knew and made use of the Paulines in composing his gospel. That is one of the reasons I supported Markan priority and an early date for the Paulines. Clearly, the evidence needs to be reassessed on my part.
David Trobisch and his work on the editorial decisions and publication of our canonical NT by the proto Orthodox will also have to be re-read in light of this…
I’m going to wait to see what other scholars have to say about Livesey’s work.
I’ve hunted around for “peer reviews” and haven’t found any yet, but, the book has been out only a very short time.
I haven’t read Livesey’s book myself, and probably won’t. Not until I can find a copy at half-price books. 🙂
However, I’ve read numerous excerpts from the book – enough to raise questions (and probably, Livesey would address the things I question, so, I’ll have to read the book). But, from what I’ve seen so far, the book just looks like more fodder for debate among atheists on the interweb, some of whom are devotees of Carrier or Price, and some of whom are Historicists. But ultimately, I suspect the book is not going to prove to be something that moves the needle among the broader body of professional historians.
I guess I’m sorta “betting” that the book will have a certain level of “pop-appeal”, and it might garner a few responses from other Academians, but it’s not going to be the beginning of some kind of “groundswell” in reconsidering the authorship or “place in history” of (at any rate) the “Authentic Pauline Epistles”.
If you really want to read the book without serious cost you can always request an interlibrary loan through your local library.
But if you are looking for some major shift to occur within the field of biblical studies you will be wasting your time, and the fault won’t be with the quality of Nina Livesey’s scholarship. We already know the power of the apologetic interests in that quarter. But biblical studies are not a monolith and any book published by Cambridge University Press, and by a scholar of Livesey’s standing, should be reason enough to take the argument seriously. Establishment pressures to gainsay or ignore it mean nothing to anyone genuinely interested in the arguments.
You speak of “professional historians” — Biblical scholars, as I used to demonstrated over and over, have not the first inkling, many of them, about the most basic fundamentals of historical research as practiced in history departments — and as a handful of genuine professional historians have themselves intimated. I can assure you that Livesey’s method is indeed consistent with the basics of historical methods as practised in history departments. That’s thanks in large measure to her embrace of Patristic Studies. Many biblical historians will continue for reasons of their own to ignore Patristics, at least in the way NL has used it, and stay where they find familiar comforts — in largely baseless suppositions of oral traditions and memory theories.
Forget the Carriers and Prices and atheists and historicists — go to the cesspit of earlywritings forum or Tim O’Neill’s site if that’s what you are looking for. Those debates are irrelevant — and wholly tendentious — as far as I am concerned. (Carrier lost my respect when he came here to drop comments that only showed he could not be bothered to read the context of what he was responding to and flew off at me with wildly false accusations.)
The interesting work in biblical studies is being undertaken by significant works that have a real foothold without being a majority. We know the tactics of the mainstream: to ridicule, dismiss and then ignore. So what? Leave them be.
But I don’t think many people who are aware of Livesey’s qualifications and the reputation of Cambridge UP will share your “pop-appeal” dismissiveness.
I said “forget … the atheists” — of course I am an atheist, but what I meant was “forget atheists arguing to promote/defend/present atheists” — I had in mind Tim O’Neill’s stated aim of trying to avoid embarrassment that atheists should be associated with certain opinions. In my view, atheists are not at all a “group” with any kind of “identity” or points of view. They are as diverse as the planet itself. And if anyone ridicules “atheists” for believing X or Y, it only reflects on the ignorance of the mocker, not “atheists” as a whole.
re: “But biblical studies are not a monolith and any book published by Cambridge University Press, and by a scholar of Livesey’s standing, should be reason enough to take the argument seriously.”
And, like I said, I’m waiting to see what other scholars have to say about it.
Why? Which scholars, in particular? The ones who peer reviewed her work? The ones with whom she has engaged in publications and lectures and presentations that culminated in this book? The ones we know will never accept any proposal, regardless of the arguments, that the writings of Paul are not by a genuine first century Paul? The ones who will complain that NL has not hewed to the traditional assumptions and methods of mainstream biblical studies? Those who are suspicious of Patristics?
re: “Why? Which scholars, in particular? ”
Whichever qualified scholars reviews/responds to her work. I want to see what other qualified scholars have to say about it, if that’s OK with everybody.
I can get random reader’s opinions out on the interweb. I can even formulate my own opinions. But I’m very aware that the way scholarship works (at least, in terms of ancient history) is by discussion/debate over new proposals (or hypotheses). But I’m not a part of Academia. I’m not one who thinks the system works perfectly. But, yeh, I want to hear the views of other scholars who are qualified to offer those views in the broader Acadamy (which Livesey is a part of). Thank you very much for asking.
It might be of interest to the readers of these articles, that a Youtube interview with Nina Livesey is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3zIpgYNmkY&ab_channel=HistoryValley