Paul vs Paul: Galatians /pt 1

In this episode, Markus and Jack begin a new series, comparing the canonical letter of Paul to the Galatians to that of Marcion's Apostolos.
(c) 2024 by speakers, distributed under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 international license.

[@brianpetruska1825]

Very interesting new series! Can't wait for more!

[@JC-vq2cs]

Excellent new series! Learning so much. This is groundbreaking & vital work. I am an interested secular person with a vaguely cultural Protestant background (my parents left their strict small town Midwest USA Lutheran roots behind to become science-minded medical professionals & raised us the same.) I find all of this fascinating as a detective case & logic puzzle. IMO religious studies & early Xianities is much more fun as a nonbeliever, no eternal consequences for me to worry about, jist doing the best & continuing to learn & grow in this one precious life we get on this unique, amazing planet. It is sadly too late for me to learn biblical Greek & join the effort. So grateful for your painstaking & bold scholarahip, following evidence wherever it leads.

[@JC-vq2cs]

Regarding Dr. Bull's comment on the different ordering of the letters: My understanding is that the canonical Qu'ran also orders the hadiths by length, like canonized Pauline letters. Which I find fascinating & a bit hilarious when I first learned that is how the canonical Paul is ordered - and after Acts, too. This feels like a csnonical scribal or redactoral habit of work, 'whew got the longest one out of the way, next'! Or vice versa. I know the feeling when tackling a complicated project in steps. The past is both a foreign country & also we moderns are not all that different. That Marcion tried to order his collection chronologically speaks volumes IMO to his intellect.

[@RogerCalverley-w4s]

This is excellent, and invaluable, work. Ultimately, due to sound scholarship, we will be able to see the broad outlines of how the Christian religion was fabricated, stitched together, and worked up from basic sources which have long been difficult to recognize. Thank you for this truly valuable contribution to understanding the teachings which have shaped our civilization for just about two millennia at this point.

[@bike_writer3614]

@ 1:00:00 Could the name Cephas perhaps be used to make Peter sound more *Jewish* at that point, being Torah observant? Crude symbolism, like the Saul-Paul transformation, but backwards. (Likewise, the name Titus as the most faithful companion of Paul always struck me as suspiciously symbolic, being the future conqueror of Jerusalem.)

[@antonius3745]

It also could be that there is something lese happening. The name Cephas is related to the function of the highpriest, called the servant of the Rock, in some way there is a relationship we yet don't know.

[@Kytheus_Errant_2106]

Very insightful, can't wait for the next!

[@jupitersun2]

DeBruhn has Paul and Peter meeting in Antioch, in brackets, in his version of the Apostolikon. Given the importance of the setting of this meeting, I would like to know more about why Markus thinks Jerusalem is the Marcionite meeting place.

[@bike_writer3614]

(2/2) The obvious attempts to turn Paul into a second Christ in the canonical letters and Acts don't shy away from crude symbolism either, showing their age (2nd century). Both Jesus and Paul: *undergo revelation, being appointed as the chosen one by God/Christ (Okay: Paul came up with this one himself.) *are cast out to the desert (Arabia) *do missionary work outside Judea *(nearly) get stoned or crucified by angry Jews (same word in Greek anyway) *appear to the apostles in Jerusalem on the 3rd day (or 3rd year) *go north to spread the message to the Greek-speaking world Paul would certainly have been pleased with these added Christ-parallels, knowing his ego. I wonder if the gospel Marcion combined with his ten letters would have pleased him, though. Paul's warnings about “fables and endless genealogies” sound a lot like he disliked whatever proto-gospels about Jesus were floating around in his time.

[@MaeMorgan-n9u]

I’m so excited to see you do an episode on Galatians! When I first read Jason BeDuhn’s book last year, the first thing I did was type up both Marcion and the canonical text of Galatians in parallel to compare them and it was it was a complete revelation! A few things that stuck with me: 1. The canonical text has to be the result of a massive redaction-seemingly an attempt to make Paul more ecumenical (esp. with Peter) and more oriented around the Hebrew Bible (though Marcion’s text does still include a shorter version of the Hagar/Sarah discourse); it also has several instances of rather benign additions which seem indicative of an expanding redactor and/or scribe. I don’t think this could simply be the result of Paul himself writing and circulating the two of them for separate audiences. 2. Peter’s gospel is set up as a rival to Paul’s true gospel. The canonical text inserts the idea of Peter and Paul’s separate-but-equally-valid missions as an ecumenical gloss. 3. The canonical text replaces Peter with Cephas in the conflict with Paul-I think it’s unavoidable in context that the redactor intends for them to be understood as two separate people, especially given the aforementioned gloss regarding Peter occurring immediately beforehand. 4. The canonical recension attempts to soften Paul’s antagonism to the Law. 5. The autobiographical information and several ‘profane/mundane’ bits in the letter are later additions. Assuming the catholic recension is indeed secondary, could this indicate a redactor who is attempting to make their longer version of the letter feel authentic? Anyways, I typed this out before listening (like I said I was excited lol!). Can’t wait to hear your thoughts and see if they align at all with mine!

[@christianmichael8609]

@26:00 - I wonder if the concordance assumes the Greek reconstruction by Vinzent (yet to be published), or if it has clear references to where the reconstruction of the Greek text is close to certain - that is (I would assume) only the quotations that Epiphanius selected for his purpose of refuting Marcion’s theology? I find it difficult to trust Tertullian to have produced a wooden translation of a Greek Marcionite text since he himself uses a Latin text as basis, and appears to string together quotations elegantly for his own purpose of refuting Marcion’s theology rather than Marcion's text - and so not necessarily with care for wooden pedantic translation into Latin of a Greek text, that may or may not have been in front of him.

[@auldlangsign3179]

Super interesting.

[@Patristica]

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[@christianmichael8609]

@38:25 On Marcion’s Galatians being the letter that, assuming the reconstruction of Vinzent, is most like the canonical version: I know this is taking a step backwards, but Patristica does not seem to consider it important to show why they think it is possible to reconstruct those texts that we do not have. What we have with the Pauline 10 letter collection by Marcion is excerpts of text that is selected and carefully framed for an apologetic purpose, rather than a text-critical one. Most of the text is rendered into Latin - possibly from a bilingual manuscript as Vinzent appears to suggest, by Tertullian, who desired to argue a strictly theological point, based on excerpts that he saw as fitting for his rhetorical aim. Here is a simple observation: The fact that the Marcionite Galatians is closest to the Canonical form could simply be due to the fact that Tertullian begins his refutation of Marcion with this letter, and, as he says later, for the sake of not repeating theological arguments already presented over and over again, he intentionally skips over some text present in Marcion’s redaction (in Tertullian’s optics) of the other letters…. I wonder how one would compensate for this rhetorical aim of Tertullian when attempting to reconstruct Romans, which comes almost at the end, and is less extensively quoted from, to avoid excessive redundancy in Tertullian’s apologetic argument. The quotations that Tertullian does offer could be a wooden translation by Tertullian himself (I doubt this) , or, as it appears more likely to me from reading parts of the English translations of Adversus Marcionem, rhetorically adapted by Tertullian for producing a nicely flowing refutation of Marcion’s God, despite skippinge over sections of Marcion’s text that does not provide suitable material for his stated purpose. Tertullian does not appear to me to be interested in quoting the whole text of Marcion - especially so when we get past Galatians. Example: all letter openings are omitted after Galatians. Tertullian only cares to comment that all letters by Paul contain a distinctive third part of the classic tri-partite letter opening: “… Grace to you (plural), and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,”. This feature is indeed common to the 10 canonical letters that recur in Marcion’s collection. In fact, all 13 canonical letters that bear Paul’s name, if one checks the NA28, contain this feature, with only slight variation. This then, is not a Marcionite feature, but rather a Canonical feature that even extends to the ‘pastorals’ with only slight modification, as would be expected in personal letters - even Philemon was written to a small community, so Philemon, unlike the Pastorals, should be expected to be included in a collection of letters to assemblies, consisting of former gentiles and godfearers. The three ‘pastorals’ are not written to those communities, but rather to individual named delegates of Paul, who had the task of being Paul’s representatives in such communities. The key point, however, is that Tertullian finds the repeated feature of the third characteristic part of the tripartite letter openings useful for refuting Marcion’s conception of God, and affirming his own. This does not seem to me to be a sound reason to assume that the Marcionite letter openings, with the exception of Galatians, contained nothing except for this characteristic feature.

[@mcosu1]

Very interesting. I haven't really heard the guys discuss counterfactuals to their argument...

[@davidaaronhill5680]

Without seeing the concordance the implications from the discussion are profound and seem to indicate that clearly Luke falls after Markion. Cant wait to see these data.

[@Patristica]

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[@jordangoddard4937]

Regarding the change from "Peter" to "Cephas" in Galations 2:11-14, is it possible this was an attempt by the canonical redactor(s) to imply that Peter and Cephas were different people in order to downplay the conflict between Paul and Peter? Some scholars (e.g., Bart Ehrman) have argued that the text of (canonical) Galatians implies they were two different people, though most believe they were not. But why choose a name that also means "rock" or "stone," instead of something completely different? Perhaps in the context of competing texts, this was actually a benefit: "Look, Marcion is obviously altering these texts to his purposes. He did not read Galatians that closely, assumed there was only one "Rock," and changed the text to strengthen his position or divide us." The similarities in the names becomes evidence that Marcion was a fool and a latecomer who didn't understand what he was reading and made understandable but incorrect assumptions. Just a thought.

[@SuenteusPi]

you forgot to link the concordance in the description

[@Dybbouk]

I read in one of Vinzent's books that Paul was a pharisee etc. Is this right?? Were there pharisees in Tarsus?

[@dia8013]

Good morning, I believe that Marcion took the myth/history of Paul and composed the 10 epistles of Paul for first time with the help of other Roman Grammarians; so the original Epistles are half truth and half Gnostic ideas with the rejection of Yahweh. Later the Church of the second century tried to "fix" the letters of Paul by adding quotations of the old testament and other editions. Even today multiple verses of the Pauline Epistles are being translating in a very different way from the original Greek for example almost not modern translation mentions that Paul wished that those who preach the law to be castrated.

[@antonius3745]

Yes Marcion created christianity as we know it now. Paul did not even write those letters and they used just fragments of it to create a Pauline theology that Paul never did formulate that way. In the Netherlands an author Chrales vergeer has proven that Paul just did write very few of the letters and just parts of it.

[@TheDanEdwards]

"so the original Epistles are half truth and half Gnostic ideas with the rejection of Yahweh."

[@TheDanEdwards]

​@@antonius3745 "Yes Marcion created christianity as we know it now. "

[@antonius3745]

@@TheDanEdwards I remember that the Gnostics indeed did reject the Biblical concept of God espc, the Creator and the JHWH concept. That makes them for me to clear heretics. This strain is still prevalent in radical evangelic groups nowadays who claim that Jesus=God.

[@antonius3745]

@@TheDanEdwards You can't judge the books of Charles Vergeer because you obvious never read them. Vergeer proves that Pauls letters are redacted by Marcion and others and that the anti-Judaist strain is form these redactors Vergeer has made as paleontologist an outstanding comparison of all the letters and see almost 3 redactors, using 2nd century Greek. Only some lines in Galatians, Romans and Corinthians, reveals a Semitic-Greek influence. This means only four letters of the seven contain lines that could be from Paul.