Boid on various books on Marcion

Stone the crows! I’ve just been reading Marcion and his Influence by E.C. Blackman (SPCK, London, 1948). He believes everything he reads. As an exposition of what Markion said or did it is hopeless. The reason I’m still reading it is that it is a convenient presentation of the whole apparatus set up to hide what he actually said and did. This turns out to be worse than I imagined. In short, an illuminating book, though not for the reasons the author had in mind.

Aside from this, the author is annoyingly Pommy. Still, we mustn’t mock the genetically afflicted.

Now, on to von Campenhausen. This book is full of insights. At last someone has pointed out that there is no evidence for the Alexandrian Jews not knowing Hebrew, and no evidence for them having a different Canon of Scripture. The corollary, as he says, is that the re-arrangement of the order of books in the LXX is Christian. On the other hand, I’m really perturbed by his inability to appreciate the Torah. He does try to sort out the issues, but doesn’t get far because he is still trapped by the Roman and Catholic theology. I hadn’t realised how deep this went. The book confirms my view that there is an ancient tradition of misreading set up on purpose. Up till today I thought this to be only an artifice for inculcating the misreading of the New Testament. I now see from what von Campenhausen, who is no dill, believes he reads on the page, that there is equally well a tradition of misreading the Torah. I now hold more strongly than before that the foundation stone of the misreading of both the N.T. and the Torah is the deliberate misreading of some passages in John, specially ch. I.

At this point I have to disagree with your view that the virgin birth story in Luke is late and put in to obscure the understanding. I agree that it has been touched up a bit. In my view, it can’t be the work of Polycarp because it is too Zoroastrian. It thus belongs with the story of the three Zoroastrian Priests (Magoi), the three gifts, following the star, the birth surrounded by animals, the birth in a cave, and so on. Besides, the use of the two quotes from Isaiah that was intended by the author is not at all the Catholic & Roman traditional misreading. Another bit of evidence for my theory of an ancient false tradition is the deliberate misreading of the name Immanuel. The false tradition says (in all modern translations) that it means “God with us”. The Greek of the Gospel doesn’t give any meaning for the whole!!! It says immanu means “with us” and El means God. It is simply assumed that the reader will know what the two words as a sentence must mean. (Another bit of proof for translation into Greek from Hebrew or Aramaic, but Hebrew works better). The Peshitta and the Old Syriac and the Old Latin (before Jerome) explain this correctly. Anyone with any knowledge of Hebrew in the slightest will know that this makes what is called in Semitic grammar (in all Semitic languages from Ethiopic to Maltese) “an identification sentence”. This is a sentence with a definite subject and an indefinite predicate and no verb. The meaning is always “A” (an identified person or place) IS “B” (an adjective or an indefinite noun or similar). Making it mean “God with us” without the “is” is so far from what is possible that it can only be a deliberate lie. If the lie is not noticed, it proves what I already knew, that N.T. scholars know naught of Hebrew and Aramaic. What is a new discovery for me is that if the lie is as blatant as this and is still unnoticed, then it is so ancient that it must have been accepted before the composition of all Catholic & Roman extant books. Another proof that it is an ancient lie is that when you turn to the passage in Isaiah there is a verse nearby with a sentence in which the two words immanu and El are written separately and the context of both sense and syntax forces the analysis “with us IS God”. The tradition of misreading says “Don’t look up Isaiah and read the context. Look up Isaiah, but don’t go past the two verses cited in Luke”.

Notice how the foundation of the tradition of misreading is the misreading of the start of the original Gospel. First, by misreading the birth story in Luke, it obscures the term “the anointed” in the title “The Gospel of Jesus the anointed”. Then it misreads the opening paragraphs, corresponding to the opening of the present Gospel of John.

Now, I still want to know what edition of the Syriac N.T. you’re using. If you’re using an American photographic re-printing of an old edition with the publication data of the original left off the title-page, as they commonly do, then all you need do is send me a copy of a sample page as an attachment to an E-mail. I will
recognise which edition it is.

I was wrong in attributing the observation on the re-arrangement in the LXX to von Campenhausen. The observation is still correct, in my opinion.

It remains true that von Campenhausen has considerable insight sometimes to a startling extent; but equally well does it remain true that he is misled by a learnt learned pseudo-tradition of how to read the O.T. and the N.T. [Learned has two syllables and means erudite or scholarly]. He is also too ready to believe what the Roman & Catholic polemicists say about Marcion. He knows there are O.T. references in Marcion’s Gospel, but explains this by a lack of thoroughness on Marcion’s part, thus contradicting his own observation on Marcion’s editorial thoroughness. Neither does he notice having just said himself that what is actually preserved of Marcion’s work contradicts the polemical characterisation of him.