On Palut and the Palutians

I ask:

Here's another riddle for the Semitic language expert. Bauer determined that Marcionitism was so official in Edessa that it appropriated the name "Christianity" for itself. Catholic's were relegated to being identified as "Palutians" supposedly because of a bishop named "Palut." This might not be easy for you to figure out but its a mystery for Marcionite scholars ever since (or at least just little old me).

(a) can Palutian come from "Paulos" i.e. only the Catholics invented the name for the shared apostle as "Paulos"?
(b) or is there some other word that could be used to negatively define the Roman faith?

Boid responds

This is interesting. The form palut (with t.et not tav) is not attested, but it is regular in formation, and would mean the same as palet (only used in the plural peletim) and palit (only used in the singular), which means “refugee”. These two forms are often paired with nimlat “escapee”. Is the reference to Christians that first fled to Pella and then moved further on?

Often paired with palit and nimlat is sarid (in Biblical Hebrew with SIN, but with SAMECH later on) meaning “survivor”. Are there any names resembling this?

You said the name drives from a bishop called Palut. Names of groups and sects are often wrongly explained as deriving from the name of some fictitious individual. If however there was such an individual, it is worth bearing in mind that there is a strong connotation in the use of this word, if the context favours it, of the individual that is the last survivor of a bloodline or a line of tradition or a line of initiation and who becomes the saviour of the line and the ancestor (real or metaphorical) of all that come after. This kind of usage is so common that the name on its own could have had this connotation in this case. Does this fit?

BOID CORRECTS THIS:

Sorry. I quoted from memory. The Greek has the neuter plural in the first clause, “ta idia”. This is even more definitely not a reference to most Jews collectively. In the second clause the word is masculine [meaning animate masculine and feminine] plural, “hoi idioi”, and refers to the relative few who were of the world in the sense of being part of creation, but not of the world in the sense of having accepted the offer of verses 12 and 13 and then 16 to 18. See verse 10. My interpretation in the first message is still right, and now even more certainly right. What I said about traditional theology is right, but that doesn’t mean these traditional sources are commonly used: the counterfeit is prevalent and has some slightly later sources of its own, in your terminology going back to Polycarp.