Judas and John 4:22

I wonder whether John 4:22 have been used to support the idea that Jesus was Judas (found in gnostic interpretations of Jesus being identified as 'thirty' (Judas has a numerological value of 30 in Hebrew)?

The statement “Jesus was a Jew” would be “Yeshua [or Yeshu] haya Yehudi ישוע היה יהודי or more elegantly “Yeshua Yehudi haya” ישוע יהודי היה or in more correct usage “Yeshua ben Yisra’el haya” ישוע בן ישראל היה You will notice that this correct form could equally well say he was a Samaritan. The statement “Jesus was Judas” would be “Yeshua Yehuda haya” ישוע יהודה היה or much more naturally “Yeshua hu Yehuda” ישוע הוא יהודה or ישוע יהודה הוא with no tense expressed. Note, however, that this last pair of sentences if used in a passage in elevated literary style would become ambiguous, because they could mean “Jesus was from the tribe of Judah”. This means the name “Judas” might be no more than the product of a misunderstanding or perhaps deliberate mistranslation of a statement that Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah, misunderstood as meaning Jesus was also known as Judah / Judas, then further obscured by making this Judas a separate person. I don’t think this is quite the right solution. I think that Judah / Judas was Thomas’s real name. Thomas is self-evidently Aramaic for “the twin” תומא (my apologies for stating the utterly obvious) and Judas Thomas is simply Judah the twin. Even so, the name Judas could still be a misunderstanding of a statement of the name of the tribe, in which case the question of Judas’s real name is unanswered.

Now we can get to the point of the passage in John. Jesus states the obvious, that the Samaritan Sanctuary was occulted, whereas the Jerusalem temple was visible and SEEMED permanent. Then he says, AS A SEPARATE STATEMENT, that THE salvation is to come from the tribe of Judah (not Levi). Nearly all translations and commentaries misrepresent this verse. Here we go, through the verse bit by bit.. First, remember that the Samaritan woman would not be impressed if Jesus were a prophet, because no Samaritan would accept the need for any of the later prophets, and who were regarded as scurrilous mountebanks by the Samaritans. She has seen that he has more than natural knowledge. All right then, if he knows any facts he needs to know, let’s see him try to find a defence of the indefensible. [No, the alternation of “c”and “s” was not a mistake. Buy a copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, or the Macquarie Dictionary, named after the patron secular saint of Sydney, Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and published in Sydney]. Jesus states the obvious, that the Samaritans don’t actually venerate a place, but rather the occulted Sanctuary or Tabernacle that ought to be in the place on Mt. Gerizim, and which gives or gave the place a secondary sanctity. This Tabernacle is obviously invisible. Then he says the Jews do seem to venerate a place, but actually venerate the building modelled on the Tabernacle, which gives the place a secondary sanctity. It logically follows that the disagreement over the question of the right place is less important than the veneration of the Sanctuary. Both sides agree that the occulted Samaritan tent or tabernacle and the visible Jewish building are only COPIES AT A LOWER LEVEL OF THE HEAVENLY TABERNACLE (Exodus XXV: 9, where tavnit, meaning plan of a building, means a Neoplatonic Eternal Form. Neoplatonism is Syrian in origin. I will give the evidence for this claim another time). It follows inevitably that the time must come when the question of who used to be right and who used to be wrong won’t matter any more. Both sides, if pressed, would have to admit this. Now to the misread verb in verse 22. The verb means “venerate” not “worship” when followed by a noun or pronoun in the accusative case. In the next verse, the same verb means “worship” because followed by the dative case. Now, as to THE salvation. I have put this word in capitals because that is what is in the Greek. If it is THE salvation, it is a definable salvation already mentioned in the Torah, just as the question “Are you THE prophet?” means “Are you the second Moses?” (Deuteronomy XVIII: 15 & 18). You will find THE salvation at the end of Deuteronomy XXXIII, in the form of a passive participle, “saved” נושע . What is written before this? (as the Talmud always says). A list of all twelve tribes. (I will explain the apparent omission of Simeon another time. The explanation of the apparent omission will tell you why the priest Simeon after seeing Jesus as a baby said he was now ready to die, and the same explanation shows that Simeon the Priest expected the one to come to be from the tribe of Judah. I come back to what we all know, that everything in the New Testament demands a detailed knowledge of the Torah, and that the corruption of Christianity into a man-made pseudo-religion could only be effected by first obscuring the connection with the Torah. See below on Mark VII). Before that, in the first few verses, is a statement of the past and future kingship of Moses, after the appearance of the first Torah in flames and fire. This can be worked out as having happened on the date of Shavu’ot, Pentecost, if the day by day account of the period from the Passover to the giving of the Torah in Exodus is followed carefully. (Be careful here. In the first verses of this chapter words are added in most translations to fit a pre-conceived meaning. Also the tenses of some of the verbs are changed, and even the subject pronouns of the verbs are changed in most translations). We can see the first Torah and the first flames and fire, but how do we know about the second Torah on another Pentecost and the second flames and fire? (You can see I’m deliberately using Talmudic phraseology). Easy (פשיטא) If this passage is a blessing (verse 1) then it must refer to the future. This means there must be a second Torah given like the first with flames and fire. When? When all the tribes are united, as in the case of the first Torah. Obviously this is to be from God and it is a form of salvation = rescue. (go back to the end of the chapter). By the hand of an individual from which tribe? At first sight, apparently not stated, but see below for the answer and its implications. Jesus gives the answer in John IV: 22. It is to be someone from Judah. Jesus says “The salvation is from the Judahites”. The Greek particle hoti connecting the two statements in John IV: 22 DOES NOT MEAN “BECAUSE”. It can mean this, but not in a sentence of this structure. In a sentence of this structure it means “end of point one, now for point two”. What is this salvation or rescue? Look at the end of Deuteronomy XXXIII again. It is victory over enemies. What enemies? Paul answers “and the last enemy to be vanquished is death”. But what could be the need for a second Torah, seeing that the first was perfect? The first Torah, all five books of it, was implicit in the words written by the finger of God on the sapphire tablets given to Moses. (Sapphire is heavenstuff in this and similar contexts. The finger of God is the point of interaction between God and Creation. Creation is both Heaven and Earth).). But Moses smashed these because the people were unable to bear their message, as he realised when he saw their well-meaning and devout but misguided work in making the Golden Calf. The second tablets were on the stone of this level of this world, and the writing was carved by Moses himself. Even so, only Moses was ever able to understand all the implications of the Torah (Numbers XII: 7). Something greater than Moses was needed to help drag the people up to where they could start to take in ALL the meaning intended by the first tablets and the second tablets and the five books of the Torah. They could certainly take in a significant part of it (Deuteronomy XXX: 11-14). But Moses couldn’t drag the people up to his own level. The best he could do was to save them from annihilation by bearing their guilt (= imperfection) and dying with them instead of crossing the Jordan. Thus the need for a second Torah, but by the hand of one greater than Moses. Jesus is “the firstfruits of them that slept” as Paul says. At this pint I have difficulty. Jesus did not resurrect himself, as the Evangelicals seem to imagine. He was very very dead, stone-dead, and was resurrected by God. But why Jesus and not Moses? Moses’s body was uncorrupted (Deuteronomy XXXIV: 7 if the verb is read according to the tense that it actually has and if the syntax is accepted exactly as it is. Also unanimous tradition). Moses was finally resurrected. See below. On the resurrection of Moses, after a long period when his body was incorruptible, see Peter’s sermon in Acts III. I suppose he was then translated. I assume this happened upon the death of Jesus, when Jesus said “it is finished” in the sense of the whole process having been carried through to the very last step ΤΕΤΕΛΗΘΗ. I assume this because Matthew adds that many of the saints of old were resurrected and were seen in the streets of Jerusalem. (This is one of the verses that embarrass N.T. scholars, who generally have nothing to say or show they wish the verse was not there). I take this verse to refer to those that were somehow saved by the willingness of Moses to die with them and protect them by his greater merit or level of existence {זכות) and who, like Moses, had been waiting, with the only difference being that Moses’s body was incorruptible. And what is the connection between resurrection and dragging others to a higher level? I don’t fully know. However, the symbolism of the presence of Moses at the Transfiguration is clear. Jesus is somehow greater, by being THE angel, the Angel of the Presence מלאך הפנים or Metatron, the angel that contains the germ of the created world. I would guess that if the presence of death is the most eloquent sign that creation is not yet as it should be, or is lower than it should be, then if Jesus is resurrected by God then this is the start of the raising of everything. (To remove one objection. When Jesus resurrected Lazarus, Lazarus was just the same as before, and could die. When Jesus was resurrected it was into the spiritual body, which does not mean insubstantial, but on the contrary even more physically present. As he said, “I am not a ghost”. This body belonged to the coming perfected world. To answer the Samaritan theologian writing some time in the late first c. A.D. or early second c. A.D. that objected that Jesus should have stayed on this level of existence and not ascended, because his visible presence would be convincing proof of the reality of the World to Come, there are two answers. The first is that the Resurrection Body or Spiritual Body or More Real Body was by definition a sample of the World to Come, and could not be held accessible to those in the world still striving towards the Coming World longer than forty days. Then how could it be held even for forty days? (Back to Talmudic style of argument. I must have absolutely absorbed the Talmud through my pores, because its style always takes me to the next step, no matter how impenetrable the question seems). Because the World to Come is equally the Coming World which means the world that is actually in the process of coming even now. It is already here a little bit. Or as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman “The hour is coming and indeed is already here” (I took this inspiration originally from the Yalkut Re’uveni ילקוט ראובני quoting a work of the Kabbalah before 1492. It needs no authority because it has the ring of truth. We are back to Paul’s words, that Jesus is the firstfruits of them that slept, and again his words, the whole of creation groaneth and travaileth waiting for the coming of the sons of God). The second answer to the very reasonable objection of the anonymous Samaritan theologian is to quote what Jesus said on the same subject: “Though one were to rise from the dead they would not believe”.

Now, what distresses me is that New Testament scholars have wilfully misread this verse in John. I say wilfully because this is avoidable ignorance. The distinction between the two meanings of the verb, as worship or venerate according to the case of the following pronoun, or the multiple meanings of the particle “hoti” according to the structure of the sentence, are matters that they ought to know to justify holding their job. The misinterpretation of the sentence “Our Fathers worshipped on this mountain” as meaning “some Samaritans in the olden days used to commonly and often worship here” is something that would not be tolerable at undergraduate level or even school level. First, “our Fathers” is a standard way of saying “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. Anyone that doesn’t know this has never read anything in Hebrew or anything translated from Hebrew, not even the daily prayerbook. As for the verb, I find it hard to express myself. In English and German, “worshipped” or “anbeteten” can mean “worshipped once” or “used to worship”. In Greek, as in French, two different tenses are used. The Greek tense here is the aorist, expressing the meaning “did something once or on a few occasions” as opposed to the imperfect, meaning “used to worship now and then / occasionally / often / regularly”. You will see that all the authors of all the pathetic commentaries have either (a) not learnt the Greek tenses at the level expected in a school or (b) read the text in English or German with a glance at the Greek while claiming to follow the Greek or (c) done both of the above. As for commentators writing in French that have used the wrong French past tense, this is even worse. What is meant? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each worshipped at least once on Mt. Gerizim, thus recognising its sanctity or at least recognising its potential sanctity, whereas Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Torah. The mountain has at least some claim to being the intended place for the sanctuary. Leave Melchizedek Priest of Salem out. Salem is not identified with Jerusalem till the Book of Chronicles. This identification is not followed by ancient Jewish sources. Not even the Septuagint or any of the four Targums identifies Salem with Jerusalem. No ancient Jewish document (except the Book of Chronicles, which does not press the point anyway) uses an identification of Salem with Jerusalem as an argument for the status of Jerusalem. Salem still bears the same name and is attested through the centuries as bearing this name, so its present location is not a Samaritan invention. We all know where it is, at the foot of Mount Gerizim but still within the sacred precincts. An identification with Jerusalem won’t fit the geography of the narrative. Am identification with the known place where there is at present a Palestinian refugee camp fits the geography of the narrative perfectly.

Bear in mind that I have not said that others disagree with my exegesis, but rather that the bare words have not been made accessible.

The reason I get so upset is that those that are paid full-time salaries to do an honest job would rather avoid working honestly, or avoid learning Greek properly, or what is worse, wilfully conceal the words of Scripture from other people. Never mind about the implications of the words. I say THE WORDS THEMSELVES (not their implications) ARE HIDDEN, and then replaced by man-made words. By the words themselves, I mean changing the tense of the verbs, ignoring the syntax so as to change the meaning of particles, leaving out or adding words in a way that changes the meaning, and ignoring the natural meaning of terms as used at the time of writing of the sections of Scripture. The worst instance of adding words that are not there, combined with wilful misrepresentation of the range of meaning of a verb, is the second part of Mark VII: 19. Lest the effects of the false addition in Mark be thought trivial, I remind you that it is this verse with the verb wilfully mistranslated, and with counterfeit words added, that is one of the most important vehicles of the deliberate attempt to misrepresent the place of Moses in Christology, to separate the New Testament from the Old Testament, and to misrepresent the work of Jesus. I have seen an instance of a person only half-educated, with definite psychiatric defects controlled by medication, but determined to know what Scripture says, realise for himself, with no knowledge of Greek, that most of the words in the usual translations of the phrase were man-made counterfeits. He asked me the meaning of the verb, and I told him what a Greek dictionary would have said, and no more than that, lest he take my exegesis for the only true meaning of the verse. He asked me to turn the syntax literally into English, which I did. It turned out that with the crude tools accessible to him, he had already worked out what the syntax must be. Then his mind leapt (Yes, this is the past tense, pronounced leppt) to the implications of the words of the verse and then to the nature of the Christological misrepresentation put forth by the misuse of the verse, and then went some distance to seeing how the meaning of the whole pericope had been misrepresented, AND WHY and for what purpose it had been misrepresented.. But how many others have lacked his zeal? And besides, I think he was gifted in a way, but his mind didn’t have the strength to be the vehicle of what he could discern, and this was the cause of his psychiatric condition. I come back to the point that ignorant guides are bad, but a heavy burden of guilt falls on those that set out purposefully to be wrongful guides. (I told you Anna says she doesn’t believe I no longer deliver sermons. She says all I have done is stop standing in a pulpit to deliver them. She is probably right).

You will see why the Greek Church has given the name Foti (modern pronunciation) to the anonymous Samaritan woman, a name meaning “enlightened”, and counts her as an Apostle. Some of the Western Churches such as the Anglican Church do the same, or many of their adherents do. I personally agree. Notice that this woman was the very first, even before Peter, to use the term “Christ” for Jesus, without Jesus rejecting it. Why? Because everyone so far that had used it had missed the meaning. The Samaritan woman obviously didn’t expect an anointed king of the line of David. That would have been intolerable to a Samaritan. The Northern Kingdom had been delighted to dump Rehoboam, and that was the end of it. Besides, David represented Jerusalem and the supreme Jewish heresy, the invention of the sanctity of Jerusalem with the attendant building of a fixed stone structure for the sanctuary. (Stephen got murdered for pointing this fact out).She therefore must have meant an anointed High Priest, but High Priest in the Heavenly Tabernacle, like Moses, as opposed to the High Priest of the earthly sanctuary, Aaron and his descendants. (The concept of Moses ministering in the Heavenly Tabernacle can be found plainly in the Torah if you read carefully what is said about the Tent Of Meeting אהל מועד There was the secondary implication of a king like Moses (start of Deuteronomy XXXIII if the verbs are read in the correct tenses and no words are added). Anyone can see that the kingship of David was only legitimised by that of Moses, and in any case David’s kingship WAS KINGSHIP IN A STATE OF EXISTENCE IMPERFECT BY DEFINITION.

We can now answer the question of why the tribe the anointed one was to come from had to be answered. The first High Priest of the Heavenly Tabernacle was Aaron’s brother, so obviously the second High Priest need not be descended from Aaron. But was he to be of the tribe of Levi, like Moses and Aaron? Or of some other tribe? If Deuteronomy XXXIII is read carefully, the place goes to Judah, but the question remained as to whether the tribe of Judah had lost its claim by the manifest unworthiness of its rulers. Note the verse in the Asâtîr in my translation where it speaks of the heresy of “the second sanctuary”, the Jerusalem temple, and says Judah has forfeited the promise given in the words of Deuteronomy XXXIII “Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah”.

The Samaritan woman and Jesus managed to get through all this at lightning speed. One wonders what their I.Q. must have been. Actually, I feel jealous. Notice that she won the dispute over the location of the holy place to the extent of forcing Jesus to dodge the question of the rightful PRESENT location. Only three people are recorded as having defeated Jesus in debate, even if only in part, and they were all women. They were his mother, at the wedding at Cana, where she won the dispute about whether Jesus was obliged to act; the Samaritan woman in John IV; and the Syrophoenician (= Lebanese) woman in the second half of John IV.

This has turned out a lot longer than intended, but there seemed to be no other way of stating the seriousness of not translating what Scripture actually says---- I mean the seriousness of not translating the bare words correctly, and thus making it impossible for the earnest reader to find the intention of the words by thought and reflection.

You know I have often wondered if I would have been a Moslem if born in a country where Islam is prominent, and you know how much I prefer the company of Moslems to the company of Christian prelates. I suppose this is an unanswerable question. Anyway, I usually state my religion as “Pagan” if ever admitted to hospital or in any other situation, because I have found that admitting to being a Christian immediately puts me in the company of enthusiasts that bear the label of Christian, but whose religion I manifestly don’t belong to., and in fact can’t bear to hear expounded. Then again, I think of a Moslem friend that does the same. I also think of what she quoted as having been said to her by her father: “When people start accusing you of being an atheist, take it as the first sign that you are starting to become a Moslem”.

Everything said here about the concept of the World to Come, right down to the last detail, could have been stated in the language of Islamic theology. I worked with the tools I was most familiar with.

All of this is eminently material. We are commanded to do our bit in the world in situations that are not always pleasant, working with whatever apparently mundane job of improvement or help or simply maintenance comes our way. The Hebrew word for this process of remedy of the world bit by bit (and sometimes seeming like no more than maintenance to our eyes) is tikkun תקון

An afterthought. If Moses was king upon the giving of the first Torah, then he represented the unity of all twelve tribes, which means Jacob. When Jacob wrestled with the angel, and held his own, wrestling right through the night, the angel gave him the name Yisra’el, which is in form the name of an angel. There is an ancient text called The Ladder of Jacob preserved only in part, from the second c. B.C. that expands on the concept of Jacob as an angel. The same concept is prominent in mediaeval Jewish texts. I take it that Jacob was not quite equal to the angel he wrestled with. As that angel was the Angel of the Presence (read the passage carefully and you will see it) then Jacob-Yisra’el was the angel embodying the world, as opposed to the angel containing the germ of the world, the Angel of the Presence. Otherwise, Jacob-Yisra’el was the earthly reflection of the Angel of the Presence. The two explanations are compatible with each other. The second explanation is the traditional one. It is usually set forth in the observation that it does not say the angels were going up and coming down. It says the angels were going down and coming up. This means they came down , saw Jacob-Yisra’el’s face [the word translated “presence” is literally “face”, recognised it, and went back up to compare it with the original. If Moses represents the essence of Jacob-Yisra’el upon the giving of the first Torah, he is limited, no matter how exalted. He represents the world as it is. If Jesus represents the Angel of the Presence, the Power (technical term of Samaritan theology and the N.T.), then he is Lord of this World and the World to Come. As for Jesus being the Angel of the Presence, there is a lot that is relevant in John’s Gospel. A very clear simple statement is seen by putting together the two sayings “I and my Father are one” but balanced by “I must do the will of my Father”. The point is that the Angel of the Presence embodies the Great Power, but that Power is given to the Angel of the Presence from above. If this distinction is correct, then Moses could never drag others up after him, and Jesus could. Not by his own strength, but by the Great Power flowing through him. Thus he could not resurrect himself into the Spiritual Body, but it was done to him, from above. On the other hand, as the vehicle of the Great Power, he could resurrect Lazarus, but only into a normal body. I take this to imply that the Resurrected and Ascended Christ, the Pantokrator, does resurrect others into the Spiritual Body by the Great Power bestowed on him or flowing through him. There is a Hermetic dictum “Nature unaided always fails”. Although I heard this dictum from a corrupt source, it is a quote of a true saying. It sums up the distinction between Moses and Jesus, but I think it also means that Jesus before the Resurrection and Ascension could not be more than human, even though a vehicle for the Great Power. Jesus the man is not the Pantokrator, AND CHRISTIANITY IS NOT JESUS-WORSHIP EXCEPT IN ITS CORRUPT FORM. All of this is of course clearly stated in Jewish metaphysical texts, which say that Metatron is not quite identical with the Angel of the Presence but ATTAINED THAT STATUS IN SOME WAY.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

Here is an explanatory translation of vv. 22 to 26, for the sake of clarity. The clause starting with hoti in v. 22 does bring in a new statement, as I said before, but I should have added that this clause is inserted to provide a necessary datum needed not for the logic of the connection between the two verses, but to settle one outstanding question that stands in the way of any present useful discussion. You might well have wondered how I could so confidently assert that the function of hoti here was to bring in a second, new, subject, but I forgot to say that the clause with hoti is at least as strongly connected to v. 23 as to v. 22. When you look at the two verses together, which you are obviously meant to do, and then look at the whole set of verses, as you are meant to do, it becomes transparently clear that hoti IN THIS POSITION introducing a clause STANDING BY ITSELF LIKE A SHAG ON A ROCK between two other clauses has its well-attested meaning of “now in regard to xyz”. It is equally clear that it does not mean “because”, since to take it this way you would have to break any logical connection between v. 22 and v. 23. as well as obscuring the logic of the whole set of verses. “You mob venerate what you don’t see [because there is no visible structure because there was never a stone building, only a protective low stone fence round the site of the tent or tabernacle, this fence having no holiness, but being purely practical], whereas we venerate what we do see [the massive stone temple building]. As for the salvation, it is to come by the hand of someone from Judah. But [to get back to the point] the hour is coming, and in a sense is already here, when the true worshippers [those that know that both sanctuaries are only copies of the Heavenly Tabernacle, as Exodus XXV: 9 plainly says, and therefore have no holiness of their own] will worship the Father in spirit and in truth [Truth = Reality in the Neoplatonic sense. This clarifies the meaning of “spirit”. They will direct their attention to the true original Eternal Form, the Heavenly Tabernacle, [as a vehicle, since God is both knowable and ultimately unknowable] which will be possible as soon as the salvation comes, [which as I, Jesus, just said is to be by the hand of someone from Judah, not Levi, not Ephraim] etc. etc. She said: “Yes, I already know all that. But it still depends on the coming of the anointed High Priest of the Heavenly Tabernacle, the second and greater Moses [Deuteronomy XVII: 15 & 18]. When he comes, he will show us all things [because he will know all that exists, Numbers XII, the first section, specially vv. 7 & 8]. Then we will know as we are known [Deuteronomy XXIV: 10 and see the Targums], directly [Numbers XII: 7, where direct vision is meant], because we will not know indirectly [Numbers XII: 6, the verb of the third clause out of four, “I am made known” in MT, but better “it has (so far) been made known” in the Samaritan text of the Torah], not by hints and not in a mirror [Numbers XII: 6, where the usually translated as image or vision can equally well be read as meaning “mirror”]. Jesus said: [“Quite so. That person must come so as to give you that perception. We both know that]. That person has now come [at last]. It’s me”. [So from now on we can stop being concerned about where the earthly tabernacle ought to be. More to the point, the new era has started, the return of the Time of Favour, the subject of Jesus’s first sermon, in Caphernaum, when he was nearly murdered].

You will see that the Samaritan woman made her mark, since neither Jerusalem nor the site of the former Jerusalem temple have any holiness in Christianity, except as far as connected with Jesus, but that is another matter altogether. There is of course the exception of modern Christian Zionism, the only new heresy ever invented since ancient times, and the most poisonous of all, a true invention of the Devil and the inimical Powers of this world.

A reminder. The short answer to part of the original question is that the words usually read as meaning “of the Jews” in v. 22 in this discussion between Jesus and the Samaritan woman can only mean “from someone from amongst the members of the tribe of Judah”. This is in fact how the Old Syriac (not the Peshitta) understands it. This text has literally “from Judah”. This is either a correct explanatory translation, or the original reading. Am inclined to take the translation as quite literal, taken from an uncorrupted Greek text. Note these two facts: they are very important. To a great extent the Peshitta shows a startling degree of intuition of what the original Aramaic behind the Greek must have been, and this phenomenon is even more marked in the case of the Old Syriac, so much so that I personally think the translators must have used an Aramaic text to correct their Greek text before translating the Greek into Syriac. The text of the Old Syriac shows marked agreement in important places with the Greek text used by Marcion, which as we all know is consistently better than most extant mss. of the Greek. As you know, I would say with Stephan that Marcion’s text is uncorrupted. Marcion’s text has a remarkable affinity with what is called the Western Text, and also tends to agree with the best mss. whenever the original reading has been obscured in most mss. but survives in a very few witnesses, so Marcion’s text was not made up by Marcion, regardless of the calumnies against him.