Eznik on Marcion as Paul

It's been a while since I wrote anything about Marcion. Marcion was the reason I got interested in Christianity in the first place. I always felt that I 'got' Marcion better than all the other experts because of my Jewish background ... but that's another story.

Here's where I got my idea that there never was an actual 'apostle Paul' of the Catholic tradition was a hoax. First in Maries and Mercier's French translation of Eznik in the Patrologia Orientalis Tome XXVIII:

Mais Paul, disent-ils, a ete ravi au troisieme ciel, et a entendu ces paroles indicibles, celles-la que, nous, nous commentons, precisement, en nos predications!

Ce Marcion donc, à supposer qu'il soit un de ces hommes, il s'ensuit que, pour lui aussi, indicibles etaient ces paroles, pour lui qui, et homme l'est assurement, et le pire de tous les hommes, lui qui, non content d'avoir abandonne la verite de l'Esprit, s'asseoit encore, va fables ravaudant!

Et le voila à tel point enhardi par l'esprit qui a fait Satan ce qu'il est, fair choix d'une moitie, la prendre, et, l'autre moitie, comme rebut, la jeter à l'abandon; mêmement pour ce qui est des Epitres apostoliques elles aussi; et l'Ancien Testament, en sa totalite, le repudier, comme si, dans sa pensee, c'etait la le don d'un coquin et point d'un bon!

L'Apotre, lui, dit qu'elles sont inénar rables les paroles qu'il a entendues, et Marcion, lui dit: "Moi! Je les ai entendues!"

Alors? est-ce l'Apotre, qui, pour indicibles, tient ces paroles, que l'on doit ecouter, ou Marcion, qui, une fois qu'il les a ravalées, fait, au rang de simples topiques passer ces paroles?

And now a rough translation from Google Translate which I will correct after five hours of sleep:

But Paul, they (the Marcionites) say, has been enraptured to third heaven and heard unspeakable words, ones that we, we comment, precisely, in our sermons?

This Marcion then, assuming he is one of those men (as the Marcionites claim), it follows that these were unspeakable words were for him, a man who is assuredly the worst of all men, he who, not content to have abandoned the truth of the Spirit, himself sets about again to spread vile fables!

And there he is so emboldened by the spirit that made Satan, that is, to choose to take (only) a half (of the gospel), and the other half, to throw it away as junk. Likewise for what is the apostolic epistles also, and he repudiates the Old Testament in its entirety, as if in thinking, it was the gift of a roguish and not of a good god!

The apostle, he says they are unutterable stirrings the words he heard, and Marcion, said: "Me, I heard them!"

So? Is it to the apostle, who takes these words that we must listen as unutterable, or Marcion, who, once he has debased them, they are made to mere topical pass these words?

More to follow ...