I just don't understand why these people can't see that there is a church WITHIN the Church, that the Marcionite canon was ABSORBED INTO the Church of the Catholoci. It means nothing to me that Irenaeus tells us that 'Marcion' took the Gospel of Luke and the Letters of Paul and corrupted them. It is plain from the surviving evidence that the Marcionites developed a parallel argument that the Catholoci split apart the one true Gospel and made it four.
So let's put aside my claim that Marcionite (Aramaic Marqiyone) means 'those of Mark.' Let's put aside my claim that the Marcionites used the longer Alexandrian gospel according to Mark. Let's put aside the debates I have with 'Marcionophiles' that Marcionitism was actually closer in spirit to authentic Judaism.
Let's put aside all the crazy distractions that I inevitably find myself embroiled in merely because I am bored out of my mind living in a cabin in the woods of Washington State.
When you stop reading Trobisch's book and you take a second look at our inherited canon you can't help but get the feeling that all it represents is a Roman reworking of the original Marcionite canon.
You see, when I speak in terms of the 'Marcionite canon' then everyone out there THINKS that they 'understand where I am coming from.' Yet in my mind, I am expressing the same thing if I say that the Romans reorganize the Alexandrian canon. This because I don't believe for a moment that there ever was a guy named MARCION running around corrupting the Church. 'Marcion' was just another orthodox 'boogeyman' like Ebion, Elxai and even Polycarp - i.e. identities developed to obscure the historical reality associated with controversial figures.
I think that Alexandria was the original headquarters of the 'Marcionite' (i.e. 'those of Mark') Church. I have countless reasons for thinking this (Origen's reference to an enthroned Marcion, the Marcionite Epistle to the Alexandrians, the fact that the orthodox tradition UTTERLY DENIES any role to Alexandria in the development of the 'true Church,' the fact that the Clement and Origen are unable to express ANY pride in the Alexandrian See).
But again I have to put all of this aside to be 'understood.'
When you put down Trobisch's the First Edition of the New Testament you can see that an editor went out of his way to build this massive external structure so as to 'bury' the Marcionite canon (i.e. the Evangelium and the Apostolicon) WITHIN a crowded distraction.
We must remember that just as seven Marcionite letters became buried within thirteen apostolic epistles, one Evangelium was 'separated' (to use the Syriac term) or diluted within a gospel of four.
It doesn't matter to me that Trobisch did not come to this conclusion in his work on the Pauline epistles. It just seems patently obvious when you QUIETLY think about the implications of his study of the New Testament.
The Marcionites not only DID NOT HAVE this massive editorial structure directing people where to find information about 'Mark' and 'John,' their UNCLUTTERED canon ultimately must have allowed the initiated to pursue the 'gospel secret' - i.e. the mystery hidden within the original copies of the gospel.
The truth is that you can't have it both ways. You can't have a Church promoting people to learn about the identity of John from clues OUTSIDE of the Gospel AND AT THE SAME TIME encourage them to cleave to oral traditions about the mysteries of the various gospel passages. Irenaeus for instance, not only ACTIVELY directions Christians to the former but REPEATEDLY attacks the merits of the mystical approach.
To this end, I want to return back to my original effort to demonstrate that Irenaeus' understanding of a 'gospel in four' is perfectly compatible with Trobisch's formulation. A few days ago I was going through every single reference to 'gospel' in the Refutation and Overthrowing of Knowledge Falsely So Called and I ended up at the clearest declaration of Irenaeus understanding of a successive unfolding of gospels, culminating with Polycarp's original Evangelium 'according to John.'
What I want the reader to see in my next post is that Irenaeus limits the discussion of the 'gospel secret' - i.e. a beloved disciple hidden within the pages of the gospel - to John, the teacher of Polycarp. As we have already noted there has been a parallel Alexandrian tradition in existence from Irenaeus' day which said that this figure was really 'Mark who was also called John.'
Did Polycarp originally think that his John was the same as the Alexandrian Mark? I suspect so, but I can't prove it. All that can be said with certainty is that by the time of Irenaeus' reforms the two were unmistakably referenced as two separate individuals.
Yet it is only when we read Trobisch's explanation of the function of the canon ALONGSIDE Irenaeus' instruction to the faithful in Book Three Chapter One of Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge False So Called that we understand why ten generations of scholars have never seen that there IS another possibility.
Trobisch makes plain the canon was established at the end of the second century. It is the canon which says that Mark and John are two different people and that one is true apostle and the other a mere 'interpreter' of the word of another apostle. Not only do I believe this was deliberate I don't think there is any real reason to believe that THE REAL POLYCARP of history held that John and Mark were one and the same person too.
It was Irenaeus who arranged the canon to rewrite history. Mark was subordinated to such an extent and his gospel curtailed to such an extent that both become functionally useless to the salvation of the faithful. This was deliberate. But for the very fact that we see Irenaeus and his successors struggling to curb the influence of this original tradition for several generations, we should properly see the late second century canon as functioning exactly in the manner of the photo I started this post.
There was a Church WITHIN the Church, a Church of St. Mark, against whom Irenaeus developed the whole canon. This is the ultimate context of the Letter to Theodore and it is why Irenaeus' successor Hippolytus says that many of the believers in Mark had read Irenaeus' report about their beliefs, practices and gospel encouraged the remaining portion to DENY his exaggerated claims about their sect. We read:
For also the blessed presbyter Irenaeus, having approached the subject of a refutation in a more unconstrained spirit, has explained such washings and redemptions, stating more in the way of a rough digest what are their practices. (And it appears that some of the followers of Mark,) on meeting with (Irenaeus' work), deny that they have so received (the secret word just alluded to), but they have learned that always they should deny. Wherefore our anxiety has been more accurately to investigate, and to discover minutely what are the (instructions) which they deliver in the case of the first bath, styling it by some such name; and in the case of the second, which they denominate Redemption. But not even has this secret of theirs escaped (our scrutiny).[Hippolytus Ref. vi. 26]
Does any of this sound familiar to the readers of the letter to Theodore? More to follow tommorow. I am so tired, I just have to get some sleep
