Sunday, July 3, 2011

Weekend Update

We received our first two pledges today and I will update the chart tomorrow. I actually got in late from watching that Brad Pitt movie - the Tree of Life - so I am too tired to do a lot of detailed blogging.   I hate watching movies with my wife because she always 'gets' these art house movies.  I have to admit, I was just sitting there about halfway through this film wondering - what's this movie about?  In any event,. one thing I would like to mention off the current obsession with Mar Saba is that I had something of a breakthrough leaving a comment at Markus Vinzent's blog. I will let the readers go over to his site to see what I mean.

The basic point is that I have been having an ongoing debate with myself as to whether the Marcionites really believed Jesus was a god completely alien to the traditional Jewish godhead (at least as posited by Philo and the community at Alexandria) or that he was the repentant Logos (cf. the Nag Hammadi treatise the Tripartate Tractate). I have finally come to conclusion and the answer is - I think Jesus was the Logos who is so depressed with his creation (i.e. the world, the Jews) that he has a change of mind and ultimately kills himself on the Cross.

Sounds like a radical revisionist interpretation but as I note in the brief comment at Vinzent's post - I think it is fully supported by the evidence. Indeed the Church Fathers are deliberately hold things back when they condemn Marcionitism. For instance, Jesus is certainly called 'the Stranger' but I think the term was rooted in the concept of - the Logos became estranged from the Jews once they started worshiping demons in their temple.

In any event, I recommend reading the post to see how my thoughts beyond Mar Saba are developing. Strange that the Mar Saba document has so fully taken over my own blog that I have to write on other people's sites to develop my own theological interpretations ...


Email stephan.h.huller@gmail.com with comments or questions.


 
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