Wednesday, November 19, 2014

19. It is easy to distinguish where Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem was falsified

Can we distinguish between the proposed 'original text' of Against Marcion developed as it was from a Diatessaron-based community from the later stages of corruption which introduce the 'Marcion falsified Luke' argument?  I think so.  If you take a careful look at the beginning of Book Four it is I think obvious to see how a more original argument dealing with the Diatessaron was altered to make it appear 'in line' with our existing canon.  Let me quote the Latin for this section in its entirety:
Habes nunc ad Antitheses expeditam a nobis responsionem. Transeo nunc ad evangelii, sane non Iudaici sed Pontici, interim adulterati demonstrationem, praestructuram ordinem quem aggredimur. Constituimus inprimis evangelicum instrumentum apostolos auctores habere, quibus hoc munus evangelii promulgandi ab ipso domino sit impositum. Si et apostolicos, non tamen solos, sed cum apostolis et post apostolos, quoniam praedicatio discipulorum suspecta fieri posset de gloriae studio, si non adsistat illi auctoritas magistrorum, immo Christi, quae magistros apostolos fecit. Denique nobis fidem ex apostolis Ioannes et Matthaeus insinuant, ex apostolicis Lucas et Marcus instaurant, isdem regulis exorsi, quantum ad unicum deum attinet creatorem et Christum eius, natum ex virgine, supplementum legis et prophetarum.
In other words, if we now breakdown the treatise in its English translation.   Tertullian begins by acknowledging that he has just given his "short and sharp answer to the Antitheses" and now passed on to:
I pass on to show how his (i.e. Marcion's) gospel—certainly not Judaic but Pontic—is in places adulterated: and this shall form the basis of my order of approach. I lay it down to begin with that the instrument (sing.) of the gospel (sing.) has (sing.) the apostles for its author, and that this task of promulgating the gospel (sing.) was imposed upon them by our Lord himself. 
It amazing to see how much difficulty this passage gives to translators who think that Tertullian 'must be' speaking here about our four gospel canonical set.  But he is not.  He is instead undoubtedly copying out a text written by by someone like Justin who consistently references a single 'gospel' containing 'the memoirs of the apostles.'

There is a clear reluctance in early Fathers to speak of 'Gospels' in the plural.  Justin speaks instead of apomnemoneumata ton apostolon because as David Aune has stressed in his The New Testament in its Literary Environment he was drawing from a pre-existent literary genre in antiquity.  Aune argues that apomnemoneumata is roughly synonymous with Greco-Roman biography and
is an inclusive literary form which provides a framework or setting for various types of short forms including anec­ dotes (which Greek rhetoricians called chreiai), maxims (gnomai), and reminiscences (apomnemoneumata). Chreiai are essentially sayings or actions (or a combination of the two) set in a brief narrative framework (e.g., the question-and-answer section of the Life of Secundus).Gnomai are proverbial sayings which lack attribution or a narrative framework, and apomnemoneumata are expanded chreiai thought to be transmitted by memory. Examples of longer literary forms which can be included in biographies are novellas, speeches and dialogues (as in the Life of Secun­dus).
But clearly we are speaking here - as we see still in Tertullian's Latin text - of a single gospel written out by the body of apostles as one text.  We should notice at once the clear echo of Matthew 28:20 referencing Jesus sending out the apostles to the farthest reaches of the world.

As we see the text continue we can already see the editors had move on the text for we read:
Si et apostolicos, non tamen solos, sed cum apostolis et post apostolos, quoniam praedicatio discipulorum suspecta fieri posset de gloriae studio, si non adsistat illi auctoritas magistrorum, immo Christi, quae magistros apostolos fecit.
The emboldened text is clearly interrupting the original idea in the text of Justin - namely that the one gospel was written by 'the apostles' exclusively.  For Irenaeus introduced the idea of a fourfold gospel written by two apostles (Matthew and John) and two disciples (Mark and Luke).  Not surprisingly right on cue the text continues:
In short, from among the apostles the faith is introduced to us by John and by Matthew, while from among apostolic men Luke and Mark give it renewal, beginning with the same rules , as far as relates to the one only God, the Creator, and to his Christ, born of a virgin, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. It matters not that the arrangement of their narratives varies, so long as there is agreement on the essentials of the faith—and on these they show no agreement with Marcion. 
One can immediately see the palpable effect of Irenaeus's hand on this section.  Notice the dogmatic assertion of dogma.  Not only does the introduction of 'those who came after the apostles' interrupt the original train of thought (namely that Jesus commissioned the apostles to spread the gospel at the end of the gospel) but the editor makes the original author reinforce other doctrinal differences with the Marcionites which clearly weren't important to him.  These familiar obsessions of Irenaeus include 'the one and only God the Creator' and Jesus being 'born of a virgin' and this 'a fulfillment of the (expectations of) the law and prophets.'

If you take out these Irenaeus obsessions we arrive at a much more believable antithesis between the original Diatessaronic gospel according to the apostles and what immediately follows the last citation in Tertullian, namely:
Marcion, on the other hand, attaches to his gospel no author's name,—as though he to whom it was no crime to overturn the whole body, might not assume permission to invent a title for it as well. At this point I might have made a stand, arguing that no recognition is due to a work which cannot lift up its head, which makes no show of courage, which gives no promise of credibility by having a fully descriptive title and the requisite indication of the author's name. But I prefer to join issue on all points, nor am I leaving unmentioned anything that can be taken as being in my favour. 
In other words, in contradiction to the clear affirmation of the conclusion of Matthew where Jesus commissions the apostles to spread the gospel - and the Diatessaronic gospel is identified as that 'gospel' - the original author of Against Marcion says that Marcion's gospel not only has no ascription to a particular person but more importantly does not identify itself as belonging to the 'apostles.'  Thus the distinction between the single long gospel which is the 'memoirs of the apostles' of the community of Justin and the anonymous gospel of the Marcionite community only makes sense when take out the other distractions introduced by Irenaeus to the text (and later loosely transcribed by Tertullian).

Notice that in what immediately follows again how feebly Irenaeus identifies Luke as the original text of the author saying:
For out of those authors whom we possess, Marcion seems to have chosen Luke as the one to mutilate.
Raschke rightly calls attention to the word 'seems' here (i.e. can't the author be more convincing here?) But then notice that the immediate follow up tries to make the argument 'square' with the original point about the 'gospel (sing.) of the apostles: 
Now Luke was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple (Mt 10:24) in any case less than his master, and assuredly even more of lesser account as being the follower of a later apostle, Paul, to be sure: so that even if Marcion had introduced his gospel under the name of Paul in person, that one single instrument would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of the support of its predecessors.
So if we really think about it, Irenaeus here has turned around the implausibility of claiming that 'Luke' was meant by the original author's reference to the 'gospel of the apostles' (because Luke wasn't an apostle but a disciple) by following a familiar tactic - seemingly appealing to Matthew 10:24.

But wait a minute.  The whole point of the exercise in this book was supposedly to say that Marcion erased Luke.  This expression that a 'disciple is not above his master' is not to be found in Luke but only Matthew.  So we should assume in fact that the appeal to Matthew 10:24 is an authentic part of the original treatise.  In other words, Justin must have argued that the Marcionite gospel was written by a disciple rather than an apostle from the beginning of the section.  He had the 'gospel of the apostles' and by contrast the Marcionite gospel was really written by a disciple - something made manifest by the fact that there is no title to the text (and juxtaposed by the clear identification of Justin's gospel as 'belonging to the apostles.'

The decision to truncate the Marcionite gospel and make it too according to a mere disciple was done as a concession to the original argument of Justin in Against Marcion.  In other words, Irenaeus was saying in effect, Justin was right to identify the author of the Marcionite gospel as a disciple but he was incorrect in not recognizing that a more original text - one called 'according to Luke' predated the corrupt Marcionite mutilation.  To this end, Justin must have been the one who wrote the sentence based on an appeal to Matthew 10:24 but instead of 'Luke' as the name of the gospel used by the Marcionites there must have been another 'disciple' who thought he was 'above his master.'

Which disciple can this be?  The answer is obvious when you remember Clement's discussion of Mark developing his gospel without the permission of Peter.  In other words:
Now Luke was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple (Mt 10:24) in any case less than his master, and assuredly even more of lesser account as being the follower of a later apostle, Paul, to be sure: so that even so that even if Marcion had introduced his gospel under the name of Paul in person, that one single instrument would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of the support of its predecessors.
must have originally read:
Now Mark was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple (Mt 10:24) in any case less than his master, and assuredly even more of lesser account as being the follower of a later apostle, Peter, to be sure: so that even if Mark had introduced his gospel under the name of Peter in person, that one single instrument would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of the support of its predecessors. 
In other words, 'Paul' and 'Luke' relationship is obviously little more than a poor copy of the pre-existent (and more widely known) pairing of 'Peter' and 'Mark.'  Instead of allowing for Justin to acknowledge that the Marcionites have a lesser gospel developed without Peter's permission by a disciple, Irenaeus developed the mythical pairing of 'Paul' and 'Luke' out of Justin's original work.

Now we should see that Justin is allowed to be correct about the fact that the Marcionite possessed an inferior gospel - one which belonged to a 'disciple' rather than an apostle.  This was true for the underlying relationship between 'Mark's second gospel' which Peter neither approved nor denied and the one that developed from Peter's memories (i.e. by Peter dictating to Mark).  Clement says that the gospel 'according to Mark' was not the name given to the text by the Alexandrian community.  It, like the Marcionite gospel, was not given a name.

Irenaeus by inventing a parallel pairing of Paul and Luke (figures who never actually existed in history) allows for a gospel developed from disciples to have legitimacy and at the same time erases the memory of the original gospel according to Peter.  Mark's gospel becomes equated with the one 'according to Peter,' secret Mark disappears, and the heretical text originally in the possession of the Marcionites (= secret Mark) becomes confounded with a 'corrupt text' associated with another gospel written by a disciple ('according to Luke').

According to Justin then 'the gospel' developed from the memories of the apostle was superior to that which developed by the disciple tinkering with the master's work without his approval.  Irenaeus allows this to stand by pretending that Papias's oracles of the Lord written by Matthew was the original apostolic narrative gospel.  The original controversy that Justin and the Marcionites were engaged in necessarily also gets sidestepped in the process.

For we should notice that immediately following the last citation Tertullian's text jumps unexpectedly into a discussion of Galatians - an argument is not only sudden but rather developed from strange logic.
so that even if Marcion had introduced his gospel under the name of Paul in person, that one single document would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of support from proceeding authorities (singularitas instrumenti destituta patrocinio antecessorum). There would still be wanting that gospel (sing.) also which Paul found, that to which he gave his assent, that with which shortly afterwards he was anxious that his own should agree: for his intention in going up to Jerusalem to know and to consult the apostles,was lest perchance he had run in vain —that is, lest perchance he had not believed as they did, or were not preaching the gospel in their manner. At length, when he had conferred with the original, and there was agreement concerning the rule of the faith, they joined the right hands , and from thenceforth divided their spheres of preaching, so that the others should go to the Jews, but Paul to Jews and gentiles. If he therefore who gave the light to Luke chose to have his predecessors' authority for his faith as well as his preaching, much more must I require for Luke's gospel the authority which was necessary for the gospel of his master.

It is another matter if in Marcion's opinion the Christian religion, with its sacred content, begins with the discipleship of Luke. However, as it was on its course even before that, it certainly possessed an authoritative structure by means of which it reached even to Luke: and so with the support of its evidence Luke also can find acceptance. But Marcion has got hold of Paul's epistle to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,a and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ: and on this ground Marcion strives hard to overthrow the credit of those gospels which are the apostles' own and are published under their names, or even the names of apostolic men, with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others. And yet, even if there is censure of Peter and John and James, who were esteemed as pillars,b the reason is evident.

We have to take this idea step by step.  The first thing which is clear is that Tertullian accepts the Marcionite idea that 'gospel' in the epistle to the Galatians refers to an actual written text.  The author begins by saying that even if we accept the Marcionite identification of their own written gospel being mentioned in the material, there is still another gospel which was older and founded on apostolic authority.

This is where things get interesting.  Let's look at the start of the section because it clearly derives from the single gospel layer:
so that even if Marcion had introduced his gospel under the name of Paul in person, that one single document would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of support from proceeding authorities (singularitas instrumenti destituta patrocinio antecessorum) There would still be wanting that gospel (sing.) also which Paul found, that to which he gave his assent, that with which shortly afterwards he was anxious that his own should agree: for his intention in going up to Jerusalem to know and to consult the apostles,was lest perchance he had run in vain —that is, lest perchance he had not believed as they did, or were not preaching the gospel in their manner. At length, when he had conferred with the authors (auctoribus) and there was agreement concerning the rule of the faith, they joined the right hands, and from thenceforth divided their spheres of preaching, so that the others should go to the Jews, but Paul to Jews and gentiles.
If this material is taken at face value it is extremely difficult to make any of this account with the fourfold canon - let alone Luke.  Instead we find it acknowledged - in a manner which agrees with Origen, Eusebius and the Alexandrian tradition - that Paul had a written gospel and the 'apostles' in Jerusalem had another.  This entire section is pre-Irenaean and juxtaposes two gospels as being already present in the earliest period of Christianity.

Of course when we move forward to the next sentence it is again obvious that the editor's hand resurfaces.  For 'Luke' is suddenly injected into this impossible scenario:
If he therefore who gave the light to Luke chose to have his predecessors' authority for his faith as well as his preaching, much more must I require for Luke's gospel the authority which was necessary for the gospel of his master
This sounds eerily like the 'introduction to Luke' which appears in Irenaeus's Against Heresies.  If we are to accept the aforementioned reading of Galatians, the editor writes, then Luke must be the gospel of Paul.  But clearly Luke cannot be this gospel of Paul on a number of grounds.  The meeting with the Jerusalem Church necessarily precedes the mythical appointment of Luke at the expense - interestingly enough - of Mark (also called John).   This is why our tradition, despite the objections of Clement, Origen and Eusebius, slams the door on the idea that Paul possessed a written gospel.

The Luke-centered redaction continues in what immediately follows where the editor says that it would be "another matter if in Marcion's opinion the Christian religion, with its sacred content, begins with the discipleship of Luke."  The Marcionites themselves clearly knew nothing about 'Luke.'  This entire section was written by a second hand including the eye-opening claim that
Marcion has got hold of Paul's epistle to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ: and on this Marcion ground strives hard to overthrow the credit of those gospels which are the apostles' own and are published under their names, or even the names of apostolic men, with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others. And yet, even if there is censure of Peter and John and James, who were esteemed as pillars, the reason is evident.
Notice that the sudden introduction of the plural 'gospels' (evangeliorum) coincides with this entire section of text.  The original argument was - there were two gospels, one 'according to the apostles' the other an anonymous text written according to a disciple.  The new argument is something completely different and more in line with what are now our familiar canonical assumptions.

Indeed the false arguments (italicized below) continue until - not surprisingly we return to the allusion back to Matthew 28:20 (see above):
It was that they appeared to be altering their manner of life through respect of persons. Yet since Paul himself made himself all things to all men so that he might gain them all, Peter too may well have had this in mind in acting in some respect differently from his manner of teaching. And besides, if false apostles also had crept in, their character too is indicated: they were insisting on circumcision, and the Jewish calendar. So it was not for their preaching but for their forms of activity that they were marked down as wrong by Paul, though he would no less have marked them wrong if they had been in any error on the subject of God the Creator, or of his Christ. Therefore we have to distinguish between the two cases. When Marcion complains (queritur) that apostles are suspected (for their prevarication and dissimulation) of having even depraved the gospel, he thereby accuses Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose.
Clearly then there is an underlying understanding throughout the text which accords with two gospels - one in the hands of Paul, the other that belongs to the apostles which does not accord with our traditional division of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The argument immediately continues  in Adversus Marcionem:
If however the gospel which the apostles compared with Paul's was beyond reproach, and they were rebuked only for inconsistency of conduct, and yet false apostles have falsified the truth of their gospels, and from them our copies are derived, what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators—that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke? Or if it has been completely destroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one.  Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours? Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours—though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title—then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified in its title.  So we must pull away at the rope of contention, swaying with equal effort to the one side or the other. I say that mine is true: Marcion makes that claim for his. I say that Marcion's is falsified: Marcion says the same of mine. Who shall decide between us? Only such a reckoning of dates, as will assume that authority belongs to that which is found to be older, and will prejudge as corrupt that which is convicted of having come later. For in so far as the false is a corruption of the true, to that extent must the truth have preceded that which is false. An object must have been in existence before anything is done to it, as what it is in itself must be prior to any opposition to it. Otherwise how preposterous it would be that when we have proved ours the older, and that Marcion's has emerged later, ours should be taken to have been false before it had from the truth material , and Marcion's be believed to have suffered hostility from ours before it was even published: and in the end that that which is later should be reckoned more true, even after the publication to the world of all those great works and evidences of the Christian religion which surely could never have been produced except for the truth of the gospel—even before the gospel was true. So then meanwhile, as concerns the gospel of Luke, seeing that the use of it shared between us and Marcion becomes an arbiter of the truth, our version of it is to such an extent older than Marcion that Marcion himself once believed it. That was when in the first warmth of faith he presented the catholic church with that money which was before long cast out along with him after he had diverged from our truth into his own heresy. What now, if the Marcionites are going to deny that his faith at first was with us—even against the evidence of his own letter? What if they refuse to acknowledge that letter? Certainly Marcion's own Antitheses not only admit this, but even make a show of it. Proof taken from them is good enough for me. If that gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke—we shall see whether it is Marcion—if that is the same that Marcion by his Antitheses accuses of having been falsified by the upholders of Judaism with a view to its being so combined in one body with the law and the prophets that they might also pretend that Christ had that origin, evidently he could only have brought accusation against something he had found there already. No one passes censure on things afterwards to be, when he does not know they are afterwards to be. Correction does not come before fault. As corrector apparently of a gospel which from the times of Tiberius to those of Antoninus had suffered subversion, Marcion comes to light, first and alone, after Christ had waited for him all that time, repenting of having been in a hurry to send forth apostles without Marcion to protect them. And yet heresy, which is always in this manner correcting the gospels, and so corrupting them, is the effect of human temerity, not of divine authority: for even if Marcion were a disciple, he is not above his master: and if Marcion were an apostle, Whether it were I, says Paul, or they, so we preach:a and if Marcion were a prophet, even the spirits of the prophets have to be subject to the prophets,b for they are not of subversion but of peace: even if Marcion were an angel, he is more likely to be called anathema than gospel-maker, seeing he has preached a different gospel. And so, by making these corrections, he assures us of two things—that ours came first, for he is correcting what he has found there already, and that that other came later which he has put together out of his corrections of ours, and so made into a new thing of his own. 
As it stands Tertullian, who wasn't even certain that Marcion corrupted Luke at the beginning of the text, now claims that he knows Marcion got a hold of the Letter to the Galatians first and then decided to corrupt a gospel - presumably Luke.  But the original text did not say this, clearly.  

If we boil down the original argument from the 'Diatessaronic-based' section of the text (i.e. before the invention and injection of Luke into the treatise) we find with our parallel substitution of 'Mark' for 'Luke' and 'Peter' for 'Paul' :

I pass on to show how Mark's gospel is in places adulterated: and this shall form the basis of my order of approach. I lay it down to begin with that the instrument of the gospel has the apostles for its author, and that this task of promulgating the gospel was imposed upon them by our Lord himself. Since, however, there are also some who are apostolic (apostolicos) they are yet not alone, but appear with apostles and after apostles; because the preaching of disciples might be open to the suspicion of an affectation of glory, if there did not accompany the authority of the masters, which means that of Christ, for it was that which made the apostles their masters.

Mark, you must know, attaches to his gospel no author's name,—as though he to whom it was no crime to overturn the whole body, might not assume permission to invent a title for it as well. At this point I might have made a stand, arguing that no recognition is due to a work which cannot lift up its head, which makes no show of courage, which gives no promise of credibility by having a fully descriptive title and the requisite indication of the author's name. But I prefer to join issue on all points, nor am I leaving unmentioned anything that can be taken as being in my favour.

Now Mark was not an apostle but an apostolic, not a master but a disciple (Mt 10:24) in any case less than his master, and assuredly even more of lesser account as being the follower of a later apostle, Peter, to be sure: so that even if Mark had introduced his gospel under the name of Peter in person, that one single instrument would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of the support of its predecessors.

So that even if Mark had introduced his gospel under the name of Peter in person, that one single document would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of support from proceeding authorities. He rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ. When Mark complains that apostles are suspected - for their prevarication and dissimulation - of having even depraved the gospel, he thereby accuses Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose.

So we must pull away at the rope of contention, swaying with equal effort to the one side or the other. I say that mine is true: Mark makes that claim for his. I say that Mark is falsified: Mark says the same of mine. Who shall decide between us? Only such a reckoning of dates, as will assume that authority belongs to that which is found to be older, and will prejudge as corrupt that which is convicted of having come later.

For in so far as the false is a corruption of the true, to that extent must the truth have preceded that which is false. An object must have been in existence before anything is done to it, as what it is in itself must be prior to any opposition to it. Otherwise how preposterous it would be that when we have proved ours the older, and that Mark's has emerged later, ours should be taken to have been false before it had from the truth material , and Mark's be believed to have suffered hostility from ours before it was even published: and in the end that that which is later should be reckoned more true, even after the publication to the world of all those great works and evidences of the Christian religion which surely could never have been produced except for the truth of the gospel—even before the gospel was true.

No one passes censure on things afterwards to be, when he does not know they are afterwards to be. Correction does not come before fault. Mark's comes to light, first and alone, after Christ had waited for him all that time, repenting of having been in a hurry to send forth apostles without Mark to protect them: for even if Mark were a disciple, he is not above his master. And so, by making these corrections, he assures us of two things—that ours came first, for he is correcting what he has found there already, and that that other came later which he has put together out of his corrections of ours, and so made into a new thing of his own.

The same pattern of corruption - of adding things to pre-existent text - was perpetrated throughout the Marcionite scriptures.  Yet we can begin to see that even the texts were written against the sect were corrected owing to the fact that the original authors knew nothing of Irenaeus's later textual innovations.  To this end it should be clear that it was not only Mark who wrote the gospel associated with the Marcionites but the epistles of the canon were also his.  Again there was only 'Peter' (Simon) and 'Mark.'  'Paul' and 'Luke' were invented figures developed as part of the reworking of Justin's original critique of the Marcionite religion.



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


 
Stephan Huller's Observations by Stephan Huller
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.