Letting go - the third sub-chapter: Shake history off

 You are invited to another live-stream for the third sub-chapter of my forthcoming novel 'Letting go', I 1.3: Shake history off.

If you like, join me in a few minutes, or watch it later at: https://youtube.com/live/XxBoBaTVfFk?feature=share

The novel is going to be published in German and potentially later in English.

The book tells the story of two couples and their intricate relations. When Feeny, one of the two ladies, is diagnosed with a chronic illness, all relations change. Letting go is about learning to live the now.

In a few weeks, the novel will be published, first in German (Verlag: Der Blaue Reiter, Göttingen).

To pre-order the German book (Vol I and II, each ca. EUR 29): info@verlag-derblauereiter.de

Letting go - the next sub-chapter of my forthcoming novel: I 1.2 Vacation in Crete

 If you like to listen to the next sub-chapter of my forthcoming novel 'Letting go', please join me in a few minutes: 

The novel is going to be published in German and potentially later in English.

The book tells the story of two couples and their intricate relations. When Feeny, one of the two ladies, is diagnosed with a chronic illness, all relations change. Letting go is about learning to live the now.

In a few weeks, the novel will be published, first in German (Verlag: Der Blaue Reiter, Göttingen).

To pre-order the German book (Vol I and II, each ca. EUR 29): info@verlag-derblauereiter.de

Letting go - Loslassen: My novel on relationship and the art of detachment

Bringing Eckhart as a Lebemeister (a master of how to live) into the 21st century, I wrote a novel, Letting go, or in German: Loslassen.

The novel which shares some elements (length and topics) with Thomas Mann's Zauberberg (had I only the skills of this author!) deals with two couples and their intricate relationships. The novel is also about challenges like misuse in the church, questions of relations (LGBT) and others.

One Feeny, one of the ladies in the book, is diagnosed with a chronic disease, the relations change again.

To watch and listen to the opening, join me here: https://www.youtube.com/live/Daf3_IElJYY

In a few weeks, the novel will be published, first in German (Verlag: Der Blaue Reiter, Göttingen). 

To pre-order the German book (ca. EUR 29): info@verlag-derblauereiter.de

Did Marcion write his Gospel from oral material or redacted it from earlier collections? - my change of mind

 I previously held the former view, but having reconstructed Marcion's Apostolos, I learned the following which made me change my mind to a position that aligns now better with traditional scholarship on the beginnings of gospel-writing (as, for example, the two-sources hypothesis). Here are the reasons:

In *Gal 5,21 we read: "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God."

This is a back-reference to which the only place to which this reference can refer is *1Cor 15:50: " I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable."

From this I have learned that the back-reference in the *Apostolos has escaped Marcion's redactional wit and refers into the wrong direction. This is only possible, if he made use of an earlier collection of letters where 1Cor stood before Gal.

As Marcion in his *Apostolos makes also use of a 3-letter-collection of *Deuteropaulines, it shows that his redaction of the *Apostolos is entirely based on collections. If so, it is most likely, that the same redactor also made use of collections when putting together his gospel.

Marcion's Antitheses - does it speak of the canonical gospels as "rogue gospels"?

 Indeed, this is what we are told by Tertullian in his commentary on this text by Marcion.

Here the evidence:

Unfortunately there is no available translation let alone a reconstruction of the antitheses available. Harnack tried to put together the material of what was in the antitheses which is not too difficult to extract, as Tertullian in his commentary on Marcion's New Testament proceeds in order. He first, in book IV of Against Marcion, gives a commentary on the antitheses (book IV 1- IV 7), from IV 8 to the end he comments on Marcion's Gospel, book V is dedicated to Marcion's Apostolos.

Now in the section of his commentary on the antitheses, we find the following entry, soon in IV 3,2: Sed enim Marcion nactus epistulam Pauli ad Galatas, etiam ipsos apostolos suggillantis ut non recto pede incedentes ad veritatem evangelii, simul et accusantis pseudapostolos quosdam pervertentes evangelium Christi (cf. Gal. 2:14), connititur ad destruendum statum eorum evangeliorum quae propria et sub apostolorum nomine eduntur, vel etiam apostolicorum, ut scilicet fidem quam illis adimit suo conferat.

Evans translates this section as follows: "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 (cf. Gal. 2:14), 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."

We can take from this passage that in the antitheses Marcion refers to *Galatians and reads this as a criticism of "False-Apostles". He applies this pauline critique to "those gospels". Tertullian, of course, sees "these gospels" as being "the apostle's own", "published under their names, or even the names of apostolic men": "under the apostle's names" = Matthew and John, "the names of apostolic men" = Mark and Luke. The repute that Tertullian credits to these four gospels, namely to be the first ones, to be genuine ones, Marcion credits to "his own gospel" which Marcion reckons to be "the gospel of Christ", while these four other gospels he sees as "pervertings" of it.

What is meant by this perversion is explained a little later in the antitheses, as Tertullian reports in IV 4: et nostrum ante videatur falsum quam habuerit de veritate materiam, et Marcionis ante credatur aemulationem a nostro expertum quam et editum

Evans: 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 [= Marcion’s] was even published

Tertullian, a little before this (IV 3), reports that Marcion spoke of his gospel that has suffered from "adulteros" (Evans: "adulterators"), from "ut cataclysmo quodam, ita inundatione falsariorum" (Evans: "a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge").

Tertullian, hence, states in commenting on the antitheses: The four mentioned gospels are rogue ones, false ones, unless it has material from the true one, Marcion's. This true one has suffered hostility = cometition, plagiarism, rivalry, imitation. Just a sentence earlier, Tertullian paralleled: "res" vs "passio" = Evans: "an object in existence" vs "what has been done to this object"; and "materia" vs "aemulatio" = Evans: "what something is in itself" vs "opposition".

(aemulatio, better translation would be: contention or plagiarism, as Lewis & Short give:  In a bad sense, jealousy, envy, malevolence, δυσζηλία: “aemulatio vitiosa, quae rivalitati similis est,” Cic. Tusc. 4, 26, 56: “infensa,” Tac. A. 13, 19: “municipalis,” id. H. 3, 57: “adversariorum,” Suet. Ner. 23; cf. id. 33: “aemulatio nasci tur ex conjunctione, alitur aequalitate, exardescit invidiā, cujus finis est odium,” Plin. Pan. 84 al.: ad aemulationem eum provocaverunt, to jealousy (said of God), Vulg. Psa. 77, 58. contentiones, aemulationes, rivalries, ib. 2 Cor, 12, 20).