Irenaeus' Presbyter (Adv. haer. IV 27-30) about Marcion's ship trade

In Irenaeus, Adversus haereses IV 27-30 we find an unknown Asian presbyter who’s work served Irenaeus as one of his sources about Marcion.[1] The presbyter does not only provide ‘an apology for the Old Testament with the intention to demonstrate that the two Testaments speak of one and the same God’, but also gives us a hidden insight into Marcion's business, perhaps he was even a former employee of Marcion, before he became a believer. 

The Presbyter develops his subtle arguments with constant reference to the letters of the Apostle Paul as his main authority and to Lord’s sayings, taken mainly from Matthew, but also from Luke. The only time where he refers to a parable of the Lord (Matth. 25:14-30 // Luke 19:12-28), it is within the report about his interlocutors. The Gospel narratives, therefore, seem to him to be of lesser authority than the Lord’s oracles. Sebastian Moll is correct in his observation that in the opening part of the excerpt from the presbyter (Iren., Adv. haer. IV 27,4) not only anti-Marcionite arguments, but also those of ‘a Valentinian opponent’ are displayed.[2] And yet, Marcion is the major, and in Adv. haer. 28-30 the sole target. We even find a passage which may have been minted on Marcion:

For in some cases there follows us a small, and in others a large amount of property, which we have acquired from the mammon of unrighteousness. For from what source do we derive the houses in which we dwell, the garments in which we are clothed, the vessels which we use, and everything else ministering to our every-day life, unless it be from those things which, when we were Gentiles, we acquired by avarice, or received them from our heathen parents, relations, or friends who unrighteously obtained them?—not to mention that even now we acquire such things when we are in the faith. For who is there that sells, and does not wish to make a profit from him who buys? Or who purchases anything, and does not wish to obtain good value from the seller? Or who is there that carries on a trade, and does not do so that he may obtain a livelihood thereby? And as to those believing ones who are in the royal palace, do they not derive the utensils they employ from the property which belongs to Cæsar; and to those who have not, does not each one of these [Christians] give according to his ability? … And [these objectors] allege that [the Israelites] acted dishonestly, because, forsooth, they took away for the recompense of their labours, as I have observed, unstamped gold and silver in a few vessels; while they say that they themselves (for let truth be spoken, although to some it may seem ridiculous) do act honestly, when they carry away in their girdles from the labours of others, coined gold, and silver, and brass, with Cæsar’s inscription and image upon it. If, however, a comparison be instituted between us and them, [I would ask] which party shall seem to have received [their worldly goods] in the fairer manner? Will it be the [Jewish] people, [who took] from the Egyptians, who were at all points their debtors; or we, [who receive property] from the Romans and other nations, who are under no similar obligation to us? Yea, moreover, through their instrumentality the world is at peace, and we walk on the highways without fear, and sail where we will… For whatsoever we acquired from unrighteousness when we were heathen, we are proved righteous, when we have become believers, by applying it to the Lord’s advantage.[3]

It is probably an intrinsic criticism of Marcion’s wealth to call the ‘large amount of property’ being ‘acquired from the mammon of unrighteousness’, meaning a profit making business, ‘acquired by avacrice’, or inheritance ‘from our heathen parents, relations, or friends who unrighteously obtained them’. That he adds that ‘even now we acquire such things when we are in the faith’ may hint at Marcion who, then, would have carried on with his maritime trade and business: ‘For who is there that sells, and does not wish to make a profit from him who buys? Or who purchases anything, and does not wish to obtain good value from the seller?’ And he seems to have obtained his ‘livelihood thereby’, and perhaps, had also the support by the royal palace, as already Peter Lampe suspected with regards to the special payments he received from the palace for his trade. Moreover, the presbyter seems to have been well acquainted with Marcion’s trade, as he mentions that he has ‘observed, unstamped gold and silver in a few vessels’ being carried, and that he earned ‘coined gold, and silver, and brass, with Caesar’s inscription and image upon it’, hence made money ‘from the labours of others’, his employees, amongst which the presbyter – before he has become a believer – counts himself (‘we, [who receive property] from the Romans and other nations … through their instrumentality the world is at peace, and we walk on the highways without fear, and sail where we will’). Interestingly, at the end of the passage, the presbyter rectifies his earlier involvement in the business, while he criticises his opponent Marcion who still trades in it, when he states: ‘For whatsoever we acquired from unrighteousness when we were heathen, we are proved righteous, when we have become believers, by applying it to the Lord’s advantage’.

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[1] See Iren., Adv. haer. IV 27-32, or if one follows S. Moll, The Arch-heretic (2010), 17-21, than at least Adv. haer. IV 28-30 is directed against Marcion.

[2] See S. Moll, The Arch-heretic (2010), 18f. who highlights the idea that the maker of the world ‘originated from degeneracy’ (‘in diminutione’) as being not by Marcion.

[3] Iren., Adv. haer. IV 30,2f.

Spring is coming - and a new design

Dear readers of this blog,
When I started this blog - my first ever in my life - I did not know, how many people would enjoy it. Over 150,000 views in less than one year, almost 14,000 to 15,000 each month and many readers who write to me and to whom I am happy to answer individually. One of the suggestions was a revamp of the design as some browsers did not work with the colour scheme. Let me see whether the new one is any better. Thanks also to all those who recommended other blogger platforms, but I admit, it took me weeks until I knew where to click to get this site to run at least partly the way I would like to have it run. Then, I am not a techy. Really not. And I try to minimize the time input into technology (which I find much more difficult than reading Greek, Latin or anything from the past), to maximise the research time which is left in a full-time Professorship.
But it is more than fun in running this blog. It is sharing half-digested ideas with people around the world who take part in what is always a fascinating enterprise: research. Where you don't know what you can expect around the corner. Never in my life did I know what I am going to find. And when I look back at those few topics which occupy me most at this very moment - Eckhart's new Parisian Questions, the Dating of the canonical Gospels, Marcion's own Gospel - only a few months ago, I had not dreamt that I would work on such topics. That is what curious scholarship is about, looking for what we do not know.
The opposite, in my eyes, what I came across the last days when I continued looking into the dating of New Testament papyri. As I asked myself. How on earth can beliefs (be they evangelical or non-evangelical whatever this might be called) taint our spectacles so that suddenly papyri are dated to a particular century, even decade which other scholars from a different belief-set, or without such belief-set maintain that they cannot be dated or at least not nearer than to a window of about 200 years. Where is the difference between scholarly opinions and ideological dogma?
Is it worth writing scholarly against dogma, even if dogma is using (pseudo-)scholarship? All my life I had no inclination going into debate with hidden agendas. Yes, I can see the purpose of ambiguities - but having been brought up in a country where scholarship once has been misused for ideological racism, I resist ideologies, and trust that transparent arguments are more powerful movers of mountains than all kinds of beliefs.
Hope you like the spring around the corner, and the new design here.

Daniel B. Wallace on the discovery of the earliest Manuscript of the New Testament

(P52)

When one approaches New Testament material and their interpretation from the perspective of a Patristic scholar, one is sheerly amazed to see the ideological gulfs that separate opinions and the battles that are fought about the most basic evidence. One of such grounds is the dating and reading of Papyri that are seen as witnesses of New Testament texts. On 1 February 2012, Daniel B. Wallace has debated Bart Ehrmann at UNC Chapel Hill ‘before a crowd ofmore than 1000 people’ and mentioned ‘that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered – six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first’.[1] While ideological disagreements, based on denominations, confessions, even religious backgrounds are mostly remnants of the past and rarely present in Patristic studies, we learn from this debate that whether one is evangelical or critical of evangelicals has even a baring on the dating of papyri, something, the innocent scholar should think is a matter for impartial scholars to decide. And yet, because we are not dealing with bare evidence, but with witnesses of ‘canonical’ texts, ‘pure’ scholarship operates on a stage that is set by vested interests. How can one avoid to be located in any of the preset sceneries? I have chosen, to weigh arguments of either side, lay them open to the reader as thoroughly and broadly as possible, and let the reader follow why I believe what sounds more likely than not, and what has less likelihood as a historical conclusion. With regards to D.B. Wallace findings which are not published yet, one will need to see how a dating of a first century papyrus can be established as a) it would be the very first of this kind and b) papyrologists today – at least those of no confessional leanings – do no longer maintain, as we will see below, that we can date papyri anything near, if we have not internal or external evidence. Likewise with what Wallace calls ‘the second century’ papyri – this statement arouses scepticism when in the same report P⁵² is still dated ‘to the first half of the second century’, a dating that is no longer supported by recent scholarship.

            Unfortunately, scholarship can not operate on ideological scenes. As soon as pre-determined camps make claims that  ‘the world’s leading paleographers’ issue opinions that are taken to be ‘certain’, even the best willing scholar becomes sceptical. Not for scepticism’s sake, but to be true to his own judgement.
In his article on the misuse of papyrology in New Testament studies, B. Nongbri summarises what he calls ‘nothing surprising to papyrologists: palaeography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand … Any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P⁵² must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P⁵² cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P⁵² to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel’.[1]

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[1] See http://www.dts.edu/read/wallace-new-testament-manscript-first-century/ (acc. 10.02.2012).

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[1] B. Nongbri, ‘The Use and Abuse of P⁵²’ (2005), 46.

Marcion's authorship of his Gospel - an overlooked question

The scholarship of the past was almost entirely clouded by those opponents of Marcion, beginning with Irenaeus, who claimed that Marcion had used an already existing Luke and made a truncated version of it. Even the few scholars of past and present, including the very learned ones like Ferdinand Christian Baur of the 19th century, who had mistrusted Irenaeus and his followers, have seen in this claim a heresiarchical accusation and therefore inverted the argument, so that Luke depended on Marcion, have maintained the position that Marcion had found a Gospel which he merely used.
As far as I can see, in all previous scholarship there are only two exceptions, both non-theologians: Heinrich Joseph Vogels, who at least ventured the possibility what has never been dared to think before him, that Marcion’s Gospel could have been produced and published by himself – and this, as we will see, albeit Marcion himself having probably made this claim. And there is the poet Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879-1959), professor of philosophy and scholar at the Ecole Normale, Paris who, very different from Vogels’ Germanic cautious suggestion, developed a full ‘outline of the beginnings of Christianity’ in his The Creation of Christ (excerpts, a good summary and comments can be found here), based on the idea of a Christ-myth which was turned into a historical Gospel-narrative by Marcion in the years 128-129. And also scholars may rightly reject most of the wild speculations of Couchoud, a critical reading of him is extremely rewarding. He knew his sources and he was prepared to unearth and make fresh and unorthodox connections which even today can inspire serious scholarship. Why has scholarship not picked up the question of Marcion’s authorship – irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees on it? Our towering rhetoritians of the early centuries and their anti-heretical argument that heretics always come after orthodoxy and deviation presumes a straight route overshadowed almost 2,000 years of historical, textual and theological scholarship. Even when in the 20^th century Walter Bauer turned this genealogy upside down, he did not conclude that, if heretics were first, also their writings must have been produced prior to that of the orthodox reaction, but copied the traditional apologetics that Marcion ‘restored’ the Gospel ‘to its pristine splendour and the unadulterated Paul’, thus based his investigation by excluding a critical look at the canonical Gospels.

The Face of the Devil - a film by Menno Kuijper

Last week I had the pleasure to be interviewed by Menno Kuijper towards his film, The Face of the Devil - a short 12m film that explores the dark side of our own self through the question of the links with the devil. It was an interesting challenge to detect that often our misconceptions start with the assumptions that the devil is as old as human beings are. Quite the contrary, as I state in my interview, he is a rather young discovery. None of the old Jewish writings know of him - on the contrary, good and evil are encompassed and part of the one first principle. Likewise, the same monistic principle we find in the oldest strata of the Zoroastrian and Indo-Babylonian mythology, reflected again in the Platonic tradition where evil is not bracketed out in something different from the creative power.
If you want to find out more, here the link to Menno's blog:

The Face Of The Devil