Characteristics of Luke?

For a substantial time, now, I am collecting the characteristics that scholars associate with Luke, to find out whether they give us insights into its author. If, as I now believe, Luke was a broadening of Marcion's Gospel, and Marcion himself has written his text, such characteristics would need to match, somehow, what we know of Marcion.
Today, I came across the following article by Dennis E. Smith,

‘Table Fellowship as a Literary Motif in the Gospel of Luke’, JBL 106 (1987): 613-38.

In its opening, Smith writes:

'Luke, as scholars have often noted, was probably the most literary of all the Gospel writers. That is, he was widely read in literature of the day and made conscious use of structures, forms, and images from popular literature in his writings.' Previous studies have noted the affinity of his writings to history, biography, and romance literature. Other studies have noted how Luke has built his argument and theology around various literary structures and themes such as "possessions" and the idea of the benefactor...'
It is interesting to note that in the discussion about the authorship, nobody has noticed that not only the well known characteristics of its high quality literature points to a conscious author (why would he almost slavishly adhere to a mediocre work like Mark?), as does the affinity to literature, but the mentioned themes such as 'possessions' and 'benefactor' match the profile of the business man and benefactor Marcion who according to Tertullian made an endowment (rather than a donation) of around 200,000 Sesterces to the Roman community.
The list is getting longer. 

AHRC PhD studentship on Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University

Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University in the Early 14th Century

AHRC PhD studentship on Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD at Kings College London on a topic related to Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University. This is offered under the AHRC funded Project ‘Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University in the early 14^th century’ and located in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. The post will involve reading, editing and commenting on codices of Quaestiones which are held in libraries at Rome, Erfurt, Worcester and elsewhere. The student will be supervised by Professor Markus Vinzent and co-supervised by Professor Oliver Davies.

The Studentship

 ‘One of the most important documents for early fourteenth-century thought is the Sentences commentary and “notebook” of … Prosper of Reggio Emilia … Vat. Lat. 1086. The manuscript contains a remarkable amount of information on and material from theologians active at Paris in the 1310s.’[1]

The project will investigate Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086 which dates from before 1323, containing over 500 Quaestiones (Qu.) with names and opinions of students and masters at Paris University. In addition, there exist several parallel codices in various manuscript collections elsewhere which may need investigation. On this basis, the studentship will focus on a specific topic which will be defined in conversation with the applicant to develop a Phd thesis on a specific aspect to explore Meister Eckhart’s (ca. 1260-1328/9) research environment and culture of the Parisian University in those challenging years between Aristotelianism, Thomism, Neo-Platonism, the Beguine-movement and the impact it had on his prior and posterior career at Erfurt.

These were tumultuous times when in the year 1310 Marguerite Porete was burned at the stake at the Place de Grève after 21 theologians of the University had passed judgement against her book The mirror of simple souls, Philip IV burned fifty-four Templars near Paris,[2] and the condemnation of core statements by Meister Eckhart in 1329. Amongst all the theologians from this period Eckhart, the only one after Thomas Aquinas to hold the chair of theology in Paris for a second time, is still the most widely read (and certainly one of the most controversial) theologians of that time. Amongst his surviving works, Eckhart's Qu. Parisienses are regarded as 'one of the most famous set of texts that’ not only he, but generally ‘medieval thinking has produced'.[3] Until recently, only five of such Qu. were known: three that were dated to his first magisterium in 1302/3, the other two from his second in 1311/2. While Professor Markus Vinzent wrote his Art of Detachment,[4] he re-discovered precisely in the codex under question, Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086, four more Qu. Par. that he thought were authored by Eckhart, texts which had previously been excluded as dubious. Here, the upper part of fol. 222v with the beginning of the first re-discovered Qu.:

Professor Vinzent presented his findings as invited main speaker at the International Medieval Congress Leeds in 2010.[5] As a result, the Eckhart editors (Prof. L. Sturlese and G. Steer) encouraged him to undertake a major research project to check this extraordinary discovery. In the same year, Professor Walter Senner (Angelicum, Rome) found another relatio of an unknown Qu. belonging to Eckhart in a Manuscript in Troyes, which the project aims to compare.

The re-discovered Qu. will be the core of the proposed project, and together with their source, the Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086, studied in detail to embed Eckhart and his Qu. into their codicological, historical and cultural environment: this manuscript is of crucial importance in shedding light on our Master and the broader development of philosophical, theological and juridical teaching in Paris at the beginning 14th century. Prosper's collection contains names and opinions of students, bachelors and masters (regents) of the university and preserves all the documentation which gives detailed insight into the atmosphere of learning of this European cultural centre, unparalleled by any other document. For many of those named by Prosper, this will be a first scholarly study of their bio-bibliography and their thinking.

After preliminary studies,[6] there is need for a thorough study of the manuscript (codicological and content), also in comparison with further manuscripts of similar content (which have not yet been taken into account), for example several important codices which will need to be studied in situ at Erfurt University, others in Venice, at Worcester Cathedral and in the Vatican library.

Eckhart scholarship developed primarily since F. Pfeiffer began to publish Eckhart’s German, and H. Denifle the Latin works. A new step in the critical engagement with the Dominican master was taken both by the Dominican order (who in 1935, also included the four, as they called them, ‘dubious’ questions that we are studying in this project) and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1936-ongoing). Almost simultaneously both parties started competing critical editions of the works of Meister Eckhart: a competition that was politically and ideologically driven, and which resulted in the withholding of vital manuscript information by the Nazi-governed German state. After the first few fascicles of the Dominican venture in Italy, their project collapsed, and Josef Quint took over the German project. After intensive preliminary studies, he published the first volumes of Eckhart’s German works in the major critical edition of the Kohlhammer Verlag (Stuttgart), while a team around Josef Koch provided the Latin works. In volume V of the Latin works, Eckhart’s hitherto known and accepted five Qu. Par. had been included, two from Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086, while four more - the so-called ‘dubious’ questions - from the same Manuscript were discarded. Since this time, the critical edition of Eckhart’s Latin works has been completed, and only a few supplementary texts are still to be added (including our newly re-discovered Qu., as the main editor L. Sturlese has indicated to the PI), and the German works are approaching completion. In a recent application to a German funding institution (Bayerische Akademie der Wissen­schaften), the PI has been asked by L. Sturlese (Lecce, Italy) and F. Loehser (Augsburg, Germany) to collaborate in the major revision of the publication of Eckhart’s German and Latin works (a long-term project lasting from 2012 to 2025).

Scholarship on the QQu., especially related to the University of Paris, has been advanced by P.  Glorieux, W.J. Courtenay and a number of other scholars. M. Grabmann researched Eckhart’s Qu. and first discovered the accepted five Qu. Par. (of which two derived from Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086). E. Longpré also drew attention to them. Ever since, they have attracted considerable scholarly interest and are regarded as the ‘most contested chapter of his [Meister Eckhart’s] thinking’.[7]

Scholarship on Eckhart’s German and Latin works is extensive, and there exist several continuously updated bibliographies, two major international Eckhart Societies and several histories of research on Eckhart. One of the gaps in this scholarship however is the re-location of his teaching into the Parisian University. Until today, very little is known about the precise nature of it (see W. Senner in the forthcoming Handbook of Eckhart, Leiden, 2012), in which the PI is involved as academic peer reviewer and reader. More will come to light when the proposed project works through what is contained in Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086.

A. Pelzer’s Catalogue description of the Vatican library, although written 80 years ago, is presently still considered the most important contribution to the study of Vat. lat. 1086. He provides a description of this manuscript, but it needs further examination and subsequent updating concerning scribal and marginal notes. P. Glorieux tried to identify not only the internal order of “reportationes”, but he also tried to assign a date to them. He supposes that Prosper might have prepared this collection from Qu. which ensued during the course of his lectures on the Sententiae as a bachelor (before 1311) and during his regency. Using the chronology of Prosper’s academic career as his basis, Glorieux argued that the ordinary and quodlibetal Qu. in group A were disputed in Paris during the academic year 1311-12. The Qu. in group B, which are grouped according to their authors, “occurred sequentially and pre­served reportations of questions disputed at Paris during the academic years 1312-14”. More recently W. Courtenay has questioned the date proposed by Glorieux; instead, he proposes 1314-15 as the likely timeframe for Prosper’s lectures on the Sententiae. After underlining the problem with the chronology of group A, Courtenay hypothesizes that this collection was assembled be­fore Prosper was sententiarius.[8] Given that nobody has until now, analyzed the content of Cod. Vat. Lat. 1086 in relation to Eckhart’s second Pari­sian magisterium, this research will be of importance in shedding light not only on the authenticity of Eckhart’s Qu., but also on their historical context and indeed on the Parisian University’s theological teaching at that time.

How and where we work: When not working at King’s College London, using photocopies and ultraviolet images of the mentioned manuscripts, we spend several months in research stays at various places where libraries hold important manuscripts (Erfurt, Venice, Rome and elsewhere) to have frequent access to the manuscripts in autopsy.

Eligibility criteria

• Open to residents of the following countries
  European Union, United Kingdom
• Applicants must hold a relevant MA/MPhil or a Masters-level advanced research training or equivalent.
• Applicable subjects
  Medieval Codicology, Medieval Latin, Philosophy, Theology, Classics or another related field

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Application details

Applications may be submitted
from 26-Jul-2013 until 15-Aug-2013

Information about the funding

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD at Kings College London on a topic related to Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University. This is offered under the AHRC funded Project ‘Meister Eckhart and the Parisian University in the early 14^th century’ and located in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London. The post will involve reading, editing and commenting on codices of Quaestiones which are held in libraries at Rome, Erfurt, Worcester and elsewhere. The student will be supervised by Professor Markus Vinzent and co-supervised by Professor Oliver Davies.

It is a fixed-term appointment for 2 years and 11 months, starting 1^st September 2013.

Application procedure

Applicants should submit via email a two-page curriculum vitae, a brief letter outlining their qualification for the studentship, and the names and contact details of two academic referees to Professor Markus Vinzent, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Kings College London (markus.vinzent@kcl.ac.uk) no later than Friday 15 August 2013.

Interviews are scheduled to be held in London within the following 7 to 100 days. For further information concerning the project, please contact Professor Markus Vinzent before Thursday, 08 August 2013.

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[1] W.J. Courtenay, ‘Reflections …’, in: C. Schabel (ed.), Theological Quodlibeta (Leiden, 2009), 345-57, 345.

[2] R. Lerner, in: Marguerite Porete, The Mirror, trans. and intr. By E.L. Babinsky (New York, 1993), 19.

[3] Kurt Flash, Meister Eckhart (Freiburg i. Br., 2010), 113.

[4] Eckhart: Texts and Studies I (Leuven, 2011).

[5]  See JTS 63, 2012.

[6] See W.J. Courtenay (above with further lit.).

[7] W. Schüssler, ‘Gott – Sein oder Denken?’, in: Transzendenz (Paderborn, 1992), 165.

[8] W.J. Courtenay, “Reflections”, in Theological Quodlibeta II (Leiden, 2007), 352.

Thomas Aquinas on Diversity

Being asked where to find Thomas' teaching on Diversity (a quote that can be found in various contemporary writings, but either not referenced or falsely referenced), we read the following in his commentary on the Sentences d. XLIV q. 2 resp. writes as follows: '

et ideo melius est universum in quo sunt angeli et aliae res, quam ubi essent angeli tantum, quia perfectio universi attenditur essentialiter secundum diversitatem naturarum, quibus implentur diversi gradus bonitatis, et non secundum multiplicationem individuorum in una natura.
 

Does Marcion teach an immortal soul?

According to Tertullian, Adv. Marc. V 6,11: 'homo et res et opus et imago et similitudo et caro per terram et anima per afflatum creatoris ist'. Hence, Marcion had read Gen. 1:26 in its entirety (imago et similitudo) as a simile of the creator god. What he created, he body, but also the substance that he breathed into the created body of man, was the creator's spirit and, therefore, the soul derived from the creator (see Tert., Adv. Marc. II 5,1: 'immo et substantiam suam, per animae scilicet censum'). The soul is the subject of sin which follows temptations and leads the body to perish. The soul itself, therefore, would have been condemned to perish with the body.

Here, however, Marcion's soteriology sets in. Barbara Aland who is the sole scholar who has looked into this soteriological process more deeply, and the only one who has somehow understood Marcion ('Marcion: Versuch einer neuen Interpretation': ZKG 70, 1973, 420-47), does not carry her thoughts through to the end, but sees Marcion's concept breaking down at the problem: if the soul, too, was the creator's work - why then should the supreme God of Love care about human beings? Why not leave it to rest, as he lets the body and the world of the creator perish? Why, according to Marcion, does he promise human beings a true substance of angels ('vera substantia angelorum', Tert., Adv. Marc. III 9,4)? There is no logical breakdown, as she assumes (ibid. 443), but Marcion only follows vigorously his main theory - namely that all actions of the God of Love build on and use the products, names and stories of the creator god, in order to show the unexpectedness of Love's action. Where creatures see a breakdown of logic or system or theology - trained by our perception that was guided by the scriptures of the creator god, as soon as one realizes the revelation of the God of Love, such breakdown turns out as proofs of Love. Whereas there was no reason whatsoever to save the soul, as it was utterly a created substance by the creator god, the God of Love in his kenotic act of salvation on the cross makes the gracious gift of a true angelic substance and makes the saved human beings, what the Lord himself has been, an angel with his new angelic message (= eu-angelion).

 

PS: sorry for my relatively long absence from blogging - but I wanted to finish my new book on 'Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels'. And, nice to tell you, yes, it is finished and awaits publication. As soon as I know more about the publishing process, I'll let you know.

Women in early Christianity

Writing on Marcion's impact on early Roman liturgy I have seen that contrary to our later heresiologists, he must have enjoyed for a longer time the back up and a close, positive relation to other Roman communities, even once he had started his own around the year 144. This we can see from the fact that even under Callistus, the community that was directed by this banker adopted the liturgical innovation of Sabbath fasting which according to our sources was introduced by Marcion as a ritual, an actual practice that was held until around the year 1000 AD, but was not received outside, but solely in Rome! Hence we have to reckon with a particular influence of Marcion in this town. Several other features, for example, the celebration of Easter on a Sunday and as a celebration of the Resurrection, rather than in the East according to Jewish practice on the 14 Nisan and as a celebration of the passion, where the Roman church fights a liturgical and ritual struggle with the Easterners, support a more Marcionite Christianity in Rome than in some other places. Now it is interesting to note that women leadership had waned as had Paul's memory, or at least his theology even in almost all communities (including Rome prior to Marcion, if we take 1 Clement and Hermas as examples), but we could also look at the Pseudo-Pauline literature, and their position have gained a new stronghold, once Marcion came up with Paul's letters, and based on them, gave his 'more holy women' (sanctiores feminae) a special place in the community who were meant 'to teach, to dispute, to practice exorcism, to promise cures, and also to baptize' (Tert., Adv. Marc. V 8), hence practiced not only everything that cult officers would do in a Roman cult, but with a strong emphasis on class room activity. The only thing that is not mentioned is 'prophecizing' which, of course, developed at the same time outside Rome in Asia Minor as a thread to both the Roman antithetically Jewish Marcionite tradition and to the anti-Jewish non-(or shall we say less) Marcionite tradition in Asia Minor and Gaul. It is very interesting to see that Tertullian moves precisely towards the female guided Montanists while he is writing is works against Marcion, emphasizing the prophetic nature of Christianity and developing his anti-Jewish position, branding Marcion an ally of the Jews. In between we have institution-oriented bishops like Irenaeus and many Minor Asian colleagues who move between Marcion and the Montanists, and see themselves neither as a totally new Pauline community which embraces Jews and Greeks, nor a new Prophetism, but as a third race that replaces the old world, be it Jewish or pagan, based on what they replaced, the male oriented Jewish communities and the Roman model of the male-oriented oikos where women soon have less and less self-determined space.