Marcion

[Ecurb Noselrub]

This subject will probably be of limited interest, but I've become more attracted to the views of Marcion of Sinope recently.  Specifically, the idea that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than that of the New Testament interests me.  He concluded that they were different gods altogether - the OT God was mean and hated people, while the NT God was merciful and loved people.  While I don't hold to his "2 Gods" view, I do agree that the presentation of God in the OT and NT is totally different.  My view is that the Jews had an experience of God, but interpreted him wrong, and that Jesus came to correct the mistakes.  His view was the right one, that God loves the world and intends to save it.  Marcion based his theology on the epistles of Paul, which I also think should be given priority over much of the gospel story. 

However, Marcion was considered a heretic - the first official heretic, in fact.  His 2nd Century canon only had 11 books (10 letters of Paul and an abbreviated Luke), and they were edited by him, apparently.  In response, he was excommunicated by the Roman church (which was gaining in primacy), and in response to his canon Christians began to think about which works should be accepted and which rejected. That process led to the NT that we know today.

In any event, if anyone has any thoughts about Marcion, his theology and his influence, I would like to read them. 

[Asmodean]

Is it demonstrable though..? That the view of jesus, and not those who wrote the OT, was the correct one? Could all of them have been like... Wrong? Or maybe Jesus was the one who didn't get it..? Or whatever other equally likely possibility one can conjure up..?

[xSilverPhinx]

Was he a gnostic? Though I don't beleive in Christianity in general, the position the gnostics had is more interesting and plausible, that is, more consistent with reality IMO.

[Too Few Lions]

Was he a gnostic? Though I don't beleive in Christianity in general, the position the gnostics had is more interesting and plausible, that is, more consistent with reality IMO.

Strictly speaking he wasn't a gnostic, but he shared similar ideas with the gnostics in that he thought that the god that was the father of Jesus and Yahweh were two different deities. The gnostics generally believed that the universe was inherently evil and a prison for souls, and was created by a false god called the Demiurge, who they often linked to Yahweh. But I don't think there's any evidence that Marcion held those views.

I have to agree with you though xSP, when I look at both the human world and the oft brutality of nature, I can understand the gnostics' position.

Marcion's an interesting character, but we know so little about him. I think all his works were declared heretical and outlawed and burned by the Christian authorities in the fourth century, and all we really know about him is what his detractors wrote some 50 odd years later.

Personally I think he was right, for me the god of Christianity is a different god from the Jewish Yahweh. Most (maybe all?) Jews also think the same thing, they don't believe that Christians worship Yahweh, if they did they'd be Jews! The idea of Yahweh having a son is anathema in Judaism, but the Christian god is by definition the father of Jesus.

In the Old Testament, Yahweh is the tribal god of the Jews, quite insular in his attention to his people, and not a universal god. The New Testament god is called 'theos', the Greek word for god, and is far more similar to the universal, abstract god of the philosophers (also called 'theos' in their works) than Yahweh of the Jews.

Of course Marcion's view was based on the clear differences he saw between the actions of Yahweh in the Old Testament, and the teachings of Jesus. From that difference he concluded that Jesus couldn't be the son of Yahweh, therefore he had to be the son of a different unknown god. Personally, I think there's a simpler answer to those differences - the teachings of Jesus derive primarily from Greek philosophy, and not Judaism.

[xSilverPhinx]

Thanks for the succinct post, I'm too lazy to go shuffling around google for info.

Maybe I will poke around gnosticism a bit though 

[Too Few Lions]

Thanks for the succinct post, I'm too lazy to go shuffling around google for info.

Maybe I will poke around gnosticism a bit though  

Gnosticism's really interesting, and well worth reading into. The assumption that god had to be perfect and good, but the world and cosmos aren't, led the gnostics to conclude that the universe wasn't created by the true perfect god, but by a different blind and often malevolent creator god.

Theirs was a strange little world where the stars and planets were celestial rulers that attempted to stop the soul ascending to god after death, and the gnostics had secret rituals and passwords to try and get past these archons (rulers). It's a million miles away from the sanitised Christianity of the 21st century, but a good insight into what cosmology and religions were like a few thousand years ago. There's loads of good gnostic stuff to read online, this website's pretty good;

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

http://www.gnosis.org/library.html

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Is it demonstrable though..? That the view of jesus, and not those who wrote the OT, was the correct one? Could all of them have been like... Wrong? Or maybe Jesus was the one who didn't get it..? Or whatever other equally likely possibility one can conjure up..?

Well, none of it is demonstrable if you are talking about empirical evidence that can be repeated experimentally in true scientific fashion.  Marcion's arguments relied primarily on the presentation of God in the OT and the NT.  He saw a distinct difference in the manner in which God was portrayed and in how God dealt with people.  Assuming God exists, if Jesus was wrong and the OT was right, we're fucked.  God hates us. Given God, I'd go with Jesus over Moses any day.  But Marcion is not going to be able to give any insight into whether any god actually exists.  He's just an interesting character, IMO. 

[Sandra Craft]

Personally, I think there's a simpler answer to those differences - the teachings of Jesus derive primarily from Greek philosophy, and not Judaism.

I think every culture and every time creates the god it wants, the god that's most useful to it.  No other way to explain how much Jesus himself changes from group to group.

[xSilverPhinx]

Thanks for the succinct post, I'm too lazy to go shuffling around google for info.

Maybe I will poke around gnosticism a bit though 

Gnosticism's really interesting, and well worth reading into. The assumption that god had to be perfect and good, but the world and cosmos aren't, led the gnostics to conclude that the universe wasn't created by the true perfect god, but by a different blind and often malevolent creator god.

Theirs was a strange little world where the stars and planets were celestial rulers that attempted to stop the soul ascending to god after death, and the gnostics had secret rituals and passwords to try and get past these archons (rulers). It's a million miles away from the sanitised Christianity of the 21st century, but a good insight into what cosmology and religions were like a few thousand years ago. There's loads of good gnostic stuff to read online, this website's pretty good;

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

http://www.gnosis.org/library.html

Thanks for the links

[Gawen]

He's just an interesting character, IMO. 

So was Pelagious.

[Asmodean]

Is it demonstrable though..? That the view of jesus, and not those who wrote the OT, was the correct one? Could all of them have been like... Wrong? Or maybe Jesus was the one who didn't get it..? Or whatever other equally likely possibility one can conjure up..?

Well, none of it is demonstrable if you are talking about empirical evidence that can be repeated experimentally in true scientific fashion.  Marcion's arguments relied primarily on the presentation of God in the OT and the NT.  He saw a distinct difference in the manner in which God was portrayed and in how God dealt with people.  Assuming God exists, if Jesus was wrong and the OT was right, we're fucked.  God hates us. Given God, I'd go with Jesus over Moses any day.  But Marcion is not going to be able to give any insight into whether any god actually exists.  He's just an interesting character, IMO. 

It's not so much about whether or not god exists, since this post doesn't really call for that argument, but if a hypothetical god exists, how can we say the NT is more reliable than the OT as description of that being? Or if any book or individual, living or dead, is reliable at all..?

[Ecurb Noselrub]

It's not so much about whether or not god exists, since this post doesn't really call for that argument, but if a hypothetical god exists, how can we say the NT is more reliable than the OT as description of that being? Or if any book or individual, living or dead, is reliable at all..?

Hypothetically speaking, if the general facts about Jesus recorded in the NT are historically correct, then that would give some basis for saying that its portrayal of God is more accurate than the OT.  If you had a representative of God (such as Jesus) who healed and forgave and accepted people, that would be some indication of God's description.  God would come across more as loving people, whereas in the OT he's always smiting someone.  The reliability of the NT description of God vs. the OT description of God comes down to the relative reliability of the historicity of the primary characters of each, IMO.   I think the historicity of the NT Jesus is more likely than the historicity of the OT Moses, so naturally I think the NT presentation of God is more likely to be accurate. 

[The Magic Pudding]

Sounds boring, can someone send me a summary?

[Asmodean]

Hypothetically speaking, if the general facts about Jesus recorded in the NT are historically correct, then that would give some basis for saying that its portrayal of God is more accurate than the OT.  If you had a representative of God (such as Jesus) who healed and forgave and accepted people, that would be some indication of God's description.  God would come across more as loving people, whereas in the OT he's always smiting someone.  The reliability of the NT description of God vs. the OT description of God comes down to the relative reliability of the historicity of the primary characters of each, IMO.   I think the historicity of the NT Jesus is more likely than the historicity of the OT Moses, so naturally I think the NT presentation of God is more likely to be accurate. 

Well, Jesus may have been rather accepting for his time in history, but his miracles are less than impressive and are no indicator of him being in any way related to god. He could, for all we know, have been an impostor. Moses, on the other hand... Did he not allegedly part a see and climb down a mountain with a god-written stone tablet..? Were I into any of that, I'd say that sounds a bit more like real deal to me... Except of course the "allegedly" part in both cases, but we are hypothesizing, are we not..?

[Too Few Lions]

Hypothetically speaking, if the general facts about Jesus recorded in the NT are historically correct, then that would give some basis for saying that its portrayal of God is more accurate than the OT.  If you had a representative of God (such as Jesus) who healed and forgave and accepted people, that would be some indication of God's description.  God would come across more as loving people, whereas in the OT he's always smiting someone.  The reliability of the NT description of God vs. the OT description of God comes down to the relative reliability of the historicity of the primary characters of each, IMO.   I think the historicity of the NT Jesus is more likely than the historicity of the OT Moses, so naturally I think the NT presentation of God is more likely to be accurate. 

...or maybe ideas about gods had changed over the 500+ years between the writing of the OT and the NT. The god of the NT is more representative of beliefs about gods in the first few centuries CE, particularly from those areas influenced by Greek philosophy, whereas Yahweh of the OT is pretty much identical to other semitic / Near Eastern deities of the first millennium BCE.