Existence of Marcion questioned?

[GrandizerII]

First of all, hi guys! It’s hard to believe it’s been over three years since I’ve come on here. Time flies!

So I just finished reading a post Rene Salm made on his blog and was wondering if anyone else here had seen it. He is now convinced that Marcion may not have existed. I’m wondering what y’all’s thoughts are.

Well, what do the relevant historians and scholars have to say in response to this? Reading only his perspective, I take it with a grain of salt. Far too many people think they're qualified experts on matters of certain periods of history when that ends up being not the case.

The thing with scholars and historians is that they have read and analyzed the relevant resources, and they have the background training, and so intuitively have the required context to better assess the likelihood of whether this person or that historically existed, compared to the layperson.

Just because someone writes something exciting and controversial doesn't mean it's true or that it's credible.

[The Grand Nudger]

That last sentence would be applicable to the various screeds against marcion and marcionites that show up in christian history regardless of whether there was a real boy. It was exciting and controversial for a small set of proto christians to declare the majority of proto christendom wrong. They ended up winning that argument, though, by killing marcionites - and that's how the christianity you know today was born. Mobs, murder, and money.

[Ranjr]

Here is what Justin Martyr wrote of Marcion of Pontus:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.

Then later, 

CHAPTER LVIII -- AND RAISE UP HERETICS.

And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.

Of course, if you've read Justin, you know he's pretty dumb.  Declaring a single deity in one phrase while affirming demonic magic in the next.  Marcion rejected the god of the old testament, and claimed that vengeful bastard was not the supreme god who sent Jesus.  So that's why Justin and Irenaeus took exception.  They wanted the old testament god to still matter.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, he'd have needed demonic magic to have personally convinced the majority of the faithful in many nations. It's a remarkably implausible complaint - and not for the presence of demonic magic, amusingly.

The problem with most christians (as justin saw it) was wrongthink, and even if there were alot of different reasons (and different very real people) behind that wrongthink, it gets stuffed into a bag named marcion and that's that.

FWIW, I think that there probably was a marcion, even if the marcion of justins telling bears little to no resemblance to the man. That wouldn't exactly be surprising for a polemic.

[JairCrawford]

Here is what Justin Martyr wrote of Marcion of Pontus:

And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.

Then later, 

CHAPTER LVIII -- AND RAISE UP HERETICS.

And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness.

Of course, if you've read Justin, you know he's pretty dumb.  Declaring a single deity in one phrase while affirming demonic magic in the next.  Marcion rejected the god of the old testament, and claimed that vengeful bastard was not the supreme god who sent Jesus.  So that's why Justin and Irenaeus took exception.  They wanted the old testament god to still matter.

And said declaration of said single deity and confirmation of demonic magic continues to be taught in many mainline Christian denominations, ‘yea even unto this very day’.

And those were precisely the quotes I was thinking of! Thanks! To my untrained eyes, his mention of Marcion does not seem like an interpolation of a non existent figure by a later scribe. However, the polemic is very real indeed.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wouldn't it be closer to anachronism? The later christian authors applying their definition of christianity to a preexisting body of source works (in order to lump in and declare as marcionism, as heresy, historically opposed views)?

[JairCrawford]

Wouldn't it be closer to anachronism?  The later christian authors applying their definition of christianity to a preexisting body of source works (in order to lump in and declare as marcionism, as heresy, historically opposed views)?

That would depend on what your hypothesized date for the proto-Catholic movement would be. From what I read on his blog Rene Salm hypothesizes around a 140 CE date for what he theorizes is a proto-Catholic takeover of what was once a largely gnostic movement. By that type of dating, First Apology’s Marcion name-drop isn’t necessarily an anachronism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Justin writes somewhere between 150 and 160. They had no personal contact, directly or indirectly, as justin demonstrates in his routinely mistaken description of marcionite christianity.

---

-additionally, by the time we get to the fourth century - whether any of this was factual in reality no longer mattered.

[Jehanne]

Justin writes somewhere between 150 and 160. They had no personal contact, directly or indirectly, as justin demonstrates in his routinely mistaken description of marcionite christianity.

All of this proves, beyond any doubt, was that there was not an early Christianity but early Christianities.

[The Grand Nudger]

Justin contends otherwise. There was only one. From the beginning. Hence, anachronism.

Marcion is rhetorically useful to Justin, that makes it difficult to know - especially in the absence of any other surviving views, where the history stops and the political mythmaking begins.