It might prove to be very interesting if we were to stop here and talk about MARCION.
Why?
You'll see. He was a very influential man who totally embraced the writings of Paul as a replacement of the Old Testament.
Watch what happened historically....
MARCION was born in a Greek colony on the Black Sea used as a trade route and port. Travelers in and out of Sinope, Turkey brought wonderous tales with them about a Great Teacher named Jesus who may have been the long awaited Jewish Messiah.
This was a little over 50 years after the execution of Jesus.
Marcion's father was a wealthy ship owner and Bishop who filled young Marcion's ears with wonderful stories of god's benevolence, forgiveness and promises of a better life. These stories were a stark contrast to the tales of Jewish sailors and travelers to the port of Sinope, however.
Jews would describe horrific deeds their God (Jehovah) had wrought upon mankind slaying the whole world of humanity in a flood and burning alive the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, commanding the slaughter of any who opposed Him.
When Marcion was still a young man, the letters of a Roman citizen and Jewish evangelist named Paul began to circulate through the churches.
Marcion's father, the Bishop, undoubtedly shared these epistles and the exhortations to follow Christ and leave the old world behind.
Marcion responded! He became a Bishop himself, a brilliant leader and original thinker whose sermons and writings inspired thousands to action.
Marcion's sermons were ORIGINAL thoughts. His teachings didn't match the Jewish christian teachings which were becoming more and more authoritative and exclusionary.
THE JEWS, who were Christians, demanded that any converts to Christianity had to be JEWISH first. This meant you had to believe in and worship the Old Testament Jehovah!
Marcion wasn't having any of that!
For Marcion it was Jesus and Paul only!
The best you could say about Jehovah was that He had created the world. As a kind of heavenly tyrant, Jehovah had tried to pass laws to hold man in check punishing him for evey infraction of his legalistic transgression.
When man didn't turn out to be the unquestioning worshipper Jehovah had imagined--divine wrath began working misery and oppression and death on the populations of Earth. That's how Marcion saw it, anyway.
Marcion lived in a GREEK colony, remember? The Greeks had a different sensibility about the divine than the Jews. For Marcion, it was no stretch of the imagination to see there must be TWO competing deities: JEHOVAH vs THE HEAVENLY FATHER whose son became Jesus the Christ.
JEHOVAH got possession of the Jews and the HEAVENLY FATHER sought to ransom by sacrfice the rest of mankind through Jesus paying their debt.
Quite a radical contrast to either Judaism or the still very young Jewish-Christian proto-religion.
MARCION's Christianity only needed PAUL's teachings (after all--Paul had actually encountered the living Jesus!) and the Jesus stories circulating like a modern day bestseller around the world.
THERE WAS NO FIXED CANON! There was no "New Testament". There were no boundries. Christianity was whatever--by whomever--make-it-up-as-you-go. This was Marcion's world. He played by his own rules, thinking, logic and individuality. Take it or leave it.
Tens of thousands of people ended up listening and AGREEING!
Clearly, there was going to be a 3 way competition for believers!
JUDAISM
Christian-JUDAISM
MARCION'S Pauline Christianity
In any competition there is conflict. In any conflict there is a grappling, debate, accusations, framing of issues and power struggle. Somebody is winner-take-all and the other competitor's are yesterday's news.
History informs us: MARCION almost won!!
With Marcion's version of things you did not have to learn Judaism, become circumcised, bring sacrifices to Jerusalem (which had been destroyed anyway), observe countless Jewish rituals--you only had to accept Jesus and believe! The only stories you had to accept were the letters from Paul and the miracle stories of Jesus helping people and teaching great things about his new Kingdom and benevolent Heavenly Father!
The backlash was intense. You better believe it was intense.
Jewish-Christians were first JEWS and you didn't mess with their Torah! Marcion ignored the Torah and spoke slightingly of Jewish religion as horror stories of a raving maniac primitive God! They went berserk at these teachings.
A very interesting thing happened next.
Marcion took a look at all the stories that were circulating about Jesus and his Apostles and Paul's letters. Which ones were reliable and which ones were obvious fairytales?
It was MARCION HIMSELF who developed the idea of a TRUE CANON of scripture! Like Thomas Jefferson after him and the modern day Jesus Seminar--Marcion ommitted anything that sounded ridiculous! That was his test. If it didn't make sense--GET RID OF IT!!
Ironically, in the Protestant rebellion against the Catholic Church, young Martin Luther did the very same thing. He removed 7 of the books of the then canonical Bible and wanted to get rid of others as well!. (Luther made an attempt to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon.)
Here is a brief snippet from Wikipedia (which you can verify by your own research, if you like):
His canon included ten Pauline Epistles and one gospel [4] called the Gospel of Marcion, plus a rejection of the whole Hebrew Bible, and did not include the rest of the books later incorporated into the canonical New Testament. He propounded a Christianity free from Jewish doctrines with Paul as the reliable source of authentic doctrine. Paul was, according to Marcion, the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. [5]
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!!
You might well wonder how the (what later became an entrenched Catholic) church might deal with such an original thinker.
Ask yourself how the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses might deal with such a person! Here you have the equivalent of a RAYMOND FRANZ publishing radical revisions of everything you are saying is God's channel of communication and this upstart is contradicting you!!
And remember--Marcion was a wealthy shipowner living in a center of trade! He was rich! But--Marcion had no ill will toward the other Jewish-Christian brotherhood at all. How do we know he wasn't simply an evil slave, an Agnostic Hellion? In the year 144 Marcion contributed 200,000 Sesterces to the Church of Rome! (A sesterce was a gold-copper coin.)
The Church was so embarrassed by his act of charity (and angry at his large following) they immediately sent back the money and disfellowshipped him (EXCOMMUNICATION!)
Marcion's biggest mistake (looking back) was moving to Rome itself where his followers and teachings and version of a canonical scripture would be right in the faces of the Jewish-Christian leadership. It would be like moving across the street from the Watchtower Building and setting up shop!
The official Church started copying Marcion's idea of creating a canon of true scripture by insisting on their own "approved" stories and excluding the ones they didn't like.
Since the Roman army had destroyed the Jewish center of worship in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. it seemed MARCION's rejection of JUDAISM had been proved correct in terms of God's own view of things. Marcion had gained ground, stature and converts in a world and time where there was safety in numbers. There was no room on the landscape for TWO christianities!
Official Authoritarian pronouncements against Marcion and his ideas began to be circulated, published and made official by the Church. He became the very first person accused of HERESY. A new charge and a new "crime" as it were. This man set the stage for the rest of us throughout history to be marginalized and shut off from a fair hearing by official pronouncement of doom from ecclesiastical authority.
Further, Marcion, by being EXCOMMUNICATED could not be viewed as a christian any longer. Insults were heaped upon him by the brotherhood that only days earlier were given a lavish donation by the same "brother". He was now referred to by the words: FIRSTBORN OF SATAN.
If not the first Apostate, surely the Greatest to ever challenge the authority of others in the church.
Ahhh, Christianity!
Marcion's writings were at first banned, then seized, then burned by the Church which could not tolerate a competing testimony.
Nothing remained by way of physical evidence he had ever existed. Had the Church won? Not exactly.....
For years and years to come, various prominent Christian writers (who mysteriously seemed to have access to Marcion's banned writings) continued to "DEBATE" him in their own apologetic works. By quoting his teachings they inadvertently PRESERVED A RECORD OF THEM!
It is because of Marcion's enemies not being able to let go--that we know anything at all about him today. We know of the insults, ad hominem attacks and reputation damage wrought by his fellow christians in trying to make him a curse to others. But we also know---he almost won!
