Hi Leolaia!
I enjoy the reading of your posts very much.
At the risk of not doing justice to your excellent questions (that will take several posts), I will make a few brief comments. Your analysis of the Pauline doctrines makes the assumption that the canonical letters we possess are original. A great deal of evidence exists to the contrary. The Marcionites possessed a textual tradition that was more primitive than what we now possess, and this was interpolated by the proto-orthodox to steal away the "Apostle of the Heretics."
(This is in opposition to the prevailing view that Marcion took the "catholic" letters, and elimiated what he did not like.)
Van den Bergh van Eysinga worked towards showing that not only Marcion?s Gospel (or at least the sources used by Marcion) was more original than Lucas canonicus, but its priority to all of the canonical gospels.
Proto Luke (or urLUke)had no more birth narratives than GMark. These are of latter addition. In Marcion's gospel, Jesus descends directly out of heaven to Galilee and begins to preach with no introduction, save from demons.
"(In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,
Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea,)
Jesus descended [out of heaven] into Capernaum, a city in Galilee,
and was teaching [in the synagogue] on the Sabbath days;
And they were astonished at his doctrine,
for his word was in authority.
33 And in the synagogue there was a man,which had a spirit of an
unclean devil,
and cried out with a loud voice, saying,
34 Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus ?
art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One
of God.
35 And Jesus rebuked him, saying,
Hold thy peace, and come out of him.
And when the devil had thrown him in the midst,
he came out of him, and hurt him not.
36 And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying,
What a word is this!
for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits,
and they come out.
37 And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round
about."
"The Gospel of Marcion"
In my reconstruction of urMark, the likely earliest version of Mark is congruent with Marcion.
(The) Jesus came {out of heaven} into Galilee, preaching the
gospel... and he went immediately into Capernaum.. (Mark 1:13 & 1:21)
followed by the same recognition of the demon.
Doceticism is a most interesting view in opposition to the proto-orthodxoy. It seems to have arisen from within the very earliest strata of extant Christian writings.
Jesus is said to have come "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:14). This is not exactly the same thing as when a modern scholar states that "Jesus did not exist," although it certainly isn't an endorsement for the case of an historical human being. Instead, it is a conception of Jesus as existing in the spiritual nether world just outside our own, un ordre symbolique. Jesus interacts in our world, but not fully. This is the explanation of Mark's messianic secret.
It is the reason that only the spiritual forces of this world (the demons) recognize him as other than a man, but the disciples do not.
Jesus is plain and comprehensible only to those of insight. _Gnosis_, Kurt Rudolph, page 157. In docetic systems, it is imagined that Christ acheives his triumph of redemption by outwitting the demiurgic powers into thinking they can kill him. Indeed they are said to so attempt, but in failing are humilated and defeated. He is revealed not to be a man, or a messenger, or an angel, or any lesser being, but the Lord of Glory himself.
Marcion's Docetic opinions are battled by Tertullian. It should be easy to refute a dead man, as he cannot answer, but
Tertullian's argument is a failed Reductio ad Absurdum.
"Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom of flesh (and a phantom is but spirit, and so the spirit breathed its own self
out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen. Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after "the giving up of the ghost;" Tertullian: _Against Marcion_ Book. 4, chapter 42.
To which Marcion would have replied, if indeed he had such an opportunity, would have been, "of course". Marcion taught neither the reality of Jesus' body or the physical resurrection. Tertullian's alleged refutation of Marcion consists of an ad hoc mishmash of later gospels, and is revealed by the anarchic references. One need not assume that the conclusion, "Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain. For the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine" is reflective of the actual gospel of Marcion.
G.R.S. Mead has certainly refuted the orthodox view. "His (Marcion's) Gospel was presumably the collection of Sayings in use among the Pauline churches of his day. Of course the Patristic writers say that Marcion mutilated Luke's version; but it is almost impossible to believe that, if he did this, so keen a critic as Marcion should have retained certain verses which made against his strong anti-Judaistic views."
Bart D. Ehrman identifies two clear proto-orthodox changes to GLuke, inserted to combat docetic interpretaions of Jesus.
These are
Luke 22:43-44 (Jesus sweating blood)
Luke 24:12 (Peter running to the tomb).
Ehrman states that these passages are not found in the other gospels, or in the oldest and best manuscripts of Luc. In every instance the former is first used by the orthodox (Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus) as texts against their so-called heretic opponents, and were likely created just for this purpose. _Lost Christianities : the battles for scripture and the faiths we never knew_, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003, page 226.
Despite the best attempts by the proto-orthodox, traces of the docetic Jesus still remain in the gospel of Luke. When the people in the synagogue attempt to throw Jesus from the cliff, he passes unseen and ungrasped through their midst. Luke 4:29-30.
Even the late doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church retain traces of docetism. It is never said that Jesus is tried by the sexual desire. Mary is Virgin not just in conception but ever intact; no physical child emerged through her birth canal. Indeed, John the Baptist is conceeded to be the greatest ever born of woman, indicating that Jesus was not.
John Abrowus
