Talk:Marcion of Sinope

message: Edit history shows a lot of IP users vandalizing the lede with various combinations of "the end" "heeeey" "hi" and similar, with a users making partial corrections — bots, I guess? -- CEFGD (talk) 18:08, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Vandalism?

message: Take a look at what has been done to the page on Marcionism.  Do you think perhaps this page on Marcion should be more focused on the life of Marcion of Sinope, leaving information about his teachings to the latter Marcionism page? -SwissCelt 00:41, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marcion vs. Marcionism 

message: I expanded the article considerably based on the entry on him in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.  
I also removed the reference to his being a bishop -- none of the standard sources I've seen suggests that.  (Are there sources that do?)
::Bishop of Sinope, see discussion: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09645c.htm
:::(This specifically describes him as son of the bishop and a shipowner. Corrected again accordingly. --Wetman 4 July 2005 00:15 (UTC)
::::Please read the article. Actually, now I'm curious, who says he wasn't a bishop?
Further changed the opening "opinions" to "teachings" -- no one was condemned in the early Church merely for holding heterodox opinions but rather for teaching and spreading them.
Also adjusted the reference to Gnosticism, which was not a single community or belief set but rather a general category for multiple and varied teachings and persons.  --Preost 01:59, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Errata 

message: Firstly, according to some sources, "The Gospel of Luke" and the ten Pauline Epistles were unknown in Rome before Marcion himself appeared in the city with them, and made a present of them to the Pope.
I don't doubt this statement but the sources should be named.
I doubt it, very strongly. 'Pope' is ludicrously anachronistic. 'Bishop of Rome' perhaps, but even that is doubtful. Nor is it credible that a letter written to Christians in Rome was unknown to those Christians - where else did Marcion get it from!! OldTownAdge (talk) 16:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: I moved this paragraph from the article to here where it seems better placed. At least some of the critic seems valid but it should be used to edit the article rather than just added to it. Also, hopefully, some sources will be coming for the claim that Marcion actually brought the scriptures to Rome, in which case that should be added back to the article.
(It is worth noting that much of this is after-the-fact criticism which may not actually have been aplicable to Marcion. Firstly, according to some sources, "The Gospel of Luke" and the ten Pauline Epistles were unknown in Rome before Marcion himself appeared in the city with them, and made a present of them to the Pope. Within several years, it became apparent that the clergy of Rome was mutilating the scriptures Marcion had presented them with in an attempt to bring scripture in line with their own already-existing traditions. While Tertullian claims Marcion was mutilating scripture, Marcionites claimed their master was merely removing spurious information the Roman priesthood had introduced into the text. There is some evidence to support that the content of these scriptures remained fluid for quite a while. For instance, while decrying Marcion Tertullian quotes a line from the 'official' version of Luke that is no longer in the modern, canonical version of that book. Marcionites claimed that Luke was a mutilated expansion of Marcions' own original gospel, and again there may be some truth to this as no one specifically mentions the Gospel of Luke by name until Tertullian himself around 199 AD! The books of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles were not so much rejected by Marcion, as they were unknown to him: Acts is never mentioned by any church father prior to 177 AD, and the Pastorals (1&2 Timothy, and Titus) were likewise unknown or at least uncommented upon until they were conveniently 'discovered' in about 199 AD.)
No, I'm sorry, this is fantasy. How can Marcion have 'presented' Paul's Letter to the Romans to the Romans? Nor does our text of any of these books rely on Roman sources - any 'mutilation' in Rome would have had no impact anywhere else and certainly not on our texts. Marcion may well have admitted his version of Luke was a forgery; so what? Acts is quoted in the Didache, (c.AD100) a long way before 177AD. I have no idea what is meant by the Pastorals being 'discovered' - this appears to be a complete invention. They are echoed in several writings (e.g. Testament of the Twelve) far earlier.OldTownAdge (talk) 17:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Move to talk

message: 1)  The following statement is false:   
(who would later be called Catholic as opposed to Marcionite) 
It was not a matter of being "Catholic".  The Catholic Church did not exist for two more centuries.  Futhermore, Marcionite and Catholic are not exactly polar opposites but rather two versions among many
:That's nonsense. The term "Catholic Church" (as opposed to other groups) first appears in the letters of Ignatius, early in the 2nd century. There is no basis for the "not ... for two more centuries" - what actually happened in 344? Str1977 (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely not. WP makes use of other encyclopedias as well. One should only note to simply take them as fact and that some encyclopedias are quite dated. Str1977 (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree. It doesn't get any more POV than this. Marcion maybe was attempting this but we cannot simply state so. Nor are the other "attempts" mentioned relevant. However, they do expose the writer's POV. Str1977 (talk) 09:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with this article

message: It is one thing to insert an encyclopedia article in its entirely faut de mieux, but it is not good enough to cite one in an original article.  If WP is to improve its scholarship it must move to citing scholarship rather than collections. I fear that it gives WP a bad name.Roger Arguile 14:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia gets a bad name because of Original Research, not by accurately quoting Wikipedia: Reliable sources. 68.123.73.93 19:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Encyclopaedias

message: Perhaps a section on why Marcion wasnt a gnostic would benefit the article.Eagles01836 00:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gnostiscm

message: It is hard to know what to make of the following insertion— "What we know of Marcion comes mostly through his detractors, who are in substantial agreement." — since the rest of the paragraph continues by mentioning Marcion's detractors. Whenever a statement really does need a citation, one hesitates to insert that little challenge, because it's been wielded clumsily so often. --Wetman 21:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A little challenge

message: I made a major cleanup of the article. Some text were lost, and perhaps some formulations/spelling need an oversight, but I consider the current version to be a clear and concise foundation to build a good article on, which is better than the unstructured compilation of quotes and badly written prose the article consisted of... I hope that rather than to revert my changes, other editors will make use of the references to add further information. / Fred-J 13:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleaned up 

message: Someone asked for citation about Marcion being excommunicated by father.  Here you go: Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1(Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1986), 268. (Ty Brumwell (talk) 09:05, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation

message: This section reads like two contibutors have had a go one after the other. Around half way there is a paragraph which surely was designed to introduce the section! But my main point is this: 
The claim that the 'canon' is the 'measuring stick' is reasonable. BUT the point made twice in this section is that Marcion offered an alternative Gospel to the one that ended up in the canon. This is NOT what it meant to use the canon as a measuring stick. What actually happened was that the measuring stick of the canon was used to evaluate other writings, so there were 'good' and 'bad' wrtings. The bad writings did not CHANGE the 'measuring stick' as is implied. The idea that the measuring stick itself can change is twisted logic and innacurate.
(Marcion and other heretics did, however, influence the CREED of the church, which is not mentioned here)
Jas.C.Brooke (talk) 23:54, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Legacy

message: The current article says "More recently, Bart D. Ehrman suggests that this "seduction of a virgin" was a metaphor for his corruption of the Christian Church, with the Church portrayed as the undefiled virgin.". I doubt if it is accurate - perhaps Ehrman said so (I have no access so just assuming), but it wouldn't be so "recent". In a Japanese source I found a mention to Adolf von Harnack: Harnack have presumed the exact same thing in his Marcion(1ed. 1921, 2ed. 1924), which I have no access either (so sorry for no citation). Not offense, but is it possible Mr. Ehrman just cited Harnack? In more important thing, is it not recently at all? We should give readers an accurate description, and early 20th century argument is not so recent in my impression. --Aphaia (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Tyler (p. 26) says that "most modern scholars" think this, but it is par for the course for Ehrman fans to attribute all knowledge to him. Johnbod (talk) 13:16, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "More recently" 

message: This version from 2005 seems in many ways superior to the current one. At some point a huge bibliography has been added to "Sources", though most have clearly not been used. Johnbod (talk) 13:14, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Back to 2005 

message: This may be nitpicking, but the only modern commentator even mentioned by name in the text of the article is Bart Ehrman, whose quotations here arguably evince an attitude toward Marcion that seems to lean sympathetic, or at least exculpatory concerning the judgment (both by his contemporaries and by centuries of widely held Christian tradition) of Marcion as heretical.  Are there no present-day scholars to quote who tend toward the Patristic view? --2603:6081:8002:AE78:C572:B691:B196:C08 (talk) 07:49, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV? 

message: If the premise that the OT is "absolutely true", and should be read in a "literal" manner, naturally leads one to believe, as Marcion did, that "Yahweh was not the same God spoken of by Jesus", then surely the same conclusion should have been reached by the host of Christian expositors through the ages, both Catholic and Protestant, who have also affirmed a similar premise. The fact that arguably most of them have not come to the same conclusion as Marcion suggests that either their exegesis is mistaken, or (much more likely) we have a confusion in terminology. Kevin Vanhoozer is only one of many theologians who use the word "literalistic" to refer to a system of interpretation, like Marcion's, that appears generally to exclude or downplay the possibility that cultural, linguistic, and other clues could indicate that the author(s) of a given verse or passage might have meant it as something other than straight historical narrative, such as poetry or allegory. Vanhoozer writes in Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Zondervan Academic, 1998), quoted on https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/13136/what-is-the-difference-between-a-literal-and-literalistic-interpretation-of:
"It is most important to distinguish literalistic from literal interpretation. The former generates an unlettered, ultimately illiterate [italics in original] reading—one that is incapable of recognizing less obvious uses of language such as metaphor, satire, and so forth. By contrast, the latter attends to what authors are doing in tending to their words in a certain way. ... The distinction, then, is between 'empirically minded' interpreters, who, in their zeal for factual correspondence, take an unimaginative, almost positivist, view of things, and 'literate-minded' readers, who are sensitive to context and familiar with how literary texts work."
One can endlessly debate which system is more faithful to authorial intent, or what is the "best" interpretation of a particular scripture once a system has been agreed upon, or whether authorial intent matters to begin with, etc. — but it seems misleading to make unqualified use of "literal" to refer to Marcion's system, an adjective which implies that his hermeneutic belongs in the same category as that which has produced a vast and enduring body of Church scholarship that not only affirms the literal, absolute truth of both testaments but also finds no contradiction between Yahweh and the God spoken of by Jesus.
— 2603:6081:8004:DD5:497E:E054:AD55:9B4E (talk) 00:41, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literal vs literalistic 

message: Only Robert Eisler maintains that the image in the Evangeliarium of Keirossis is of the apostle John next to Marcion. Marcion's name does not appear in the original illustration. Eisler interprets that this is Juan being angry because he discovers the "contrary feelings" on the part of his secretary Marcion. None of that is evident in the manuscript. The description of the Morgan Library reads: "Evangelist John, decorated nimbus, name inscribed, pen in right hand, open book with inscription (damaged) in left hand, seated on cushioned bench, feet on footstool; man holding inkpot; draped architectural setting; decorated border".
I think it is important to note that the image corresponds to Juan and Marcion only in Eisler's fertile imagination. Gustavo Rubén (talk) 18:16, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image