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Marcion: the TRUE author of the New Testament that you never heard of.

Discussion in 'Religion, Beliefs and Spirituality' started by DeathMadeTangible, Feb 7, 2014.

  1. #1 DeathMadeTangible, Feb 7, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 7, 2014
    Marcion of Sinope has long been vilified & labeled a heretic by his Catholic and Jewish contemporaries. Before the Council of Nicea, Marcion compiled the various Gospels and had written the first draft of the "New Testament" (before it was even called the New Testament) which excluded any of Jewish influence and valued the good traits of Christ - compassion, brotherhood, honesty and forgiveness. He believed the evil, vengeful and violent Jewish-demiurge of Judaism to be a negative influence upon society for his generation and all future generations. He had wrongly been accused of being an anti-semite because of his less than favorable view of Judaism (and the Catholic Church) and their imposing influence on the Mediterranean and Middle East.
     
    Why was Marcion important and why should I care?
    He pissed a LOT of ancient people off, many of those same people who would eventually define Western religion, philosophy and ideology.
     
     
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  2. #2 DeathMadeTangible, Feb 7, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 7, 2014
    Pretty sure 99% of the people on this forum (and IRL) have never heard of Marcion, who was way ahead of his time, so I thought I should bring word of the Gospel of Marcion to my fellow tokers. If the Marcionite version of Christianity (closer to modern-day Buddhism) was still around today, we can safely say that we would have avoided some ugly historical events like the Holocaust, the Crusades and the Inquisition. 
     
    Best of all, Marcion did not endorse censorship, like almost all modern and ancient religions did, as evidenced by the fact that he allowed the Marcionites to read the Old Testament. He must have felt quite confident in his Gospel and his message, because he did not feel threatened enough to disallow other scripture in his church. He also removed all mention of homophobia/homosexuality from the Old Testament.
     
    An achievement that even today in 2014 is still a big deal.
     
  3. Is there a text of the Marcion version of the writings?  Because it's hard to imagine what it looks like without the OT, considering the existing NT makes consistent reference to the old writings and seems in many places to be written specifically to "fulfill" OT prophecy.  So without the OT, what does the NT really look like?
     
    I know the NT has some internal problems of its own - any collection of writing is going to - but I wonder how much of it arises from shoehorning in the old religion.
     
  4.  
    We can't "safely say" that those things wouldn't happened.  Marcion didn't fit in with mainstream early Christianity, but to say his views would have prevented things that resulted from human flaws connected to religious passion is quite an assumption.
     
  5. #5 DeathMadeTangible, Feb 8, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 8, 2014
     
    Surprisingly, the Gospel according to Marcion was preserved not by the Marcionites, but by his opponents. Much of his Gospel (which is just a revised Gospel of Luke + the Paulene letters minus the bigotry) has been quoted in the writings of other theologians, which is how we know it exists. But as far as I know, it hasn't been found in one complete piece, since it was deemed heretical in 144 A.D and probably all known copies were burned.
     
    Without the OT, the NT is a much "friendlier" document.  :yummy:
     
     
     
    It's the next logical step. The Inquisition was a Catholic creation aimed at fighting heresy - the same methods they used for centuries before the Inquisition was even a thought in some Spaniard's head. Marcion himself was a victim of branded-heresy. No Catholicism = no Spanish Inquisition. The Crusades were also a Catholic invention, along with their lapdogs the Knights Templar. 
     
    In regards to the Holocaust, Hitler himself was a practicing member of occult practices, which were forced to go underground in the hostile Catholic environment of Europe. Marcion would surely have not disallowed Pagan/Vril worship if his vision of the Church had come to fruition. Thus, the occult rise to power in Germany would almost certainly not have taken such a sinister hold, and even if it did, it would have been dealt with earlier. Possibly centuries earlier. In many ways, WW2 was a culmination and a boiling over of what was wrong with European Capitalism at the time. Regardless of what would have happened in the 1940s, I have no doubt the Marcionite church would have painted a much more functional picture of society over the centuries. 

     
  6.  
    Hitler and the Spanish Inquisitors didn't care what Rome had to say.  Come on man, your crystal ball isn't legit.
     
  7. At the end of the day, nobody in their right mind would say Catholicism/Current Christian Church > Marcionite Church.
     
    That's like saying barbed wire on your genitalia > cute puppies playing in the backyard
     
  8. Blessed be Marcion. 
     
    Here's a useless article about Marcion with lots of misinformation, which I could expect from an "official" encyclopedia:
    http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/364272/Marcionite
     
     
    Marcion's Gospel (the Gospel of Lords) came before Luke and the other synoptic gospels. Marcion's Gospel eventually became Luke's Gospel.
     
    As far as the Paulene letters go, it's obvious why Marcion accepted them as authentic - because the Marcionites wrote them.
     

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