All very interesting, Pete.Jack Bull asks about the neglect of Marcionite studies:
- Why have they -- why are colleagues (secular and biblical) -- not engaging with us properly ... about Marcionite studies?
Jason BeDuhn gives the following answer:24:45
"Intellectual inertia. And just to be very frank very poor quality of graduate programs in this field across the world. It's just laziness .... just let's do another of the same kind of work we've been doing. And behind it I think there's a kind of terror. The kind of .... let's not open the door to reconsidering everything... They're afraid that the whole construct is going to come apart.
I mean even people who work on patristic material are terrified by confronting the fact for example that almost all of our patristic manuscripts are medieval and later.
They don't want to open that door to the fact that we actually don't have you know datable reliable sources of the of a lot of these materials and we don't know what they look like before full well knowing just from biblical studies just from looking at biblical manuscripts full well knowing that scribes were always altering texts. Always altering texts. Every step of transmission is an alteration.
So this so to open the door to all of that is just a terror. A night terror for them and so they would rather hanker down in doing very traditional type of things and as you say it's not premised on having a religious commitment to it. It is premised on them being comfortable in a well-established field with well ingrained ruts in the road that they don't want to have to work to get out of and so it's frustrating to me. It's frustrating to me the low level of scholarship out there and the very repetitive uninterestingly repetitive kinds of studies that are done. Always you know stacked premise upon premise upon premise that all those previous premises are not examined are not questioned. Are not broken into and broken up. So that's my take on it.
https://youtu.be/xWfQEGQeaXU?t=1472
So the question is: Are patristic scholars terrified that almost all patristic manuscripts are medieval and later?
And if they are not then should they be?
Should scholars be worried about Marcion and the gospel he had in his hand. I think so. Such a gospel opens up questions regarding the development of the gospel story, it's theology, mythology or philosophical aspects.
The basic story - Jesus crucified under Pilate and Tiberius - seems to be central to all the Jesus stories regardless of dating manuscripts. Copies after copies of this story, additions and deletions, have left that central story intact.
So, yes, scholars should be worried - if only for their paycheck. The gospel in the hands of Marcion does not challenge the Jesus, Pilate/Tiberius scenario. What it does do is challenge the assumed development of that story. Where does the gospel in the hands of Marcion fit into the Mark, Matthew and John scenario.? The Synoptic Problem verse Marcion......perhaps interesting days ahead....
Dating manuscripts early or late does not negate the gospel story and it's claim against Rome. (Pilate and Tiberius). That story runs - like a music ear worm in the mind....
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I love an old Irish saying (from Irish mythology].
I will argue that, as music-making is a way of making sense of noise, of giving noise order, so poetry is a way of ordering experience, of giving a meaningful order to lived time – and that that process of ordering could be summed up in a phrase from the Old Irish, a phrase that is first found in a tale of the Fianna-Finn, who, during a break from hunting, begin to debate what might constitute ‘the finest music in the world’. One man says it is ‘The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge’, while others jump in to suggest ‘the top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield’, ‘the belling stag of a stag across water’, ‘the song of a lark’ and ‘the laugh of a gleeful girl’. Finally, they turn to their chief, Fionn, and ask him what he would choose, to which he replies: ‘The music of what happens … that is the finest music in the world.’
Burnside, John (2019-10-02T23:58:59.000). The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century . Profile. Kindle Edition.
Burnside, John (2019-10-02T23:58:59.000). The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century . Profile. Kindle Edition.
my bolding
'....the music of what happens'....
What happened, what is at the core of the gospel story, a story that has survived through copies after copies - is the story about a man crucified, a king of the Jews, under Pilate and Tiberius. It's a story, the symbol of which is hung around the necks of countless christians and remembered every year on 'Good' Friday.
That story is the 'music' of what happened 2000 years ago - and it's the music that will keep playing until it's needle gets stuck or the streaming link gets dropped.
Statistics: Posted by maryhelena — Thu Apr 11, 2024 12:23 am