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Paul the Apostle Of The Heretics

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Paul the Apostle Of The Heretics

Tertullian called Paul the "Apostle Of The Heretics", meaning that the heretics of his time, like Marcion, Valerian and Basilides all relied on the "Pauline" teachings.

Robert M Price, author of The Amazing Colossal Apostle writes:

But let's just say for sake of argument that Marcion first went
public with his "New Testament" in 144, and that's the first time
that anyone saw Marcion's version of Paul's letters.

There is no account of anyone knowing of a collection of Paul's letters
prior to that.

In "The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul" (Kindle Locations 937-942), he writes:

Somewhere between 100 and 150 CE, Paulinism as a theological system
arose out of a mystical and speculative circle. Van Manen speaks of the
Paulinist movement and Gnosticism arising from the same circles
... Tertullian called Paul “the apostle of Marcion and the apostle of
the heretics,” and both Irenaeus and Tertullian noted how much 'the
heretics' cherished Paul’s writings. The first commentators on the
epistles were the Gnostics Valentinus1, Heracleon?, and Basilides2
[c. 100 - c. 139 e.v.].

Later he writes:

I don't agree that the Pastorals were part of a Pauline collection at
the time that Marcion put out the Apostolikon. I see those as a
definite later addition. They seem distinctly post-Gospel, unlike all
of the other Pauline letters. So, IMO, those are certainly a later
addition, that would have been written after the Apostolikon. The
Pastorals are distinctly anti-Marcionite, contain at least one
reference to a Gospel, and tie in to Acts of the Apostles.

There are very few differences between the Apostolikon and the orthodox
Pauline letters, with the exception of Romans. But Romans appears to
have been circulating on its own as a separate open letter. An orthodox
editor could have used that copy of Romans to replace the Marcionite
version. The fact that Romans is at the front of the orthodox
collection, but fourth in the Marcionite collection is interesting.

We can find no account of anyone knowing of a collection of Paul's letters prior to Marcion (circa 144 AD). So we err on the side of caution and exclude the Paulines from our EbioniteCanon for this and other reasons:

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