John Dunn

Marcion appears to be making something of a comeback

Tuesday, 9 January 2024 at 21:21

The Apostle John and Marcion of Sinope

Marcion appears to be making something of a comeback

His return to a widening field of discussion has been led, from all places(!) by academia.

Marcion of Sinope (85 AD to 160 AD) is now being considered as the author or compiler of the first New Testament. Indeed it was Marcion who first coined the term New Testament.It seems that Marcion’s own position was something along the following lines. The authors who wrote Matthew and John, Luke and Mark had taken their material from Marcion’s own Gospel. The false ones came later and derived from the foregoing true one.

As they had borrowed their material from Marcion, the false Gospels were seen by him as as copies, plagiarisms or attempted improvements. The improvements consisted in combining Marcion’s Gospel with the Law and the Prophets, hence, with what Marcion called the Old Testament, to prove against him that Christ did not come from an entirely transcendent God in heaven, but from Judaism and that he was predicted by their prophets.

Who Marcion thought were the instigators of the improvements, and why they reformulated his first New Testament, is not known. The field of study seems to be opening up to find answers to these questions.

Tertullian is a starting point. In his own critique of Marcion he outlines Marcion’s critique of the compilers of the post-Marcion Bible.

“Their aim was to combine Marcion’s Gospel into one body with the Law and the Prophets to pretend that Christ had been fashioned from that place, namely Judaism and the Old Testament.”

© John Dunn.

John Cowper Powys: Poet

Sunday, 7 January 2024 at 15:08

John Cowper Powys: Poet

This book of mine, published in 2011, is still available on Kindle. This is another work that I will place in the category of precursor. I do so only because I would no longer wish to be associated with its general assessments of Powys and his work. In other words I have moved on from here. However, the book was a staging post along the way to the thinking held in the three books for sale on this website, and may be of some small interest to others making the same or similar journey of discovery.

When published in 2011, I summarised the work as follows.

Powys responded to his era with a fluidity of mind that rendered his own work transitional. His poetry has a similar quality to his novels, seemingly traditional, yet modern, highly contemporary, yet timeless, inhabiting a world in which socially instilled beliefs are repeatedly trumped by personal mythologies. In his life, the shifting sands of fluctuating religious convictions drove his own political beliefs. The brand of anarchism he sought would allow the spirit to rove free, untrammelled by convention. An unsettling author, he upsets the convictions of his readers whomsoever they might be. The atheist feels the wonder of his mysticism; the religious are shriven by his pagan irreverence.

© John Dunn.

The Stations of the Cross: poetic responses

Sunday, 7 January 2024 at 15:01

The only true words from the following are perhaps "the pilgrimage continues". Appropriately enough, this work, still available on Kindle,published in 2011, is but a staging point on a much longer pilgrimage that still lies ahead. I should be read as such, if read at all.

The Stations of the Cross: poetic responses

These are my reflections on an ancient Christian devotion. The journey to Calvary is the journey we must all undertake. Even at the point of his own utmost suffering, Jesus called upon the women onlookers not to pity him. Instead, he said, ‘weep for yourselves and for your children’. In short, don’t let the piteous condition of others deflect you from an understanding of your own piteous position and the journey you too must travel unto death.

These lines of rhyme and half-rhyme are in themselves a station in my own Christian journey. Even as they were completed, I felt that I had moved on to a new place within faith. The pilgrimage continues.

Still available on Kindle.

First published in 2011, I would describe this very much as a precursor work to the three books listed under "Book sales".



© John Dunn.

A Bleak but Honest Resolution

Saturday, 6 January 2024 at 21:42

A Bleak but Honest Resolution

That Thomas should have memorials in the stained glass of church windows is ironic, though perhaps illustrative of the obscured picture of Thomas left by a grieving wife and daughter, both of whom found solace in religion. Their memoirs, combined with those of Eleanor Farjeon, have influenced the subsequent biographical and critical treatment of the poet to the detriment, I would argue, of his reputation as a poet and socially relevant thinker. Thomas can be read as a ‘mirror of England’, as long as that England is today’s place of continued social change where traditional beliefs are under strain, for it is to this England that Thomas’s poetry remains relevant.

Available on Kindle

First published in 2006, I would describe this very much as a precursor work to the three books listed under "Book sales".



© John Dunn.

You can break the rules

Friday, 5 January 2024 at 22:04

Fly the banner of Love and creativity high

Spaketh thus Eros

Hear me, you deluded innocent fools of Beulah.

You can break the rules

Just as I, your god Eros, broke out of the Cosmic Egg to disrupt the goddess Ananke’s equilibrium of Chaos, man too can break the rules. Man can break out of the straitjacket of closed systems be they religious, economic, Dawinist, Spinozist, kabbalistic, Marxist etc.

To accept a system as closed, to accept freedom as necessity, is to withdraw into nature, to return to Mother Nature, to Ananke and an amorphous state of pre-Eros, pre-Love and pre-Being. Closed systems are the path to entropic death. The systems we compose for ourselves can neither be closed at their beginning nor at their end. Each breakout from a closed system is an echo of the Orphic myth of Eros, be this a break with the womb, innocence, or animal nature. Each of these and more is a cosmic egg to be smashed. Each break is both an act of violation and creativity, ultimately prompted by Love. Each is an act of violation, ending the cycle, penetrating the egg, giving rise to birth and new life. Each response to Love is a death and resurrection of man in the image of God.

To the ones living a fully human life of love and creativity are opposed those who lead a sub-human existence without love, who never make the break from Mother Earth. These are the ones who worship the One, who promote the closed system, be it Dawinist, Spinozist, kabbalistic, Marxist etc.

This is the divide of all ages that is masked deliberately by the politics of Right and Left, which are two sides of the same coin. The real and only meaningful opposition is between those whose banners bear the symbols of love and creativity and those devoid of love, life and humanity who would have us return to the One, the amorphous state of pre-Eros, pre-Love and pre-Being.

Choose Love and fly your banners high.


© John Dunn.

Words to accompany the videoed walk around the ruined tower of Temple Bruer

Thursday, 4 January 2024 at 20:34

I’m gradually building the commentary to my next YouTube video production, which is based upon a motorcycle excursion to the Preceptory of the Knights Templar, known as Temple Bruer, in Lincolnshire. (The work in progress is included on the home page to keep things fresh for Google search ranking.)

Words to accompany the videoed walk around the ruined tower of Temple Bruer

There are many examples of graffiti. Some of them are recent. Many were made in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there are some with 17th century dates. Temple Bruer has been a visitor attaction for many years.

There’s also a considerable number of masons' marks. Masons' marks were used to identify the work of individual masons, when they were paid by piecework rather than by day rates. The marks were straight-line designs scratched on the surface of the stone.

This ground floor chamber probably served as a side chapel or chapter house.

This rubble scar on the east wall is where an altar was once located.

The remains of seats for priests can be seen below the blind arcading - that series of arches and column remains along the south and west walls.

The stone grave cover in the form of a knight was excavated outside in the farmyard.

The function of the first floor is uncertain. It was possibly a private devotional space or simply a store room, who knows.

The staircase continued to a third floor, again no-one knows what purpose this served.

The roof dates from the early 20th century, when the tower was saved from further decay and made watertight.

© John Dunn.

Thus spake Love

Monday, 1 January 2024 at 15:35

Thus spake Love

Eros went down the mountain alone.
An awakened one is Eros: what will you do in the land of the sleepers?
Could it be possible! They have not yet heard of it, that God is dead!
Teach them Eros! Tell them where you’ve been.

Hear me, you deluded innocent fools of Beulah.

I climbed the heights to look down upon the Synagogue of Satan. You think you see the Creator, but you are mistaken. What you see instead is Urizen, the demiurge, a self-deluded and anxious shaper of pre-existent matter; and you follow his ways.

When you worship Urizen you worship Satan, the puppeteer pulling the strings of mankind, the over-bearing father, the failed architect, the ‘Accuser of the World'. You have been infected by the children of Urizen into Devil Worship.

"Man must and will have some religion; if he has not the religion of Jesus, he will have the religion of Satan, and will erect the Synagogue of Satan." (William Blake)