"... One of the most detailed and crucial pieces of information that we possess about
[Marcion's Gospel
] derives from Tertullian's preface to his commentary on Marcion's
Gospel and
Antitheses...in Tertullian's
Adversus Marcionem IV - according to IV 9,3.
"We can also draw on the prefaces to some other works of Tertuallian, particularly those belonging to his systematic and ant-heretical opus, to which
De praescriptione haereticorum provides the preface, followed by
De ressurectione carnis,
De carne Christii and, eventually,
Adversus Marcionem I-V.
5 Once one notices that Tertullian was particularly keen not only to provide prefaces to his own works, but also to reference, value and evaluate the prefaces of other writers, notably Marcion's
Antitheses, Irenaeus' preface to his
Adversus haereses I-V,
and the prefaces to the
Pastoral Letters, which he regards as genuinely Pauline,
6 the relation not only between so-called hypertext and hyopotexts,
7 but also that between hypertexts themselves, comes to the fore ..."
//
"... in what follows we will try to look critically at Tertullian's ways of prefacing his works, recognising his extraordinary creativity in reshaping the notions and interrelations of
exordium, narratio, partitio, and
propositio,
11 to then first move to the introduction
12 of his
De praescriptione haereticorum (the preface of which accounts for 14 of a total of 45 chapters); and then to comment on the entire text of that work, as it is itself the preface (the literal sense of
praescriptio) to the further anti-heretical and primarily anti-Marcionite writings of
De ressurectione carnis,
De carne Christii and
Adversus Marcionem, with which we will deal with in particular, focusing on their prefaces and selected passages."
//
"As a result the reader will [not only] get a better understanding of Tertullian's extensive literary response to Marcion,
15 but also a glimpse of what, despite all the rhetorical clouding of Tertullian,
16 might have provoked Marcion...to publish his own preface to his
Gospel, the
Antitheses, together with this
Gospel-text and the ten
Pauline Letters as
his* 'New Testament', thereby providing the structural principle for the later canonical
New Testament.
17
"We will discover that, astonishingly, there was closer intellectual proximity between the interlocutors than the battle on the surface would intimate."
^From the Introduction of Markus Vinzent's 2016 book, '
Tertullian's Preface to Marcion's Gospel', Studia Patristica Supplements, 5; Peeters: Leuven, Paris, Bristol, CT; pp.1-3.
5 See T.D. Barnes, Tertullian (1985; 1st ed. 1971), 125; although he sees the proximity of the first draft of Adversus Marcionem to De praescriptione haereticorum, he only reckons with the anti-Marcionite works Adversus Marcionem, De carne Christii, and De ressurectione carnis; similarly, C. Moreschini, 'Polemica antimarcionita e speculaziones teologia' (2002), 25.
6 See M.A. Frisius, 'Tertullian's Use of the Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude' (2011), 9.
7 On prefaces and their relation to the texts they introduce see G. Genette Palimpsests (1997) [1982]); id., Paratexts (1997 [1987]).
11 See R.D. Sider, Ancient Rhetoric and the Art of Tertullian (1971), 22-4; G.D. Dunn, 'Tertullian's Aduersus Iudaeos' (2008), 61-8.
12 Tertullian does not seem to distinguish between prefaces and introductions as G. Genette, Paratexts (1997) [1987]), 161, does, although even he admits that 'for the most part' the nuances between the different 'cases of co-presence' are 'connotative' (ibid. 162).
15 As R. Baum writes in his introduction to Adversus Marcionem IV .... [French] ...
16 Clouding does not mean distorting - on Tertullian's trustworthiness see W. Bosshardt, 1921; E. Lodovici, 1972; on his lack of catching Marcion's theological depth, see A.v. Harnack, Marcion, (21924 = 1966), 329-30; on this see C. Moreschini, 'Polemica antimarcionita e speculaziones teologia' (2002), 11.
* italics mine (and there New Testament was italicised, whereas I haven't)
17 See J. Knox, Marcion and his New Testament (1942), 31: 'The the structural principle of Marcion's canon became the organizing idea of the catholic New Testament'. One only needs to see the 'predominance of Pauline Letters in the Catholic New Testament' which, according to E.C. Blackman, Marcion and his influence (1948), 38 'is accounted for by Marcion's view of Paul and the only Apostle'.
.