Justin Martyr, the Gospel of Luke, and Marcion.

[Ken Olson]

I was interested in the question of whether Justin knew of any of the pericopes from Luke's special L material that were unattested in Marcion. This is different from the larger question of whether he had any Lukan readings unattested in Marcion, including in double and triple tradition material.

I came up with a quick and dirty method to check this. First, I used the list of L passages from chapters 3-19 of Luke in Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (2000) 140-141. Then I checked which of those were attested in Marcion against Jason BeDuhn's English text in The First New Testament (2013). Then I did a search through the footnotes in the English translation, Justin Martyr (Fathers of the Church, 1948, 2008) Thomas B. Falls, to see which Lukan passages were footnoted. This is, as I said, a quick and dirty method to give me a general idea, not a rigorous scholarly method.

Chart 1: The Contents of L in Luke:
3.10-14 The Preaching of John the Baptist
4.25-27 Elijah's miracles for Gentiles
M 7.11b-15 Jesus raises the widows son of Nain
M 7.36-47 A sinful woman forgiven
10.30-37a Parable of the Good Samaritan
10.39-42 Mary and Martha
M 11.5b-8 Parable of the persistent friend
M 12.16b-20 Parable of the rich fool
M 12.35-38 Parable of the doorkeeper
13.1b-5 Repent or perish
13.6b-9 Parable of the barren fig tree
M 13.10-17b Healing on the Sabbath
13.31b-32 Warning about Herod
14.2-5 Healing on the Sabbath
M 14, M 8-10; Not M 12-14 Parable of the choice of place at table
14.28-32 Counting the cost
M 15.4-6 Parable of the Lost sheep
M 15.8-9 Parable of the Lost coin
15.11.32 Parable of the lost (prodigal) son
M 16.1b-8 Parable of the dishonest manager
M 16.19-31 Parable of the rich man and Lazarus
17.7-10 Say, "We have done out duty"
M 17.12-1818.2-8a Ten lepers healed, Samaritan thankful
M 18.2-8a Parable of the unjust judge
M 18.10-14a Parable of the Pharisee and the publican
M 19.2-10 Zachaeus repents

26 L pericopes in Luke 3-19
15 attested in Marcion (marked with M)
11 unattested in Marcion

I could not find that any of the 11 L pericopes unattested in Marcion were footnoted in Falls' translation of Justin. This seemed striking. After chatting with Ian Mills, who suggested that Justin was more interested in Double and Triple Tradition passages than L, I went back through and looked at the 15 L passages that were attested in Marcion and they were not footnoted in Falls translation either.

Can that be correct? Justin does not mention the L material, whether or not it is attested in Marcion. I used a quick and dirty method and may well have missed something. I'd be interested to know if anyone else can confirm or deny this.

Best,

Ken

[Secret Alias]

Reminder : "unattested in Marcion" = unreferenced in the same breath as Marcion in Patristic commentary." Next to worthless given that Marcion is accused of stealing and corrupting Luke. It's like Dashaun Watson. He's accused of doing bad things. Doesn't mean every accusation is accurate. Some true. Some false. But the culmative effect of having many accusarions. Priceless. But ultimately hearsay.

[Ben C. Smith]

Can that be correct? Justin does not mention the L material, whether or not it is attested in Marcion. I used a quick and dirty method and may well have missed something. I'd be interested to know if anyone else can confirm or deny this.

That does seem quite striking.

I have a huge text file full of Justin's parallels to gospel materials, but I am still very much in the process of (very slowly) working through them all. I know that at least most of the L pericopes on your list do not appear in Justin so far as I am aware, though I cannot yet confirm every last one of them.

What first interested me was the realization that, given both the possibility and my suspicion that Luke 1-2 (not counting the prologue) once stood alone and was added to the rest of Luke at some point, I could no longer count Justin's knowledge of Luke 1-2 as sure evidence of his knowledge of the rest of canonical Luke.

[Ben C. Smith]

Reminder : "unattested in Marcion" = unreferenced in the same breath as Marcion in Patristic commentary." Next to worthless given that Marcion is accused of stealing and corrupting Luke. It's like Dashaun Watson. He's accused of doing bad things. Doesn't mean every accusation is accurate. Some true. Some false. But the culmative effect of having many accusarions. Priceless. But ultimately hearsay.

What?

[Secret Alias]

How does mentioning Marcion in the same breath as a passage tell us whether the passage was in Marcion's gospel?

[Ben C. Smith]

How does mentioning Marcion in the same breath as a passage tell us whether the passage was in Marcion's gospel?

It does not, and I doubt anyone here thinks it does.

[Secret Alias]

Have you ever read Against Marcion Book 4 end to end?

[Ben C. Smith]

Have you ever read Against Marcion Book 4 end to end?

In its entirety, I doubt it, but I came pretty close at one point in preparation for what I posted in this forum. Why?

[Secret Alias]

Roth's book is utter lunacy. Everyone since Harnack has done this "maximal" excavation of any passing reference to any Lukan text made in the same breath as Marcion. But Irenaeus EXPLICITLY SAYS I have the pure text, I have the pristine gospel so there is a mix of "you see why Marcion doesn't like this" but more often than not a HYPOTHETICAL reference to why Marcion WOULD hate this passage. But it's all so ambiguous. Completely insane that anyone could know whether or not Marcion actually had a given passage or not beyond about 15 or 25 one line references

[Secret Alias]

Not to mention the Church Fathers are by and large petty wickedly evil people CAPABLE at least of massive dishonesty in the name of winning a debate.