The Marcionite 115 ½ year ½ Month Dating of Marcionism from Christ
By Stephan Huller
Tucked away in the opening book of the Latin text of Against Marcion by Tertullian is a peculiar dating of arrival of Marcionism:
Anno xv Tiberii Christus Iesus de caelo manare dignatus est, spiritus salutaris. Marcionis salutis, qui ita voluit, quoto quidem anno Antonini maioris de Ponto suo exhalaverit aura canicularis non curavi investigare. De quo tamen constat, Antoninianus haereticus est, sub Pio impius. A Tiberio autem usque ad Antoninum anni fere cxv et dimidium anni cum dimidio mensis. Tantundem temporis ponunt inter Christum et Marcionem. Cum igitur sub Antonino primus Marcion hunc deum induxerit, sicut probavimus, statim, qui sapis, plana res est. Praeiudicant tempora quod sub Antonino primum processit sub Tiberio non processisse, id est deum Antoniniani imperii Tiberiani non fuisse, atque ita non a Christo revelatum quem constat a Marcione primum2 praedicatum.
Most commentators have simply taken the reference to Luke 3:1 and added 115 ½ years and ½ months and come up with an approximate dating of 144 CE for the arrival of Marcion. Harnack did this as did . There are several difficulties with this approach most notably the acknowledgement of the author that he doesn’t know the year that the message of Marcion was first preached.
More importantly there is an underlying complexity to the calculation which is often ignored. While the author fixes the descent of Jesus from heaven to Luke’s dating of the 15th year of Tiberius – as he does in Book Four – earlier in the same book he gives the dating of the 12th year of Tiberius. The change from xii to xv is difficult to explain as a copyist error. It seems to be more likely that xv was imposed upon an earlier dating for the year of Tiberius. I shall make the case for the original Marcionite dating of that year to be vii which was subsequently altered to xii and then the standard dating of xv. Already Eusebius knows of a Christian tradition associated with the so-called Acts of Pilate which dated the crucifixion to the seventh year of Tiberius. This understanding seems to have made its way to the early Christian copies of Josephus where Jesus is dated to a similar period. I shall make the case here that Tertullian is witness to a Marcionites dating of the first public teaching of Marcionism 115 ½ years and ½ months from the crucifixion of Christ in the seventh year of Tiberius.
It is well known that Tertullian acknowledges that the surviving Against Marcion had a complex back history. He says that the current Latin edition represents a ‘re-tracted’ reformation of an unpublished treatise with incorrect ideas about monarchy of God that was lost, published without his permission, and then subsequently corrected by himself. However we choose to interpret this bizarre opening ‘confession,’ there are strong indications of the Latin text representing a recycling of second century Greek apologetic material. This process is attested in Against the Valentinians which is a repurposing of Valentinian material from Against Heresies, Against the Jews which derives its origins from Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho among other texts. Yet more significantly the process of reshaping original material is clearly present within the body of Against Marcion itself as Book Three consistent takes material directed against Jews in Against the Jews and repurposes it against Marcion and Marcionites.
The idea then that Book One’s ‘anno xv’ represented a correction of an original ‘anno xii’ is at least a possibility if not a strong one. The idea that ‘anno xii’ went back to ‘anno vii’ finds immediate support in the frequency of references to the Acts of Pilate in Tertullian. The origin of these references is clearly Justin Martyr and his frequent repurposing of material associated with the second century apologist. Twice in the Dialogue Justin references the account of the crucifixion from the Acts of Pilate which is quite strange given that he and his audience must have a gospel account of the same incident. The only plausible explanation for the preference of a document like the Acts of Pilate was that it was alleged to have been a ‘public document’ whereas the gospel was deemed to be private or ‘secret.’ To that end, as information was transferred from Justin to Tertullian arguments developed from the Acts of Pilate regarding the dating of the crucifixion would have assumed an ‘anno vii’ dating which were later corrected.
Tertullian’s repurposing of Justin Martyr and the latter’s use of the Acts of Pilate for the dating of events toward the end of the ministry of Jesus is quite opening especially in the manner in which they overlap with statements in Against Marcion. At the beginning of Tertullian’s Apology he notes that “Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world [cuius tempore nomen Christianum in saeculum introivit], having himself received intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity, brought the matter before the senate, with his own decision in favour of Christ. The senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal. Caesar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all accusers of the Christians.” While the latter reference to Tiberius’s reception of Berenice/Veronica and the image of Christ is well known from the surviving Acts of Pilate literature, the specific reference to the ‘name of Christ invading the world’ has strong echoes of criticism of Marcionism in Against Marcion.
The reader should be reminded that in the traditional orthodox understanding, Jesus was born in the reign of the Emperor Augustus. The Marcionites however denied that Jesus was ever born or had a historical identity as a person. This ‘name’ or spiritual being instead floated down from heaven in a particular year of Tiberius in what is consistent caricaturized by Tertullian and subsequent Patristic writers as a military invasion or trespass. In Against Marcion 1.15 we read Tertullian write “your god no less has his own creation, his own world and his own heaven … [y]et how is it that their owner has been in evidence since anno xii of Tiberius Caesar.” Later in Book Four however the invasion motif is amplified:
Marcion premises that in anno xv of the principate of Tiberius he came down into Capernaum, a city of Galilee—from the Creator's heaven, of course, into which he had first come down out of his own [world]. Did not then due order demand that it should first be explained how he came down from his own heaven into the Creator's? For why should I not pass censure on such matters as do not satisfy the claims of orderly narrative, <but let it> always tail off in falsehood? So let us ask once for all a question I have already discussed elsewhere, whether, while coming down through the Creator's territory and in opposition to him, he could have expected the Creator to let him in, and allow him to pass on from thence into the earth, which no less is the Creator's … Who saw him coming down? Who reported it? And who gave assurance of a fact not easily credible even to him who gives assurance. It is quite wrong in fact, that Romulus should have had Proculus to vouch for his ascent into heaven yet that Christ should not have provided himself with a reporter of his god's descent from heaven—though that one must have gone up by the same ladder of lies by which this one came down.
In the traditional understanding of Tertullian’s argument in Book Four, the Marcionite gospel is a corruption of the Gospel of Luke which – although the third in a develop of two previous exemplars viz. Mark and Matthew – was the first to assign the specific date of the fifteenth of Tiberius to the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
If however we assume that anno xv was a later correction of anno vii, then we can look at the passage in Book Four rather differently. The original reference was to Marcion premising that Christ came down in anno vii not according to his gospel at all but rather a commonly used public document – the Acts of Pilate. The next sentence makes a very Papian sounding reference to the Marcionite gospel lacking the proper ‘order’ not merely because the specific year of descent was lacking in that gospel (it was ultimately also not present in any gospel until Luke) but because, according to the understanding of the author, the ‘suddenness’ of the descent in the Mark-like gospel of the Marcionites. In other words, Marcion’s gospel lacked a birth narrative, lacked reference to John the Baptist’s ministry and as such – owing to the lack of ‘order’ lent itself to the ‘mistaken’ belief that Jesus was a name which descended from heaven to Galilee rather than a mortal man born of woman.
While the discussion of what Papias originally meant by ‘orderly narrative’ takes us too far afield from our present discussion, it is worth noting that there is strong circumstantial evidence for an original assumption of a common employment of the Acts of Pilate’s anno vii by both Marcion and the author. In a second reference to the Acts of Pilate in Tertullian’s apology he makes an almost identical connection with Proculus and Romulus and a heavenly ascent:
Thereafter, having given them commission to preach the gospel through the world, He was encompassed with a cloud and taken up to heaven, - a fact more certain far than the assertions of your Proculi concerning Romulus. All these things Pilate did to Christ; and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Caesar, who was at the time Tiberius. Yes, and the Caesars too would have believed on Christ, if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars
What is hinted at in Against Marcion is made explicit in the Apology – namely that in anno vii of Tiberius Jesus both descended and ascended in a cloud to heaven like Romulus in the narrative of Proculus but the Marcionite gospel was deficient for lacking an account of his descent because of its omission of the witness of John the Baptist.
Yet the consistent reference to Proculus’s account of Romulus and its relationship with the Acts of Pilate deserve more attention than they have traditionally received. It should be duly noted that the context of Proculus’s account of the king of Rome an audience with the Roman Senate. As Livy notes:
For Proculus Julius, whilst the state was still troubled with regret for the king, and felt incensed against the senators, a person of weight, as we are told, in any matter however important, comes forward to the assembly, “Romans,” he says, “Romulus, the father of this city, suddenly descending from heaven, appeared to me this day at day-break. While I stood covered with awe, and filled with a religious dread, beseeching him to allow me to see him face to face, he said, Go tell the Romans, that the gods so will, that my Rome should become the capitol of the world. Therefore let them cultivate the art of war, and let them know and hand down to posterity, that no human power shall be able to withstand the Roman arms. Having said this, he ascended up to heaven.”
If it were not for the explicit connection between Proculus and the Acts of Pilate in the Apology we might be misled into thinking that the reference was limited to mock seriousness. Yet a careful reading of Proculus emphasizes certain features of the surviving Acts of Pilate which support the Marcionite understanding.
Even in the surviving Acts of Pilate literature the account of Jesus delivered before the Senate emphasizes a supernatural Jesus. In the report of Pilate in the Gospel of Nicodemus we hear it said that “this God of the Hebrews, then came when I was governor of Judea, and they beheld him enlightening the blind, cleansing lepers, healing the palsied …” Similarly in the so-called Trial and Condemnation of Pilate the supernatural nature of the person of Christ is emphasized as Pilate stands before the Senate under Tiberius:
And when he was brought to the city of the Romans, and Caesar heard that he was come, he sat in the temple of the gods, above all the senate, and with all the army, and with all the multitude of his power, and commanded that Pilate should stand in the entrance. And Caesar said to him, Most impious one, when thou sawest so great signs done by that man, why didst thou dare to do thus ? By daring to do an evil deed thou hast ruined all the world.
We should also note that as with Tertullian’s Apology the surviving Acts of Pilate tradition emphasizes the supernatural nature of Jesus by identifying with ‘the name of Christ’ – viz. “And when Caesar said this and himself named the name of Christ, all the multitude of the gods fell down together, and became like dust where Caesar sat with the senate.”
The point of all of this is that we should expect that no gospel until Luke identified the ministry of Jesus with the 15th year of Tiberius. The original identification of the year of Jesus’s ministry came from the Acts of Pilate which specified the 7th year of Tiberius. How does all of this take us back to the calculation of the 115 and ½ years and ½ a month time span associated with ‘the Marcionites’ in Against Marcion 1.19? It should be recognized that a lot of the ambiguity in the reporting has to do with the fact that the author is reporting a belief of the heretics themselves “A Tiberio autem usque ad Antoninum anni fere cxv et dimidium anni cum dimidio mensis. Tantundem temporis ponunt [emphasis mine] inter Christum et Marcionem.” If we suppose that the earlier versions of Against Marcion reflected a common use of the Acts of Pilate it should be clear that the measurement of time between ‘Christ’ and ‘Marcion’ necessarily represent their public proclamation in Rome. The context of chapter 19 make the absolutely explicit.
The chapter begins with a statement regarding the Marcionite understanding of revelation of Christ – “Deus per semetipsum revelatus est in Christo Iesu.” The gnostic understanding of course holds that the original disciples did not comprehend Christ properly. This came immediately following the ascension with Paul by means of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Yet even before Paul established the gospel, the Acts of Pilate understands the former procurator of Judea to have appeared before the Senate and publicly announced the gospel. If we assume the crucifixion occurred in the seventh year of Tiberius, the recalling of Pilate before the Senate was understood to have taken place within a year thereafter – sometime between the seventh and eighth years of Tiberius. As such, I shall contend, the public pronouncement of the gospel by Pilate in Rome is critical to understanding the 115 ½ year ½ month chronology.
The Marcionite understanding is explicitly referenced in what immediately follows – and in the specifically Acts of Pilate form we suspect originally “In the anno vii of Tiberius Caesar Christ Jesus vouchsafed to glide down from heaven, a salutary spirit.” As we have seen this understanding of a supernatural being descending from heaven in this particular year of Tiberius is confirmed reinforced in the Acts of Pilate tradition. Our reference to anno vii rather than anno xv is assumed from our examination of the use of the Acts of Pilate in Tertullian and Justin. In the same way we see a strange juxtaposition between this known public pronouncement of Jesus under Tiberius with something much vaguer with respect to Marcion under Antoninus.
We already saw that Tertullian declares:
In what year of the elder Antoninus the pestilential breeze of Marcion's salvation, whose opinion this was, breathed out from his own Pontus, I have forborne to inquire. But of this I am sure, that he is an Antoninian heretic, impious under Pius. Now from Tiberius to Antoninus there are a matter of a hundred and fifteen and a half years and half a month. This length of time do they posit between Christ and Marcion.
But then he adds:
Since therefore it was under Antoninus that Marcion first brought this god on the scene (Cum igitur sub Antonino primus Marcion hunc deum induxerit), at once, if you are in your senses, the fact is clear. The dates already decide the case, that that which first came to light under Antoninus did not come to light under Tiberius (quod sub Antonino primum processit sub Tiberio non processisse): that is, that the god of Antoninus' reign (id est deum Antoniniani imperii) was not the God of the reign of Tiberius (Tiberiani non fuisse), and that revealed by Christ therefore was not that plainly first preached by Marcion (atque ita non a Christo revelatum quem constat a Marcione primum praedicatum).
Of course nowhere does Tertullian provide any evidence that Marcion appeared under Antoninus. It can be inferred from Justin, but Tertullian – at least overtly – cannot be equated with Justin.
So what are the facts here? The first clear thing Tertullian says is that he doesn’t exactly know which year of Antoninus Marcion preached. Instead the terminal date of the 115 ½ years ½ month period corresponds to the beginning of the Antonine period (i.e the last months of 137 - 138 CE). He says De quo tamen constat Antoninianus haereticus est. As such the 115 ½ years ½ month period ends at the beginning of the Antonine period just as we find in the Chronicle of Edessa “in the year 446 (137/138 ce) Marcion left the Catholic Church.” The story of Marcion’s departure is always placed at Rome and it is portrayed as a very public break. Even in the Prescription he dates Marcion as ‘Antonine,’ Antonini fere principatu. Moreover the clearest statement of all is the one cited earlier:
A Tiberio autem usque ad Antoninum anni fere cxv et dimidium anni cum dimidio mensis. Tantundem temporis ponunt inter Christum et Marcionem
In other words, Tertullian clearly measured the 115 ½ year ½ month period “from Tiberius … up to Antoninus” that is the beginning of Antoninus’s reign and the Chronicle of Edessa agrees.
One we establish the terminus ad quem the beginning is fairly easy to discern. It can’t be from the crucifixion as there is to reason to include Tiberius in the discussion. It must go back to the use of the Acts of Pilate by early Christians and specifically the announcement of the gospel by Pilate before Tiberius and the Senate. In this way, the author is clearly comparing to public announcements in the city of Rome – one by ‘Christ’ through Pilate c. 21/22 CE the other by Marcion in Rome c. 137/138 CE. Tertullian claims the two public pronouncements betray two different doctrines. One could make a very strong case that there were also many agreements. Before people question the role of Pilate as preacher of the gospel we must go back to the statement in Tertullian’s apology namely that “whole story of Christ was reported to Caesar—at that time it was Tiberius—by Pilate, himself in his secret heart already a Christian” (Apol. 21, 24). To that end it is clear the gospel was openly preached in Rome twice, first by Pilate and secondly by Marcion, 115 ½ years ½ month apart.