Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

(1) OVERVIEW

CONTEXT

The history of scholarly reconstructions of the Gospel of Marcion is thoroughly outlined in the introductory sections of various monographs (BeDuhn, 2013; Gianotto, 2019; Klinghardt, 2015/2020; Klinghardt, 2021; Roth, 2015). More succinct overviews may be found in previous Journal of Open Humanities Data data papers for the von Harnack (Bilby, 2021b), Roth (Bilby, 2021c), Hahn and Zahn (Bilby, 2021d), and Klinghardt and Nicolotti (Bilby, 2021e) datasets. In the last two centuries, six complete Greek texts have been published (Gianotto & Nicolotti, 2019; Hahn, 1832; von Harnack, 1924; Klinghardt, 2015/2020; Klinghardt, 2021; Roth, 2015; Zahn, 1888/1892). The Greek reconstruction presented here is the seventh. Another major reconstruction (Bilby, 2023), utilizing an iterative open science approach to publishing, is nearing completion.

BeDuhn’s work has been widely reviewed in a consistently positive manner (Baudoin, 2016; Frankfurter, 2015; Jefford, 2014; Le Boulluec, 2016; Muir, 2016). Growing out of a 2014 Society of Biblical Literature panel on the book, several more positive reviews (Pervo, 2015; Rothschild, 2015; Scherbenske, 2015; Winninge, 2015) were published in the journal Early Christianity, which also gave the author a chance to respond (BeDuhn, 2015). Some reviewers found the case against Marcionite omissions persuasive (Frankfurter, 2015; Pervo, 2015), while others remained convinced of the early orthodox hypothesis of Marcion as a textual abridger (Le Boulluec, 2016; Winninge, 2015), yet both the research and translation were praised.

Both the monograph (BeDuhn, 2013) and responsive review (BeDuhn, 2015) explore the thinking behind the choice to [then] reconstruct the Evangelion in English. The ambiguity and multilingual nature of patristic attestations and manuscript variants made it difficult to establish precise wording in Greek, but a coarse-grained English translation could accept this ambiguity while still achieving greater clarity and moving beyond the limitations of previous editions (Tsutsui, 1992; von Harnack, 1924). Subsequent Greek reconstructions (Bilby, 2023; Klinghardt, 2015/2020; Klinghardt, 2021; Nicolotti, 2019; Roth, 2015), along with five critical translations (Bilby, 2023, English; Gramaglia, 2017, Italian; Klinghardt, 2015/2020, German; Klinghardt, 2021, English; Nicolotti, 2019, Italian) have since shifted the discourse, meticulously organizing, detailing, and engaging the patristic evidence and manuscript variants, and increasingly clarifying philological patterns. While editors and translators have expressed widely varying degrees of confidence about the reconstructions—whether their own or those of others—the international scholarly discourse has collectively become more scientifically-minded. Gramaglia (2017) thoroughly critiqued Klinghardt’s work by means of word frequencies; Bilby (2023) has endeavored to shift the discourse and methods to integrate them with currents in open access, data science, and computational linguistics. The rapid evolution of scholarly engagements with Marcion’s scriptures led BeDuhn to reevaluate his initial position and collaborate with Bilby on a Greek reconstruction and corresponding datasets under his editorial control ...

(2) METHOD

READING PREFERENCES

Reconstructing a Greek text of the Evangelion requires adjusting the principles used when distilling its semantic content from all available attestations in multiple languages (BeDuhn, 2013). Tertullian of Carthage’s early third century Latin treatise Adversus Marcionem provides the most attestations; but given the ambiguities of Latin translation in relation to Greek and Tertullian’s indirect citation habits, it should not be given preference over Greek sources. Instead, as a general rule, Epiphanius of Salamis’s late fourth century work against heresies, Panarion, should be preferred for the Greek text wherever he preserves it, despite its significantly later date, not only because he wrote in Greek, but also due to his procedure of copying out passages from the Evangelion verbatim before commenting critically upon them. The approach taken by Epiphanius avoided the fragmentation and syntactical reworkings of Evangelion content characteristic of Tertullian’s rhetorical rebuttal. This distinction applies only to Epiphanius’s Scholia, since his Elenchoi were composed later when he no longer had the Evangelion for reference and employ a rhetorical approach similar to Tertullian’s, often with significant paraphrasing. Epiphanius is generally to be preferred to the other major Greek source, the fourth century dialogue of Adamantius (falsely attributed to Origen of Alexandria), due to uncertainty over how strictly the latter adhered to the Evangelion text in specific instances and inconsistencies between its Greek and Latin versions. Nevertheless, correlation of the evidence of Epiphanius, Tertullian, and the Greek and Latin versions of Adamantius has proven its overall value ...

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... n's_Gospel

(1) OVERVIEW

CONTEXT

... Over the past 200 years, eight major published reconstructions have appeared, six of which include a Greek text: Hahn (1832, Greek), Zahn (1892, Greek), von Harnack (1921/1924, Greek), Tsutsui (1992, Latin), BeDuhn (2013, English), Roth (2015, Greek), Klinghardt (2015/2020, 2021, Greek/German and Greek/English), and Nicolotti (2019, Greek/Italian).Klinghardt’s work was first released in 2015 but has recently been expanded in a second German edition (2020) and English translation (2021) that include corrections and revisions in response to some of the criticisms made in the interim between the editions. Much of the content of an entire issue of the Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum (ZAC) journal consisted of such criticisms along with a concluding response by Klinghardt (2017). BeDuhn (2017) deemed Klinghardt’s 2015 work decisive in proving the greater antiquity of GMarc to canonical Luke. While lauding the thorough scraping of textual variants from manuscripts of Luke to fill out a more robust text for GMarc, BeDuhn nevertheless critiqued Klinghardt for not making serious use of the full range of relevant patristic sources in the reconstruction, for disregarding various non-canonical sources in the attempt to resolve the synoptic problem, for dimissing rather than modifying the Q / Two Source Hypothesis, and for dating the formation of the entire New Testament canon to the mid-second century. Bauer (2017) challenged Klinghardt’s claim that GMarc was translated into Latin before the mid-2nd century, the overreaching correlation of GMarc with so-called Western text traditions, and the overreliance on variants peculiar to medieval Latin manuscripts such as Codex Palatinus. Roth (2017) focused his criticism on a meticulous examination of the sources and reconstruction of one representative verse, pointing out several problematic word choices and even self-contradictory evaluations of the patristic attestations. A quantitative approach surfaced in the review by Schmid (2017), who statistically refuted Klinghardt’s position that the textual transmission of GMarc shows comparable rates of variation as found in canonical text traditions. Schmid also found the unfiltered use of idiosyncratic features in patristic attestations and late Lukan manuscripts highly problematic and indeed the entire reconstructive proposal and model unconvincing. The most involved critical response to Klinghardt’s work thus far is the book-length, annotated Italian translation by Gramaglia (2017), whose detailed analysis and footnotes routinely provide counts of lemmata and syntagmata in GMarc and/or Luke, alternatively confirming or challenging Klinghardt’s reconstruction on philological grounds. Gramaglia also made a counter-argument throughout that GMarc and canonical Luke are successive recensions by the same author reflective of two different passes at appropriating and editing material from the Q sayings gospel.

Nicolotti (2019) has made the most recent major attempt in print at reconstructing GMarc. Both in the goal of restoring a fully continuous text and in the frequent use of Codex Bezae to fill in the gaps between the patristic attestations to GMarc, Nicolotti’s reconstruction proves similar to Klinghardt’s in many respects. Even so, as our normalized datasets help to clarify, Nicolotti restored considerably fewer passages, verses, and words than did Klinghardt, and often at a lower level of certainty. Scholarly reviews of Nicolotti’s reconstruction have varied widely, reinforcing two distinct sides of the scholarly debate. The French Canadian scholar Paul-Hubert Poirier found in Nicolotti’s work confirmation of the Schwegler and/or Semler hypothesis that GMarc is an earlier and simpler version of the Gospel of Luke rather than a later evisceration of an earlier, longer canonical text: “Marcion a repris à son compte un écrit préexistant… qui se trouvait anticiper ce que sera le Luc canonique” (2019: 319). Poirier also validated Nicolotti’s continuous and maximalist approach to restoration: “essentiellement pour permettre une lecture suivie et intelligible du texte marcionite, il a eu sans aucun doute tout à fait raison de décider ainsi” (318). He ultimately gave highest praise to Nicolotti’s work in comparison with other recent critical reconstructions: “la plus efficace de l’évangile marcionite… l’une des meilleures—sinon la meilleure—reconstructions de l’instrumentum de Marcion à avoir été publiées ces dernières années” (320). Several Italian reviews (Girolami, 2020; Mantelli, 2020; Ronzani, 2020) have consistently taken the opposite point of view, repeating the early-orthodox defense of the greater antiquity of canonical Luke and maintaining Marcion’s evisceration of canonical Luke as both historical and scholarly consensus. These Italian reviews cast doubt on the usefulness of Codex Bezae to fill in the gaps between patristic attestations to GMarc, and they favorably echo Gramaglia’s (2017) conclusion that any maximalist, continuous reconstruction of GMarc represents too hypothetical and tendentious a philological undertaking. Several inaccuracies or infelicities in Nicolotti’s Italian translation are detailed (Girolami, 2020: 568; Mantelli, 2020: 606–607). Yet these reviews also recognize that Nicolotti’s effort to reconstruct the text of GMarc makes “un ulteriore utile contributo alla discussione su un tema assai controverso” (Girolami, 2020: 568) and reflects a “lavoro minuzioso” (Ronzani, 2020: 401), especially in the production of an apparatus that is “molto puntuale ed esaustivo e rispecchia l’acribia con cui il lavoro è stato condotto” (Mantelli, 2020: 607) ...

REFERENCES

Bauer, T.J. (2017). Das Evangelium des Markion und die Vetus Latina. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 21(1), 73–89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2017-0005
BeDuhn, J. (2013). The First New Testament. Salem, OR: Polebridge.
BeDuhn, J. (2017). New Studies of Marcion’s Evangelion. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 21(1), 8–24. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2017-0001
Bilby, M.G. (2021a). Key to BibleWorks Greek Morphology (v1.1). Zenodo. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4950243
Bilby, M.G. (2021b). Normalized Datasets of Harnack’s Reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 7(24), 1–7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.47
Bilby, M.G. (2021c). Normalized Datasets of Roth’s Reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 7(27), 1–6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.57
Bilby, M.G. (2021d). Normalized Datasets of Hahn’s and Zahn’s Reconstructions of Marcion’s Gospel. Journal of Open Humanities Data, 7(##), 1–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.63
Bilby, M. G. (2020–07/2021–12). The First Gospel, the Gospel of the Poor. LODLIB. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3927056
Gianotto, C. (2019). Marcione e il suo “Nuovo Testamento.” In C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti (Eds.), Il Vangelo di Marcione (pp. vii–lxviii). Turin: Einaudi.
Girolami, M. (2020). Review of C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti, Il Vangelo di Marcione. Studia Patavina, 67, 565–568.
Gramaglia, P.A. (2017). Marcione e il Vangelo (di Luca). Turin: Accademia. ARK: https://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t6vx6m34h
Hahn, A. (1832). Evangelium Marcionis ex Auctoritate Veterum Monumentorum. In I. C. Thilo (ed.), Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti (pp. 401–486). Lipsius: F. C. G. Vogel. ARK: https://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t23b6zq5d
Harnack, A. von. (1924). Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (2nd ed.). Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/marciondasevange00harn
Klinghardt, M. (2017). Das marcionitische Evangelium und die Textgeschichte des Neuen Testaments: Eine Antwort an Thomas Johann Bauer und Ulrich B. Schmid. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 21(1), 110–120. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2017-0007
Klinghardt, M. (2015/2020). Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien (2nd ed., Vols. 1–2). Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 60. 1–2. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.
Klinghardt, M. (2021). The Oldest Gospel (Vols. 1–2). Leuven: Peeters.
Mantelli, S. (2020). Review of C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti, Il Vangelo di Marcione. Augustinianum, 60(2), 601–608. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/agstm202060234
Nicolotti, A. (2019). Il Vangelo di Marcione. In C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti (Eds.), Il Vangelo di Marcione (pp. 1–233). Turin: Einaudi.
Poirier, P.-H. (2019). Review of C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti, Il Vangelo di Marcione. Laval théologique et philosophique, 75(2), 314–317. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070841ar
Ronzani, R. (2020). Review of C. Gianotto and A. Nicolotti, Il Vangelo di Marcione. Chiesa e Storia, 10, 394–403.
Roth, D.T. (2015). The Text of Marcion’s Gospel. Leiden: Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004282377
Roth, D. T. (2017). Marcion’s Gospel and the History of Early Christianity: The Devil is in the (Reconstructed) Details. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 21(1), 25–40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2017-0002[b]
Schmid, U. (2017). Das marcionitische Evangelium und die (Text-)Überlieferung der Evangelien. Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum, 21(1), 90–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/zac-2017-0006
Tsutsui, K. (1992). Das Evangelium Marcions: Ein neuer Versuch der Textrekonstruktion. Annual of the Japanese Biblical Institute, 18, 67–132.
Zahn, T. (1888/1892). Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons (Vols. 1–2). Erlangen: Andreas Deichert. ARK: https://n2t.net/ark:/13960/t8cf9s958

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... n's_Gospel

Scholarly work on Luke has often noted the significance of Marcion's Gospel for understanding the textual history of the third canonical Gospel. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the past new insights into Marcion's Gospel have led to revisions in the apparatus of the highly influential Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, now in its 28th edition. In view of the precedent for continually updating the Nestle-Aland text and apparatus, this article revisits the apparatus to Luke in the light of recent research on Marcion's Gospel in order to highlight problematic references that should be changed or removed in the apparatus of future Nestle-Aland editions.

2 J.K. Elliott's observation...at the turn of the century: ‘we ought to work more systematically on the writings of Marcion and Irenaeus to learn what they can reveal about the Biblical texts and specifically the New Testament text-types which they were using and quoting’ (‘The New Testament Text in the Second Century: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century’,¹ NTTRU 8 (2000) 1–14, at 12). For additional references to both NT and Patristic scholars highlighting the importance of work on Marcion's Gospel, see Roth, Marcion's Gospel, 1–3.

18 Of the 486 verses attested as present in Marcion's Gospel, Tertullian attests 438 (for 328 he is the sole witness). Epiphanius provides data for readings in 114 verses and the Adamantius Dialogue contains seventy-five verses that at least ought to be considered as possibly witnessing Marcion's Gospel. For details of the statistical analysis, see Roth, Marcion's Gospel, 86, 271–2, 355–6. Tables providing an overview of all verses attested as present, verses attested as absent and unattested verses for Marcion's Gospel can be found in Roth, Marcion's Gospel, 49–78.

More needs to be done on Justin’s citations. Work on the other second-century fathers, Latin and Greek, is less developed and we
ought to work more systematically on the writings of Marcion and Irenaeus to learn what they can reveal about the Biblical texts and
specifically the New Testament text-types which they were using and quoting.

We may even be able to detect if certain textual variants in the apparatus in our Greek New Testament originated with a particular writer ...

via https://ia800206.us.archive.org/6/items ... ticism.pdf, pp.23-5