Markus Vinzent 'Marcion’s Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity, ASE* 32/1(2015): pp.55-87
- Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi
https://asejournal.net/2015/07/29/ase-321-2015/
In the year 2009, Dieter Roth in his PhD dissertation of Edinburgh University provided us with a textcritical commentary on Marcion’s Gospel, and in 2013 Jason David BeDuhn published The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon in which he gives an English translation also of Marcion’s Gospel, as he re-constructed it ... independently Matthias Klinghardt has produced his own reconfiguration of Marcion’s Gospel ...
First, however, we may ask, why has Marcion’s Gospel remained obscure for such a long time? If I am not mistaken, it is due not to the fact that this Gospel is more difficult to unearth from its sources as has been done with other Gospels, but it is due to the negative judgement of scholars about its non-originality, its [supposedly] plagiarising character and, perhaps even more impacting, because of the label ‘heretic’ that Marcion was given in later times.49 In rejecting the critical appreciation of Marcion’s Gospel during the enlightenment of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, most scholars (including D. Roth) based their views on Irenaeus of Lyon’s anti-Marcionite claims that Marcion did not write his own text, but made use of the existing Gospel of Luke which he only circumcised.
Marcion, so Irenaeus,
mutilates the Gospel according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord.50
According to Irenaeus, whom Tertullian follows,51 Marcion used Luke together with Paul’s letters and corrected both on the basis of his theology. In order to achieve his goals, he [supposedly] cut down four elements of his sources. From Luke [Marcion supposedly] omitted
- Jesus’ birth story, and
- the sayings where Jesus used the Jewish Scriptures to claim his Father to be the creator.
- the same relation of Christ to his Father as creator, and
- the prophetic references that foretold his coming.
Harnack closed the vital debate of the 18th and 19th centuries and provided the Patristic basis that cemented New Testament Studies.“That the Gospel of Marcion is nothing else than what the primitive church judged it to be, namely a falsified Luke, there is no need to spend one word on it”.52
49 See Sebastian Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen: 2010)
50 Iren., Adv. haer. 1.27.2 (trans. ANF)
51 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.4.2.
52 Von Harnack, Marcion (21924 = 1966), 240*;
....another exponent is T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons (Erlangen: 1888), 1.681, 713.
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p.68:
... Irenaeus...reveals that Marcion’s views had attracted not only the attention of many, but also persuaded “his disciples.” That Marcion had a large following is reported in older and younger witnesses. More important, however, is that we know of Marcion living and undisputedly teaching within the Roman community for several years until he decided to leave it and create [his] own.
Around the year 177 AD it is Irenaeus who, in his Against the Heresies, tries to downplay the authority of Marcion, while, at the same time, being the first Christian author to advocate apostolic authority of our four Gospels.
No other teacher in the history of the Church until Martin Luther [other] than Marcion received already during his lifetime and still after his death a comparable literary response.53 Here follows a list of these responses in the order of their appearance during the second century only:
- Justin Martyr (Rom), To Marcion (πρὸς Μαρκίωνα σύνταγμα) (before 151);54
- An unknown Asian Presbyter of Rome;
- Dionysius of Corinth, Letter to Nicomedia (ca. 171);55
- Philippus of Gortyna (Crete), Against Marcion (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος) (ca. 171/2);56
- Theophilus of Antioch, Against Marcion (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος) (ca. 169–183);57
- Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Marcion (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος) (before 177);58
- Rhodo (Rom), To (or) On Marcion’s School (πρὸς τὴν Μαρκίωνος αἵρεσιν) (180–192);59
- Modestus, Against Marcion (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος);60
- Bardesanes of Syria, On Marcion’s dialogues (πρὸς τοὺς κατὰ Μαρκίωνα … διαλόγους σύγγραμμα);61
- Hippolytus of Rome, To Marcion (πρὸς Μαρκίωνα).62
Only starting with Dionysius of Corinth and his Letter to Nicomedia, a harsh criticism against Marcion—reminding of the later writings of Justin—sets in. Interestingly, Dionysius quotes canonical Acts (the very first evidence for the existence of Acts). And there seems to be a relation between the first quote of Acts and the sharp criticism of Marcion on which I [won't] elaborate here.
Marcion’s name spread from Rome to Corinth, Nicomedia, Antioch in Syria, Crete and Gaul, and, with the exception of Egypt, he was well known in the Mediterranean. Only few of the teachers we know from this time do not, or at least not openly discuss Marcion.
Amongst those we find implicit and sometimes explicit hints at Marcion in Ptolemy of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, Papias of Hierapolis and Melito of Sardis, to name a few. According to these authors who wrote to, about or against Marcion, he must have made the most important single contribution to theology during the second century. Adolf von Harnack even states in a letter to Hans Lietzmann that “between the years 150 and 180 the entire development of Christianity and Church were determined by Marcionism and anti-Marcionism”.63
Yet, one wonders how Marcion could have had such an impact if he had written nothing at all, or very little, with the exception of a letter, only a preface to the Gospel, and reworked the writings of others, Luke and Paul’s letters.
53 See Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford 1993: 22011), 216: “No other heretic evoked such vitriol or, interestingly enough, proved so instrumental for counterdevelopments within orthodoxy.”
54 See Euseb., Hist. eccl. 4.18.9.
....Interestingly, guided by his view of Justin’s position with regards to Marcion, in ib. 4.11.8 he alters the title to κατὰ Μαρκίωνος σύγγραμμα.
55 See ib., 4.23.4.
56 See ib., 4.25.
57 See ib., 4.24.
58 See ib., 4.25; 5.8.9.
59 Ib., 5.13.
60 See ib., 4.25.
61 See ib., 4.30.1.
62 See ib., 4.22.1.
63 Adolf Harnack to Hans Lietzmann (11 December 1923), in Glanz und Niedergang der deutschen Universität: 50 Jahre deutscher Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Briefen an und von Hans Lietzmann (1892-1942) (ed. Kurt Aland; Berlin and New York: 1979), 473 (no. 500).
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p.69:
Unfortunately, we can no longer draw on the mentioned writings of the listed second century authors, as most of the works have been lost; and only from very few of them [do] we have tiny quotes in later authors. This is especially problematic, as the earlier works seem to have been non- or less polemical, while only the most hostile ones have been transmitted to posterity, beginning with the later works of Justin,64 Irenaeus (Against the Heresies),65 and from the third century Tertullian, especially his five books Against Marcion, and then later works, amongst them Epiphanius’ Panarion.
If Marcion had only shortened an already existing Gospel, why did he set such a wave of literature in motion with the rescinding of a text that nobody else had quoted or even referred to before him and not many after him chose as their preferred Gospel? Shortly after Marcion, we hear of Tatian and Theophilus of Antioch; who both [supposedly] not only shortened one Gospel, but brought our four Gospels together into single narrative lines of Gospel-harmonies; hence they reworked them all, but no dispute or debate ensued. Moreover, many new Gospels were produced which, as shown in Serapion of Antioch with the Gospel of Peter in the later second century, were initially accepted without suspicion.
Marcion’s work must have been of a different calibre, and cannot simply have been the redaction of another spurious work.
... we have two extant works that discuss Marcion’s Gospeltext in detail; first, Tertullian’s fourth book Against Marcion and Epiphanius’ Panarion; and we have additional quotes. Moreover, as soon as we distrust Irenaeus and Tertullian, and reckon with this text being the source of all other Gospels, the Synoptics particularly become witnesses for Marcion’s Gospel.
Yet, to avoid a potential circularity in the reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel, Klinghardt (and me) started, as all other scholars who tried to reconstruct this Gospel, with Tertullian and Epiphanius. To these, however, one has to add many variant Marcionite readings of the famous NT Codex Bezae and other variant readings, preserved in early NT papyri and codices.66
Tertullian’s commentary in his fourth book Against Marcion is the outstanding witness—the longest book he ever wrote, so technical and detailed that the German translator gave up after the introduction and stated that what followed was nothing but a mosaic of bible quotes67 ... this commentary leads us towards the origins of Gospel-writing.
Let me give you a closer reading of Tertullian. Tertullian undertook to challenge
every sentence, indeed the whole structure, arising from Marcion’s impiety and profanity, on the basis of that gospel which he has by interpolation made his own.68
This first introductory description raises already questions, because what we have got here is the apologetic mixture of a rhetorician who is neither telling lies nor distorting the truth, but provides us with his biased view. Tertullian, as he states, had Marcion’s Gospel in front of him; also its preface, the Antitheses, as he will add. More pronounced than Irenaeus, Tertullian notes that every sentence (omnem sententiam) of the Gospel, and “indeed the whole structure” of it (omnem paraturam) arose from Marcion’s thinking. The critical reader must be astonished, as in the same sentence Tertullian had continued that only “by interpolation” Marcion had made the Gospel “his own.”
How can it be that Tertullian speaks of only interpolations or even manipulations, as the English translator Evans broadens already the text, if, at the same time, he first stated that in this Gospel everything, every sentence and its structure, reflected Marcion’s theology? One of the two statements seems to be wrong. Tertullian possibly followed Irenaeus in whom the same tension is already present, but, as Irenaeus only compared a few elements between Marcion’s Gospel and Luke, the discrepancy is more obvious in Tertullian who, indeed, went through every passage in Marcion’s Gospel and, consequently, concluded that what he had in front of him was a thoroughly Marcionite text.
Immediately after the aforementioned quote, Tertullian adds information about Marcion’s preface, the Antitheses:
Besides that, to work up credence for it he has contrived a sort of commentary, a work entitled Antitheses because of its juxtaposition of opposites, a work strained into making such a division between the Law and the Gospel as thereby to make two separate gods, opposite to each other, one belonging to one instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament), one to the other, and thus lend its patronage to faith in another gospel, that according to the Antitheses.69
The short quote reveals that Marcion’s text had been criticized and needed “credence.” Tertullian will soon explain why. Here, however, he tells us that the preface, a sort of commentary on the Gospel, separated this Gospel from the Law and attributed on the one side the Gospel to one God, and on the other side the Law which, as we learn is the Jewish Law, the Torah and the Prophets, to another God. For Marcion, the New Testament had as Patron none other than the highest God. Tertullian correctly reports: “Marcion attaches to his gospel no author’s name”.70
We are given further information by Tertullian about Marcion’s Gospel, its publishing, date, nature and authority and its relation to Luke, elements which not all have received attention in scholarship. Moreover, we can compare how Tertullian sees Marcion with regard to the Gospel and the function he gives him with regard to Paul’s letters ...
Writing about Marcion’s letters of Paul, Tertullian stylises him as redactor of the Epistles of Paul and he infers Paul’s authority time and again against 'the redactor Marcion' who [he says] alters the original argument and wording of Paul, while only once does Tertullian use Luke’s original to argue against Marcion’s opinion and Gospeltext.
He does not complain at all about Marcion not displaying Luke’s birth stories of Jesus; says nothing about the missing out of the story of the compassionate Father and his two sons (Luke 15:11–32), nothing about the shortening of the end of the Gospel. The only time that Tertullian blames Marcion [for] omitting a verse (Luke 23:34b), it is in contradiction to Epiphanius who quotes this verse as being present in Marcion’s Gospel.71 Instead, shortenings that Tertullian notices in Marcion are regularly benchmarked against readings of Matthew, not of Luke.
While Tertullian, therefore, sees Marcion clearly as redactor of Paul’s letters, he deals with him not as redactor but, in fact, as an author of his Gospel. Time and again Tertullian refers to Marcion as the writer of the text of this Gospel which, as he states, is not a Judaic but a Pontic product, written by Marcion, born in Pontus.72 He even terms Marcion the “gospel-author,” or as E. Evans translates evangelizator as “gospel-maker” and the German translator V. Lukas renders it as “Evangelien schreiber”.73
Consistently, when Tertullian discusses Paul’s concepts of the “new covenant” and of “newness,” he asserts that Marcion introduced with his Gospel a nova forma sermonis,74 a literary innovation, that
“there is in Christ a novel style of discourse, when he sets forth similitudes, when he answers questions”.75
Tertullian implies that Marcion had not made use of preforms of this kind of writings, but suggests that Marcion put together for the first time the Lord’s sayings with narratives, hence he brands him a literary innovator. The only criticism Tertullian has: Marcion should have credited this literary innovation not to his ultimate God, but to the God of the Old Testament, but he fully acknowledges that Marcion’s Gospel was a new product with regards to form and content.
Tertullian gives us a lively rhetorical debate where he voices Marcion’s view that this Gospel was his own,76 saying:
I say that mine is true: Marcion makes that claim for his. I say that Marcion’s is falsified: Marcion says the same of mine. Who shall decide between us?.77
There can be hardly a clearer statement that, according to Tertullian, Marcion had claimed this Gospel to be his own. In the ensuing rhetoric, Tertullian does not recur to content, but sets out the question of chronological priority. Which of the Gospels was produced irst, that of Marcion or the ones that Tertullian used? In reporting Marcion’s own arguments for his claim of priority, set out in his Antitheses, Tertullian reveals how his opponent, 60 years earlier, saw the course of events, namely that Marcion, by his Antitheses, accuses [our Gospel] to be an interpolation by the defenders of Judaism. That 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 O.T.].78
64 Justin, 1 Apology 1.26, Dialogue with Tryphon 58.
65 Iren., Adv. haer. 1.27,2; 2.1,2–4; 3,1, 28,6, 30,9, 31,1; 3.2,1, 3,4, 4.3, 11,7–9, 12.5-12, 14,3, 25,2–3; 4.2,2, 6,4, 8,1, 13,1, 33,2, 34,1.
66 See for the rationale of the reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel in M. Klinghardt, 2015, 2020, 2021.
67 Tertullians sämtliche Schriften (trans. Karl Adam and Heinrich Kellner; Köln: 1882)
68 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.1.1.
69 Ib.
70 Ib., 4.2.3: “Marcion evangelio, scilicet suo, nullum adscribit auctorem, quasi non licuerit illi titulum quoque afingere.”
71 See Epiph., Pan. 42.11.6.
72 See, for example, Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.2.
73 V. Lukas, Rhetorik und literarischer ‘Kampf’ (Frankfurt a.M.: 2008), 224.
74 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.11.12 and 19.1.
75 Ib., 4.11.12: “forma sermonis in Christo nova, cum similitudines obicit, cum quaestiones refutat.”
76 What we know from Papias of Hierapolis, preserved in an anonymous Latin preface to John’s Gospel, complements this picture: Marcion seems to have attacked the Gospel of John as being not the true one.
77 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.4.1.
78 Ib., 4.4.4.
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Tertullian adds Marcion’s further opinion:79
How absurd it would be that when we have proved ours the older, and Marcion’s the later, ours should be taken to have already been falsified, before it received material from the true one, and Marcion’s be believed to have suffered plagiarism through ours, before it [= Marcion’s] was even published;80 and in the end <how absurd> that that which is later should be reckoned more true, even after the publication to the world of all those great works and evidences of the Christian religion which surely could never have been produced except for the truth of the gospel—even before the gospel was true.81
This passage provides vital information about Marcion’s own position. According to Marcion—whether right or wrong—needs to be seen:
- 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 aemulationes of his own (Marcionis!),82 as copies, plagiarisms or attempted betterings. The bettering 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.
. - The taking of material from Marcion has taken place, before Marcion’s had “even published” (editum) his Gospel. In Tertullian editum, indeed, means authored and published by an author. It follows from this information that Marcion’s own Gospel was taken by several people, excerpted, copied, reworked, interpolated and made public, even before Marcion himself as author had published his original version. In De praescriptione, Tertullian refines Marcion’s accusation, according to which Marcion’s plagiarisers had introduced of their own by omission or addition or alteration things contrary to what they had found in his work.
Or in short, they had introduced what Marcion regarded “a corrupt text into the Scriptures,” while Marcion himself claimed that he “should be thought to have introduced” nothing but the Gospel (illos … intulisse). Marcion must have pointed to the fact that he was the one who wrote it (stilo usus est), at which others laid their naked hands with knifes to falsify his Gospel to suit their arguments.83
. - We have to reckon with two stages of Marcion going public with his Gospel, perhaps even with two different recensions of his text:
4.1. A first draft of the Gospel, probably for his class-room (without the Antitheses and perhaps without Paul’s letters). This text provided the basis for Matthew and John and Mark and Luke. This first recension is only accessible for us today via those later canonical Gospels.
4.2. A second edition of this text, perhaps in a second recension, now published by Marcion, prefaced by his Antitheses and with the added Epistles of Paul under the title “New Testament.” Only the published version of Marcion’s New Testament was available to Tertullian, and it is this recension which was hitherto the only one known to scholarship.
Perhaps the one which instigated Acts to be written.
. - In this sense, Tertullian is correct, when he calls Marcion’s Gospel “that which is later” than “all those great works and evidences of the Christian religion,” namely the Gospels he used, but as is now clear, this does not contradict Marcion’s draft version being earlier. Tertullian simply remained almost silent about Marcion’s earlier recension, an information that only lurked through Tertullian’s report about Marcion’s own opinion. And according to this, Marcion did not refer to, or made use of an earlier Gospel, but he himself produced the first draft and the second version which he himself published.
. - Marcion’s views give us a first-hand insight into the making of the first Gospel and Gospels in Rome around the years 140-5 AD. It
is an irony of history, of course, that Marcion himself had drawn the attention to the unauthorised publications of his Gospels. However, his literary innovation of the new “genus” of a Gospel sparked an enormous literary output, both in copying and altering him as well as discussing with him his apparently sole literary work. Despite a soon ensuing hardened debate between so many authors who tried to make up their minds of the validity and truthfulness of the accounts of either of these texts which can still be seen from the preface to Luke’s Gospel, people embraced many of Marcion’s principle ideas.
The first further initiatives after the copying and editing of Marcion’s Gospel seem to be the harmonization attempts, already undertaken during Marcion’s lifetime and soon after when perhaps Justin, then Tatian and Theophilus created Gospel harmonies. Interestingly, none of these drastic redacting activities provoked any debate, the only author who remains discussed during these decades is Marcion as one does not debate epigones, but forerunners.
79 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.5.4
80 Quam et editum could be referring to Tertullian’s Gospel, but the following sentence makes more sense, if it is referring to Marcion’s Gospel—as Tertullian wants to underline that his was earlier and Marcion’s later—hence the absurdity arises in his eyes: that Marcion’s should have suffered plagiarism through a published Gospel even before it was published itself. In addition, the grammatical structure of the sentence aligns itself to this interpretation, as we have Tertullian’s Gospel as subject of the first part of the passive sentence (“Tertullian’s should be taken … before it [Tertullian’s] was received…”), while Marcion’s directs the next part of the still passive sentence (“Marcion’s be believed …, before it [Marcion’s] was even published”).
81 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.4.2
82 Not 'Marcionite,' as the German Kellner translates in the BKV.
83 Tert., De praescr. 38
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pp. 77, 79
When one adds Marcion to the Synoptics, and Irenaeus was the first to do this,84 one makes extraordinary findings.
The commonly accepted assumption is that our three Synoptics, Mark, Matthew and Luke are literally related, and that, because of the many parallels between Matthew and Luke, these two are based on Mark, the oldest Gospel; and because of the parallels that Matthew and Luke share, they had [a] further potential source, Q, sayings of Christ, a [hypothetical] 'witness' which is no longer extant.
On that basis, however, it is difficult to explain, how, both based on the same two foundations of Mark and Q, in which no birth-stories are present, the unrelated Matthew and Luke developed birth-stories of Jesus, indeed very different ones. Luke with his over 2,000 words story [in Luke 1:26-2:7] agrees in only less than 20 words with the much shorter roughly 900 words account of Matthew in [Matt 1:18-2:11] ...
To Marcion, who’s Gospel did not provide the birth and youth stories of Jesus, as mentioned, but in which Jesus as an adult came down from above, from God, Jesus is and remains, from the start through to his resurrection, an angelic divine figure ... he is the transcendent God himself. This was the reason, as Tertullian explains to us, why Marcion called this text “gospel,” “euangelion,” namely the good message of an angel.85 It is the same reason, why early Christian authors after Marcion were rather reluctant in picking up this title. The entire Gospel, therefore, serves to show the antithesis of flesh and spirit and the impossibility for the flesh to grasp the spirit ...
84 Iren., Adv. haer. 4.6.1.
85 Tert., Adv. Marc. 4.4.5.
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