The earliest possible mention of Marcion is preserved in the anti-Marcionite prologue to John. Papias is referenced in relation to a tradition that John condemned Marcion for heresy. It could suggest that Papias knew both Marcion and a claim that John opposed him. Given that Patristic evidence has little in the way of credibility or truthfulness, it could just be Irenaeus or someone like Irenaeus making this claim about Papias and/or John. Against Heresies misrepresents Papias’s statement about John, the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Matthew that made its way into Eusebius’s Church History. Irenaeus expands the report in Papias to claim that John himself authored a gospel. More importantly he implies that John was part of an apostolic– undoubtedly the very ‘pillars’ mentioned in Galatians chapter 2 – effort which ‘brought together’ [contulerunt] the four gospels which now make up our New Testament canon.
Papias knows nothing about this ‘textual collection drive.’ In Eusebius’s citation John the elder – not John the apostle – just so happens to be talking about the differences between the gospel of Mark and the gospel of Matthew. By the time Against Heresies got hold of the passage it became the cornerstone of the building of the apostolic Church. The development of this myth was specifically designed to address a clear problem which emerges in Papias – Mark came before Matthew. The Philosophumena, a heretical treatise related to but ultimately quite different from Against Heresies – infers that the gospel of Mark was the Marcionite gospel. If somehow the gospel of Mark was the text which the pillars received in Galatians chapter 2 and the gospel of Matthew resulted from the various emendations which these ‘Judaizers’ made to the text, it is not difficult to see why Irenaeus would want to invent to introduce another ‘gospel’ to obscure the parallels between Papias and Marcion with respect to their understanding of apostolic history.
Without Luke there is a neat simplicity in apostolic history – Paul opposed the Jerusalem Church. Paul claimed that his gospel was first and Papias agrees in the very manner that Peter in the Clementine confirms that “he who was among those born of woman (Simon aka ‘Paul’) came first; then he who was among the sons of men came second. It were possible, following this order, to perceive to what series Simon belongs, who came before me to the Gentiles, and to which I belong who have come after him, and have come in upon him as light upon darkness, as knowledge upon ignorance, as healing upon disease.” The whole world makes a whole lot of sense until Luke, the Acts of the Apostles and John come along to turn things on their heads.
The only reason scholars accept Irenaeus’s version of apostolic history is because modern orthodoxy develops from his claims. Against Heresies doesn’t cite any actual evidence when it makes the claim that Marcion:
Irenaeus initiates an understanding – perpetuated by Tertullian – where Marcion is understood to have had access to all four gospels but only chose Luke. This element of ‘choice’ might have something to do with the origin of the Christian understanding of ‘heresy.’mutilates the Gospel which is 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.
I want to stress again that all the while he and Tertullian promote this understanding of Luke as the inseparable witness to Paul, the Marcionites held fast to the understanding that Galatians confirmed a break between Paul and the Jerusalem Church and Matthew was a falsified version of Paul’s gospel. Luke was needed to basically take out Papias as a witness for the prosecution – namely that ‘yes Matthew was a reworking of Mark.’ By making Luke Paul’s gospel Irenaeus sets up a different understanding of what happened with the synoptic gospels. Marcion came along a century after these events and – according to the fable - took the gospel of Luke falsifying it to reflect his own ideas about another god beside the Creator and a separation between the Law and Gospel a reality. Yet the story obviously breaks down as Paul has a connection to these same ideas in the Clementine Literature and the Acts of Peter. It is only the inherited belief of scholars in Luke, Luke’s ‘inseparability’ from Paul and the Acts of the Apostles which keeps the rather flimsy claims of Irenaeus alive.
Much of this has already been noted by Baur among others. What I’d like to do in this paper is point out the complete lack of evidence presented by Irenaeus for the claim that the Marcionite gospel is a corrupt version of Luke. The evidence better fits a situation where Irenaeus established four gospels, one for each of the principal heresies and Luke was molded into the Marcionite counter-gospel. In Book Three we get as close to anything resembling a proof text where he writes that “Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from those [passages] which he still retains.” Of course, Irenaeus is still making an unsubstantiated accusation against Marcion. There is nothing related which proves that Marcionite falsified Luke. Nevertheless the argumentation so resembles statements found in Tertullian’s Against Marcion that it is difficult not to accept that Irenaeus’s Against Marcion was a previous version of the surviving Latin text.
The idea that Irenaeus lays behind a text of Tertullian already has a precedent – Against the Valentinians is a text of Tertullian in name only. It is plagiarized sometimes word for word from the first twelve chapters of Against Heresies. A similar situation exists with respect to Book Three of Against Marcion and an earlier treatise of Justin preserved in Against the Jews. The point now is that not only does the methodology of Against Marcion Book Four so resembles the plan for Irenaeus’s Against Marcion but Tertullian himself acknowledges this present text as the third version of a lost original exemplar with at least of these three texts being attributed to a different author. So it is that when he says:
Too little attention is paid to the strange methodology acknowledged here coming down to basically ‘I will use Luke against Marcion because that’s the original source for his text.’ The case for Marcion forging Luke is sidestepped completely. The echo of Irenaeus’s circular logic in Against Heresies - “Marcion, mutilating that according to Luke, is proved … from those [passages] which he still retains” – is unmistakable.Every sentence, indeed the whole structure, arising from Marcion's impiety and profanity, I now challenge in terms of that gospel [Luke] which he has by manipulation made his own.
This isn’t to say of course that there isn’t a charge of ‘interpolation’ of a gospel. The point of this paper is to note that it isn’t made for Luke. Luke is simply brought forward to ‘confirm’ that Marcion’s gospel derives from Luke and – strangely – earlier material arguing Marcion falsified Matthew in particular or a gospel like Matthew is left standing. I will make the case that the four gospels were developed after the first edition of Against Marcion. The first edition here went back to Justin who used something resembling a Matthew-like gospel-harmony but which did not contain the Matthean Antitheses. Justin made the case that Marcion falsified his gospel by adding ‘the Antitheses’ and then Irenaeus in the second edition of Against Heresies simply reworked the original material in Greek to reflect a four gospel system. He rearranged Justin’s lost work (which he references in Book Four interestingly enough) and – importantly – organized the fourfold canon according to points Justin developed against Marcion including, most significantly, the placement of the contentious ‘Antitheses’ in Matthew.
To understand the situation we have to go back to Papias. Papias preserved something that John said about Mark being the first gospel but lacking order and Matthew being an improvement over Mark. From that germinal seed, it was imagined – or ‘envisioned’ - that John supervised a gospel canon – a collection of gospels which together formed a ‘rule’ and that not only did John write a gospel but that another gospel – Luke – was the key to hold the fourfold form of the text together. Each one of these gospels, it was presumed, had a heresy associated with it. Matthew had the so-called ‘Ebionites,’ John the Valentinians and of course Luke the Marcionites. But now that we see that Against Marcion likely only identified Luke as the gospel of the Marcionites in later versions of its development the fact that the Philosophumena – itself one of many ‘alternative versions’ of Irenaeus’s heresiological tome – identifies the gospel of Mark as the Marcionite gospel becomes extremely significant. It reinforces the understanding that a Matthew-like was likely the gospel the original gospel of the author of version 1 of Against Marcion.
We can see this understanding reflected in the first line of Against Marcion preserving undoubtedly the original sense of a Matthew-based Marcionite corruption argument:
In other words, The author counts three versions of Against Marcion floating around in antiquity. The first is the ur-text, ‘that which he wrote in times past,’ the second is one which was stolen by someone who became an apostate, the third is the present text which not only differs from ‘version 2’ but strangely also ‘version 1.’ We can be certain that one of the changes that emerged from version 1 to either 2 or 3 was the introduction of the ‘Marcion’s gospel is a version of Luke’ argument. How do we know this? We need only go back to the core argument that Marcion falsified an ‘apostolic gospel’ original belonging to the author’s Christian community.Whatever in times past we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of [Si quid retro gestum est nobis adversus Marcionem, iam hinc viderit]
This is the topsy turvy battle that rages throughout Against Marcion and Against Heresies and goes back to the statement from Galatians about Paul presenting his gospel to the pillars of the Jerusalem church. Both the author and the Marcionites acknowledged that this was a written gospel. But strangely both Irenaeus and Tertullian’s text of Galatians has a corruption whereby Paul said that he did submit to the authority of the Jerusalem Church – meaning that he willingly submitted to their changes to his gospel. Our text and the Marcionite text of Galatians has Paul has he did not submit to their authority – meaning that he opposed their editorial changes to his text. We can imagine that for at least a few generations the battle was over whether or not Paul consented to the changes made by the pillars of Jerusalem. But it was Irenaeus’s genius to change the nature of the debate by inventing Luke as the gospel of Paul.
The Marcionites of course said that the written gospel was by Paul’s own hand. The original draft of Against Marcion necessarily understood that the gospel of the community of the pillars of Jerusalem was necessarily a version of Paul’s gospel which he willingly submitted to James and Peter. This situation sounds uncannily similar to Papias’s statements about Matthew being a corrected version of Mark – one which made up for the deficiencies of the original. In other words, even without having the Marcionite gospel before us we can see a situation where Mark was the Marcionite gospel. Yet the very manner in which Against Marcion Book Four has come down to us betrays the fact that Luke was unknown to the author of version 1. Marcion is always identified as a ‘gospel falsifier’ but never with respect to Luke. The only mention of gospel ‘interpolation,’ ‘falsification,’ ‘adulteration,’ ‘taking out’ passages takes place with respect to non-Lukan gospels specifically Matthew and on one occasion Mark.
I want to pay very close attention to the words Tertullian uses. In the end we will see that like Irenaeus before him he provides absolutely no evidence for the textual manipulation of Luke. At the very beginning we hear a summary which reads:
Again, there is no mention of specific adulterations made to Luke. Then in what follows again in the next chapter, we read:You have there my short and sharp answer to the Antitheses. I pass on next to show how his gospel—certainly not Judaic but Pontic—is in places adulterated [adulterati] [4.2.1]
Once again there is no reference to any specific alterations to Luke. Instead Against Marcion goes back to Galatians chapter 2 to debate whether any of this supports the Marcionite contention that Paul’s gospel was stolen and manipulated by the Jerusalem Church.If however the gospel which the apostles brought together [contulerunt] with Paul's was beyond reproach, and they were rebuked only for inconsistency of conduct, and yet false apostles have falsified [interpolaverunt] the truth of their gospels, and from them our copies are derived, what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators [apostolorum instrumentum quod adulteros]—that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke? Or if it has been completely de- stroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one. Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours? Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours—though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title—then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified (adulterato) in its title. [4.3]
The Marcionites claim to have Paul’s original gospel written by the apostle himself. Irenaeus developed a counter-story where Luke was ‘inseparable’ from Paul in other words, we don’t need to have a tradition of Paul ourselves we need only trust what Luke says. But again interpolare here does not apply to Marcionite treatment of Luke. Instead it is clearly part of a binary choice being set up between the Marcionite gospel and a Matthew-like text:
I will argue that the reference to Luke was added later by the second or third revision. But the important thing to see again is that the situation in Galatians is what is being debated, the Marcionites saying that Paul condemned Peter for falsifying his written gospel.So we must pull away at the rope of contention, swaying with equal effort to the one side or the other. I say that mine is true: Marcion makes that claim for his. I say that Marcion's is falsified (adulteratum): Marcion says the same of mine. Who shall decide between us? … If that gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke—we shall see <later> whether it is <accepted by> Marcion—if that is the same that Marcion by his Antitheses accuses of having been falsified [interpolatum] by the upholders of Judaism with a view to its being so combined in one body with the law and the prophets that they might also pretend that Christ had that origin, evidently he could only have brought accusation against something he had found there already. [4.4]
As we go through all the explicit mentions of ‘falsification’ or literary ‘corruption’ we should never lose sight again of the fact that there is never any reference to any ‘interpolation’ of Luke by Marcion. In the next chapter we read:
There is clearly an accusation of Marcion ‘emending’ a gospel, but no specific charge related to that gospel being the gospel of Luke nor any evidence supporting this contention put forth. It is only stated that the Marcionites using Galatians as their frame of reference identify the Jerusalem church as having stolen and falsified their gospel. All that follows from Tertullian is little more than a ‘I know you are but what am I’ exercise.No one passes censure on things afterwards to be, when he does not know they are afterwards to be. Correction [Emendatio] does not come before fault. As corrector [Emendator] apparently of a gospel which from the times of Tiberius to those of Antoninus had suffered subversion, Marcion comes to light, first and alone, after Christ had waited for him all that time, repenting of having been in a hurry to send forth apostles without Marcion to protect them. And yet heresy, which is always in this manner correcting [emendat] the gospels, and so corrupting them, is the effect of human temerity, not of divine authority … And so, by making these corrections [emendat], he assures us of two things—that ours came first, for he is correcting [emendans] what he has found there already, and that that other came later which he has put together out of his corrections [emendatione] of ours, and so made into a new thing of his own. [4.4]
So what are we left with? The only thing that either Tertullian or Irenaeus actually say is that Marcion is a falsifier and Marcion’s gospel is Luke. He makes an assertion based on these two claims that Marcion ‘must have’ falsified Luke without ever citing a specific falsification. This is explicit in the next chapter of Book Four:
This is as close as Tertullian ever comes to providing any actual evidence for Marcion’s emendation of Luke – he simply makes a general charge both for Luke’s inseparability from Paul and Marcion’s corruption. But no actual textual evidence. The only examples of ‘interpolation’ or ‘alteration’ come from the other gospels – Matthew and Mark.So then, since it is evident that these (gospels) too existed in the churches, how is it that Marcion has not laid hands on them as well, either to correct if falsified (aut emendanda si adulterata), or to acknowledge if correct? For it is conceivable that any who were engaged in corrupting one gospel might have taken even greater interest in the corruption of gospels whose authenticity they knew had wider acceptance—false apostles for this very reason, that it was apostles they would be counterfeiting by this forgery. The more then Marcion might have corrected things which would have needed correction (emendasset quae fuissent emendanda) if they had been corrupt, the more he has in fact certified that those have not been corrupted which he has not thought it necessary to correct (non fuisse corrupta quae non putavit emendanda). So he did correct (emendavit) the one he thought was corrupt. Yet even this he had no right to correct: because it was not corrupt. For if the apostolic gospels have come down to us in their integrity, while the gospel of Luke, in the form in which we have it, is in such agreement with the standard of those others that it is retained in the churches along with them, it is at once evident that Luke's also came down in integrity until Marcion's act of sacrilege. In fact it was only when Marcion laid hands upon it, that it became different from the apostolic gospels, and in opposition to them. [4.5]
The case against ‘the Antitheses’ is a perfect case in point. While many have tried to imagine it as a credal statement ‘fixed’ to the front of the canon, others have rightly noted it is simply a more radical version of the Matthean Antitheses (Matthew 5:18 – 44):
Tertullian says he is advancing toward demonstrating that Marcion has ‘fixed’ the Antitheses. To be certain that might imply that he had a version of Luke which he fixed parts of Matthew on to. But I will contend that this isn’t what is being suggested here.I now advance a step further, while I call to account, as I have promised, Marcion's gospel in his own version of it, with the design, even so, of proving it adulterated [adulteratum]. Certainly the whole of the work he has done, including the prefixing of his Antitheses, he directs to the one purpose of setting up opposition between the Old Testament and the New, and thereby putting his Christ in separation from the Creator, as belonging to another god, and having no connection with the law and the prophets. Certainly that is why he has expunged [erasit] all the things that oppose his view, that are in accord with the Creator, on the plea that they have been woven in by his partisans; but has retained those that accord with his opinion. These it is we shall call to account, with these we shall grapple, to see if they will favour my case, not his, to see if they will put a check on Marcion's pretensions. Then it will become clear that these things have been expunged [erasa] by the same disease of heretical blindness by which the others have been retained. Such will be the purpose and plan of my treatise, on those precise terms which have been agreed by both parties. [4.6.2]
The original author clearly did not accept Marcion’s version of the Antitheses. But as we shall see this is clearly a battle over the specific contextualization of Matthew’s Antitheses. It has nothing to do with a corruption of Luke.
All previous commentators seem ‘puzzled’ by the consistent Matthean references without noticing that all adulteration, interpolation, erasure, take away refences to gospel passages inevitably involved non-Lukan and more often than not Matthean material. The reason for this should be obvious – the deepest layer of the text – the one which corresponds to the first version of Against Marcion – had nothing whatsoever to do with the charge that Marcion falsified Luke.He (Jesus) makes it clear on his first appearance that he is come not to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them (Matt 5:17). For Marcion has blotted this out as an interpolation (ut additum erasit). But in vain will he deny that Christ said in words a thing which he at once partly accomplished in act. For in the meanwhile he fulfilled the prophecy in respect of place. From heaven straightway into the synagogue. As the saying goes, let us get down to it: to your task, Marcion: remove ( aufer ) even this from the gospel, I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and, It is not <meet> to take away (auferre) the children's bread and give it to dogs:c for this gives the impression that Christ belongs to Israel. I have plenty of acts, if you take away his words. Take away (Detrahe) Christ's sayings, and the facts will speak
Again this situation confirms that the first version of Against Marcion knew nothing about Luke and only referenced Marcionite excision from Matthew.So then he has commanded the law to be fulfilled: in whatever sense he gave this command, he can in the same sense have stated the principle, I am not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. What good then did it do you to excise from the gospel a sentence which remains there still? [Quid ergo tibi fuit de evangelio erasisse quod salvum est?] You have admitted that he did for kindness' sake something which you deny that he said. So there is proof that he said it, because he did do it, and that it is you that have excised the Lord's words from the gospel, and not our people that have foisted them in [et te potius vocem domini de evangelio eradicasse quam nostros iniecisse]
This pattern as we have noted continues through the rest of the document whenever the topic of interpolation comes up. For instance Marcion ‘taking out’ something appears throughout chapter 17 but as always it is a change made to Matthew. So we read:
The ‘rain and sunshine’ that Marcion has ‘taken out’ of his gospel only makes sense if the author originally argued that Marcion cut things out of Matthew:Because, he continues, he is kind unto the unthankful and evil. Well done, Marcion. Cleverly enough have you deprived [detraxisti] him of rain and sunshine, that he might not be taken for the Creator. Yet who is this kind one, who has never been heard of until now? How could he be kind when from him had proceeded no good gifts of this sort of kindness with which <he had acted> who gave us the loan of sunshine and showers without expectation of any return from the human race? This the Creator has done, who in return for all his liberality in works of nature even until now bears with men while they pay their debt of thanks- giving more readily to idols than to himself. [4.17.6]
Of course once modern apologists hear that Marcion prefers Lukan readings to Matthew they completely forget the focus of the first few chapters where it says that Marcion corrupted the author’s gospel and Marcion was a bad guy.Matthew 5:44 – 45 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Luke 6:35-36 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
A little later in the same chapter Marcion is condemned for not preserving Matthew once again:
Evans tries to pass this off as “a lapse of memory” because “the sword comes from Matt. 10: 34; Luke 12: 53 has 'division.’” But this totally ignores that Marcion is only said to have ‘interpolated,’ ‘erased,’ ‘left out’ or whatever else passages from gospels other than Luke. Indeed when Tertullian ridicules Marcion for the way his disciple Apelles allegedly started his own when Jesus said “a disciple is not above his master” (Matthew 10:24) the statement here fits the pattern of the rest of the work – “I am surprised that in this alone Marcion's adulterating (adulterium) hand lost its cunning.” [4.17.12] Given the context of all the other statements it is clear that Matthew and not Luke is meant here.He will himself be found to give a better explanation of the character of that fire when he proceeds, Suppose ye that I am come to send peace on earth? I tell you, Nay: but division. The book says, A sword: but Marcion corrects (emendat ) it, as though division were not the function of a sword. So then, as he has not come for peace, by fire he means the fire of overthrow. Like battle, like fire: like sword, like flame: neither of them proper for <your> lord [4.17]
A similar statement in 43:7 makes clear that there are no references to Marcion interpolating Luke:
In short Against Marcion develops from the understanding that Marcion falsified, corrected, interpolated a gospel like Matthew rather than Luke. To argue otherwise is to ignore what Against Marcion actually says and act instead as a protector of the reputation of the Church Fathers. Because it becomes manifestly obvious that the Marcion falsified Luke understanding is a complete lie.Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him----I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, "A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have," so transposed, as to mean, "A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones; "that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, "A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?"