Gospel of Marcion

The Gospel of Marcion or the "Gospel of the Lord" was a text used by the mid-second century Christian teacher Marcion to the exclusion of the other gospels. Its reconstructed fragments now appear among the New Testament apocrypha. So many Catholic apologists wrote treatises against Marcion after his death, in addition to the noted diatribe by Tertullian, that it has been possible to reconstruct almost the whole of Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord" from their quotations. Marcion, then, is known only through his critics, who considered him a major threat to the form of Christianity that they knew.

Relationship to the Gospel of Luke

There are two possible relationships between Marcion's gospel and the Gospel of Luke.

Marcion as revisionist of Luke

Church Fathers wrote and the majority of modern scholars agree that Marcion edited Luke to fit his own theology, Marcionism. This view is consistent with the way he altered other books in his canon. It is also likely because Luke's gospel was believed to be complete by Marcion's time. In it, he eliminated the first two chapters concerning the nativity and beginning at Capernaum and made modifications of the remainder suitable to Marcionism. The differences in the texts below highlight the gnostic view that, first, Jesus did not follow the Prophets and, second, the earth is evil.

Marcion as pre-dating Luke

Charles B. Waite was one of the first to propose in "History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two-Hundred" in 1881 that Marcion's Gospel may have preceded Luke's Gospel. John Knox (not the same as the Scottish reformer John Knox) in "Marcion and the New Testament" also defends this hypothesis. Some recent scholars have agreed. In this case, Luke's gospel was not finished. There are two possibilities: Either Marcion and Luke both based their gospels on an earlier, common source (such as Matthew and Mark in the Augustinian hypothesis), or the Gospel of Luke was based on Marcion's gospel. For an example of evidence that may support this view, compare to ; some scholars question whether Marcion deleted 5:39 from his Gospel or whether it was added later, by Proto-orthodox Christianity, to counteract a Marcionist interpretation of 5:36-38. See also New Wine into Old Wineskins.

Justification

Theologian Adolf von Harnack - in agreement with the traditional account of Marcion as revisionist - discusses the reasons for his alterations to Luke. According to von Harnack, Marcion believed there could be only one true gospel, all others being fabrications by pro-Jewish elements, determined to sustain worship of Yahweh. Furthermore, he believed that the true gospel was given directly to Paul by Christ himself, but was later corrupted by those same elements, who also corrupted the Pauline epistles. He saw the attribution of this gospel to "Luke" as another fabrication. Marcion thus began what he saw as a restoration of the original gospel as given to Paul. [Adolf von Harnack: "Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God" (1924) translated by John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma]

Von Harnack writes that:

:"For this task he did not appeal to a divine revelation, any special instruction, nor to a pneumatic assistance [...] From this it immediately follows that for his purifications of the text - and this is usually overlooked - he neither could claim nor did claim absolute certainty."

External links

* [http://www.webcom.com/~gnosis/library/marcion.htm Marcion: The Gospel of the Lord] : five of the original total twenty-one chapters (in English)
* G.R.S. Mead, [http://www.webcom.com/~gnosis/library/meadmarcion.htm "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten" (London and Benares, 1900; 3rd edition 1931)] : pp.241- 249 Introduction to Marcion
* [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3827/Library.html The Center for Marcionite Research Library] : contains a full text in English
* [http://www.archive.org/details/historyofchristi00waitrich History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two-Hundred by Charles B. Waite] : It includes a chapter where compares Marcion and Luke

References