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Christ’s Torah

This volume explores the creation of the collection now known as the New
Testament. While it is generally accepted that it did not emerge as a collection prior
to the late second century CE, a more controversial question is how it came to be.
How did the writings that make up the New Testament—The Gospels, the
so-called Praxapostolos (Acts and the canonical letters), the Epistles of Paul, and
Revelation—make their way into the collection, and what do we know about their
possible historical origins, and in turn the emergence of the New Testament itself?
The New Testament as we know it first became recognisable in more detail in
Irenaeus of Lyon towards the end of the second century CE. However, questions
remain as to how and by whom was it redacted. Was it a slow, organic process in
which texts written by different authors, members of different communities and in
various places, grew together into one book? Or were certain writings compiled
on the basis of an editorial decision by an individual or a group of editors, revised
for this purpose and partly harmonised with each other? This volume sketches out
the complex development of the New Testament, arguing that key second century
scholars played an important role in the emergence of the canonical collection and
putting forward the possible historical origins of the text’s composition.
Christ’s Torah: The Making of the New Testament in the Second Century is of
interest to students and scholars working on the New Testament and anyone with
an interest in early Christianity more broadly.

Markus Vinzent, who had held the H.G. Wood Chair in the History of Theology
at the University of Birmingham (1999–2010) and was Professor for Theology and
Patristics at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College
London (2010–2021, ret.), is Fellow of the Max-Weber-Centre for Anthropological
and Cultural Studies, University of Erfurt (2011–present).
Christ’s Torah
The Making of the New Testament
in the Second Century

Markus Vinzent
First published in English 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Christi Thora. Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments im 2. Jahrhundert by
Markus Vinzent © 2022 Verlag Herder GmbH, Freiburg im Breisgau
This English edition © 2024 Routledge
The right of Markus Vinzent to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
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utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vinzent, Markus, author. | Vinzent, Markus. Christi Thora.
Title: Christ’s Torah : the making of the New Testament in the
second century / Markus Vinzent.
Other titles: Christi Thora. English
Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023037393 (print) | LCCN 2023037394 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032457024 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032457031 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003378303 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. New Testament—History. | Bible. New
Testament—Canon.
Classification: LCC BS2315 .V5613 2024 (print) | LCC BS2315 (ebook) |
DDC 225.1—dc23/eng/20231003
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LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023037394
ISBN: 978-1-032-45702-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-45703-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-37830-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003378303
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

Introduction 1

1 The New Testament as a Collection 11

  I. The Collection in Irenaeus, Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius, and
Dionysius 12
1. Irenaeus of Lyon—Witness to an Untitled Collection
Comprising Four Gospels, the Praxapostolos, the Pauline
Epistles, and Revelation 13
2. Polycarp of Smyrna and Papias of Hierapolis—
A Non-Witness and the Oldest Witness 16
3. Ignatius of Antioch—An Unusual Witness 28
4. Dionysius of Corinth—Witness to the Revision
of the Collections 34
II. The Precanonical New Testament, Attributed to
Marcion—The Template 38
1. Marcion of Sinope 38
2. Marcion, the Creator of the “New Testament”? 41
III. Irenaeus and the Counter-Portfolio to the Precanonical
New Testament 52
IV. Alternatives 68
V. Result 74

2 The Sub-Collections 98
I. The Gospels 98
1. The Origin 98
2. The Four Gospels as a Sub-Collection 103
3. Individual Gospels 105
A. Gospel of Marcion (*Ev) 105
B. Gospel of Mark 120
C. Gospel of Matthew 142
vi Contents

D. Gospel of Luke 166

E. Gospel of John 213
4. Synopsis of the Five Gospels 239
A. Five Gospels Instead of Four 239
B. John the Baptist and Jesus 244
II. The Praxapostolos 245
1. The Praxapostolos and the Pauline Epistles 245
2. Historical Setting 248
3. The Praxapostolos in Irenaeus 251
4. John the Baptist 254
III. Paul’s Epistles 260
1. Who Was Paul? 260
2. Two Versions of Paul 261
IV. The Revelation of John 271

3 The New Law of Christ 305

  I. Kindness Instead of Justice 305
1. Violence Within One’s Own Ranks and
the Character of God 306
2. Fighting Against Violence 310
3. Reconsidering and Redefining Religion
in the Post-Bar Kokhba Period 314
II. Poverty Instead of Wealth 319
1. The Beatitudes and the Woes 319
2. Poverty Instead of Property 334

Outlook: The New Testament as a Second-Century Collection 351

Bibliography355
Index382
Introduction

The late Josef Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI, divided the early years of
­Christianity into two periods: the beginnings of Christianity in the time of the
Apostles and the beginnings of the Church during the time of the Apostolic Fathers.
He elaborated:

In the past months we have reflected on the figures of the individual Apostles
and on the first witnesses of the Christian faith whom the New Testament
writings mention. Now we turn our attention to the Apostolic Fathers, that is,
the first and second generation of the Church after the Apostles. And so we
can see how the journey of the Church begins in history.1

The canonical New Testament is a collection of writings that comprises twenty-

seven books and is currently available in Greek in the worldwide authoritative
28th edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece, edited by Nestle-Aland. It con-
tains about 138,000 words;2 hence its length is at the upper end of the range for an
average novel3 that can still be easily read all the way through. According to the
majority of New Testament scholars today, while the development of the collection
dates to the second century, most of its twenty-seven books, and especially the four
Gospels, are thought to have been written during the first century.4
The fact that this collection is made up of first-century Christian writings clearly
distinguishes it from all other early Christian writings commonly dated to the
second century and, therefore, seen as belonging to patristic literature. The lat-
ter begins with the so-called Apostolic Fathers—a seventeenth-century assignation
referring to the most important Christian writings of the second century regarded as
orthodox, such as the letters of Ignatius, the letters of Clement of Rome, and so on.5
To this day, the New Testament belongs to the domain of scholars specialized in the
discipline of “New Testament studies,” the number of whom exceeds 8,000 around
the globe, separate from those specializing in early Christianity and patristics (the
Church fathers), of which there exist just over 1,000 worldwide.
In recent decades, however, there have been significant shifts in terms of the dat-
ing of the individual writings that make up the New Testament. As far as the ques-
tion of the time of composition of the four Gospels and the mutual relationships
between them is concerned,6 it has recently been proposed that the so-called Gospel

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378303-1
2 Introduction

of Marcion (*Ev) from the middle of the second century could possibly lead to
completely new insights in the assessment of these relationships.7 The origin of
the Acts of the Apostles has likewise been increasingly shifted from the first to the
second century;8 the so-called Pastoral Epistles (1–2 Tim, Tit)9 and 2 Peter have
recently been convincingly dated to the second century,10 and weighty evidence has
been presented that would relegate the Apocalypse of John to the late reign of the
Emperor Hadrian (117–138 CE).11
Having said that, most New Testament scholars continue to follow the rough
outline of the composition of the early Christian writings as presented here in tabu-
lar form:12

Year CE Sources

ca. 30–33 Oral message of Jesus of Nazareth and the risen Christ
ca. 40–50 Paul’s Epistles
ca. 60–80/90 Mark (ca. 70), Matthew (after 70), Luke (before 90)13
ca. 90–100 Acts,14 Catholic Epistles,15 John, Revelation
ca. 100–200 The Apostolic Fathers

Were I to accept this chronology, together with the disciplinary split between
New Testament studies and early Christian history, I would not and could not
have written the book presented here, my training and my venia legendi16 being
in Church history rather than New Testament studies. The fact that I have been
asked by my own Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College
London to contribute to New Testament courses was due to either the contribution
being limited to sources considered to have emerged later, such as the Gospel of
Marcion, or staff shortages in the underfunded university landscape in Britain.
Despite the contemporary existence of a separation between New Testament
scholarship and Church history (or early Church history, also called patristics), it
may come as a surprise to some readers that this split is a rather modern phenom-
enon. Martin Hengel, who combined both fields in his own research, once wrote
that the subject of New Testament scholarship as a separate field of study was
indeed a young discipline17 and pointed out that the first chairs in this discipline
were established as late as the last third of the nineteenth century.18 Yet there were
still great scholars who combined both subjects in their teaching and research at
the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, the Protestant Hans Lietzmann
(1875–1972)19 and the Catholic Franz-Josef Dölger.20 The recently deceased Amer-
ican New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado emphasized in his inaugural lecture at
the University of Edinburgh in 1999 that until well into the twentieth century, there
were “scholars of the Old Testament and of systematic theology”21 and “above all
church historians” who had taught the New Testament in the faculties.22 Even at my
own institution of King’s College London, the professor of Church history in the
1920s, Claude Jenkins, taught and researched not only medieval and Reformation/
post-Reformation topics but also patristic and New Testament texts.23 And when, a
little later in the 1930s, Randolph Vincent Greenwood Tasker had to teach patris-
tics, he already had years as a lecturer in New Testament exegesis at King’s College
 Introduction 3

under his belt, a double specialization he maintained until after the Second World
War, when he was appointed professor in both fields.24 The same went for Robert
Victor Sellers,25 who was appointed Professor of Biblical and Historical Theology
in 1948.
The split between New Testament scholarship and Church history is ultimately
the result of a late nineteenth-century clash between Romanticism and Modernism.
At this time, both traditionalist and historical-critical approaches fundamentally
clung to the Kantian distinction between the inaccessible divine and the uninspired
secular. Historians had to deal with realia, while the New Testament belonged to a
canon of inspired writings to be protected by the Church.26 New Testament scholar-
ship was thus an expression and representative of the latter and had to move within
its institutional framework.
Nowadays, as the annual conferences of the international Society of Biblical
Literature based in the United States testify, this discipline has moved far beyond
the limitations imposed by such an approach and has developed methodologically,
in particular. However, even if contemporary representatives of the discipline try to
go beyond the framework of the canon of twenty-seven writings in order to over-
come the systematic narrowing of a canonical discipline, many still adhere to the
fundamental split between New Testament and patristics scholarship. Neverthe-
less, as early as 1988, the French-speaking Swiss New Testament scholar François
Bovon envisioned researchers of patristics and the New Testament working hand
in hand to promote a scholarly integration of several disciplines, on the one hand,
and to encourage New Testament commentators and exegetes to take a more self-
critical view of their own presuppositions, on the other hand.27
From my own research, it has become increasingly clear to me that none of the
dates of composition for the writings listed previously—with the exception of the
Pauline epistles, which represent a special topic and problem to be addressed—are
tenable, and thus the wall between the two disciplines as well as that between their
primary sources, “the New Testament and the void Testament,”28 that is, between
canonical and non-canonical Christian writings, must crumble.29 More importantly,
however, we must return to the old practice of reading all canonical Christian writ-
ings of the New Testament in the light of the events of the second century, the time
when most of them were ostensibly written and all of them collected and substan-
tially redacted and revised in the process.
As mentioned earlier, it has long been accepted knowledge that the New Testa-
ment as a collection did not come into being until the end of the second century.
A more controversial question is how this collection came about.30 Was it a slow,
organic process by which texts written in many places by diverse authors were
handed down in different versions and read in diverse congregations, until eventu-
ally they came together to form a book whose initial contours are first found in
Irenaeus of Lyon in the last third of the second century? This is the theory put
forward by Irenaeus himself31 and largely accepted by older research.32 Conversely,
were these writings perhaps deliberately selected and compiled in a series of edi-
torial decisions made by an individual or a group of editors,33 revised to fit their
purposes, partly harmonized with one another, and supplemented with writings and
4 Introduction

new chapters specifically composed for this collection?34 This latter theory was first
put forward by David Trobisch and taken up in particular by Matthias Klinghardt.35
Trobisch and Klinghardt differ slightly, however, on the question of editor ano-
nymity. Trobisch suggested first that Polycarp of Smyrna was the editor of the New
Testament but that he had left his name off the manuscript in order to suggest that
the collection had been compiled earlier, namely “while Paul was still alive.” Kling-
hardt refines this view and speaks of the “self-invisibilization of the editor,” whereby
this “respectable forger” left behind a “hidden trace” which he “only slightly
conceal[ed].”36 In contrast to the development paradigm, Trobisch and Klinghardt
propose that “as early as the second century . . . in addition to the Gospels and Paul-
ine Epistles, the Catholic Epistles also formed a recognizable historical unit (the
so-called “Praxapostolos”) with the Acts of the Apostles.”37 This explanation of a
specific publication of the New Testament is gaining increasing attention in research
and teaching today.38 However, there are also weighty objections, such as “the
absence of any early Christian memory of such a comprehensive undertaking” as the
edition and publication of a New Testament, which “must be astonishing.”39 Would
it not have been possible for “at least the more educated early Christian theologians”
to “decipher” the only slightly concealed editor? And how could “the logistically as
well as economically highly challenging collection, edition, and distribution of such
an enormous work . . . have been carried out in secret, so to speak,” especially in what
was then still a very small world of Christian scholars?40
Another way of describing the emergence of the New Testament links the older
model with the newer one in some respects. Recently proposed by Wolfgang Grün-
stäudl, it has been described as the process of a “dynamic, multi-layered devel-
opment” of mutual links.41 The Second Epistle of Peter, in particular, serves in
Grünstäudl’s theory as a “node of a multi-layered intertextual network.”42 In Tro-
bisch’s hypothesis, too, 2 Peter plays a prominent role because of the multiple links
it contains to other texts (in 2 Peter 1:20–21 there is a reference to written proph-
ecy, 2 Peter 3:1 to another Epistle of Peter, 2 Peter 3:14–16 to the Pauline epistles,
etc.).43 Grünstäudl concludes from this that 2 Peter fits “well into the development
paradigm”44 but also possibly into the paradigm of writings deliberately compiled
as a collection. For with this text’s “emphasis on the reliability of (written) proph-
ecy and the hermeneutical remarks on the Pauline Epistles,” for example, “topics
are addressed that play an important role in the large-scale Church debate with
Marcion’s theology,”45 which thus speak to the fact that the canonical New Testa-
ment may have been a reaction to an older precanonical collection compiled by
Marcion, even the first to be titled the “New Testament.” Grünstäudl adds:

Although these elements, which in 2 Peter are initially in the service of an

eschatological debate, can certainly not be taken as sufficient evidence for
an anti-Marcionite orientation of 2 Peter, they do then, if one assumes a cor-
responding dating of 2 Peter for other reasons and takes into account that a
controversial-theological text does not have to presuppose only one counter-
front, invite a reading of 2 Peter that takes a look at the Marcionite challenge
ad experimentum.46
 Introduction 5

As further explanations will show, I intend to pursue this track of a critical read-
ing of the two alternative models as outlined by Grünstäudl and attempt to sketch
out the complex network of the various actors and their respective contributions to
the development of the New Testament. The present study argues that Marcion of
Sinope, as mentioned by Grünstäudl, does indeed play an important, though not the
sole role in the emergence of the canonical collection. Early witnesses and actors
known to us provide us clues as to the network connections involved in the creation
of the canonical collection that during the third century was given the title of Mar-
cion’s collection, the “New Testament.” These include, above all, the great teachers
of the second century: Irenaeus of Lyon, Polycarp of Smyrna, Papias of Hierapolis,
Ignatius of Antioch, and Dionysius of Corinth. The fact that Justin Martyr, who
also taught in Rome in the second century, is only briefly touched upon is due to the
fact that although he has knowledge of the later canonical Gospels, he makes less
use of them than of the “memoirs of the apostles.” At no point does he explicitly
refer to the Pauline epistles, nor does he cite the Acts of the Apostles.
The focus on individual teachers and their mutual references brings us imme-
diately to a methodological question: Is the formation of the New Testament to
be thought of structurally within a process of the spiritual history of horizontally
mediated effects and liturgical practices? Or does the New Testament as a col-
lection rather go back to certain authors, specific individuals, who, although not
isolated, nevertheless interacted in a determining way, exposed to mutual impulses,
entangled readings, and reception processes? Does their thinking thus have the
effect of producing “an intellectual history deliberately pursued as such”?47
Grünstäudl has already indicated that the two perspectives on the emergence
of the New Testament do not have to be mutually exclusive. Regardless of which
solution one leans toward, even if one wants to continue to adhere to the older
hypothesis, held by fewer and fewer researchers, in what follows, I want to invite
as many readers as possible to engage with the somewhat more complex explana-
tion. Based on the evidence provided, Chapter 3 invites you to participate in the
thought experiment—which, in my eyes, comes closer to historical reality than any
of the older models—of reading these writings, above all the Gospels, against the
backdrop of the second century. More precisely, I wish to place them in the context
of the period immediately following the Second Jewish War (132–135 CE), known
also as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, that is, as literature written between the years 135
CE and 177 CE (Irenaeus of Lyon) and collected as such.
We will look at the emergence of the New Testament as a collection along the
four collection units as we find them in the oldest full manuscripts of the New
Testament—the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus (both presumably
­
fourth century); the Codex Alexandrinus, the Codex Bezae, and the Codex Wash-
ingtonianus (presumably all fifth century); and some papyri (P74, 022, 016 et al.),48
without forgetting that in older papyri the books are initially attested to individu-
ally. These four sub-collections are: 1. The Gospels; 2. The so-called Praxapostolos
(Acts and the canonical letters); 3. the Epistles of Paul; and 4. Revelation.
While I have already examined this collection of writings from the point of
view of how they represent the history of the beginnings of Christianity,49 in the
6 Introduction

present book I will question the collections of writings with regard to their time of
origin. In the course of the investigation, the question will often arise organically
as to which of the historical settings seems to be the more plausible as the backdrop
to a text’s composition—that of the first century or that of the mid-to-late second
century. As is already the case in higher mathematics, historical scholarship is also
dependent on considerations of probability and perspective. As New Testament
scholars have impressed upon me, research in this field tends to be skeptical of
new insights because of its extreme “overloading,” leading to the assumption that
everything that could be said has already been said. I am, however, quite certain
that much of what follows has not yet been said, at least not from this perspective.
As a reader of the draft text of this book said to me in an email: “It was a fantastic
read. I especially like the parts comparing the different versions (of the Gospels),
which is very convincing if you accept the general concept.”50
I would like to thank a wealth of colleagues who contributed to the creation of
this book, beginning with those who critically read the book in its German or Eng-
lish draft form or sections of it—Wolfgang Grünstäudl, Jan N. Bremmer, Harry O.
Maier, and my revered teacher Reinhard M. Hübner (Munich/Eichstätt). Likewise,
I would like to thank my other teacher Adolf Martin Ritter (Heidelberg), who has
continued to accompany me attentively and correct me mercilessly in both discus-
sions and reviews, and finally the professional colleagues who have inspired me
most over the years with regard to the topics dealt with here—Matthias Klinghardt,
David Trobisch, Jan Heilmann, Eve-Marie Becker, William Arnal, John Kloppen-
borg, and Heidi Wendt—without whose suggestions many of the new insights pre-
sented in this book would not have emerged. I am also grateful to the anonymous
peer reviewers who have judiciously pointed out the mistakes left in the German
and the English text. A special thanks goes to Avital Tsype of Academic Language
Experts, who has reviewed the English translation, made numerous suggestions,
and removed inconsistencies and mistakes. I am also grateful to my colleagues of
the Collaborative Research Centre TRR 294 “Structural Change of Property” at
the Universities of Erfurt and Jena, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-
schaft, which has financial contributed to the English revision of this book. As, in
the meantime, I have taken early retirement from my Department of Theology and
Religious Studies at King’s College London, I would like to publish this book as
a special thank you to my colleagues and friends at King’s, especially New Testa-
ment scholar and researcher of Philo of Alexandria, the Qumran, and the Second
Jewish Temple period Joan Taylor and Pauline specialist and sociologist of early
Christianity Eddie Adams, as well as my patristic and Byzantine office mate Yannis
Papadokiannakis; researcher of the early Franciscans Lydia Schumacher; and her
husband, the Oxford scholar of patristics Johannes Zachhuber. I would also like to
thank the fellows at the Max Weber College in Erfurt, in whose midst I have been
fortunate enough to participate in a lively interdisciplinary dialogue spanning many
years: first and foremost, Bettina Hollstein, my late wife Jutta Vinzent, Jörg Rüpke,
Hartmut Rosa, Emiliano Urciuoli, Roberto Alciati, Jörg Frey, and Dietmar Mieth,
as well as all the members of the Meister Eckhart Research Centre. Finally, I would
 Introduction 7

like to thank all those who, with their enquiries about my previous books, invited
me to talk and lecture, conversed with me orally and in writing, and warmed up,
sometimes with fiery fervor, to new insights into a subject that is often perceived as
rather dusty and lacking in innovation. This book is a continuation of these conver-
sations. Finally I would like to thank the entire team at Routledge who have taken
on this project from the German publisher Herder and allowed me to do some revi-
sions and updates of what will hopefully become an invitation to further debate.
The past two years have been a turbulent period in my life, during which, after
over ten years of struggle with ovarian cancer, my wife Jutta passed away. I would,
therefore, like to express my thanks to her entire medical team Prof. Jonathan
Lederman (London), Prof. Jalid Sehouli and his wife Adak Pirmorady (both Ber-
lin), and above all, to my late wife for being a role model in how to deal with such
a devastating disease and let go of your partner, your children, and your life while
encouraging each of us to appreciate every day and to move on, saddened but
enriched by this experience, with the greatest gratitude.
Erfurt and San Miguel de Abona, September 2023 Markus Vinzent

Notes
1 J. Ratzinger, Generalaudienz (2007).
2 Because of the disputed variants, the figure varies slightly, see 137,328 words for the
Nestle-Aland edition: M. Ritter, Statistische Beobachtungen und Besonderheiten zur
Bibel (2018). The figure of 138,020 is given for the Analytical Greek New Testament
(AGNT) edition: F. Just, New Testament Statistics (2005).
3 A. Goldberg, “Auf die Länge kommt es an, oder: Wie lang sollte Ihr Buch sein?—Ein
Leitfaden.” (2021). Retrieved 30.01.2021.
4 J. K. Elliott writes that “they were composed and originally written down [‘published’
if you wish] in the first century,” J. K. Elliott, New Testament Textual Criticism: The
Application of Thoroughgoing Principles: Essays on Manuscripts and Textual Variation
(2011), 13. See already the position in the nineteenth century: H. W. J. Thiersch, Ver-
such zur Herstellung des historischen Standpuncts für die Kritik der neutestamentlichen
Schriften. Eine Streitschrift gegen die Kritiker (1845), 75. The dating is based almost
exclusively on internal reasons; to these are added external witnesses like the Epistles
of Ignatius, which are repeatedly dated as authentic writings to around 110 CE; the so-
called Didache, a catechetical writing also dated to the first century; and the Epistle of
Polycarp, for which an early dating is proposed for around the year 120, see, for exam-
ple, I. Broer and H.-U. Weidemann, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2016). However,
it must be admitted that all these dates are now highly controversial and are rejected
with good reasons by a growing number of scholars.
5 The attribution of writings to the so-called Apostolic Fathers varies; see B. D. Ehr-
man, The Apostolic Fathers (2003); J. B. Lightfoot, J. R. Harmer and M. W. Holmes,
The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (2007); W. Pratscher, Die
Apostolischen Väter: Eine Einleitung (2009).
6 See, for example, the recent debate about the dublets in the canonical Gospels and their
“micro-conflations”; see J. S. Kloppenborg, “Macro-Conflation, Micro-Conflation, Har-
monization and the Compositional Practices of the Synoptic Writers” (2019); E. Eve,
Relating the Gospels: Memory, Imitation and the Farrer Hypothesis (2021).
7 I. Broer and H.-U. Weidemann, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2016).
8 Introduction

8 K. Backhaus, Zur Datierung der Apostelgeschichte: Ein Ordnungsversuch im chronolo-

gischen Chaos (2019b); C. E. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic His-
tory (1989), 367–410.
9 M. Theobald, Israel-Vergessenheit in den Pastoralbriefen: Ein neuer Vorschlag zu
ihrer historisch-theologischen Verortung im 2. Jahrhundert n. Chr. unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Ignatius-Briefe (2016).
10 W. Grünstäudl, Ein apokryphes Petrusbild im Neuen Testament: Zur Konstruktion apos-
tolischere Autorität in OffbPetr und 2 Petr (2019); W. Grünstäudl, Geschätzt und bez-
weifelt: Der zweite Petrusbrief im kanongeschichtlichen Paradigmenstreit (2018b); W.
Grünstäudl, Der zweite Brief des Petrus: Eine Herausforderung für tolerante Geister
(2018a); R. Bauckham, 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter (1998); R. Bauckham, “2
Peter: An Account of Research” (1988); E. E. Ring, The Meaning and Significance of 2
Peter 3:15b-17. Dissertation (1954).
11 T. Witulski, Die Johannesoffenbarung und Kaiser Hadrian: Studien zur Datierung
der neutestamentlichen Apokalpyse (2007); T. Witulski, “Iustinus und die Johannesof-
fenbarung. Die Rezeption der Apokalypse durch den Apologeten in ihrer Relevanz
für deren Datierung” (2016); T. Witulski, “Christus, die sieben Sterne und die sie-
ben ‘Gemeindeengel’. Zeitgeschichtliche Bemerkungen zu einer Motivdisposition in
Offb 1,20; 2f. = Christ, the Seven Stars and the Seven Angels of the Church: Histori-
cal Commentary on Motif Arrangement in Rev 1:20; 2–3” (2019/2020); T. Witulski,
“Tempus tempus praecedit—Eckpunkte einer spatialen Konstruktion von relativer
und absoluter Zeit in der Apokalypse des Johannes” (2018); T. Witulski, Der erste
“apokalyptische Reiter” (Apk 6,1–2) und der Reiter auf dem weißen Pferd (Apk
19,11–16,19–21). Ein Beispiel von polemischem Parallelismus innerhalb der Apoka-
lypse des Johannes (2017); T. Witulski, Die vier apokalyptischen Reiter Apk 6,1–8.
Ein Versuch ihrer zeitgeschichtlichen (Neu-)Interpretation (2015b); L. Arcari, D. Tri-
paldi and T. Witulski, “Discussion of Thomas Witulski’s Works on Dating the Revela-
tion” (2016).
12 See, for example, already A. Jülicher, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1894); A. v.
Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius 2. Theil. Die Chronolo-
gie der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius 1. Band. Die Chronologie der Litteratur
bis Irenäus: nebst einleitenden Untersuchungen (1897), 717–722.
13 On the different suggestions of dating these writings, see M. Vinzent, Marcion and the
Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014b). On Mk and its dating to the years 40 to 145,
see ibid. 161–163; on Mt and its dating to the years 40 to 145, see ibid. 174–175; on Lk
and its dating to the years 55 to 145, see ibid. 181–183. Even the most recent introduc-
tions to the New Testament offer no picture different to the previous graphic, according
to which the canonical Gospels are generally dated to the years between 70 and 100;
see M. Ebner, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2020); I. Broer and H.-U. Weidemann,
Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2016).
14 K. Backhaus, Zur Datierung der Apostelgeschichte: Ein Ordnungsversuch im chronolo-
gischen Chaos (2019b); K. Backhaus, Markion und die Apostelgeschichte: Ein Beitrag
zum Werden des Kanons (2019a).
15 For the dating of 1 Peter in the years 81–90, see R. Feldmeier, Der erste Brief des Petrus
(2005).
16 The German academic precondition for teaching a specific subject at university level.
17 M. Hengel, M. F. Bird and J. Maston, Earliest Christian History: History, Literature,
and Theology. Essays from the Tyndale Fellowship in Honor of Martin Hengel (2012),
459–471.
18 Ibid. 459.
19 W. Kinzig, Hans Lietzmann (1875–1942) (2003); W. Kinzig, Evangelische Patristiker
und christliche Archäologen im “Dritten Reich” drei Fallstudien: Hans Lietzmann, Hans
von Soden, Hermann Wolfgang Beyer (2001).
 Introduction 9

20 With further lit. M. Vinzent, Writing the History of Early Christianity: From Reception
to Retrospection (2019b), 85–89.
21 L. Hurtado, Beyond the Interlude? Developments and Directions in New Testament
Textual Criticism (1999).
22 M. Hengel, M. F. Bird and J. Maston, Earliest Christian History: History, Literature, and
Theology. Essays from the Tyndale Fellowship in Honor of Martin Hengel (2012), 459.
23 See, for example, C. Jenkins and K. D. Mackenzie, Episcopacy Ancient and Modern
(1930).
24 See R. V. G. Tasker, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: An Introduction
and Commentary (1983); R. V. G. Tasker, The Narrow Way (1952); R. V. G. Tasker, The
Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God (1951); R. V. G. Tasker, The Old Testament in the
New Testament (1946); R. V. G. Tasker, ed. The City of God, etc. (1945).
25 Sellers became known for his two books: R. V. Sellers, Two Ancient Christologies:
A Study in the Christological thought of the Schools of Alexandria and Antioch in the
Early History of Christian Doctrine: Publications for the Church Historical Society
(1940); R. V. Sellers, Eustathius of Antioch and His Place in the Early History of Chris-
tian Doctrine (1928).
26 See S. Alkier, Urchristentum: Zur Geschichte und Theologie einer exegetischen Diszip-
lin (1993).
27 F. Bovon, “The Synoptic Gospels and the Noncanonical Acts of the Apostles” (1988),
35–36.
28 C. Colpe, Tatian “aus Assyrien”, Marcion “aus Sinope” und die Gegner der “aus Rom”
schreibenden Autoren der beiden Petrusbriefe und des 1. Clemensbriefes (1998), 44.
29 I have made a start with M. Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity and the
Making of the New Testament (2011); M. Vinzent, Resetting the Origins of Christianity:
A New Theory of Sources and Beginnings (2023b); E.-M. Becker and M. Vinzent, “Mar-
cion and the Dating of Mark and the Synoptic Gospels” (2018); M. Vinzent, Marcion
and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels (2014b).
30 S. Alkier, “Die Entstehung des Kanons: Geschichtlicher Prozess oder gezielte Publizis-
tik? Eine Einführung zur Kontroverse” (2003).
31 M. Oeming, “Das Hervorwachsen des Verbindlichen aus der Geschichte des Gottes-
volkes: Grundzüge einer prozessual-soziologischen Kanon-Theorie” (2003).
32 See on this M. Vinzent, The Influence of Marcion on the Formation of the New Testa-
ment Canon (forthcoming-d); C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (1962).
33 So already A. v. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius 2.
Theil. Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius 1. Band. Die Chro-
nologie der Litteratur bis Irenäus: nebst einleitenden Untersuchungen (1897), 681–884;
F. C. Burkitt, Two Lectures on the Gospels (1901), 17–18. Harnack assumed an official
Roman undertaking, based on the fact that in manuscripts the general title “Euangelion”
can be found, while the four canonical Gospels were called, Gospel according to Mt
. . . , then, because the Canon Muratori presented the four Gospels in a fixed order and
Irenaeus spoke of a fourfold gospel—all hints for Harnack that an influential publication
of this collection existed.
34 M. Klinghardt, “Die Veröffentlichung der christlichen Bibel und der Kanon” (2003).
35 D. Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (2000); D. Trobisch, Die Endredak-
tion des Neuen Testaments: Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christlichen Bibel
(1996); D. Trobisch, Die Paulusbriefe und die Anfänge der christlichen Publizistik
(2010b); D. Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (1994); D. ­Trobisch,
Das Neue Testament als literaturgeschichtliches Problem (2010a); G. Theißen,
­Literaturgeschichte und Literaturästhetik: Zu D. Trobisch: Das Neue Testament als
­literaturgeschichtliches Phänomen (2011); J. Heilmann, Die These einer editio princeps
des Neuen Testaments im Spiegel der Forschungsdiskussion der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte
(2018).
10 Introduction

36 M. Klinghardt, Inspiration und Fälschung: Die Transzendenzkonstitution der christli-

chen Bibel (2013), 349.
37 W. Grünstäudl, Geschätzt und bezweifelt: Der zweite Petrusbrief im kanongeschichtli-
chen Paradigmenstreit (2018b), 61. For the term “Praxapostolos,” see D. Trobisch, Die
Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments: Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christli-
chen Bibel (1996), 38. This term is used, as our oldest New Testament manuscripts give
one of the four sub-groups in which the twenty-seven books of the New Testment col-
lection are present in codices, as a combination of Acts and the catholic epistles. Even
though the term only appears later in Byzantine times, it makes sense to make use of this
term for this specific sub-group of the New Testament collection, see D. C. Parker, An
Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts (2010), 283.
38 See M. Ebner, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2020). More reluctant is I. Broer and
H.-U. Weidemann, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (2016), 250.
39 W. Grünstäudl, Geschätzt und bezweifelt: Der zweite Petrusbrief im kanongeschichtli-
chen Paradigmenstreit (2018b), 61.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid. 61, 81–88.
42 Ibid. 86.
43 Other references include, for example, 2 Peter 1:14, which refers to Jn 21:18–19 and
other texts which are not explicitly mentioned like the Apocalypse of Peter, mentioned
by Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 41,1 and the Canon Muratori 43.
44 W. Grünstäudl, Geschätzt und bezweifelt: Der zweite Petrusbrief im kanongeschichtli-
chen Paradigmenstreit (2018b), 86.
45 Ibid. 82.
46 Ibid. The anti-Marcionite character of 2 Peter is supported by the discussion of this letter
in Adam., Dial. 56–58; 80 with the Marcionite Megethius. Adamantius not only insists
that 2 Peter is consistent with Paul (Dial. 80), but also refers to a saying (Dial. 58),
which he introduces as having been pronounced by Christ, underpinning the scriptural
reliability of 2 Peter. See, W. Grünstäudl, “ ‘On Slavery’: A Possible Herrenwort in 2 Pet
2:19” (2013), 11–12.
47 See for this differentiation C. Colpe, Tatian “aus Assyrien”, Marcion “aus Sinope” und
die Gegner der “aus Rom” schreibenden Autoren der beiden Petrusbriefe und des 1.
Clemensbriefes (1998), 52.
48 For a precise list of the witnesses, see W. Grünstäudl, Geschätzt und bezweifelt: Der
zweite Petrusbrief im kanongeschichtlichen Paradigmenstreit (2018b), 74–81.
49 M. Vinzent, Resetting the Origins of Christianity: A New Theory of Sources and Begin-
nings (2023b).
50 Jan N. Bremmer, email to me of 23.6.2021. Thankfully, despite this praise, Jan has never
been reluctant with criticism.
1 The New Testament
as a Collection

Reading the New Testament as a book, or rather as a collection of books, is rather

unusual, and it rarely happens in scholarship. Most Christians do not perceive the
texts of the New Testament as such either. In the liturgy, passages from the Old Tes-
tament and from New Testament Epistles or Revelation are presented as individual
readings selected and organized into a sequence by the respective church commu-
nity or denomination. Moreover, many churches express higher appreciation for
Gospel readings in comparison to Old Testament and non-gospel New Testament
texts by reserving the public reading of the Gospels to persons of the male gender
or members of the ordained clergy, as is the case, for example, in the Catholic
Church. The New Testament therefore only appears as a collection when found as
reading material on hotel bedside tables or purchased via Kindle or in bookshops,
either as a gift for confirmation and communion ceremonies or for personal read-
ing. Students, likewise, are rarely introduced to the New Testament as a collection.
In my own department, we offer a master’s course on the canonical Gospels which,
after the first introduction, immediately deals with the Gospels individually, with-
out of course skipping the synoptic question; nevertheless, there is not, as of yet, a
course on the New Testament as a whole.
Research in this field is even more atomized. Scholarly commentaries deal
almost exclusively with individual books of the twenty-seven writings that form
the New Testament.1 Studies, unless they are devoted to themes or methodological
approaches that require a comprehensive view, mostly deal with individual sec-
tions, often as minute as individual verses or terms. There is, thus, a clear lack of
a single-author commentary on the collection of the New Testament as a whole.
The same shortage applies to the individual sub-collections of the four canonical
Gospels, the Praxapostolos, and Paul’s epistles (Revelation is the exception to this
rule when it is viewed as a single book rather than a sub-unit of the collection). One
cannot even find a single scholarly synoptic commentary on the Gospels of Mark,
Matthew, and Luke. And yet the collection bears a unifying title, the “New Testa-
ment,” and this entity was obviously understood as a complete work by those who
brought together the books it contains. It is this full entity, the “New Testament,”
which complements the “Old Testament” to form the Christian Bible.
So what evidence do we have at our disposal regarding the emergence of the
New Testament collection? And how does research envisage its development?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378303-2
12 The New Testament as a Collection

As early as the nineteenth century, famed researcher of the New Testament canon
Theodor Zahn2 soberly admits that “with regard to the first fundamental facts,
which have not been seriously called into question by any subsequent develop-
ment,” there is no document external to the New Testament “concerned with its
transmission.”3 Thus, according to Zahn, the history of the collection can only be
illuminated by the materials contained within it. On the one hand, if arguments can
be made exclusively based on the texts that form the collection, this opens the gates
wide for speculation; on the other hand, his conclusion warns against any exagger-
ated certainty, such as can be found, for example, in the many historical introduc-
tions to the New Testament available to students and readers today.
Zahn’s starting position points us to a key element that has been largely over-
looked in the research so far. If the New Testament as a collection had undergone
the previously mentioned organic development in the second century, and if book
after book had slowly formed over time like the rings of a tree, then this could
hardly have happened without any of the many authors active during this century
referring to such a collection, which gradually grew in size, importance, and repu-
tation. The criticism raised against the Trobisch–Klinghardt hypothesis of a canon-
ical redaction thus also applies to that of the organic growth of the New Testament.
Zahn’s own investigation presents the first counter-evidence to the organic growth
theorem in his discussion of Justin Martyr, since Justin specifically does not yet tes-
tify to the New Testament as a unified collection.4 Conversely, it is precisely Zahn’s
research that offers us a further indication of how one can explain the emergence
of this later collection, which was so monumentally important as to form the very
basis of Christianity, an explanation that diverges from both the organic growth and
the conscious editorial decision paradigms.

I. The Collection in Irenaeus, Polycarp, Papias, Ignatius,

and Dionysius
If Justin Martyr (d. probably 165 CE) is a dead end, where can we begin the search
for the origins of the New Testament collection? It is undeniable that Irenaeus of
Lyon of the late second century is considered the central witness to the collection of
writings we now identify as the New Testament. Before him, however, references
to at least some of the books contained therein can also be found in other authors,
some of whose works have survived in fragments only. Among these, we find Poly-
carp of Smyrna and Papias of Hierapolis, as well as the famous, albeit cryptic,
Ignatius of Antioch and the lesser-known Dionysius of Corinth. While Polycarp is
likely to be a contemporary of Justin, and Dionysius a contemporary of Irenaeus,
Papias and Ignatius are unfortunately difficult to date with more precision than to
say they wrote around the mid-second century. As the course of our investigation
will show, however, we are not only dealing with big names or great individu-
als but rather with a network or even a superstructure of overlapping networks of
intellectuals emerging from numerous writings of a variety of literary genres. We
will encounter not only authors from all walks of life (teachers, presbyters, bish-
ops, laymen, ascetics, martyrs, letter writers, commentators, etc.) but also different
 The New Testament as a Collection 13

cities, localities, and regions (Rome, Antioch, Pamphylia, Galatia, Pontus), as well
as historical events of the second century (especially the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt
against the Romans), which are all of outstanding importance to our examination.
An important, albeit not exclusive, node in all this is the capital of Rome, which
served, among other things, as a destination and place of refuge for teachers and
intellectuals who settled there in the aftermath of the aforementioned Bar Kokhba
revolt from the year 135 CE onwards. We will pay particular attention to one of
these teachers, Marcion of Sinope, who compiled the first tangible collection in
history called the “New Testament,” a title coined by him. We will discover that
Irenaeus of Lyon, our oldest witness of a larger collection of early Christian writ-
ings which, today, we know under the title of the “New Testament,” was writing in
response to Marcion’s “New Testament,” though Irenaeus never called his counter-
collection by the title of its predecessor and competitor.

1. Irenaeus of Lyon—Witness to an Untitled Collection Comprising Four

Gospels, the Praxapostolos, the Pauline Epistles, and Revelation

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 135–c. 200 CE) is the first witness to this collection, though
not to all the writings it contains. Justin Martyr, who taught and wrote about twenty
years before him, never once explicitly refers to Paul and his epistles, and when
he speaks of the Gospel (Dial. 10:2), he has this term reluctantly introduced by
his Jewish interlocutor Trypho as the “so-called Gospel,” or understands the term
as “good news for the poor” (Dial. 12:2). At one point Justin seems to allude to
Scripture (Dial. 100:1),5 but when he uses the term in the plural, he speaks again
of “so-called gospels” (1 Apol. 66:3), a designation indicating that these texts and/
or their title are unusual and new to him. Indeed, he prefers a different title when
it comes to the written Jesus tradition, calling his source repeatedly the “memoirs
of the apostles.”6 He does, however, admit that these “memoirs” were not exclu-
sively recorded by the apostles but also by their disciples (Dial. 103).7 In this way
he wants to make it clear that these memoirs, in their written form, are “neither
records for one’s own recollection and use, nor collections of ‘memorabilia’ for
posterity—that would be hypomneumata—but instead the ‘memories’ of an impor-
tant person.”8 To be more precise, these memories do not pertain to Jesus’s deeds
but only his sayings and teachings.9
The difference between Justin and the somewhat younger Irenaeus is imme-
diately evident when the latter opens his extensive, five-volume work Adversus
Haereses, which he himself calls the “Refutation and Overcoming of the Falsely
Called Gnosis,” with a quotation from 1 Timothy 1:4. His preface contains exten-
sive quotes from Matthew, drawing not only on sayings but also on the description
of Jesus’s life, as reported by Matthew and the three other Gospels. In addition to
these Scriptures, which we know from the later canonical New Testament, Irenaeus
quotes many other writings and cites them as evidence for his struggle against the
“falsely called gnosis.” As we shall see in more detail in the following, based on
the way he quotes various writings throughout Book III of his Adversus Haereses,
Irenaeus seems to have known not only the writings from the sub-collection of
14 The New Testament as a Collection

the four canonical Gospels but also most of the other three sub-collections, the
Praxapostolos, the Pauline Epistles, and the Revelation of John.10 The only New
Testament writings he does not cite in Books III and IV and about which he is silent
are Paul’s Epistles to Philemon, 2 Peter,11 3 John, and Jud.12 Irenaeus is aware of
another epistle, which, according to him, was written by the Church in Rome to
the brethren in Corinth and which he calls a “very suitable [in the Latin translation
“very weighty”] letter.”13 Nevertheless, as a note of caution, he states that only
those “who want to discern [the right from the wrong] can recognize the tradition
of the apostolic church from this letter, especially since the letter is older than those
who now teach the wrong thing.”14 This statement makes it clear that Irenaeus dis-
tinguishes between the writings he cites and other works such as the Shepherd of
Hermas and the First Epistle of Clement. While he considers the latter appropriate
or weighty, he does not see them in the same category as the former. The distinction
points to the fact that Irenaeus uses the word “scripture” in both the holy and the
mundane sense;15 indeed, he himself seems to be involved in the development of a
hierarchy of scriptures, a subject we shall delve into in more detail slightly further
on. Irenaeus attributes Revelation to the evangelist John, which Justin had already
done before him16 and, like Justin, also takes up the theme of the future resurrec-
tion. But while Justin insists that “those who believe in our Christ will live a thou-
sand years in Jerusalem,”17 Irenaeus does not commit himself to a specific number
of years. And yet, it is precisely because of this teaching of the future kingdom that
the Book of Revelation remained controversial as to whether it should belong to the
collection later called the “New Testament.”18
Let us recall, however, that Irenaeus does not refer to the collection by this
name.19 When he speaks in his writings of a “New Testament” (Greek καινὴ
διαθήκη; in the early Latin translation of Irenaeus: novum testamentum), which
rarely happens, he has two older meanings of this combination of terms in mind: the
first stems from the Greek translation of the Jewish Bible, in which διαθήκη stands
for God’s “covenant” (Heb. “brit”) with mankind; the second is found in colloquial
and legal language, where the Greek διαθήκη, like the Latin “testament,” denotes
a testamentary disposition.20 We find the latter meaning represented, for example,
in Gal 3:15,17 and Heb 9:16–17. In Irenaeus, this use of the term is found in the
following passage:

These are taken by the Spirit for an inheritance and brought into the king-
dom of heaven. For this reason Christ also died: The testament of the Good
News, which was to be opened and read throughout the world, was first to
make His slaves free. It was then to make them heirs of his property, when
the Spirit possesses them by inheritance. For the survivor takes possession
of the inheritance.21

Even though in other passages Irenaeus understands “testament” mostly in the

sense of “covenant,” the term in this context has the obvious sense of inheritance.
Looking at Irenaeus’s entire work, we find the term “testament” used in relation
 The New Testament as a Collection 15

to a collection of writings in only two places, and both times they are employed in
response to one of the two Roman teachers whom Irenaeus criticizes in his work,
specifically Marcion, whom we shall discuss in more detail further on. In both
instances, Irenaeus speaks of two testaments, of which one is the “first” or the
“former” testament equated with the Law, and the second is the “Gospel.” The fact
that he adopts the language of his opponent in these passages is obvious when he
writes later on: “There are indeed more such commandments. But they do not all
mean a contradiction [“contrarietas”] or dissolution of the old commandments, as
the followers of Marcion cry out.”22 In fact, as we shall see, Marcion of Sinope had
already entitled his collection of writings the “New Testament” about forty years
earlier, positioning it explicitly in opposition, that is, in antithesis (“contraria”), to
the “Old Testament.” Irenaeus does not seem to have encountered this information
in Marcion directly but to have taken it from an anonymous report he had received
from a presbyter and which he cites in his work.23 In this report, immediately after
speaking of the “testaments,” Marcion’s teaching is criticized.24
The phenomenon of an author adopting the language of their opponent, as
pointed out by Wolfram Kinzig, is also encountered in the work of Tertullian, who
wrote twenty years after Irenaeus in the North-African city of Carthage. Tertul-
lian, the first writer, polemicist, and apologist to write in Latin, and the majority
of whose writings seem to have survived, uses the word “testament” to refer to a
collection of writings exclusively in the context of his polemic against Marcion.25
It is also in Tertullian that we first see a collection of writings called the “New
Testament” in reference to Marcion’s collection, a choice of title Tertullian does
not reject. He even praises Marcion for the designation of Jewish scripture as the
“Old Testament,” as long as one refers this testament to the same God as the “New
Testament.” Tertullian leans more toward the definition of the Christian writings
as a novel testament that surpasses and cancels out the testament of the Jews. The
latter he sees as “temporary,” while the former is “an eternal testament for the
future.”26
Irenaeus, on the other hand, is considerably more skeptical of Marcion’s title for
the collection. For Irenaeus, Marcion’s proclamation that Christianity was some-
thing “new” and different from the “old” Judaism is a weighty bone of contention.
This explains why Irenaeus did not call the Christian collection of writings a “New
Testament” and could never have accepted such a designation.27 In his reluctance,
he picks up after Justin, who likewise did not use “New Testament” as the name for
the collection, even though “in Justin the juxtaposition of old and new testament
plays a major role.”28
In short, we can state that although Irenaeus is considered our oldest witness to
a collection of writings which, compared to the earlier one by Marcion, brought
together more works and included revised versions of the ones previously included,
his collection did not carry the title of “New Testament.” The selection of writings
comprised in this collection will be examined after we will have presented our
other second-century witnesses and, most importantly, the “New Testament” of
Marcion.
16 The New Testament as a Collection

2. Polycarp of Smyrna and Papias of Hierapolis—A Non-Witness and the

Oldest Witness

Papias of Hierapolis has frequently been considered in the context of the formation
of the New Testament, and the few fragments that survive of his work are seen
to be central to its history.29 Yet before we come to Papias, we will first go back
to Irenaeus and meet his teacher Polycarp, for Irenaeus is the first to tell us about
Papias and to quote from his largely lost work, and Eusebius of Caesarea places
Papias in close connection with Polycarp. Unfortunately, the dates of Papias’s life
are disputed, and much depends on how one interprets the account of Polycarp in
Eusebius.
According to the chronology presented by Eusebius in Book III of his Ecclesias-
tical History, the life and works of Papias seem to fall under the reign of the Roman
Emperor Trajan (98–117 AD), since he is the last emperor to be spoken of in this
book.30 However, the chapter on Papias also states that what follows happened “at
that time when Polycarp, a disciple of the apostles, was a man of eminence in Asia,
having been entrusted with the episcopate of the church of Smyrna by those who
had seen and heard the Lord.”31 As Eusebius tells it, Polycarp was appointed by the
apostles as bishop of Smyrna. We also read this in Irenaeus, at least in the Latin
translation, since the original Greek text for the relevant passage has been lost and
only survives in Eusebius’s account of it. Irenaeus claims that “Polycarp was not
only instructed by the apostles and conversed with many who had seen our Lord,
but was also appointed by the apostles in the church of Smyrna as bishop in Asia.”32
However, this information is not entirely reliable.33 It is surprising, for example,
to discover that, in a letter Polycarp wrote to the congregation in Philippi, he does
not refer to himself as bishop. In addition, we have a letter from Irenaeus to the
Roman presbyter Florinus, which again has come down to us exclusively through
Eusebius (Book V),34 in which Irenaeus speaks several times about Polycarp, calls
him a “blessed and apostolic presbyter,” but never refers to him as a bishop.35
According to this letter, Irenaeus was closely acquainted with Polycarp and twice
refers to himself as a disciple of the same. Irenaeus, “for whom the monepiscopate
is self-evident, reckons the bishop among the presbyters and calls . . . Polycarp as
well as the Roman bishops and himself presbyters.”36 We can thus conclude that the
difference between presbyter and bishop is not entirely tangible to Irenaeus, while
Eusebius can hardly imagine that an outstanding personality such as the leader of a
congregation could be anything but a bishop. This letter and Irenaeus’s relationship
to Florinus and Polycarp are of importance to the chronology of Papias and highly
informative for our overall context, as we shall see. Let us therefore examine this
letter as it has been handed down by Eusebius:

4 These teachings, Florinus, to put it mildly, do not spring from clean rea-
soning. These teachings do not agree with the Church and lead those who
convince themselves of them to the greatest impiety.
These teachings were not even dared to be expounded by the heretics who
were outside the Church.
 The New Testament as a Collection 17

These teachings were not handed down to you by those who were presby-
ters before us and who also associated with the apostles.
5 When I was a young man, I saw you in the lower Asia with Polycarp,
walking through the magnificent imperial assembly hall in an effort to win
his approval. I remember what happened then better than things that hap-
pened more recently.
6 For what a person learns from childhood and grows with the spirit becomes
one with him. So that I am even now able to determine the place where the
blessed Polycarp sat to teach, and his goings in and out, and his manner of life,
and his physical appearance, and the speeches which he made to the people,
and his close relationship with John, as he reported, and with others who had
seen the Lord, and how he remembered their words (ἀπομνημόνευεν) and what
he heard from them about the Lord, and about his powers and his teachings,
having received them from the eyewitnesses of the “Word of Life,” Polycarp
proclaimed everything in accordance with the Scriptures.37
7 These things, which I also then experienced through the mercy of God,
I heard with eagerness, not writing them down on papyrus, but in my heart,
and by the grace of God, I am able to chew on them forever, and can testify
before God that if that blessed and apostolic presbyter had heard such a thing,
he would have written it down and plugged his ears, saying according to his
custom: “Oh good God, for what times hast Thou preserved me, that I should
endure such things.” He would have left the place where, sitting or standing,
he had heard such words.
8 And these things may be proved from the letters which he sent either
to neighboring churches for their support, or to some brethren to exhort and
encourage them.38

This excerpt from the letter contains a veritable treasure trove of information for our
immediate and indirect contexts. On the one hand, it becomes clear that Florinus
was a close confidant and fellow student of Polycarp along with Irenaeus. We can
probably even determine the dates a little more precisely here, because we are told
about “the magnificent imperial assembly hall” (ἐν τῇ βασιλικῇ αὐλῇ), yet there is
no evidence of an imperial assembly hall or basilica in Asia Minor in the first half
of the second century, and there would have been no emperors there by the time
Florinus and Irenaeus would have pursued their studies. The famous nineteenth-
century Anglican Patristic scholar and bishop Joseph Barber Lightfoot,39 based on
the eighteenth-century edition of Irenaeus by René Massuet, suggests that the term
is used retroactively here and refers to the court of the proconsul of Asia, Titus
Aurelius Fulvus. Fulvus was elevated to the imperial throne two or three years after
his appointment as proconsul in 136 CE and succeeded Emperor Hadrian (117–138
CE) as Antoninus Pius (138–161 CE). Consequently, Irenaeus may have referred
to the court of the proconsul and future emperor as imperial. The fact that Irenaeus
writes the letter as an older man and places his period of study at the end of the
reign of Hadrian and the beginning of that of Antoninus Pius also points to about
the middle of the second century.40
18 The New Testament as a Collection

Similarly important to the temporal location of Florinus and Irenaeus is their

relationship to each other and to Polycarp, as described by Irenaeus. Irenaeus’s
main objective in this rhetorically charged letter is to gently admonish Florinus,
and its tone, albeit passionate, is fittingly irenic overall, due to the author’s fond
memories of their period of joint study and as attested by the fact that Irenaeus
continues to refer to Florinus as a presbyter, just like himself. Specifically, Irenaeus
wants to point out that the doctrines Florinus is currently advocating do not belong
to the body of tradition they had learned from Polycarp. Consequently, to support
his arguments, Irenaeus refers to the “blessed and apostolic presbyter” Polycarp,
where he points to the latter’s letters as proof for his teaching.
We must keep in mind that letters in antiquity were often anything but private
correspondence. This is true of Irenaeus’s letter to Florinus, since it was accessible
to the librarian of Caesarea, Eusebius, enabling him to include this letter excerpt in
his Ecclesiastical History. Epistolary texts were, therefore, often composed with
more than one purpose in mind. Alongside his reproach of Florinus, equally impor-
tant, to Eusebius’s mind at least, is the description of Irenaeus’s close relationship
with Polycarp and the latter’s intimate contact with John and “others who had seen
the Lord,” which serve to bolster Irenaeus’s own authority.
Yet Irenaeus’s letter pursues another goal with the broader public in mind,
one that has remained unconsidered in the research thus far. Irenaeus styles Poly-
carp as a teacher and representative of such “teachings,” which he remembers
(ἀπεμνημόνευεν) because of his relationship with John and the further “eyewit-
nesses of the ‘word of life’ ” (παρὰ τῶν αὐτοπτῶν τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ λόγου). Polycarp’s
recollections refer to “what he heard from them about the Lord, also about his
powers and about his teachings,” and which he proclaimed “in accordance with
the Scriptures.”
The terms and expressions in this passage are carefully chosen. They must have
electrified Ireneaus’s contemporary readers. When he speaks of doctrines pro-
claimed by Polycarp as being “in accordance with the Scriptures,” he implies a
certain distance between Polycarp’s teachings and the Scriptures. That is, Polycarp
does not seem to have presented his opinion based on or with reference to the
Scriptures. Perhaps Irenaeus wishes to indicate that he had not even been aware
of the Scriptures’ existence. We might also take into account the only Scriptural
quotation present in this letter excerpt taken from the beginning of the First Epis-
tle of John (1 Jn 1:1): “Word of life.” John’s letter begins: “That which was from
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the
Word of life.”41 Now, of course, Irenaeus was not there to witness the Word of life
himself, but, according to his letter, the Word of life was transmitted to him by
Polycarp, the latter having learned it from John and other eyewitnesses through
their direct reports rather than from writings.
The opening verse of the First Epistle of John, of course, refers us back to the
Gospel of John—“In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1)—the spiritual Gospel
which, according to Irenaeus, came first and opened the collection of the four Gos-
pels and thus also stood at the beginning of Irenaeus’s larger collection of Scriptures
 The New Testament as a Collection 19

in general.42 Immediately one is reminded that Irenaeus, in his detailed argument

for the necessity of exactly four Gospels, considers them in the following order:
John, Luke, Matthew, and Mark.43 Indeed, in this passage, Irenaeus emphasizes that
Polycarp is a guarantor not only of what John says but also of what the others have
seen with their eyes and touched with their hands. However, by making Polycarp a
guarantor for John and the others, he presents Polycarp as being above their writ-
ing and preceding them chronologically, which supports the previous claim that
Irenaeus sees Polycarp as a bearer of oral tradition and one of the first advocates
for written memories. Since Polycarp both taught orally and put words down in
writing, Irenaeus sees him as a transitional link between these two manners of
transmitting tradition.
At the same time, Irenaeus’s letter hints at another Scriptural reference from the
beginning of Acts, a text which, as already stated, is mentioned in both Irenaeus
and his contemporary Dionysius of Corinth.44 The verse in question, regarding the
dilemma of who should replace Judas, stipulates that one of the conditions of being
an apostle is to have been present as an eyewitness from the beginning:

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us
the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s
baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must
become a witness with us of his resurrection.
(Acts 1:21–22)

It was with such witnesses, then, that Polycarp associated, according to Irenaeus.
This contact made him the recipient of the right teachings, teachings that were and
are proclaimed “in accordance with the Scriptures.” According to this testimony,
then, Polycarp is a guarantor of both the oral content and the written form in which
it was later transmitted, as attested by the allusions to John and Acts. Finally, Ire-
naeus points out that Polycarp’s teachings are about “what he heard from them [the
apostles] about the Lord, and about his powers and his teachings,”—that is, the life
of Jesus, his miracles, and his sayings—thereby giving readers a good outline of
what is contained in the four Gospels.
In summary, it can be said that Irenaeus stylizes Polycarp as a source and an
authority to vouch for the authenticity of the later collection of writings of the
Gospels, Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and perhaps even Revelation, which plays a
prominent role in Irenaeus.45 At the same time, he implicitly admits that Polycarp
had not had the opportunity to lay his eyes on the written Gospels. This also cor-
responds to the findings we can gather from the extant letter of Polycarp to the Phi-
lippians.46 In this letter, there are indeed a number of allusions and quotations that
Polycarp himself attributes to Paul, and even echoes of 1 and 2 Timothy from the
so-called Pastoral Epistles,47 yet there are no signs of any knowledge of the Gospel
narratives.48 The only possible reference to them in the letter is to a line from the
Lord’s Prayer (“Lead us not into temptation,” Mt 6:13),49 but here the subsequent
quotation is identified as a saying of the Lord: “As the Lord said, the spirit is will-
ing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt 26:41).50
20 The New Testament as a Collection

As mentioned previously, Polycarp quotes from the Catholic Epistles exten-

sively (e.g. 1 Petr 1:8; 2:12; 2:22; 2:24; 3:9; 1 John 4:2–3), yet none of his scrip-
tural allusions refer to the Gospel accounts. Acts presents a special case, for in the
opening of Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians, we find the formulation: “Whom
God raised up after he had loosed the bonds of Hades” (ὃν ἤγειρεν ὁ θεὸς λύσας
τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ ᾅδου), which immediately sends us back to Acts 2:24, which reads:
“Whom God raised up, having loosed the bonds of death” (ὃν ὁ θεὸς ἀνέστησεν
λύσας τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ θανάτου). Even though the text shows variants, there is much
to suggest that there is either a direct dependence here or both writings draw on the
same source. Since Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians has no further quotations,
not even one single other echo reminiscent of Acts, there are two possibilities with
regard to the direction of the dependency relationship: either Acts took this passage
from Polycarp, or Polycarp had recourse to Acts this one time and not otherwise.51
Another passage that has attracted the attention of scholars is one in which Poly-
carp speaks of the “Scriptures”:

I trust that you are well versed in the sacred writings, and nothing is unknown
to you; to me it is not granted. Only this I say, as it is said in these Scriptures:
“Be angry, but do not sin” [Ps 4:5]. . . . “The sun shall not go down on your
wrath” [Eph 4:26]. Blessed is he who remembers this, as I believe it is done
among you.52

It is peculiar that the writer claims that it is “not granted” to him to be “well versed”
in the Scriptures; indeed, he contents himself with a short moral saying from Ephe-
sians (which itself quotes Ps 4:5).53 On the contrary, Polycarp’s letter proves how
deeply he is versed in the writings of Paul, whom he mentions several times, as
well as other writings, including those that did not make it into the canonical New
Testament, such as 1 Clement. Either his statement of not being well versed in the
Scriptures is an expression of rhetorical modesty, a common trope among authors
of this period, or Polycarp wants to make it clear that he is uninterested in uncriti-
cal scriptural scholarship. Just before this passage, he quotes Paul saying that “the
saints will judge the world” (1 Cor 6:2) and adds: “I have not noticed or heard
anything of this kind among you.”54 It seems to be of genuine concern to him that
one might regard the Scripture too literally: even if the Scriptures say “be angry”
and speak of “wrath,” one should not sin by being angry. Conversely, he also main-
tains that one must not interpret the Scriptures however it might suit one and writes
against Marcion (among others)55: “Anyone who treats the Lord’s words according
to his own liking and claims that there is neither resurrection nor judgment is the
firstborn of Satan.”56
Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (and the Psalm verse contained therein) is
regarded by Polycarp as “Scriptures” in the plural. This is in line with his idea that
all Christian texts must be regarded as “Scriptures,” including Acts and the Catho-
lic Epistles (which would later become known as the Praxapostolos). His definition
of the term is therefore much more inclusive as compared to Marcion’s collection
of Scriptures, which does not include this sub-unit. While, for Marcion, Paul is the
 The New Testament as a Collection 21

only true apostle, Polycarp probably deliberately paraphrases the quotation from
Gal 2:2, a passage where Paul insists on his own authority (“I have not walked in
vain”), replacing the singular with the plural (“All these apostles have not walked
in vain”) and adding the prophets as authorities.57 If Polycarp also took the verse
from the Psalms to be part of the “Scriptures”—as can be deduced from his use
of the plural—he may have regarded the Psalms as prophetic literature, which is
consistent with how this book was regarded at the time.58
Although Irenaeus styles Polycarp as an authority and guarantor for the Gospels
and Acts, Polycarp in his own letter does not refer to these Gospels but only to the
Pauline letters, writings from the Praxapostolos, and Psalms.
Let us return now to Eusebius and his account of Papias of Hierapolis. As we
have seen, he presents Papias as a contemporary of Polycarp. From what has been
said here, this may point to the time of Emperor Trajan, yet based on Irenaeus,
one could equally date Papias to the end of Hadrian’s reign or the beginning of
the reign of Antoninus Pius,59 that is, the period directly after the Second Jewish
War, which ended in 135 CE. Indeed, Eusebius’s information about Papias is based
on Irenaeus’s account of him in Against Heresies.60 In this book, Irenaeus reports
that Papias was a confidant of Polycarp’s and even a fellow in-person witness to
the Apostle John. Thus, according to Irenaeus, he might not only have studied but
also worked at about the same time as Polycarp. According to Irenaeus and Euse-
bius, Papias wrote five books of Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord (λογίων
κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεις), of which only a few fragments are extant, most of them
preserved by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.61
Eusebius reports that Papias too was a bishop,62 but here the attribution of the
episcopate is even more uncertain than in the case of Polycarp,63 since Irenaeus
never attributes such a title to Papias.64 In fact, in the fragments of Papias handed
down by Irenaeus and Eusebius we only find reference to presbyters; there is no
mention of bishops. Papias obtained his information from presbyters,65 which Ire-
naeus underlines by pointing out that Papias carefully memorized what he had
heard from them,66 and it is these presbyters and their students who stand as guar-
antors for the veracity of his words.67 Papias also emphasizes that he only listened
to certain presbyters, certainly not to any who “mentioned foreign laws, but only
to those saying what they had been given to believe by the Lord.”68 Unfortunately,
Papias does not specify what the source of these foreign laws might have been. He
does, however, mention quite a number of people who provided him with informa-
tion, men who had come “from the presbyters.” Having met and spoken to Andrew,
Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, “or other disciples of the Lord, then
with Aristion and John the presbyter,” Papias believes that no written document is
of service to him, but only the “living, abiding voice.”69 With this statement, Papias
confirms, first, that there were books available to him that he could have consulted
for his purposes and, second, that there were also books expounding “foreign laws”
as opposed to what the Lord wished to convey. With this in mind, he had to embark
on his own search for what he deemed the right teachings, which he was finally
only able to access through the oral tradition of presbyters and their disciples. His
trust in this mode of transmission was such that he dismissed books altogether,
22 The New Testament as a Collection

even though he himself chose to put down his discoveries in writing, producing a
five-volume work at that. Schmithals, however, rightly cautions:

An oral tradition in living use is obviously not available to him (Papias, MV)
in his congregations. At the same time, the written tradition is not rejected,
but it is clearly devalued. This may be due to Papias’s specific theological
interests, but nor does he yet regard the written tradition as Holy Scripture.70

It has long been noticed by scholars71 that Papias’s list of witnesses is almost cer-
tainly taken from John,72 because Papias offers their names in the order in which
they appear in this Gospel. In John 1:35–51 we meet Andrew, Peter, and Philip,
and in John 21:2 we encounter Thomas and the two sons of Zebedee (James and
John).73 Papias therefore seems to have known John but explicitly does not refer to
this text, which makes sense if he does not read the Gospel as Scripture but prefers
to rely on oral tradition. His knowledge of John is also confirmed by other testi-
monies of Papias. In a Gospel prologue that has found its way variously into Latin
Bible translations and their manuscripts in the West, we read:

The Gospel of John was published and delivered to the churches during his
lifetime, as a Hierapolitan named Papias,74 John’s trusted disciple, reported
in his expositions [exotericis?], namely in the last five books. Marcion, the
heretic, however, wrote a Gospel, while John dictated the true one. But after
he [Marcion] was rejected by him [John], because he [John] had scrutinized
the Antitheses, the latter [Marcion] had brought writings or letters to him
[John] from the brethren,75 who were in Pontus.76

As can be seen from the question mark and the many brackets, this is not a text
that is easy to interpret; it has also been called a “stylistically offensive and rough
draft.”77 Because of the reference to Marcion and the chronological setting, accord-
ing to which the writing of the Gospel of Marcion is set at about the same time as
that of John, older scholars either doubted the historicity of this text—Benjamin
W. Bacon calls it a “curious anachronism”78—or, despite the sound substantiation
of the text in the manuscripts and their widely agreed reading, replaced the name
of Marcion with others. Moritz von Aberle, for example, explaining that because
Marcion, who is witnessed in Rome after the Second Jewish War, that is, after the
year 135 CE, “was in any case not a contemporary of John or Papias,” replaces
“Marcion” with “Cerinth” without any textual backing.79 Yet there are other wit-
nesses from the early Church who confirm the statements in this Papias fragment,
perhaps relying on this text. Tertullian, for example, writes at the beginning of
the third century that the “Apostle John” had called Marcion or the Marcionites
“antichrists,”80 and the fourth-century anti-heretical writer, Philastrius, Bishop of
Brescia, was also aware of Papias when he noted in his work The Book of Diverse
Heresies (Diversarum hereseon liber) that Marcion, having been “convicted by
the blessed evangelist John and by the presbyters and put to flight from the city of
Ephesus, had sown his heresy in Rome.”81
 The New Testament as a Collection 23

It is evident from Papias’s claims that the encounter between Marcion and John
came to a bad end for both sides. While Marcion obviously considered his gospel
the one true account of the Lord, John, whom Papias agrees with, insisted on his
being the same. As a reminder, decades later, a representative of the so-called Mon-
tanists, the Roman Gaius, also rejected John along with Revelation as creations of
the heretic Cerinth and declared them a forgery.82
Most importantly, however, this passage indicates that Marcion approached
John with “writings or letters” that came “from the brothers who had lived in Pon-
tus.” Pontus was the region of Marcion’s home city of Sinope on what is now the
Turkish coast of the Black Sea. In fact, we have further evidence of Christians in
Pontus in the second century; Acts in particular speaks repeatedly of such (e.g. Acts
2:9). In Acts, Pontus is also regarded as the home of Aquila, who returned there
together with his wife Priscilla after he had been expelled from Rome together with
other Jews as a result of the edict of Emperor Claudius in 41 or 49 CE. The First
Epistle of Peter is addressed to the Christians in Pontus (1:1), and Robert M. Grant
believes that the church in Pontus was already

fairly old . . . for around the year 110 Pliny (the Roman governor of Pontus
and Bithynia: legatus pro praetore provinciae Ponti et Bithyniae consulari
potestate, MV) investigated Pontic Christians who claimed to have left the
church twenty years earlier. At an uncertain date 1 Peter addressed Christians
in Bithynia and Pontus who were undergoing persecution. After 132 the vio-
lent struggle between Roman troops and Jewish messianists in Palestine pro-
duced strong sentiment against Jews throughout the empire, and presumably
led Marcion to try to separate the gospel from the Jewish Bible.83

The “writings and letters” mentioned in the prologue to John thus seem to refer to
Marcion’s New Testament, which, in addition to Marcion’s Gospel and the Antith-
esis (the preface to this collection), also contained ten Pauline epistles.84 We are
going to look more closely at this collection in the next chapter. Here we will only
note that, according to this testimony, Marcion submitted this collection to John,
but John, precisely because of his reading of the Antitheses, rejected it together
with the Gospel and instead dictated his own Gospel, which he called the “true
one.” In the third century, the Alexandrians Clement and Origen also report John’s
activity in the creation of the Gospels. Clement writes, according to Eusebius:

7 And when Mark and Luke had already published their Gospels, they say
that John, who had employed all his time in proclaiming the Gospel orally,
finally proceeded to write for the following reason. The three Gospels already
mentioned having come into the hands of all and into his own too, they say
that he accepted them and bore witness to their truthfulness; but that there
was lacking in them an account of the deeds done by Christ at the beginning
of his ministry. . . .
11 They say, therefore, that the apostle John, being asked to do it for this
reason, gave in his Gospel an account of the period which had been omitted by
24 The New Testament as a Collection

the earlier evangelists, and of the deeds done by the Savior during that period;
that is, of those which were done before the imprisonment of the Baptist. And
this is indicated by him, they say, in the following words: “This beginning of
miracles did Jesus”; and again when he refers to the Baptist, in the midst of
the deeds of Jesus, as still baptizing in Ænon near Salim; where he states the
matter clearly in the words: “For John was not yet cast into prison.”85

In Origen we read:

There is a story that John, who still survived Nero’s time, gathered together
the Gospels which were written, recognized some of them as genuine and
accepted them, but of those that were derived by the plot of the devil, rejected
and condemned which he knew were not true.86

The content of these reports by the Alexandrian scholars comes so close to Papias’s
note that it is likely that both used it as source material. He speaks not only of
John’s acceptance of the compiled Gospels but also of his rejection and condem-
nation of others. The fact that an almost identical statement is found in Origen’s
“Homilies on the Gospel of Luke” (albeit only in the Greek version, left out in
Jerome’s translation), in which Origen also clearly contrasts himself with Marcion,
underlines his reliance on Papias’s report.
A few decades later, in the passage quoted from Clement previously, Eusebius
leaves out the person of Marcion (note the omission in Jerome’s translation),87 who
by this time had become one of the arch-heretics.88 In another report about ­Clement,
Eusebius comes back to the origin of the Gospels and states: “But, last of all, John,
perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel, being urged
by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel.”89
Both excerpts from Clement, then, confirm the claim made in the previously
discussed excerpt from Papias that John wrote his Gospel with full knowledge of
the previously composed Gospels and insisted that his was truthful or inspired by
the Spirit, though we no longer have any mention of the Gospel of Marcion.
There is another testimony significant for our context, which has been largely
ignored by research so far,90 due to questions of credibility.91 This potential piece of
evidence comes from the Acts of Timothy, which are dated to anywhere between
the early third century to the late fifth century (320–340 CE according to the book’s
editor Hermann Usener; 356 CE according to Cavan Concannon, with further
development in the late fourth and early fifth centuries;92 after 374 CE according to
Emil Schürer’s convincing arguments;93 and after the Council of Chalcedon in 451
CE in most recent opinion).94 The Acts of Timothy (in its Latin translation) claims
to have been written by Polycrates of Ephesus and tells us more about John’s
undertakings in Ephesus than about Timothy. In it, we read that John ended up in
Rome following a shipwreck, which the author claims to have read in Irenaeus of
Lyon. The author then tells us the following:

The disciples who followed our Lord Jesus Christ also did not know how
to bring together the papyri they sometimes had in their possession, which
 The New Testament as a Collection 25

reported in various languages the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ taking
place at that time. When they happened to be in the city of Ephesus, they
brought them [the papyri], as is generally known, to the famous theologian
John. He studied them all, and inspired by them he compiled what they had
presented into three Gospels, according to the order of Matthew, Mark and
Luke, adding their names to the Gospels. But when he discovered that these
told the story of the salvation history of the Incarnation, he theologized about
things that were not mentioned and of which he had received knowledge
from the divine breast. Therefore, he added the things that were omitted by
the others, especially the divine miracles. Then he put his own name to this
book, namely the Gospel.95

It is apparent that we are not dealing here with a mere embellishment on Eusebius’s
report. Certainly, this says nothing about the historical value of the note, but John,
who is explicitly referred to as “the theologian,”96 is credited here with a consider-
ably greater part in the creation of the Gospels than in Clement’s report in Euse-
bius. The Acts of Timothy see him not only as the author of the fourth Gospel but as
the editor of the synoptic Gospels too.97 Moreover, the Acts consider the writings in
codex form, since otherwise it would have hardly been possible to speak of pages
that were not in order.98
There is a further account of John in a collection of the church fathers, the Cat-
ena in Ioannem edited by Corderius, which comes close to what we have just read
in the Acts of Timothy:

About this time the publication of the other Gospels took place. The believ-
ers in Asia brought the books to John because they wanted to know what
he thought of them, and he praised the authors for their truthfulness, but he
explained that they had overlooked some events in their reports.99

It is consistent with Papias that John was evidently seen as an authority in the pro-
cess of the composition of the Gospels, even though all the testimonies admit that
he was the last to take up writing and no longer simply gave oral testimony. If the
Papias excerpt gives us a little insight into history, then the Acts of Timothy could
represent a certain attempt at correcting it. As with Eusebius, there is no longer any
mention of Marcion. In contrast to John’s negative judgment of Marcion and his
confirmation of the truth of the three Gospels in Papias, in the Catena in Ioannem
we find the rather critical claim that John was the first to put the raw material of the
synoptic Gospels into a certain order. He is also seen as having given his Gospel a
more theological twist, a perspective on the economy of salvation that highlights
the incarnation and the divinity of Christ, complimenting the other Gospels, which
emphasize the human side of Jesus. Let us not forget that the Gospel of John is
famed precisely for this theological emphasis, beginning with the book’s prologue,
which speaks of the divine, pre-existent Logos, identified with Christ, and not of
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a human being, as in Matthew and Luke.
It is, therefore, all the more astonishing that Papias speaks of his preference
for the “living, abiding voice,” which shows a critical distance from all Gospels,
26 The New Testament as a Collection

including that of John, even though he describes it as the true one in the previous
passage from Eusebius. Compared with all the accounts quoted previously, the
information Papias provides seems to date back the furthest. Moreover, it is in
line with the further knowledge we gain from the statements about the Gospels
of Mark and Matthew, where Papias likewise expresses some appreciation linked
with c­riticism—Martin Hengel speaks even of Papias’s “devaluation” of these
Gospels.100 This critical stand might be the reason Papias does not apply the name
“Gospel” to either of these two texts in the surviving fragments.101 Eusebius quotes
Papias speaking of Mark as follows:

This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become an interpreter of Peter,
wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatever he remembered of the
things said or done by Christ. For he had neither heard the Lord nor followed
him, but later, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the
needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving an orderly account of
the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote
down things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not
to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them
falsely. These things are related by Papias concerning Mark.102

In a subsequent fragment, he writes about Papias’s view of Matthew: “But con-

cerning Matthew he writes as follows: ‘So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the
Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able’.”103
Much ink has already been devoted to these two fragments,104 and again Hengel
seems to have gotten it right: “Papias, or rather his informant . . . [knew] something
of the problem of writing the Gospels and the competing claims and traditions con-
nected with it.”105 For our context, it is interesting to note, first of all, that Papias
seems to pass on knowledge concerning the origin, the editing, and the compiling
of Mark and Matthew, as he did with John. While he praises Mark and Matthew, he
does not seem to be really satisfied with the products of their labors. Mark himself
never heard the Lord speak, but he remembers exactly the words of his disciple
Peter. On the basis of memory, then, Mark, as Peter’s interpreter, follows the order
of the teachings of his source, Peter, who attempted to meet the needs of his audi-
ence, which apparently explains the incoherence of Mark’s narrative.106 In Mat-
thew’s case, the source material is not to blame but rather the necessity of repeated
translations that have led to the text’s vagueness.
Without being able to pass judgment here on the historical reliability of the
details of the various testimonies listed, we can nevertheless conclude that the
early Christian tradition concerning John has at least one common denominator:
the Gospels did not come into being by chance in diverse places and at diverse
times through the organic production or growth of traditions within communities.
Our sources portray the creation of these texts as conscious and even professional
products of writers who were searching for information, checking the reliability of
their sources, and exchanging with colleagues who produced competing writings.
It would even seem that the composition of the Gospels was, from the beginning,
 The New Testament as a Collection 27

somehow coordinated among the actors and carried out in the knowledge of the
writings of the others. All the testimonies speak for a roughly simultaneous writ-
ing process and for a knowledge network where mutual reaction of peers could
intersect and interact.
At this point, in the interest of advancing our discussion of the New Testament
as a whole, I do not wish to go further into the Gospels, which we shall do later on
in this study. Suffice it, for now, to say that, according to everything that the early
Church has handed down to us in terms of external testimonies, there is ample
support for the previously mentioned hypothesis of a consciously editorial crea-
tion of at least the sub-collection of the Gospels. There is nothing in the sources
quoted previously to give credit to the alternative hypothesis, namely that these
texts emerged out of congregations by way of liturgical use and ritual practice.
That does not mean that the testimonies presented here are at all trustworthy.
One would be entirely justified in maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism if only
due to the fact that the third- and fourth-century testimonies are missing one of the
main actors in the original account: Marcion of Sinope. Moreover, one only has to
look at the further, later embellishment of the descriptions of the evangelists, as we
find them in the biblical codices of the Latin Church, to see how the narrative of
the composition of the Gospels has been shaped by the views of apologetic authors
who claimed orthodoxy for themselves. We have already spoken of the Latin pro-
logue to the Gospel of John, and we shall look at similar prologues for Luke and
Mark (in the western tradition) more closely in the following.
Going back to Papias and his fragments, we can gain further information about
the collection beyond the Gospels. According to Eusebius, Papias “uses testimo-
nies from the First Epistle of John and from that of Peter as well. And he relates
another story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which
is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.”107 It is worthwhile to note
here that, generally speaking, Eusebius credits Papias with having communicated
“certain strange parables and teachings of the Savior, and some other, more mythi-
cal things.”108 Having said that, can it be that Papias knew not only Mark, Matthew,
and John—Eusebius conspicuously does not mention Luke, although we have tes-
timony that Papias also knew this Gospel109—but also the Gospel of Hebrews? We
know of the latter from other sources in the early Church, and yet its profile, con-
tent, origin, and dissemination remain largely obscure, especially since the sources
also speak of an Ebionite and a Nazarene Gospel.110
The tale of the woman in question, however, is known to us as the story of the
woman taken in adultery in John (7:53–8:11), which, as attested by the absence of
this passage in some manuscripts, was obviously only added to John later.111 It is
not found in the early third-century papyri (P66 and P75) or in the two large fourth-
century codices already mentioned, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vati-
canus112, but is present in the Latin-Greek Codex Bezae, which, especially when it
comes to Luke, offers a version that is very close to Marcion. Overall, the Codex
Bezae offers a wealth of smaller and larger changes, additions, and omissions.113
A later reader of Papias and his “interpretations,” the Syrian Mahboub (Agapius)
of Hierapolis, writes in his Universal History (Kitab al-’Un-van, written in Arabic
28 The New Testament as a Collection

around 942) of “a wise man” who came to Hierapolis and wrote five books—hence
the identification with Papias by scholars114—and presented “in his book on the Gos-
pel of John the theme of the woman who was an adulteress.”115 What is striking
in Mahboub’s summary of the “theme” is that although the stories differ in minor
details (for example, Mahboub makes no mention of Jesus writing on the ground or
conversing with the woman), they are recognizably based on the same original narra-
tive.116 It is, however, difficult to reconcile Eusebius’s account with that of Mahboub,
for why would Papias, in his interpretation of John, refer to a narrative that Eusebius
claims he would have taken from the Gospel of Hebrews? It seems more likely
that Eusebius must have known from Bible codices at his disposal that this passage
mentioned by Papias was missing from their editions of John. He thus attempted to
construct a non-canonical source for the narrative precisely because, as we know
from Augustine, it was deemed rather controversial in the fourth and fifth centuries,
and perhaps even earlier, since it could be read as an apology of female adultery.117
Another element that catches our attention is Eusebius’s reference to Papias’s use
of 1 John, already encountered as testimony in Irenaeus’s letter. Let us not forget that
Eusebius places Papias in close proximity to Polycarp in his Ecclesiastical History,
and note that, for Irenaeus as for Papias, Polycarp is one of the presbyters they use as
sources of information, and he, in turn, is backed up by John as a source of authority.
It is possible, then, that the reference to 1 John and 1 Peter implies that Papias already
knew the further sub-collection of the Praxapostolos (the compilation of Acts and
the Catholic Epistles). At any rate, he certainly displays knowledge of the last sub-
collection of the later canonical New Testament, the Book of Revelation.118
To briefly summarize our examination of Polycarp and Papias, while Polycarp
shows no knowledge of the Gospels, Papias offers information about a Gospel writing
process which he places, at least as far as the Gospel of John is concerned, in the time
of Marcion, hence shortly before the middle of the second century. He views Mark as
chronologically coinciding with Peter and possibly regards Matthew as a revision of
Mark. It is possible that he was familiar with Luke, but we cannot rule conclusively
either way.119 He also shows evidence of knowledge of the Pauline epistles, such as
Romans120 and 2 Corinthians.121 Ulrich H. J. Körtner, an editor of the Papias Frag-
ments, remarks that Papias “with his literary enterprise [does not resemble Paul, but]
rather the Synoptics, and Luke in particular,”122 implying that Papias himself is to be
considered an active figure in the production process of these writings.

3. Ignatius of Antioch—An Unusual Witness

As Eusebius states in his Ecclesiastical History (Book III, Chapter 36), in addition
to Polycarp and Papias, there is another witness with whom we must reckon:

1. At that time Polycarp, a disciple of the apostles, was a man of eminence in

Asia, having been entrusted with the episcopate of the church of Smyrna
by those who had seen and heard the Lord.
2. And at the same time Papias, bishop of the parish of Hierapolis, became well
known, as did also Ignatius, who was chosen bishop of Antioch, second in
succession to Peter, and whose fame is still celebrated by a great many.
 The New Testament as a Collection 29

3. Reports say that he was sent from Syria to Rome, and became food for
wild beasts on account of his testimony to Christ.
4. And as he made the journey through Asia under the strictest military sur-
veillance, he fortified the parishes in the various cities where he stopped
to give oral homilies and exhortations, and warned them above all to be
especially on their guard against the heresies that were then beginning
to prevail, and exhorted them to hold fast to the tradition of the apostles.
Moreover, he thought it necessary to attest that tradition in writing, and
to give it a fixed form for the sake of greater security.
5. So when he came to Smyrna, where Polycarp was, he wrote an epistle
to the church of Ephesus, in which he mentions Onesimus, its pastor,
and another to the church of Magnesia, situated upon the Mæander, in
which he makes mention again of a bishop Damas; and finally one to the
church of Tralles, whose bishop, he states, was at that time Polybius.
6. In addition to these he wrote also to the church of Rome, entreating them
not to secure his release from martyrdom, and thus rob him of his earnest
hope. In confirmation of what has been said it is proper to quote briefly
from this epistle.
7. He writes as follows: “From Syria even unto Rome I fight with wild
beasts, by land and by sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten
leopards that is, a company of soldiers who only become worse when
they are well treated. In the midst of their wrongdoings, however, I am
more fully learning discipleship, but I am not thereby justified.
8 May I have joy of the beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray that
I may find them ready; I will even coax them to devour me quickly that
they may not treat me as they have some whom they have refused to
touch through fear. And if they are unwilling, I will compel them. For-
give me.
9. I know what is expedient for me. Now do I begin to be a disciple.
May naught of things visible and things invisible envy me; that I may
attain unto Jesus Christ. Let fire and cross and attacks of wild beasts,
let wrenching of bones, cutting of limbs, crushing of the whole body,
tortures of the devil—let all these come upon me if only I may attain
unto Jesus Christ.”
10. These things he wrote from the above-mentioned city to the churches
referred to. And when he had left Smyrna he wrote again from Troas
to the Philadelphians and to the church of Smyrna; and particularly to
Polycarp, who presided over the latter church. And since he knew him
well as an apostolic man, he commended to him, like a true and good
shepherd, the flock at Antioch, and besought him to care diligently for it.
11. And the same man, writing to the Smyrnæans, used the following words
concerning Christ, taken I know not whence: “But I know and believe
that he was in the flesh after the resurrection. And when he came to Peter
and his companions he said to them, ‘Take, handle me, and see that
I am not an incorporeal spirit.’ And immediately they touched him and
believed.”123
30 The New Testament as a Collection

Thus, our third witness is Ignatius, “the second successor of Peter on the episco-
pal see of the Church in Antioch.”124 What Eusebius reports about Ignatius, his
transport under heavy military guard through Asia to Rome, for example, does not
seem to have come from any reliable source, which even Eusebius himself admits
(λόγος δ’ ἔχει, i.e., “as it is said”).125 This supports the theory that Eusebius did not
have access to the famous Ignatian Epistles, which describe this journey in detail in
the more extensive seven-letter collection, but that he only had access to the older
three-letter collection—Ignatius to Polycarp (IgnPol), Ignatius to the Ephesians
(IgnEph), and Ignatius to the Romans (IgnRom).126 It is only from these letters
that he quotes with reference to a recognizable source, whereas the reference to
Ignatius’s letter to the Smyrnaeans (IgnSm), which belongs in the seven-letter col-
lection, is given without quotation. Similarly, Origen, writing in the third century,
quotes a passage from the same letter but does not cite this letter of Ignatius as its
source (even though he knows Ignatius and has access to the three-letter collec-
tion).127 Rather he attributes the quote to the Doctrina Petri, a text unfortunately
lost except for a few fragments.128
Consequently, we can conclude that Eusebius, like most of his predecessors, may
have heard of the seven-letter collection but had only the three-letter ­collection of
the Ignatian Epistles as a written source. Even Irenaeus quotes only from the three-
letter collection, and even if he knew of the seven-letter collection, it is highly
doubtful that he had read it.129 The only instances of references directly parallel to
the seven-letter collection are found in the work of a contemporary of Irenaeus, the
Greek-writing sophist and satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–180 CE).130
Since the 177 CE Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyon, which is connected
with Irenaeus, also points to knowledge of both collections of Ignatian letters, and
since Theophilus of Antioch (c. 183 CE) also knows both collections of letters, the
seven-letter collection seems to have originated around 170–177 CE at the latest,
presumably in the vicinity of Smyrna in Asia Minor. It appears to have become
known in Asia Minor, Syria, and Gaul shortly before 180 CE and later, as Clement
of Alexandria attests, in Egypt.131 Convincing support for both the dating and the
localization of this collection of seven epistles has recently been presented by Jan
N. Bremmer, who has examined the names cited in these letters and concludes:

Thus, one could imagine a scenario in which a martyr Ignatius, whose exist-
ence I do not doubt, wrote some letters which were combined with Poly-
carp’s Letter to the Philippians. We do not know the precise time or content
of these letters, but they may be related to or have consisted of the short
recension if we follow Vinzent.132 This combination became expanded in the
160s (?) to contain the seven Ignatians, just as the authentic letters of Paul
became expanded with the Pastorals, which happened not that long before
the appearance of the Ignatians.133

Indeed, in a recent study, I have tried to show that while Ignatius’s three-letter
collection had slipped from the radar of scholars for over 150 years,134 this col-
lection had probably been the earliest pseudonymous production of such letters,
 The New Testament as a Collection 31

credited to an otherwise little-known martyr, in the years after 150 CE. Later, it
was expanded into a seven-letter collection in the years after 170 CE, not far off
from the canonical redactions of Irenaeus’s broadened collection, later known as
the New Testament.135
Assuming this chronological sequence for the (pseudo-)Ignatians,136 we can
then proceed to investigate the collections of Christian writings reflected in these
letters and see if we find quotations of or allusions to the Gospels, the Pauline Epis-
tles, Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation.
If we read through Ignatius’s three-letter collection, we find three traces of the
Gospels, two referring to Matthew and one to John. In IgnPol 2:2, we read: “Be
wise in all things as the serpent, and without guile ever as the dove,” which sounds
like a paraphrase of Mt 10:16 (“Be wise as the serpent, and innocent as the doves”).
Even before that, the same letter, IgnPol 1:3, advises: “Bear the infirmities of all
men,” which is reminiscent of Mt 8:17 (“He bore the infirmities,” itself a quotation
of Isa 53:4).137 In addition, we encounter the mention of a star hidden from the ruler
of this world, which could be an allusion to the star of the magi (Mt 2:9). In Ign-
Rom 7:3 we read of the “bread of God,” an expression found in Jn 6:33 (“For the
bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”).
Certainly, these scanty traces do not have great probative force, as Christian Carl
Josias Bunsen rightly remarked as early as the nineteenth century.138 If anything,
we can cautiously say that only the later canonical Gospels, Matthew and John,
could have been known to the letter-writer since no other traces are found in the
three Ignatian epistles.
The style of the letters themselves is reminiscent of the Pauline letters. Com-
pare, for example, the opening of Paul’s letter to the Philippians (“Paul and Timo-
thy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi,
with their overseers and helpers. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ”)139 with IgnPol: “Ignatius, [also Theophorus],140 to Polycarp,
bishop of Smyrna, or rather to him who was sought out by God the Father and Jesus
Christ our Lord, many greetings,” and IgnEph: “Ignatius, [also Theophorus], to
the Church blessed by the greatness and fullness of God the Father” and IgnRom:
“Ignatius, [also Theophorus], to the Church received in mercy by the greatness
of the Father Most High.” Furthermore, we find the following phrase in IgnRom
5: “but I am not yet justified by it,” which is identical to 1 Cor 4:4. Similarly, in
IgnEph we read: “You are imitators of God,” an expression that is found word for
word in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Eph 5:1). Yet, apart from these, we find
hardly any other direct reference to the Pauline letters in the three-letter collec-
tion.141 There is, however, an allusion to the Pauline Epistles in general and perhaps
to 1 Peter as well in IgnRom 4:3, which states that “Peter and Paul” gave “instruc-
tions” to the Romans, which he, Ignatius, did not do, since he was not an apostle.
As for Acts, the Catholic Epistles, or Revelation, the three-letter collection makes
no reference to them at all.
However, this picture changes substantially when we consider the seven-letter
collection, which came about perhaps twenty years later. Like its shorter predeces-
sor, this collection also mentions only the two later Gospels, those of Matthew and
32 The New Testament as a Collection

John, and not Mark or Luke. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians proclaims:
“No one who confesses faith sins, and no one who possesses love hates. The tree
is known by its fruit”142 (IgnEph 14:2), an echo of Mt 12:33: “Make a tree good
and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is
recognized by its fruit.”143 The Epistle of Ignatius to the Philadelphians cautions:
“Beware of the bad plants that Jesus Christ does not cultivate because they are not
a planting of the Father” (IgnPhilad 3:1), a theme repeated also in the Epistle to
the Trallians: “For these are not the Father’s planting” (IgnTral 11:1). Both of these
passages are reminiscent of Mt 15:13: “He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly
Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.’ ” Then in the Epistle to the
Smyrnaeans, we find: “He that receives, let him receive”144 (IgnSm 6:1), which is
almost a verbatim quote of Mt 19:12: “The one who can accept this should accept
it.”145
There are also numerous examples of passages that echo the Gospel of John.
Consider the similarities between:

• IgnPhilad 7:1: “For it [the Spirit] knows whence it comes and where it goes, and
it searches out the hidden things” and John 3:8: “The wind blows wherever it
pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it
is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
• Ignatius to the Magnesians (IgnMag) 7:1: “How then the Lord, being one with
Him, did nothing without the Father, either by Himself or through the apostles”
and John 5:19: “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees
his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does,” as well
as John 8:28: “So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you
will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the
Father has taught me’,” John 10:30: “I and the Father are one,” and John 14:11:
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”
• IgnMag 6:1: “We are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with
the Father from eternity and appeared at the end,” and John 1:1–2: “In the begin-
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was
with God in the beginning.”

The seven epistles contain parallels to the Gospels not only in terms of the say-
ings attributed to Jesus but also in the narrative of Jesus’s baptism: “Truly born of
the virgin and baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him”
(IgnSm 1:1) which echoes a passage in Mt 3:13–15:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John
tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to
me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all
righteousness.” Then John consented.

In addition, there are certain expressions that seem to be directly lifted from
the Gospel of John: IgnEph 7:1 refers to Jesus as “the gift of God,” also found in
 The New Testament as a Collection 33

John 4:10,146 and IgnPhilad 9:1 as “the Father’s door,” a term found in John 10:7
and 10:9.
Another passage pertinent to our discussion is found in IgnPol 5, which not only
mentions the “gospel” three times but also the prophets, explicitly stating that this
gospel had already been proclaimed by the prophets, who had called the gospel a
“common hope,” and who had, therefore, been saved by Jesus as holy men worthy
of love and admiration. Similarly, IgnSm 5 proclaims:

These could not be persuaded by the prophecies, nor by the law of Moses,
nor even to this day by the gospel, nor by the sufferings of any of us. For
they also think the same of us. What good is a man to me if he praises me
but reviles my Lord by not admitting that he appeared in the flesh? He who
does not affirm this has utterly denied him and carries his own corpse. But
their names, the unbelieving, I think not to record. Yea, far be it from me
to remember them, until they be converted unto the suffering which is our
resurrection.

And IgnSm 7:2 adds:

So it is fitting to keep away from such, and not to speak of them singly or
together, but to keep to the prophets, and especially to the gospel, in which
the suffering is revealed to us and the resurrection is clearly set forth.

In keeping with this recurrent evocation of the prophets, the seven-letter collec-
tion also quotes a verse taken directly from Isaiah. In IgnTral 8:2 we read: “Woe
to him through whom my name is vainly blasphemed before some,” as compared
to Isa 52:5: “All day long, my name is blasphemed.” There are likewise two ref-
erences to the book of Proverbs with the formula “it is written” (γέγραπται), in
IgnEph 5:3: “For it is written: God resists the arrogant,” a verse found literally in
Prov 3:34,147 but also in the Book of James (4:6) and 1 Peter (5:5).148 To this point,
it is significant that IgnPhilad 8:2 presents a discussion about whether the written
Gospel is sufficient, or whether it requires confirmation by “the charters,” referring
here to the Jewish scriptures, and in particular to the prophets:

For I heard some say, If I do not find it in the charters [ἐν τοῖς ἀρχείοις], in
the Gospel, I do not believe it; and when I said to them, It is written, they
answered me, That is in question. But to me the charter is Jesus Christ; to me
the untouched charters are his cross, his death, his resurrection, and the faith
established by him; in these I will be justified by your prayer.

The section highlights that Ignatius is no longer relying on the Jewish writings,
perhaps not in writings at all, but instead points to Jesus Christ as the foundation of
his belief. Moving on from the Gospels, the seven-letter collection contains further
testimonies from the Pauline Epistles149 and, even more strikingly, quotations and
echoes of the so-called Pastoral Epistles, that is, the two Epistles to Timothy and
34 The New Testament as a Collection

the Epistle to Titus. These are no longer attributed to Paul in scholarship today but
are presented under Paul’s name in the Ignatian Epistles.150 Similarly, only in the
seven-letter collection do we find a reference to “all of Paul’s letters” (IgnEph 12:2;
see also IgnTral 3:3; IgnEph 3:1).151
Just as important as what we do find in the seven-letter collection, in terms of
allusions to canonical literature, are those canonical texts that seem to have left no
trace on the Ignatian Epistles, such as the Gospels of Mark and Luke as well as
Acts and Revelation. Based on this body of evidence, we can say that of the four
sub-collections of the later canonical New Testament, we encounter only the later
Gospels (Mt and Jn), the Pauline Epistles, namely with Rom, 1 Cor, and Eph, and
the Pastoral Epistles, but without reference to Heb, whereas the other two sub-
collections (Praxapostolos and Revelation) go entirely unmentioned in the seven-
letter collection too.

4. Dionysius of Corinth—Witness to the Revision of the Collections

In order to complete our examination of the external witnesses offered us by Euse-

bius and from which we can then draw a first summary conclusion regarding the
possible process of the creation of the collection of writings that later became
known as the New Testament, we still need a look at the report that Eusebius gives
us about Dionysius of Corinth.
Eusebius’s account of Dionysius of Corinth succeeds his discussions of Justin
Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, and Hegesippus in the fourth book of the Eccle-
siastical History. This means that Eusebius places Dionysius’s life and works in
the period after 170 CE.152 He also reports that Dionysius was a bishop presiding
over the Church of Corinth but that he had influence beyond his own diocese.
According to Harnack, Dionysius was “the bishop of one of the first Christian
communities” who “conducted an ‘ecumenical’ correspondence.”153 In fact, his let-
ters are directed to a geographically wider area than that of Ignatius of Antioch.154
Eusebius mentions a total of eight letters that Dionysius wrote at the request of his
Christian brothers. Dionysius also seems to have collected them himself, for “how
else could the letter of Pinytus (to Dionysius) have been included?”155 Moreover,
we learn from the letters that this collection (recall the collections of the Pauline
and Ignatian Epistles) underwent corruption by “the apostles of the devil” during
Dionysius’s lifetime.156 Unfortunately, except for the few excerpts Eusebius shares
with us, these letters are all lost to us today. According to Eusebius’s testimony,
Dionysius wrote epistles to:

• The Lacedemonians (a name for the inhabitants of Sparta in the south of the
Peloponnese), in which are contained “instruction in the orthodox faith and an
admonition to peace and unity.”
• The Athenians, or more precisely, an epistle “also addressed to the Athenians”
(meaning that it was likewise addressed to other unknown communities), “excit-
ing them to faith and to the life prescribed by the Gospel” because they had
“almost fallen away from doctrine after the martyrdom of their bishop Publius,”
 The New Testament as a Collection 35

even though they had been “awakened to a new life of faith” by their new bishop
Quadratus. In quoting from this letter, Dionysius displays a knowledge of Acts,
for he tells us of “Dionysius the Areopagite, who was converted to the faith by
the apostle Paul, according to the statement in the Acts of the Apostles [17:34],
first obtained the episcopate of the church at Athens.”
• The inhabitants of Nicomedia in Asia Minor (today’s Izmit), “in which he
attacks the heresy of Marcion, and stands fast by the canon of the truth.”
• The church at Gortyna in Crete as well as all other Cretan churches. In it, he
praises their bishop Philip for the virtuous life of people in the area but “warns
against seduction by the heretics.”
• The church in Amastris in Paphlagonia, on the coast of the Black Sea, 300km
west of Sinope, and to the churches of Pontus. In it, “he gives explanations of
passages of the divine Scriptures and mentions their bishop Palmas by name. He
gives them much advice also in regard to marriage and chastity, and commands
them to receive those who come back following any kind of fall, whether it be
delinquency or heresy.”
• The inhabitants of Knossos in Crete, in which “he exhorts Pinytus, bishop of the
parish, not to lay upon the brethren a grievous and compulsory burden in regard
to chastity, but to have regard for the weakness of the multitude.” In reply to
this letter, “Pinytus admires and commends Dionysius, but exhorts him, in turn,
to occasionally impart more solid food, and to feed the people under him, when
he wrote again, with more advanced teachings, that they might not be fed con-
tinually on these milky doctrines and imperceptibly grow old under a training
calculated for children.”
• The Romans and their bishop Soter. This letter states: “For, from the beginning,
it has been your practice to do good to all the brethren in various ways, and to
send contributions to many churches in every city. Thus relieving the want of
the needy, and making provision for the brethren in the mines by the gifts which
you have sent from the beginning, you Romans keep up the hereditary customs
of the Romans, which your blessed bishop Soter has not only maintained, but
also added to, furnishing an abundance of supplies to the saints, and encourag-
ing the brethren from abroad with blessed words, as a loving father would do
his children.” Eusebius adds that in this letter Dionysius “makes mention also of
Clement’s epistle to the Corinthians, showing that it had been the custom from
the beginning to read it in the church. His words are as follows: ‘Today we have
passed the Lord’s holy day, in which we have read your epistle. From it, when-
ever we read it, we shall always be able to draw advice, as also from the former
epistle, which was written to us through Clement.’ ”
• The “most faithful sister Chrysophora . . . , in which he writes suitably and
imparts to her also the proper spiritual nourishment.”157

For our context, it is first of all important that Dionysius wrote the first six letters,
that is, all with the exception of the letter to the Romans and to Chrysophora, on one
of two themes: “peace and unity” or, conversely, the danger of “heresies.” Clearly,
Acts plays a certain role here, since it is on the basis of this textual authority that
36 The New Testament as a Collection

Paul is introduced as the one who had won Dionysius the Areopagite to the faith,
which led to his being installed as the first bishop of the Church in Athens. From
Athens, Dionysius first turns his gaze to Asia Minor in the letter addressed to the
Nicomedians. It is here that we first encounter the only heretic Dionysius (through
Eusebius) mentioned by name: the one and only Marcion. Marcion’s home city
of Sinope in Pontus is situated to the east of Nicomedia, and halfway between
these two cities, we find Amastris in Paphlagonia, which borders Pontus to the east.
Unfortunately, Eusebius reports nothing more from the letter to the Nicomedians
than that in this letter, Dionysius combats “the heresy of Marcion” on the ground of
the true faith. What this means is somewhat elucidated by the letter to the commu-
nity in Amastris, in which it is said that Dionysius explained biblical passages with
admonitions concerning marriage and virginity.158 We know from the teachings of
Marcion that he held a decidedly ascetic attitude that demanded strict sexual absti-
nence. Tertullian, writing his five-volume work against Marcion at the beginning
of the third century, accuses his adversary: “For you do not permit the union of
man and woman, nor do you admit to the sacrament of baptism and the Eucharist
to persons who had married elsewhere, unless they had agreed with each other to
abstain from sexual intercourse.”159
Elsewhere, Tertullian writes: “No flesh is immersed unless it is virginal or wid-
owed or unmarried or has purchased baptism by separation.”160 Marcion had thus
admitted spouses only under ascetic renunciation. If Marcion’s teachings were the
background to the letter to Amastris, which is at least geographically likely, then
this also seems to explain the content of the letters to Crete. For in Knossos, too,
Dionysius preaches that one should not impose heavy burdens as indispensable
duties with regard to abstinence, thus contradicting Marcion’s doctrine directly. It
is all the more astonishing that Bishop Pinytus describes the position of Dionysius
as “milky doctrines . . . calculated for children” and an attempt to weaken Christi-
anity, meaning that he himself wished to adhere to Marcion’s more severe attitude
for it strengthened Christianity in his community.161 The “seduction by the her-
etics” of which the other letter to Crete, namely to the church at Gortyna, speaks,
therefore, does not seem to have been unjustified, because Marcion’s position was
presumably on the rise, even if heretics are spoken of here in the plural.162 Moreo-
ver, it shows that the delineation between orthodox and heretics was not clear yet,
as neither Dionysius nor Pinytus regarded themselves as belonging to different
religious denominations and, apparently, Pinytus did not understand the reference
to heretics as a categorization which, if associated with it, would estrange him from
Dionysius. We know from Eusebius that the addressee, Bishop Philip, “according
to the words of Dionysius himself, also wrote a very zealous book against Mar-
cion,”163 perhaps on the same basis still that these bishops did reject Marcion’s
rigorous asceticism while others like Pinytus saw in it the better expression for a
life according to Christ.
Since Marcion is such a central and sensitive topic in these letters to Asia Minor
and Crete, we may hypothesize that perhaps the letters to Sparta and Athens dealt
with him, too. This would explain why Dionysius’s reference to Paul in the letter
to the Athenians, made explicit through the mention of Acts, suggests an image
 The New Testament as a Collection 37

of Paul that differs from the way he is presented in his letters and read ascetically
by Marcion. If these considerations are correct, it then follows that Acts appears
for the first time in the history of Christianity within the context of a discussion of
on the one side a rejection and on the other a praise of Marcionite ascetic demands
and the interpretation of Pauline authority.
Other letters are mentioned in Dionysius’s letter to the Romans—one from the
church of Rome to the Corinthians and an earlier letter sent through Clement to
Rome—which are read in Corinth on the “holy day of the Lord.” This would suggest
that the two letters—at least one of which seems to be the First Epistle of Clement
known to us—were considered texts to be used at a Sunday gathering. Whether this
might also apply to Acts cannot be ascertained from Eusebius’s account.
Eusebius’s quotations from and remarks on Dionysius contain yet another piece
of evidence that is of importance for our topic, specifically Dionysius’s claim that
the letters he had written at the request of his Christian brethren were forged:

As the brethren desired me to write epistles, I wrote. And these epistles the
apostles of the devil have filled with tares, cutting out some things and add-
ing others. For them woe is in store. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if
some have attempted to adulterate the Lord’s writings also, since they have
formed designs even against writings which are of less account.164

The “apostles of the devil” here, again, seem to refer to Marcion, whose heresy
appears to have preoccupied Dionysius.165 Polycarp, as we have noted before, had
called Marcion “the firstborn of Satan.”166 Eusebius, citing Irenaeus in his account
of Polycarp, repeats this statement and goes on to quote Irenaeus:

Such caution did the apostles and their disciples exercise that they might
not even converse with any of those who perverted the truth; as Paul also
said, “A man who is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject
him; you may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-
condemned” [Tit 3:10–11].167

Both the encounter between Polycarp and Marcion and Irenaeus’s explanation
from the Epistle to Titus, picked up by Eusebius, are noteworthy. Marcion is
described here, not unlike in Papias’s fragment, as someone who had sought con-
tact and closeness with the authorities of tradition but was rejected by them and
even equated with Satan or the devil. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Marcion
and his followers are subsumed by Dionysius under the invective “the apostles of
the devil.” In addition, Dionysius, like Irenaeus after him and perhaps influenced
by him, accuses Marcion of falsifying writings. Due to competing versions of his
letters—which speak to a close interweaving network of authors and readers or
editors—Dionysius obviously felt compelled to prepare an authoritative volume of
his own letters, which would have been accessible to Eusebius.168
In attacking Marcion, Irenaeus and Eusebius, not unlike Dionysius, refer to writ-
ings that, as we shall see in a moment, were not to be found in Marcion’s collection
38 The New Testament as a Collection

of writings. They rely neither on Paul’s letters, which are still regarded as authentic
today, nor on the Gospel of Marcion, which has the closest relationship to Luke,
but instead primarily on Acts, the Pastoral Epistles (to which Titus belongs), and
the Gospels of Matthew and John. In order to better understand this strategy and
to see how it presumably led to the creation of a new collection of early Christian
writings to compete with Marcion’s New Testament, we shall next investigate the
latter’s genesis.

II. The Precanonical New Testament, Attributed to Marcion—

The Template
Before we turn to Marcion’s New Testament collection, I will give a brief introduc-
tion of his person, as far as our sources allow.

1. Marcion of Sinope

Second-century Christian history has often been described as a battleground

between heretics and orthodox teachers, whether we see orthodoxy as mainstream
Christianity from which heretics deviated, or, as Walter Bauer famously advocated,
if we view heretics as precursors who provoked opponents to form a mounting
and eventually successful orthodoxy.169 It is my opinion, however, that we must
think of the confrontations between the different teachers of the second century in
much less warlike terms. Even if the charged rhetoric can sometimes lead one to
believe that one is dealing with opponents who are out for blood, there is much evi-
dence to indicate that these teachers were, in fact, keenly interested in each other’s
works and ideas, that authors from different schools were more or less willing to
learn from each other, and that they often reconsidered their own opinions and
partly accepted other thinkers’ positions, even though they rarely openly admitted
as much.170
Let us take another look at Irenaeus, for example. In Book III of Against Her-
esies (Adversus haereses), after discussing various positions that are in his opinion
problematic and should be rejected, he returns to Marcion and his idea that God
is “exclusively good.” Irenaeus tries to counter him with the claim that God is not
only good since he is also a judgmental God.171 Nevertheless, the criticism ends on
a different, almost conciliatory note in the shape of a prayer: “We pray therefore for
their sake, because we love them more than they love themselves. For our love, in
so far as it is true, is wholesome to them if they will receive it.”172 Irenaeus makes
similar remarks to Valentinus at the very beginning of Book IV.
Unfortunately, Irenaeus does not seem to have followed through on his plan to
write a book “Against Marcion” (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος),173 in which he aspired
to contradict Marcion using “his own writings . . . his words, which are respected
among them, those of the Lord and of the Apostle, of which he makes use.”174 We
are, therefore, left only with his critique of Marcion in the larger Against Her-
esies, which is directed primarily against Valentinus and his followers. Neverthe-
less we can infer, even from the brief quote previously, that Irenaeus had at least
 The New Testament as a Collection 39

knowledge of Marcion’s New Testament collection containing one Gospel (“those

[words] of the Lord”) and the ten Pauline Epistles (“those of the Apostle”). In fact,
these two parts of his New Testament, along with the preface, the Antitheses, and a
lost letter mentioned by Tertullian,175 are the only writings of Marcion’s for which
we have evidence.
Yet, who was this Marcion who deprived so many Christian authors of their
peace of mind? Besides Irenaeus and Tertullian, there is a long list of Christian
writers who knew and explicitly wrote either to or against Marcion: Justin (πρὸς
Μαρκίωνα σύνταγμα, before 151 AD)176, Rhodo (πρὸς τὴν Μαρκίωνος αἵρεσιν),177
Dionysius of Corinth (in several of his letters, particularly the letter to the Nicome-
dians),178 Theophilus of Antioch (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος),179 Philippus of Gortyna
(κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος),180 Modestus, (κατὰ Μαρκίωνος λόγος),181 Miltiades,182
Proclus,183 Melito of Sardis (“On the Incarnation of Christ”),184 Bardesanes (πρὸς
τοὺς κατὰ Μαρκίωνα . . . διαλόγους),185 and Hippolytus (πρὸς Μαρκίωνα).186 In
addition, writers of this period also mention Marcion in works not explicitly writ-
ten to or against Marcion. These include, to mention only a few:187 Papias of Hiera-
polis (140–150 AD),188 Hegesippus (c. 180–190 AD),189 Clement of Alexandria,190
and Origen.191
The list reads almost like a “who’s who” of second- and third-century Christian
history. If, as present scholarship tends to think, Marcion produced hardly anything
and the collection of the New Testament that he put together was nothing but an
assemblage of older and existing texts in which “he did not alter anything,”192 how
and why did he become the target of interest and criticism for generations of Chris-
tian teachers and writers, while the text that he was supposed to only use and derive
his theology from remained unnamed and unblamed?
To answer this question is no easy feat, as Marcion’s original New Testament
did not survive but had to be reconstructed from the commentaries and reports of
Marcion’s interlocutors and opponents. Even if we only have accounts of and quo-
tations from this collection of writings, we know, especially from Tertullian, that
he had named his collection the “New Testament,” which was, as Wolfram Kinzig
has shown, the first usage of this title for a collection of Christian writings.193 As
Kinzig notes, Tertullian, in his extensive writings, large parts of which still survive
today, uses the title “New Testament” exclusively when dealing with Marcion. The
same is true of Justin.194
As indicated, unfortunately, we no longer possess Marcion’s New Testament in
the form of a manuscript, a roll or a codex but have to base our views on the close
commentary that Tertullian wrote and published in the beginning of the third cen-
tury, as well as that of Epiphanius of Salamis from the fourth century. From these,
however, we can delineate its shape to some extent,195 for it is true that “the sources
on Marcion are more numerous than those on any other heretic of his time.”196
The great late nineteenth–early twentieth-century researcher of early Christian-
ity, Adolf von Harnack, devoted much of his attention to Marcion and compiled in
his studies almost all the sources available to us today.197 Though we cannot deter-
mine the exact dates of Marcion’s life from these,198 we do learn that Marcion came
from Pontus (today’s northern Turkey), presumably from the city of Sinope at the
40 The New Testament as a Collection

northernmost point of Anatolia.199 The city was famous at the time for its harbor,
which regularly served Roman naval forces as an assembly point in their quest to
dominate the southern Black Sea.200 The famous Greek translator of the Septuagint
and a contemporary of Marcion, Aquila, who according to Epiphanius had married
into the imperial house of Hadrian and allegedly became a Christian (but then had
himself circumcised), also came from Sinope.201 According to Tertullian, Marcion
himself seems to have come from a family in the Jewish environment and whose
members were considered Jewish proselytes.202 My previous considerations as to
whether Marcion had already become a Christian before the end of the second
Jewish war (132–135 CE) are now outdated, since we have come to know that Mar-
cion, albeit a proselyte and a Jew, was the first teacher who dared to formulate his
own, non-Jewish Christian self-identity, hence lives at a time where the two strands
within Jewish traditions still were not fully separated.203 In any case, the cruel war
between the Jews under the rebel leader Bar Kohba and the Romans under Hadrian
must have left a deep impression on him and ultimately brought him from Pontus
to the Roman capital.
He was a ship-owner or naukleros (ναύκληρος) by profession204 but also a phi-
losopher and a teacher. Peter Lampe has shown that naukleroi were known for
their wealth and profitable businesses.205 At the time of Marcion and Emperor Had-
rian, they were materially well off, wielded a certain degree of respect, occupied
a relatively high social position, and were able to invest in both land estates and
seafaring. As members of the guild of naukleroi, they had a corresponding social
network and imperial privileges. For example, Nero granted them tax exemption
on their ships, and under Hadrian, naukleroi did not have to pay city taxes. Marcion
seems to have owned a relatively large ship enterprise and was able to delegate
responsibilities to other people.206 This is supported by the fact that when Mar-
cion arrived in Rome, he established a considerable endowment for the municipal-
ity there,207 equal to perhaps the annual salary of the leader of the Roman naval
forces208 or “twice the minimum wealth of a municipal decurio.”209 According to
Martial, this sum could buy an estate or a piece of land of about fifty hectares,
which corresponded to the size of a medium-sized farm.210 If we compare Marcion
to other second-century cult founders or patrons, he seems to have been one of the
wealthiest among them.211 In addition, Tertullian tells us that a few years after he
made the endowment, Marcion took the assets back, which suggests that prior to
this the community was allowed to use only interests from it. This demonstrates
his prudent and clever financial mind, even though Tertullian sees this move as
indicating the exclusion of the benefactor from the community, albeit an exclusion
that Tertullian dates to the reign of bishop Eleutherius, which only began one or
two decades after Marcion’s death.212
Other sources depict Marcion as being so wealthy that, like the majority of
the ship-owning urban elite, he was no longer involved in the operation of his
business.213 Instead, Marcion was free to pursue his other passion, that of teach-
ing. Jerome calls him a highly learned man (doctissimus).214 Others make men-
tion of his philosophical education,215 and although Eusebius of Caesarea views
him negatively, he does concede that Marcion was successful in developing and
 The New Testament as a Collection 41

expanding his school,216 which apparently included both male and female stu-
dents and teachers.217 The school grew not only quantitatively but also in terms
of its importance, a fact we learn from Irenaeus, who tells us that after Marcion
had arrived in Rome, “his influence grew under [Emperor Antoninus] Pius, and
remained until Aniket.”218 Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s successor after the Second
Jewish War, reigned from 138 to 161 CE, and Aniket was a Roman bishop in the
years 154–166 CE. However, according to Clement of Alexandria, Marcion was
no longer alive during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180 CE).219
If Marcion lived until shortly before the year 161 CE and, according to Clement,
was “considerably older” than the other famous Roman school founders, such as
Valentinus and Justin, who had all come to the capital after the end of the Second
Jewish War, then we can conclude that Marcion was born around the years 90–100
CE and arrived in Rome between the years 136 and 138 CE.220 That Marcion was
already teaching and researching Christianity in his home town of Sinope in Pontus
is suggested by the Papias fragment quoted previously and might not be farfetched,
given the impact the publication of his New Testament had in Rome.

2. Marcion, the Creator of the “New Testament”?

Marcion scholar Adolf von Harnack gleaned important chronological information

and certain geographical clues from the following statement by Tertullian:

In what year of the elder Antoninus the pestilential breeze hatched 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. Since therefore it was under Antoni-
nus that, as I have proved, Marcion first brought this god on the scene, at
once, if you are in your senses, the fact is clear. The dates themselves put it
beyond argument that that which first came to light under Antoninus did not
come to light under
Tiberius: that is, that the god of Antoninus’ reign was not the God of the
reign of Tiberius, and therefore he who it is admitted was first reported to
exist by Marcion, had not been revealed by Christ.221

Based on this, Harnack calculates that Marcion was “impious under Pius” (i.e.,
Emperor Antoninus Pius) in the summer of 144 CE. As for “Marcion’s salva-
tion,” Tertullian’s poetic imagery most likely refers to Marcion’s Christ in his New
­Testament—his message of salvation composed of the narrative of the descent,
appearance, life, death, and resurrection of the Savior, followed by the Pauline
Epistles. Tertullian, who stresses that this “pestilential breeze” was “breathed out”
from Pontus, evidently sees Marcion’s works as products of a time when the latter
was living and working in Pontus and had not yet moved to Rome. On the other
hand, if he is “impious under Pius,” Tertullian locates Marcion in Rome at the time
42 The New Testament as a Collection

when his views became publicly known, “since therefore it was under Antoninus
that, as I have proved, Marcion first brought this god on the scene.”222 Even if Har-
nack’s calculation was not correct, Marcion’s publication of his “New Testament”
must have taken place at a time when he was living in the Roman community,
an event that was seen by Tertullian as the crucial moment in the biography of
Marcion, as well as the history of the Roman church. As far as we can learn from
Tertullian’s report about Marcion’s New Testament, the significance of Marcion’s
Antitheses, aside from its interpretation of the Gospel and the ten Pauline letters,
was that it supported the claim that the tradition concerning Christ and Paul—
Tertullian calls it the “rule” (regula)—had been adulterated (adulterata) prior to
Marcion’s restoration of it (recurasse).223 Tertullian sees this publication as a devia-
tion from the pious path and ultimately as the reason for, as he claims, Marcion’s
expulsion from the Roman community, even though Marcion seems to have merely
set up a new community of his own accord, which, from what we know, was not
fully separate from other Christian communities in Rome as late as the mid-third
century.224 Like Papias, Tertullian thus seems to have considered the Gospel a Pon-
tic product but locates the publication of the New Testament collection as a corpus
delicti in Rome.
Of the preface, the Antitheses, Tertullian tells us:

I shall take up the rest [of my argument] from my opponents themselves. The
separation of Law and Gospel is the primary and principal exploit of Mar-
cion. His disciples cannot deny this, which stands at the head of their docu-
ment, that document by which they are inducted, into and confirmed in this
heresy. For such are Marcion’s Antitheses, or Contrary Oppositions, which
are designed to show the conflict and disagreement of the Gospel and the
Law, so that from the diversity of principles between those two documents
they may argue further for a diversity of gods.225

Tertullian, thus, explicitly aims to refute Marcion using his own words, a project
that Irenaeus, as we have seen, had also announced but obviously not accom-
plished. Tertullian’s first point is that he is picking up “their document” which can
only mean Marcion’s New Testament including the Antitheses which, as Tertul-
lian explains, “stands at the head of their document.” Tertullian also mentions the
purpose of Marcion having created this New Testament with his introduction, the
Antitheses. The collection served to introduce and confirm people “in this heresy.”
Tertullian, therefore, explicitly states that Marcion did not make use of a collection
that he found and which would confirm his heretic opinion, but on the contrary
that this was “their,” the Marcionite foundational document, which contained their
teachings. Marcion’s main concern, so Tertullian, is to separate the Law from the
Gospel. Already in the Antitheses, as the name of the preface indicates, Marcion
tries to point out the difference, indeed the opposition, between the Gospel and the
Law. This, however, is only the basis for the further conclusion that the God of the
Gospel is not the same as that of the Law.
 The New Testament as a Collection 43

Tertullian also explains what, according to Marcion, constitutes the falsification

of the older tradition. For Marcion “God was still unknown” and had “just come
to be noticed” through the Christ of this god unknown, a revelation that Marcion
presents in his work. This implies that in all the years between Christ’s appear-
ance on earth and Marcion’s coming “to his rescue” there existed “a perversion of
the preaching about Christ himself.”226 Speaking in what follows about “Peter and
those others, pillars of apostleship,” Tertullian interprets Marcion as reproaching
these apostles for having abandoned “the truth of the Gospel,” the same accusation
Paul levels at them in his Letter to the Galatians (Gal 2:11–14).
While Tertullian accepts that Paul did in fact reprove these apostles’ “worri-
some conduct,” he rejects Marcion’s claim that this reproach had anything to do
with a rejection of the God of the Law.227 Hence, the “unity of preaching” is pre-
served.228 Tertullian sees the “New Testament” as merely a compendium that had
been cleansed or disentangled from the intricate burdens of the Law229 but one that
constitutes no particular novelty, certainly not enough to argue for the existence of
another God. Instead “the contrariety which results from difference will pertain to
the same [God] who was behind the change which resulted from renewal.”230
Tertullian addresses these issues in the following volumes and turns back
to discuss the Antitheses in more detail at the beginning of Book IV of Against
Marcion. Here, Tertullian wants to substantiate that, first of all, the Gospels were
indeed authored by the apostles, Matthew and John, as well as their disciples, Mark
and Luke.231 Moreover, he insists that this “instrument” had not been, as Marcion
claims, adulterated; rather, it is Marcion’s own Gospel that is a fabrication. To
produce it according to Tertullian, “it seems that Marcion chose Luke in order
to shorten it.”232 Scholarship has questioned Tertullian’s argument that Marcion
abbreviated the Gospel of Luke.233 In fact, the italicized “seems” (the Latin text
reads “videtur,” usually a reference to an uncertain statement) indicates Tertullian’s
own uncertainty about this statement, which has led modern scholars to believe
that Tertullian may not be referring to the Gospel of Luke but rather a pre-Lukan
Gospel that Marcion then shortened.
Tertullian’s argument clarifies the accusation Marcion makes in his preface: that
his own Gospel had been appropriated and distorted by four other accounts which,
according to Tertullian, bore the names of the apostles and the disciples of the apos-
tles, that is, Matthew, John, Mark, and Luke, which we later came to know as the
canonical Gospels. According to Tertullian’s report, Marcion speaks of collusions,
plagiarisms, and imitations (praevaricationis et simulationis suspectos, adultera-
tio, aemulatio).234 While his Gospel is not attributed to any author (not even to Paul
or Marcion himself), these four are pseudo-apostolic writings235 created by a wave
of forgers (inundatione falsariorum),236 to whom one can apply the same complaint
Paul raised against the false brethren (Gal 1:7; 2:4–5237). They led believers away
from the true Gospel, wishing to enslave them through the Law, which is why nei-
ther they nor their writings can be trusted.238
The counter-argument of the rhetorician Tertullian was simple: since, as Mar-
cion himself admits in his preface, the apostolic Gospels were older than his “New
Another random document with
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 58. Hunter, Guinea-hen and Fish. [Note]

Thomas Williams, Harmony Hall, Cock-pit country.

Hunter always hunting an’ he meet up a spendid piece of land, rich

land, and he t’ink to cultivate it an’ he begin same day cut bush. Piece
of land is Guinea-hen feeding-ground. Guinea-hen come out at night,
—Guinea-hen don’ walk in de day. “Massa is good, know dis is my
feedin’ ground an’ begin to clean it so I can get my pullin’ clear! Let
me help myself.” Make a little chopping himself too.

Ol’ man coming in de morning. “Hi! t’ankful! I commence work

yesterday, do somet’ing good an’ massa help me!” Start to do a little
himself ’side what he do first day. T’ird day come, he burn what he cut,
an’ Guinea-hen burn dere too. Ol’ man come in morning say, “Hi!
t’ankful! massa burn de balance!” Begun to clean up. Guinea-hen come
de night, give t’anks an’ clean up de balance of what de ol’ man lef’.

Nex’ day, ol’ man t’ankful, begun to plant peas an’ corn. Guinea-hen
come in night, say, “Massa is good! I don’ need to plant any”, begin to
eat dat which de ol’ man plant. Ol’ man come in de morning see de
damage, say, “Hi! what insec’ do dis?” Plant some more.

Go on so until de peas begin to ripe—about eight weeks. Ol’ man say,

“Goin’ to gadder it in to-morrow.” Guinea-hen hear what ol’ men say,
went to de sea an’ call de fish wid his trombone an’ tell de fish what he
want: “I plant a bit of corn and peas, an’ gettin’ ripe an’ ol’ man
coming to-morrow an’ I wan’ to go to-night gadder it in before he
come to-morrow.” Fish accept an’ say, “Well, yes, I’ll go, but, Friend
Guinea-hen, I kyan’ walk an’ I kyan’ fly, my wing is not strong enough.
So, as you have foot an’ wing, you give me one of dem, I’ll go.”
Guinea-hen says, “Yes, I’ll lend you my wing but I kyan’ tak me legs
off to give you. See de straight road? You can fly an’ drop, an’ I’ll run
on quick on my feet.” So Fish fly an’ drop, an’ Guinea-hen run on till
came to de groun’. “Here is my own field; gadder an’ eat as much as
you like.”

When day commence to light, de time man is to come, Guinea-hen

commence to eat an’ look out. Fish say, “What you lookin’ so fo’, Friend
Guinea-hen?” Guinea-hen see ol’ man coming, say, “It’s a butterfly I
see jumpin’ about. Lend me yo’ wings, I go ketch it fe you.” An’ he sail
away quietly out of groun’. Ol’ man come, see damage an’ begin to
grumble an’ pick what he can till he get whe’ de Fish is, say, “Lawd!
see him whe’ he mak him [64]bed!” an’ when he hawl up a big root an’
see Fish a-flutt’ring an’ a-trembling, he say, “O Fish! is it you do dis
damage all dis time?” Fish says, “No, not I! Don’ kill me an’ I sing you
some song.” Ol’ man like music, put him in a tub o’ water to sing an’
dance.

Fish says, “Tak me to de neares’ sea-side you has!” Ol’ man tak up de
tub, put it on his head goin’ to de sea-side. Fish begin,

“She man yerry me bra, hay!

She man yerry me bra!
Guinea, guinea, quot amba tory.”

Ol’ man dance, Fish sing, until big wave coming an’ Fish aim for it an’
go long wid it. Ol’ man stay dancing, don’ know dat Fish is gone. Look
in tub, Fish gone. Run home fe hook an’ line an’ t’row it into de sea to
catch Fish. An’ dat is why we always have to catch fish at sea.

[Contents]
 59. Rabbit Stories. [Note]

[Contents]

a. The Tar Baby.

Rennie Macfarlane, Mandeville.

When Brer Fox tried to catch Brer Rabbit, he could not catch him. He
stick up a tar-pole in his common, an’ when Brer Rabbit come an’ see
it, say, “Come out of Brer Fox place or I kick you!” An’ the tar-pole
wouldn’t come out. An’ kick him an’ his foot fasten. “Let go foot, else I
kick you with the other one!” An’ he won’t let it go, an’ kick it with the
other one an’ the other foot fasten. An’ he box him an’ his han’ fasten.
An’ say, “Let go me, else I box you!” an’ he box him with the other
han’ an’ his han’ fasten. An’ he said, “Let it go, else I buck you!” An’ he
buck him an’ head fasten. An’ said, “Let me go, else I bite you!” an’
when he bite him, mouth fasten an’ he couldn’t move or talk.

An’ Brer Fox said, “Think I couldn’t catch you!” An’ Brer Fox said, “Out
of burn you an’ drown you an’ hang you an’ dash you over de bramble,
which one you rather?” He said, “Do anything you like but don’ dash
me over dat bramble!” An’ Brer Fox take him an’ dash him over the
bramble, an’ he said, “Oh, what a fool!”

[Contents]

b. Saying Grace.
 Rennie Macfarlane, Mandeville.

Brer Fox catch Brer Rabbit again. So he gwine kill him, an’ Brer Rabbit
said, “Do, Brer Fox, as you gwine kill me, have prayers.” An’ he said,
“Clasp you hands an’ say what I say: ‘O God, bless an’ blind us!’ ” but
Brer Fox thought he say “Bless an’ help us,” an’ he say it. An’ Rabbit
run away an’ they never see him. [65]

[Contents]

c. Pretending Dead.
Rennie Macfarlane, Mandeville.

When Brer Fox want to get Brer Rabbit again, he an’ Bear make up to
catch him. Brer Bear go to Brer Rabbit yard an’ tell him that Brer Fox
dead an’ he mus’ help him bury him, for he an’ Brer Fox friends. When
he go to Brer Fox yard, he see Brer Fox lying down. Brer Rabbit put on
his bonpon 1 hat an’ coatie an’ spectacle an’ sit up in a rocking-chair an’
say, “I never see it so! What a style! what a funniness! I think that
when folks fall down die, they always cock up their foot in the air an’
make ‘pooh!’ ” An’ Brer Fox cock up his foot in the air an’ say, “Pooh!”
an’ Brer Rabbit go away an’ say, “A man like you never dead yet!”

1 A round tin cooking pot is called a “bonpon”. So is a high round hat. ↑

[Contents]
 60. The Animal Race. [Note]

[Contents]

a. Horse and Turtle.

Alfred Williams, Maroon Town, Cock-pit country.

Horse bet Turtle say a get to Kingston before him. Turtle bet him say
him will get to Kingston before him, Brar Horse. An’ Turtle tak up one
of him pickney an’ drop dem ev’ry mile-post, an’ drop de last one in at
Kingston at de wharf-house, tell ’im ’em going for a sack of salt. An’ de
night when dem start, as Brar Horse catch to de firs’ mile-post an’ sing
out in a harsh note,

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

♩ = 72 1st ending.

I-ya-a ya-o sa, nom-be, ya-o ya ya-o sa-a, nom-be,

2nd

a nom-be, sa-ka be-ne sa-bi-na, nom-be, ya ya-o sa, a, nom-be.

Turtle answer quite yonder, soft an’ sweet,

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

♩ = 72

I-ya-a ya-o sa-a, nom-be, ya-o sa ya-o sa-a, nom-be, se

sa-ka be-ne sa-bi-na, nom-be, ya ya-o sa-a, nom-be.

[66]

Horse say, “Well! Brar Turtle gone!” Gallop, draw rein an’ ’pur As he get
to de nex’ mile-post, hear,

“I-ya-a ya-o sa, nom-be, ya-o ya.”

Gallop an’ gallop till he get to de nex’ mile-post. Turtle sing,

“I-ya-a ya-o sa, nom-be, ya-o ya.”

Trabbel on, ride on, ride on, ride on, catch to de nex’ mile-post, sing
out,

“I-ya-a ya-o sa, nom-be, ya-o ya.”

Turtle answer de same song quite at de mile-post,—

“I-ya-a ya-o sa, nom-be, ya-o ya.”

As Horse catch to dat mile-post go in to Kingston, drop down dead!

[Contents]

b. Pigeon and Parrot.

Julia Gentle, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Pigeon an’ Parrot was co’rtin’ one girl an’ she say whichever one firs’
come in de house de mornin’ she would marry dat one. Parrot could
not fly very fas’. He went an’ mek bargain wid anodder Parrot. He went
before an’ leave de odder one to follow Pigeon behin’. He went near to
de girl house an’ sit down in a tree. Pigeon call, saying,

“Come on, me pretty Poll, come on, me pretty Poll,

Stay on de tree so long,
For de sun an’ de moon gwine down,
Stay on de tree so long.”

Parrot answer Pigeon behind,

“Go on, me pretty Pigeon, go on, me pretty Pigeon,

Stay on de tree so long,
Go on, me pretty Pigeon, go on, me pretty Pigeon,
Stay on de tree so long.”

Pigeon sail again. He stop, call again,

“Come on, me pretty Poll, come on, me pretty Poll,

Stay on de tree so long,
Come on, me pretty Poll, come on, me pretty Poll,
Stay on de tree so long.”
Parrot answer,

“Go on, me pretty Pigeon, go on, me pretty Pigeon,

Stay on de tree so long,
Go on, me pretty Pigeon, go on, me pretty Pigeon,
Stay on de tree so long.”

[67]

Pigeon sail. When Pigeon nearly catch to de house, call again in de

same tune. Parrot answer before now. Pigeon say, “Stop! a lil’ while
Parrot was behin’; how Parrot get before?” When Pigeon went to de
house, Parrot was in de house. Pigeon has to stay outside an’ Parrot
married to de girl.

[Contents]
 61. The Fasting Trial (fragment). [Note]

Julia Gentle, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Jumpin’ Dick say he would bear longer hunger than White Belly. So
White Belly up a tree where a grape a drop, an’ Jumpin’ Dick pick up
on de ground.

White Belly say,

“Coo coo, me lovin’! coo coo, me lovin’!

Everybody goin’ to look for dem dandy.”

Jumpin’ Dick dance an’ sing,

“Every Monday morning,

Zum zick a zum zum!
Every Monday morning,
Zum zick a zum zum!”

[Contents]
 62. Man is Stronger. [Note]

Simeon Falconer, Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Lion and the Tiger were very good friends. Tiger says, “No one
beat us in strength!” Lion said, “No, my friend, somebody that’s
stronger than we. Tiger said no, no, he cannot believe that. Lion said
there was a little something called “Man” that was stronger. So Tiger
says he will have to find that something called “Man.”

And he go hunting the Man and he buck up Mr. Ram-goat and he ask
him if him name “Man”. Goat says yes. And he asked him if the two
things he had up here (horns) called “gun”. And he asked him if that
long scar he have on belly, called “ram-rod.” And he asked him if that
bag he had, called “shot-bag.” And Goat said yes. And Tiger walk up
and lick him flat on the ground. Goat holla “Wi-i! wi-i-i!” And Tiger
went back to Lion and say he find something called “Man” and single
lick he lick him, fa’ dead. Lion say, “No, me friend! dat no ‘Man’, for
Man have two feet an’ dat you tell me have four legs.” Tiger say will
have to go back again find Man, for he bound to have that something
called “Man”. [68]

And he went out again seeking after “Man”, and a Hunter was out. And
he saw the Hunter and he said, “Now this yeah mus’ Man!” And so him
gwine up to de man, de Hunter aiming for him with the gun, and ask if
him name “Man”. And the Hunter drive at him with the gun. And he
run back to Lion and could only say, “I find ‘Man’ an’ him single answer
him answer me, blood fly all t’ru me body!” and him dead. Lion says, “I
tell you; you no believe me; but you believe me now!”
[69]
 OLD STORIES, CHIEFLY OF SORCERY.

[Contents]
 63. The Pea that made a Fortune. [Note]

Etheline Samuels, Claremont, St. Ann.

One day an old lady was travelling on the road and she picked up a green pea and she planted it. And
after it grew, her goat ate it off. She cried upon the goat and told it that she wanted the peas. The
goat said that he didn’t have anything to give her, but she could take one of his horns. She took the
horn and went to the river-side to wash it. The river took it away from her. She cried upon the river,
and the river said it didn’t have anything to give her but a fish. She went further. She met a man who
was very hungry. She gave the man the fish. After the man ate it, she cried upon the man. The man
gave her a moreen. She went a little further and saw a cow-boy. She gave him the moreen. After he
had worn it out, she cried upon him for it. He said he didn’t have anything to give her but his whip.
She went a little further and saw a man driving cows. She gave the whip to the man. After the man
had lashed it out, she cried upon him, so he gave her a cow; and from the cow she made her riches.

[Contents]
 64. Settling the Father’s Debt. [Note]

Simeon Falconer, Santa Cruz Mountains.

A man owe another one five pounds, and the other called in and asked the son who was at home,
“Where is your father?”—“Me father gone to break a new fence to mend a rotten one.”—“Where is
your mother?”—“Me mother gone to the market to sell sweet to buy sweet.”—“Where is your older
brother?”—“Gone to sea to catch what in catching will kill and what him don’ catch will carry home
alive.”—“Where is your sister?”—“Me sister in the house weeping over what she was rejoicing about
last year.”—“What are you doing?”—“Taking hot bricks out [70]of oven.”—“Now, me good boy, you give
me some hard puzzle. If you tell me the meaning I’ll give you five pounds.”—“When I tell you me
father gone to break a new fence to mend an old one, mean to say me father owe you five pound and
gone to borrow five pound to pay you. When I tell you me mother gone to the market to sell sweet to
buy sweet, gone to sell honey to buy sugar. When I said me brother gone to the sea to catch what in
catching he kill and what him don’ catch him bring home alive, I mean to say he goes to bed and he
will catch the lice from his head and kill them; what he don’ catch he mus’ carry back in the head.
When I said me sister was in the house weeping over what she was rejoicing over last year, she was
rejoicing last year in getting her baby; she is weeping over it now because it is dying. When I tell you
I’m taking hot bricks out of oven, I am pulling chiggers out of me feet.”—“Now all your puzzles are put
through, you are worthy of the five pounds.”—“Please settle me father’s debt, then.” So he make a
receipt and give his father five pounds.

[Contents]
 65. Mr. Lenaman’s Corn-field. [Note]

George Parkes, Mandeville.

There was a man named Mr. Lenaman. He went to a place to rent a piece of ground. He didn’t know
that it was a burial ground. It was about twenty acres of land. When he went, he chopped with his
machete “pom!” He heard a voice say, “Who chop bush deh?” He answered, “Me, Mr. Lenaman.” The
v’ice said,

“Big an’ little, get up an’ help Mr. Lenaman chop bush!
No mo’ bush mustn’t lef’ to-day.”

So all de ghosts, big an’ small, get up chop off de bush clean.

Mr. Lenaman was very glad. He went home and told his wife of the luck he had met. When the bush
dry up, he went back to burn it an’ starting to burn it he hear de v’ice say, “Who burn bush deh?” He
said, “Me, Mr. Lenaman.” The v’ice said,

“Big an’ little, get up an’ help Lenaman bu’n bush!

No mo’ bush mustn’t lef’ to-day.”

An’ all de ghost get up an’ help Mr. Lenaman bu’n off de bush clean.

The nex’ day, himself an’ wife went to plant corn. As they make the firs’ chop say “pom!,” hear de v’ice
say, “Who plant corn deh?” He say, “Me, Mr. Lenaman.” De v’ice say,

“Big an’ little, get up help Lenaman plant corn!

No mo’ corn mustn’t lef to-day.”

[71]

An’ all de ghost get up an’ help him plant de corn, plant off de whole twenty acres.

When de corn grow up, he went back to mol’ it. As he started, the v’ice says, “Who mol’ corn deh?” He
said, “Me, Mr. Lenaman.” The v’ice said,

“Big an’ little, get up help Lenaman mol’ corn!

No mo’ corn mustn’t lef’ to-day.”

An’ all de ghost get up an’ help dem mol’ off de corn dat day.

Now de corn grow up an’ bear an’ dry. Mr. Lenaman send his wife an’ boy one day to go an’ see how
dey stay, an’ tol’ ’em not to break any because if dey break one, de ghosts will break it all off an’ den
Mr. Lenaman won’t get none. He is going to get a lot of people to go there with him one day to help
him break them, so that he can get a plenty. Now the wife an’ boy went to the groun’, but when they
go, they forget what Mr. Lenaman tol’ them. In coming away, they broke one each. They hear the v’ice
say, “Who broke corn deh?” They said, “Mr. Lenaman wife an’ boy.” The v’ice say,

“Big an’ little get up an’ help Lenaman wife an’ boy break corn!
No mo’ corn mus’ be lef’ to-day.”
An’ dey break off every bit!

The wife an’ boy went home an’ tol’ it to Mr. Lenaman. The three of them went back to the groun’. Mr.
Lenaman got vex an’ started to beat the wife an’ boy. The v’ice said, “Who beat wife an’ boy deh?” He
said, “Me, Mr. Lenaman.” V’ice said,

“Big an’ little, get up go an’ help Mr. Lenaman beat wife an’ bwoy!
No mo’ wife an’ bwoy mustn’t lef’ to-day.”

So dem beat de wife an’ boy so dat dem kill dem.

So Mr. Lenaman stan’ up now didn’t know what to do, start to scratch his head. The v’ice said, “Who
’cratch head deh?” He said, “Me, Mr. Lenaman,” The v’ice said,

“Big an’ little, get up an’ help Lenaman ’cratch head!

No mo’ head mustn’t lef’ to-day.”

An’ de whole of dem start to ’cratch his head, ’cratch it until he dead.

[Contents]
 66. Simon Tootoos. [Note]

Thomas White, Maroon Town, Cock-pit country.

Der was once a woman dat have a child. Him name was Simon Tootoos. De mudder him was a church
woman, an’ him used to send de boy to church; and after, de mudder come an’ [72]die. An’ when de
mudder die, he take de world upon his head. And Simon Tootoos mek colbon 1 and set it on Sunday
day, and he go to wood on Sunday to go and search his colbon. And when he go to catch him bird, he
catch a snake in de colbon. When he go to raise up de colbon an’ fin’ it was a snake, him leave it. An
de snake answer to him,

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

♩ = 80

Come take me up, Come take me up, Simon Tootoos, lennon boy. Come take me up,
oh, lennon boy, Too na too.

It was his dead mudder cause de snake to sing like dat. And when he go to leave—

“Come back you’ colbon, come back you’ colbon.

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come back you’ colbon, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

make him come an’ tek him up carry him come back to yard. And him put him down—

“Come ’tretch me out, come ’tretch me out,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come ’tretch me out, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

And stretch him out and cut him neck.—

“Come wash your pot, come wash your pot,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come wash your pot, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

And wash de pot. And cut him up an’ put in de pot, an’ he set it on de fire, mak up him fire under him,
and him start boiling. After it start boiling, it boil until it tell him to season in skelion 2. When it boil, it
tells him to come down pot off de fire. So

“Come wash you’ plate, come wash you’ plate,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come wash you’ plate, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

He wash de plate. [73]

“Come clean you’ knife, come clean you’ knife,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come clean you’ knife, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

He clean him knife.

“Come lay you’ table, come lay you’ table,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy!
Come lay you’ table, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

He lay him table. An’ say,

“Come pick me out, come pick me out,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come pick me out, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

And pick him out.

“Come lay me on table, come lay me on table,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come lay me on table, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

Put him on table.

“Come draw you’ chair, come draw you’ chair,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come draw you’ chair, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

He draw him chair.

“Come eat me now, come eat me now,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy!
Come eat me now, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

He eat him dead mother now.

“Come call you’ grave-digger, come call you’ grave-digger,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come call you’ grave-digger, O lennon boy!
Too na too!
“Come call you’ carpenter, come call you’ carpenter,
Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come call you’ carpenter, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

As him eating done—

“Come say you’ prayer, come say you’ prayer,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come say you’ prayer, O lennon boy!
Too na too!

[74]

“Come go to you’ bed, come go to you’ bed,

Simon Tootoos, lennon boy,
Come go to you’ bed, O lennon boy!
Too na too!”

After him go to him bed, him mudder come out of him belly; an’ dat was de las’ of Simon Tootoos.

1 A trap. ↑
2 A cooking-pot. ↑

[Contents]
 67. The Tree-wife. [Note]

Thomas White, Maroon Town.

It was a man didn’t have no wife an’ he was a hunter-man; he hunt in de bush all day. An’ one day he
go in de bush, go an’ shoot, an’ when he coming home, him saw a pretty tree name of Jessamy, an’ he
say, “O me biddy boy, das a pretty tree!” An’ he says, “If dis tree could tu’n a wife to me, I would like
to be marry to him!” An’ so he said, it done de very same as what him said; de tree do tu’n a wife for
him. De woman was naked, an’ he lef’ him at de said time an’ went home back, an’ he get some
clot’ing for de woman, an’ got him dress up nicely an’ carry him home at house.

An’ deh he an’ de woman was fo’ a long time until one day he were gwine out a bush fe gwine shoot,
an’ leave him wife a house. Him go an’ sleep an’ never come home till de nex’ day. An’ after he gone to
de wood, it’s anudder man go dere an’ inveigle him wife an’ tek’ him away from him house an’ go to
dis man house. An’ when de poor man come home from bush de nex’ day, he couldn’t fin’ him wife.
An’ what de wife did, after de wife come out dis man’s house go to de nex’ house, she was frighten
how him husban’ gwine fin’ him. An’ de nex’ man house about a two mile off him husban’ house, an’
as she leaving for him house, she spit all de way until she ketch to dis odder man’s house.

An’ de man was into a rage dat him couldn’t fin’ him wife an’ didn’t know what was to ever do. An’ him
sing, 1

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

Jesta be-yo, eh-e-eh-eh-eh-o—— Jesta

be-yo, A, a wi’ die, oh, wi’a go die, oh, fe trees bear-e, oh,
A, a wi’ die, oh, wi a go die, oh, fe trees bear-e, oh.

[75]

When de man sing, de spit dat de woman spit answer him,—

“Jesta be-yo, eh, eh, eh, o!

Jesta be-yo, a wi’ die-o,
Wi’ a go die-o, fe trees bear-e o!”

To every place where de woman spit, de man go dere an’ stan’ an’ call—
“Jesta be-yo, eh, eh, eh, o,”

at each stopping-place of half a mile until two miles are passed. An’ jus’ as de woman hear de voice of
de man, stan’ at door-mout’ an’ see dat de man coming. An’ de man go tak him wife an’ catch him
right back to home yard.

Jack man dory, choose none!

1 The song sung is the Koromanti Death Song, always used by the Maroons at a burial. ↑

[Contents]
 68. Sammy the Comferee. [Note]

Thomas White, Maroon Town.

It was a woman had one son, an’ it was a boy dat very unruly by him mudder an’ fader. He had not’ing
to do but fire bow an’ arrow all day. An’ one day he tek up him bow an’ arrow an’ fire de arrow an’ de
arrow drop in a Massa Jesus yard. An’ he went in de yard to go an’ pick up de arrow, an’ Massa Jesus
wife was in de yard an’ Massa Jesus was gone out—wasn’t at home. An’ all dem clo’es was out of
doors sunning. An’ de wife detain de boy in de yard fo’ de whole day until rain come de day an’ wet up
all Massa Jesus clo’es a-do’. Dis boy was Sammy de Comferee, an’ jus’ t’ru Sammy de Comferee mek
de clo’es a wet up a-do’. An’ when Massa Jesus come in, him was wet an’ him want some dry clo’es to
put on an’ him couldn’t get no dry clo’es to put on. An’ him tu’n to him wife an’ ask him what him was
doin’ de whole day at de house an’ mek him clo’es wet up a-do’. Him answer to Massa Jesus dat as he,
Sammy de Comferee, was in de house, das why came de clo’es to wet a-do’. Massa Jesus say to him
as he was along in de house de whole day if is de reason to mek him clo’es a wet up a-do’, an’ de
woman reply to Massa Jesus dat if him been pretty as Sammy de Comferee, him would a do more. An’
Massa Jesus answer to him wife dat him know dat is him made Sammy de Comferee, an’ if Sammy de
Comferee is prettier den him, him would see about it.

An’ Massa Jesus put up iron rod, an’ de iron rod hot as a fire, hot until it red. An’ him sen’ for Sammy
de Comferee. An’ when Sammy de Comferee come, Massa Jesus says to him what he was doin’ in him
yard de whole day. An’ he says dat him [76]fire him bow an’ arrow an’ de arrow drop into de yard, an’
after, he went in de yard to pick up de arrow an’ de wife detain him in de yard an’ him couldn’t get
away from de woman until rain tek him in de yard. And Massa Jesus said dat de wife tell him dat
Sammy de Comferee is prettier ’an him dat made him. An’ he order Sammy to climb de iron rod. An’ he
commence to melt away an’ he sing,

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

 ♩ = 88

Ah, me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a-e-ro, Gi-ra

no, ah, in din ro. Ah, e do me da de a, Gi-ro no.
Ah, me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a-e-ro, Gi-ro no, ah, in din
ro. Ah, e do me ma me-a, Gi-ro no. Ah, me Sammy de
Con-fa-ri-a-e-ro, Gi-ro no, ah, in din ro.

He melt off to him leg. An’ sing again—

“A me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a!”

He melt off to his middle. He sing again—

“A me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a!”

an’ him melt off one of him hand. He sing again—

“A me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a!”

an’ him melt off to him neck. An’ him sing again,

“A me Sammy de Con-fa-ri-a!
Gi-ra no a in din ro!”

an’ him melt off to not’ing. An’ when you look at de iron rod, de whole heap of fat heap up about de
iron rod. An’ all de pretty men dat come into de worl’ get some of Sammy de Comferee’s fat, but all de
ugly ones don’t get none of it.

Jack man dory, me story done! [77]

[Contents]
 69. Grandy-Do-an’-Do. [Note]

a. Moses Hendricks, Mandeville.

There was an old woman, a witch, but she was very wealthy. She lived quite to herself. Plenty of stock
—horses, cows, sheep, mules, each kind kept by itself in a separate pasture. The old lady’s name was
Grandy Beard-o, but nobody knew that name. She wanted a person to sup with her. She came across a
little girl one day. Then took that girl home. After she prepared her meal, she called the girl and asked
her if she knew her name. The girl said, “No, ma’am.” She said to the girl, “Unless you tell me my
name, I will not give you anything to eat.”

She started out the girl to go and fetch some water. The girl had to go through all the pastures to get
where the water was—mules to themselves, cows to themselves, horses to themselves, sheep to
themselves. She went along crying, being hungry. So she got into cow-pasture—that was first pasture.
The cow said to her, “What’s the matter with you, me baby?”

The girl said, “The old lady will not give me anything to eat except me can tell her her name!” Cow
was afraid to tell her.

From there she went into mule pasture, crying all the same. Mule said, “What’s the matter, me baby?”

The girl said, “The old lady will not give me anything to eat, except me can tell her her name!” Mule
wouldn’t tell her.

She got into horse pasture, crying all the way. Horse said, “What’s the matter, me baby?”

“Old lady in there won’t give me anything to eat except me can tell her her name!” Horse wouldn’t tell
her.

From there she went into bull pasture, still crying. Bull said, “What’s the matter, me baby?”

“Old lady won’t give me anything to eat except me can tell her her name!”

Bull says, “Cho! when you go home, tell her her name Grandy Beard-o.” Bull was a mighty man; he
didn’t care!

The girl was so glad, hastened home so as to get something to eat. Old lady said, “You can tell me my
name make me give you something to eat?”

The girl said, “Your name Grandy Beard-o, ma’am.”

Old lady got so indignant! She gave the girl a good feed and after that she started to find who told the
girl. Went into cow pasture.

“You cow, you cow, you cow,

Why you tell the girl
Me name Grandy Beard-o?”

[78]
Cow said,

“A ring ding ding, mamma, ring ding ding;

A ring ding ding, mamma, ring ding ding;
No me tell.”

She jump into horse pasture now.—

“You also horse tell the girl

Me name Grandy Beard-o?”

Horse said,

“A ring ding ding, mamma, ring ding ding;

A ring ding ding, mamma, ring ding ding;
No me tell him.”

She got into bull pasture now.—

“You bull, you bull, you bull,

Why you tell the girl
Me name Grandy Beard-o?”

Bull said,

“A ring ding ding, mamma, ring ding ding;

A ring ding, ding, mamma, ring ding ding;
Damme, me tell ’m!”

The old lady gripped the bull and tossed him in the air. The bull dropped; nothing happened. The bull
tossed her in the air now, and she dropped; one leg broken. She tossed the bull again; the bull came
down unhurt. The bull tossed her up again; she came down, another leg was broken.

She tossed the bull; nothing happened. The bull tossed her; she came down, one arm broken. She
tossed the bull again; the bull came down unhurt. The bull tossed her again; she came down, the
other arm was broken.

She tossed the bull again; the bull came down unhurt. The last toss the bull made, her neck broke.
That was the end of her. The girl became mistress of all she possessed, and that is why the land goes
from hand to hand in legacy up to to-day.

Jack man dory!

b. Julia Gentle, Malvern, Santa Cruz Mountains.

A very bad woman have only one daughter an’ say, “Go to the river for water an’ when you come back,
if you cannot tell my name I will destroy you.” When him goin’ fe water see Crab. An’ Crab axin’ where
him go. An’ say, “Grandy sen’ me go a river fe water an’ say when me come back, if me cannot tell him
name, her will kill me.” The Crab tell him say, “When you go, tell her dat her name Grandy Do-an-do.”
[79]

So when she come back, she forget the name. An’ she say mus’ kill him, so dash away the water an’
send him back. Then when she go back, the Crab say, “Sing it all the way!” Then when the girl go back
she sing,

“You name Grandy-do-an-do.

You name Grandy-do-an-do.”

Then the woman mad when she hear it an’ she travel. An’ she meet Cow, an’ say,

“You Cow, a you tell de girl a name Grandy Do-an-do?”

Cow say,

“No, no me tell him so you name Grandy Do-an-do!”

She travel an’ she meet Sheep, an’ say,

“You Sheep, a you tell de girl a name Grandy Do-an-do?”

Sheep say,

“No, no me tell him so you name Grandy Do-an-do!”

Meet Horse, say,

“You Horse, a you tell de girl me name Grandy Do-an-do?”

Horse say,

“No, no me tell him so you name Grandy Do-an-do!”

Meet Duck, say,

“You Duck, a you tell de girl a name Grandy Do-an-do?”

Duck say,

“No, no me tell him so you name Grandy Do-an-do!”

Meet Crab, say,

“You Crab, a you tell de girl a name Grandy Do-an-do?”

Crab say,

“Yes, a me tell him a you name Grandy Do-an-do!”

An’ tak de machete an’ chop after de Crab, an’ Crab sink in de hole an’ stay in de hole till now.

[Contents]
 70. Jack and Harry. [Note]

William Forbes, Dry River, Cock-pit country.

Jack an’ Harry, de two was gwine out for a walk. An’ de mo’ning was cool, an’ catch to an ol’ man dah
in watch-house. Harry said, “Ol’ Massa, beg you a little coffee if you have any.” An’ he said, “Yes, me
pickney!” an’ him give Jack a cup o’ coffee [80]an’ Harry a cup o’ coffee. An’ de ol’ man didn’t drink fe
him coffee yet. Jack say, “Harry, I gwine drink fe de ol’ man coffee.” Harry said, “No, Jack, don’ do it!”
An’ Jack tek ’way fe de ol’ man coffee an’ drink it. An’ de ol’ man tek him ’tick after dem, dem run.

An’ when dem run, see a hen wid some chicken. Harry said, “Do, me good hen, cover me wid you
wing!” An’ cover dem wid her wing de same as her own chicken. An’ de ol’ man was coming after dem
didn’t see dem, tu’n back. An’ Jack say, “I gwine to pop de hen wing.” An’ Harry say no, an’ Jack say
mus’ pop it. An’ de hen begin to flutter after dem an’ Jack an’ Harry run an’ de hen was after dem.

An’ see a poor lady ’tan’ up in de way. An’ Harry said, “Do, lady, tek you coat an’ cover we up!” An’
after she cover dem up, Jack had a stick an’ say, “I gwine to choke de ol’ lady.” An’ Harry say, “Don’ do
it!” An’ as he choke de ol’ lady, ol’ lady shake dem out an’ run after dem.

An’ when dey run, dey see a kyan-crow 1 in de way an’ Harry said, “Do, me good kyan-crow, tek we up
on you wing, carry we away from dis ol’ lady!” An’ de kyan-crow tek up Jack an’ Harry an’ fly up wid
dem right up in de sky, an’ de ol’ lady couldn’t catch after dem. An’ Jack say, “I gwine to pop de kyan-
crow wing mek him drop.” Harry said, “No, Jack, don’ do it!” An’ as ’em drop, ’em knock ’emself out of
senses.

An’ when dey come to demselves, see a land turtle was coming. An’ Harry call to de land turtle, an’ as
he shove out his head. Jack cut off de head.

1 Carencron. ↑

[Contents]
 71. Pea-fowl as Messenger. [Note]

[Contents]

a. John Studee.
Matilda Hall, Maroon Town.

The husband and wife married people, and the husband a great gambler, never at home with the wife;
until the wife going to have a baby, and the ninth month come now. So they send for the mid-wife; so
when the mid-wife come, there is no husband in. She said she want some one to go call the husband,
name of him is John Studee. So she call for all the thing they have in the yard. She call for a fowl, a
cock, and say, “What will you say to call the husband?” The cock crew,

“Ko ku ru ku-u-u!”
“You won’t do.”

[81]

She calls for the dog and says, “What will you say?” Dog says,

“Hoo-oh!”
“No, won’t do.”

Said to Puss what he will say. Puss says,

“Me-oo!”
“Won’t do.”

Then ’he call for the pea-fowl now; ’he provide a quart of corn for the pea-fowl, ask what he will say.
Pea-fowl sing,

“You John Studee, you John Studee,

Fe me master, John Studee,
There’s a pretty gal from Silo,
There’s a handsome gal from Silo,
Want the care of a new John bwoy,
’t almost deh.”

“Yes, you’ll do!”

Then when the pea-fowl fly miles off, he didn’t see the master, John Studee. He fly, he fly away now,
take up the quart of corn and fly away. Then he pitch upon the house-top, sing,

“You John Studee, you John Studee,

Fe me master, John Studee!
There’s a pretty gal from Silo,
There’s a handsome gal from Silo
Want the care of a new John bwoy,
’t almost deh!”

The people say, “John Studee, was here, but jus’ gone away,—that great gambler!” He fly about a mile
off again, go to another great house, go upon the house-top. He sing loud of voice now,

“You John Studee, you John Studee,

Fe me master, John Studee!
There’s a pretty gal from Silo,
There’s a handsome gal from Silo
Want the care of a new John bwoy,
’t almost deh!”

John Studee come now, say, “Who call my name?” See the bird up on the house-top, say, “Well, he
want me!” Then he took up the fowl an’ get the buggy in haste; and take off his gold chain off his neck
an’ put it on the pea-fowl. Pea-fowl have the golden feather round his neck on account of that gold
chain. So when the feather came home, he got a boy chil’ an’ call his name John Studee after him. [82]

[Contents]

b. Contavio.
Oliver D. Witter, Santa Cruz Mountains.

Miss Nancy married Contavio. One day, Contavio went to market, but before he left home he locked up
Miss Nancy till he came back. He did not come back that day, and as Miss Nancy was hungry and saw
a sheep passing she said, “Do, my dear sheep, call Contavio for me and I will throw a lump of gold on
your head.” Bra Sheep goes, “Bep, baah baah baah.” She said, “No, my dear Bra Sheep, that will not
do.” Soon after she saw a billy-goat and said the same thing to him. Bra Billy said, “Bep, bep, ba, ba,
ba, bep-ba-ba-bep, bah, bah.” She said, “No, my dear Bra Billy, that will not do.” She then saw Bra
Peacock coming up an’ she said, “Bra Peacock, if you call Contavio, my husband, for me, I will give you
a lump of gold,” and Bra Peacock flew right away until he saw Contavio, and he picked him in his head
and picked off all the feathers, and spurred him the whole way home until all Bra Peacock’s spurs
dropped off. When he got Contavio home, Miss Nancy flung the lump of gold on Bra Peacock’s head
and that’s why the feathers on a peacock’s head look like gold. That’s also the reason why it has no
spurs, and a crow has no feathers on its head.

[Contents]
 72. The Barking Puppy. [Note]

Alfred Williams, Maroon Town, Cock-pit country.

Deh is old lady live at home wid one little puppy, an’ ev’ry night a gentleman come to pay her a visit,
but dis little puppy snap an’ bark, have fo’ to tu’n back. An’ de ol’ lady catch de puppy an’ mak up a big
fire an’ bu’n de puppy. Nex’ night again de gen’leman come back. Ol’ lady sing,

[MP3 ↗️ | MusicXML ↗️]

♩ = 84

Heah, heah, Phin-ney man, heah, oh, heah, Phin-ney man, No-bod-y heah,
Phin-ney man, Dick an’ Dan-dy heah, Phin-ney man, No-bod-y heah,
Phin-ney man, Dick an’ Dan-dy heah, Phin-ney man.

De ashes bark as de puppy. De ol’ lady get up, tak up de ashes [83]dash ’em in de river, say, “Dis
gen’leman goin’ to pay me visit an’ kyan’ because de ashes bark!”

Nex’ night, de gen’leman come back again, holla out, “Hulloo!” Ol’ lady sing,

“Heah, heah, Phinney man,

Nobody heah, Phinney man,
Dick an’ Dandy heah!”

De puppy ashes bark in de river an’ de gen’leman wouldn’t come. De ol’ lady tak de river water dash in
de sea to hinder Dick an’ Dandy from barking. Nex’ night de gen’leman come back fo’ de las time;
counsel a sing now. Old lady raise up an’ sing,

“Heah, heah, Phinney man,

Nobody heah, Phinney man,
Dick an’ Dandy heah!”

Meanwhile de gentleman dance. He come in now, draw a chair, say, “So long I couldn’t come on
account of Dick an’ Dandy!” an’ say, “I coming to marry you.” Old lady say yes, but don’ know but dog
shadow come; sometime shadow come back. Ol’ lady sing,

“Heah, heah, Phinney man,