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 THE FIRST
NEW TESTAMENT
 THE FIRST
NEW TESTAMENT
Marcion’s
Scriptural
Canon

Jason David BeDuhn

POLEBRIDGE PRESS
Salem, Oregon
 Dedicated to William R. Schoedel

Cover: P69 (P. Oxy 2383). Image courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society
and Imaging Papyri Project, Oxford. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2013 by Jason D. BeDuhn

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of

this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For information address Polebridge Press,
Willamette University, 900 State Street, Salem, OR 97301.

Cover and interior design by Robaire Ream

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

BeDuhn, Jason.
The First New Testament : Marcion’s Scriptural Canon / by Jason David
BeDuhn.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59815-131-2 (alk. paper)
1. Bible. New Testament--Criticism, interpretation, etc.--History--Early
church, ca. 30-600. 2. Marcion, of Sinope, active 2nd century. I. Title. II.
Title: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon.
BS2350.B43 2013
225.092--dc23
2013027059
 Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 1: Marcion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 2: Marcion’s New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 3: The Evangelion
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Evangelion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Text Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Chapter 4: The Apostolikon
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
The Apostolikon
To Galatians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
To Corinthians 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
To Corinthians 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
To Romans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
To Thessalonians 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
To Thessalonians 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
To Laodiceans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
To Colossians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
To Philippians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
To Philemon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Text Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
Chapter Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

v
 Preface

In my second semester as a college freshman at the University of

Illinois, some thirty years ago, I took William Schoedel’s course in
the New Testament. One day, I was in the classroom somewhat
early, when Prof. Schoedel came into the room, and eased his lanky
frame into the desk beside me. He turned to me with a look of be-
mused curiosity, and said, “You’ve got it.” He went on to explain
that the paper I had recently handed in had all the hallmarks of
competent biblical scholarship expected of a graduate student, and
that once I had mastered the pertinent languages, I would be on my
way in the field. It was a gesture typical of the generous character
of this remarkable man, and its significance to me can be measured
by my clear recollection of that day after all these years. I went on
to enjoy many more classes and conversations with Prof. Schoedel.
He was just as kind with regard to my bravely attempted failures as
he was congratulatory of my occasional achievements. Most of all,
he made me feel a part of the academic fold, comfortable enough to
actually spar with him on questions of early Christian history. My
audacity in doing so was enabled by his patient mentorship. In fact,
I was surrounded by such generous mentors in those days: Gary
Porton, Vernon Robbins, Valerie Hoffman. Their ability to make me
feel part of a grand enterprise astonishes me today when I think
back to how undeveloped I was as a thinker and, in many ways,
as a person. I had many possible futures back then. The warmth
and openness of the community of scholarship they showed me is
largely responsible for my choice of this profession.
Most of my work has focused on relatively later historical sub-
jects than those that interested Prof. Schoedel, and I sensed in a
later conversation that my choice came as something of a disap-
pointment to him. Truth be told, at the time I found biblical studies
a bit crowded, and leapt all the way to the third and fourth centu-
ries to work on the little known and less understood Manichaean
tradition. My venture out into the study of radically different
claims to the legacy of Jesus, such as that entailed in Manichaeism,

vii
viii Preface

has brought a fresh angle to my biblical research, and helped me

to see how deeply buried the first Christian centuries remain be-
neath later orthodoxies. In fact, it now appears to me that we are at
the beginning, rather than the end, of serious historical investiga-
tion of Christian, and biblical, history unfettered by entrenched as-
sumptions that in many cases have passed into modern scholarship
directly from prior theologically-motivated judgments. So when I
found my research leading, by a natural progression of problems,
back into Prof. Schoedel’s own beloved second century and the
question of the first emergence of the New Testament into history,
my thoughts inevitably turned back to him and his role in inspiring
me down this course. As I have worked on this project, he has been
my imagined interlocutor, raising objections, cautioning against
over-reaching, and intoning in my ears the dicta of Carneades,
Ockham, and Sherlock Holmes. And so it is to him that I dedicate
this book.
It took a decade between the inception of this project and its pub-
lication, and over that time it went through many transformations
as I sought the right balance between the needs and interests of dif-
ferent potential readers. I wish to thank Larry Alexander, publisher
of Polebridge Press, for his faith in me and his enthusiasm and sup-
port for the book. The level of meticulous detail involved here is
a copy-editor’s nightmare, and I am left truly astonished by, and
deeply grateful to, Cassandra Farrin for her patient, temperate per-
fectionism. As always, I must thank the intrepid staff of Northern
Arizona University’s Cline Library Document Delivery Services
for the many challenging requests to which I subjected them. I am
particularly fortunate for the friendship I have enjoyed with my
colleagues in the Religious Studies program here in Flagstaff over
the last fifteen years: Arne Hassing, Bruce Sullivan, Paul Donnelly,
and Lodewijk Peter van der Loo, as well as the late Wayne Mahan.
Finally, and most importantly, I wish to express my gratitude to
my study companion, Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, working away on her
projects at her desk as I work at mine in the beautiful home we have
made together in the northern Arizona forest.
 Abbreviations
and Sigla

Abbreviations
1,2 Chr 1,2 Chronicles
1,2 Clem 1,2 Clement
1,2 Cor 1,2 Corinthians
1,2 Thess 1,2 Thessalonians
Adam (Ad) Adamantius, Dialogue on the True
Faith in God
Adam* (Ad*) Indicates either that a Marcionite
gave the quotation, or that
Adamantius is expressly quoting
from a Marcionite text
Carmen adv. Marc. (CaM) Carmen adversus Marcionitas
ClH The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
Clement, Paed. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus
Clement, Strom. (ClS) Clement of Alexandria, Stromata
Col Colossians
CSyr Curetonian Syriac version
Deut Deuteronomy
DialSav Dialogue of the Savior
Diat Diatesseron
Did Didache
Didy Didymus
Dig. Digesta
Diogn Letter to Diognetus
E Indicates pages in the English transla-
tion of a work
Elenchos (El.) Elenchos (pl. elenchoi) of Epiphanius,
Panarion

ix
x Abbreviations & Sigla

Eph Ephesians
Ephrem, Paul Ephrem Syrus, Commentarii in
Epistolas d. Pauli (Venice: Sanctus
Lazarus, 1893)
Ephrem, Hymns (EH) Ephrem Syrus, Hymns against Heretics
Ephrem, Marc. (EM) Ephrem Syrus, Against Marcion I, II,
III, page numbers refer to Mitchell
(1921)
Ephrem, Comm. Diat. (ED) Ephrem Syrus, Commentary on the
Diatesseron
Epiphanius, Pan. (Ep) Epiphanius, Panarion (Refutation of All
Heresies)
Exod Exodus
Eznik, De Deo (Ez) Eznik of Kolb, De Deo (“On God”)
Gal Galatians
Gen Genesis
Gk Greek
GPet Gospel of Peter
Hab Habakkuk
Hegemonius, Arch (Ar) Hegemonius, Acts of Archelaus (Acta
Archelai)
Hippolytus, Ref. (Hip) Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haere-
sium (Refutation of All Heresies)
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica
(Ecclesiastical History)
Hos Hosea
IgnMag Ignatius to the Magnesians
IgnPhd Ignatius to the Philadelphians
Irenaeus, Haer. (Ir) Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses (Against
Heresies)
Isa Isaiah
Jer Jeremiah
Jerome, Comm. Gal. (JrG) Jerome, Commentarium in Epistulam ad
Galatas libri III
Jerome, Vir. ill. Jerome, De viris illustribus
Josephus, Ant. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities
Josephus, J.W. Josephus, Jewish War
Justin, 1 Apol. Justin Martyr, First Apology
Justin, Dial. Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone
Lev Leviticus
LXX Septuagint (the Greek OT)
 Marcion & the First New Testament xi

Matt Matthew
ms(s) manuscript(s)
NT New Testament
OL Old Latin version
Origen, Cels. (OrC) Origen, Contra Celsum (Against Celsus)
Origen, Comm. Jo. (OrJ) Origen, Commentarium in evangelium
Joannis
Origen, Comm. Matt. Origen, Commentarium in evangelium
Matthaei
Origen, Comm. Rom. (OrR) Origen, Commentarii in Romanos
Origen, Fr. 1 Cor. (Or1) Origen, Catena Fragments on 1
Corinthians, page numbers refer to
Cramer (1842)
Origen, Fr. Luc. (OrL) Origen, Fragments on Luke, page num-
bers refer to Raur (1998)
Origen, Hom. Ezech. (OrEz) Origen, Homiliae in Ezechielem
Origen, Princ. (OrP) Origen, De principiis
OT Old Testament
P69 Papyrus 69 (POxy 2383)
Phil Philippians
Philastrius, Div. her. (PhH) Philastrius of Brescia, Diversarum
hereseon liber
PolPhil Polycarp to the Philippians
POxy Oxyrhynchus Papyrus
Ps.- pseudo-
Ps.-Clement, Hom. (ClH) Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
Ps.-Eph A (PsE) Pseudo-Ephrem A
Ps.-Tertullian, Adv. haer. Pseudo-Tertullian, Adversus omnes
haereses
Ps(s) Psalm(s)
Q Quelle (“source”)
Rom Romans
Scholion (Sch.) Scholion (pl. scholia) of Epiphanius,
Panarion
SCopt Sahidic Coptic version
SSyr Sinaitic Syriac version
Tertullian, Marc. (T) Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem
(Against Marcion)
Tertullian, Carn. Chr. Tertullian, De carne Christi (The Flesh
of Christ)
Tertullian, Idol. Tertullian, De idololatria (Idolatry)
xii Abbreviations & Sigla

Tertullian, Ieiu. Tertullian, De ieiunio adversus psychi-

cos (On Fasting, against the Psychics)
Tertullian, Praescr. Tertullian, De praescriptione haeretico-
rum (Prescription against Heretics)
Tertullian, Prax. Tertullian, Adversus Praxean (Against
Praxeas)
Tertullian, Pud. Tertullian, De pudicitia (Modesty)
Tertullian, Paen. Tertullian, De paenitentia (Repentance)
Tertullian, Res. Tertullian, De resurrectione carnis (The
Resurrection of the Flesh)
Thom Gospel of Thomas

Sigla
≠ Disagreement with previous recon-
struction by . . .
= Partial agreement with previous
reconstruction by . . .
> Indicates a Greek word that a Latin
term translates
... Additional material likely existed, but
cannot be confirmed
(parentheses) English supplied to clarify the Greek
[brackets] Connective content necessary for
the directly attested material to have
coherent meaning
Italics Indicates a variant that does not cor-
respond with witnesses to the catho-
lic New Testament
Photo: P69 (P. Oxy 2383), a possible fragment of Marcion's gospel
text. Image courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society and Imaging Papyri
Project, Oxford. Used by permission.
 Introduction

Many modern Christians think of the New Testament as a book out-

side of history, something that was just suddenly there. Historians
of Christianity, able to trace its gradual authorship and formation,
nonetheless typically find themselves describing this development
as an anonymous process, a spontaneous evolution accomplished
by the nameless and faceless members of ancient communities of
faith.1 Historians often resort to this story of collective group action
to provide an account of historical developments for which we do
not have enough information to fix names and dates to key per-
sonal decisions, shifting individual alliances, or local revolutions.
But when it comes to the origin of the New Testament, we ought to
do better, and we can. We know the name of the individual respon-
sible for the first New Testament, the circumstances of his work
in compiling it, and even a date that relates to his momentous de-
cision to establish a textual foundation for the fledgling Christian
communities of his time: 144 ce. More than that, we actually know
the bulk of the content of this First New Testament.
Modern New Testaments are based upon thousands of man-
uscripts, most copied many centuries later than the First New
Testament. The oldest relatively complete New Testament manu-
scripts date to the first half of the fourth century ce. Incomplete por-
tions of earlier New Testament collections survive in fragmentary
papyri from about a century earlier, the early third century. With a
little ingenuity, reconstructions culled from the quotations of early
Christian writers can be pushed back about as far. It is largely on
the basis of these sources that the modern New Testament is edited
and translated. But there is an older New Testament, reconstruct-
ible to the same degree as those early third-century manuscripts
and sources, but dating back another century earlier to the mid-
second century, and so to within a generation or two of the original
composition of the texts themselves. This earliest New Testament
is contemporaneous with the oldest tiny scrap of Christian writing
surviving today, but it must be recovered from the comments made

3
4 Introduction

about it by later writers. Nevertheless, we have it, in large part. We

can expect to find no earlier New Testament in any form, for in fact
it is the very first New Testament ever to have been made.
Historians of Christianity widely acknowledge that Marcion
(circa 95–165 ce)2 compiled the first authoritative collection of dis-
tinctly Christian writings from texts already known and valued
by segments of the Christian movement. In doing so, he defined
for the first time a biblical canon—that is, in the useful distinc-
tion made by Bruce Metzger, not just a “collection of authoritative
books,” such as a circulating set of Pauline letters, but an “authori-
tative collection of books,” with set limits that clearly signaled a
unique status for the texts included.3 Marcion clearly intended his
First New Testament to serve as the touchstone of Christian belief
and practice at a time when these were still quite fluid and con-
veyed in a primarily oral environment. Although we cannot be sure
that Marcion himself ever referred to this collection as the “New
Testament” (and in fact that phrase was slow to be applied to such a
collection of Christian scripture in other Christian circles), it serves
as an appropriate designation for Marcion’s two-volume set of au-
thoritative texts, since it in so many ways anticipates the content
and stature of the New Testament more familiar to us today.
Yet this First New Testament has never been published in
English, nor for that matter in any modern language.4 It has re-
mained an artifact of study to a relatively small number of bibli-
cal researchers with widely varying views of its reconstructibility,
significance, and place in the transmission of the texts it contains.
This is all the more remarkable because, besides being in all prob-
ability the very first Christian canon, Marcion’s New Testament
is also the earliest extensive witness to content found in the New
Testament used by Christians today. Marcion is the first known
witness to explicitly identify Paul as the author of several letters
now included under his name in Christian scripture, including
what is known as the letters to the Ephesians (which Marcion un-
derstood to have been addressed instead to the Laodiceans) and
Colossians. His New Testament provides the first certain evidence
for the existence of the gospel now known as Luke (although his
version was shorter, and did not bear Luke’s name). The First New
Testament is significant, therefore, both where it corresponds with
and confirms later evidence for biblical content and where it pres-
ents fundamentally different readings than those later sources.
 Introduction 5

Moreover, as the first formalized collection of Christian scripture,

it affords us an early glimpse of a Christian community defining it-
self by the texts it holds sacred. Even with the extensive publication
in recent years of compilations of other early Christian writings,
both “gnostic” and varying shades of “orthodox,” the First New
Testament of Marcion has remained largely neglected. This book
seeks to remedy this state of affairs by offering a reconstruction of
the Marcionite New Testament accessible and useful to all levels of
expertise and interest.
*****
The first generations of Christians formed diverse, local groups
with several distinct understandings of their experience of Jesus
Christ, and divergent interpretations of the meaning of his instruc-
tion. The letters of Paul provide only momentary snapshots in an
ongoing struggle over the legacy of Christ, and we have no reli-
able knowledge of the ultimate outcome of these conflicts in the
lives of their participants. Instead we peer into a dark space of early
Christian history between the more-or-less datable letters of Paul
and the writings of late second-century Christians such as Irenaeus
of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria. The century-and-a-half be-
tween is full of floating, disembodied voices that we can fix in time
and place only tentatively, sound bites from a tumultuous period
of division, debate, and self-definition. This was a time, as B. H.
Streeter reminds us, in which “there was no unifying authority, no
worldwide organisation, however informal, to check the indepen-
dent development of the various local churches each on its own
lines.”5 These local Christian communities had a complex relation-
ship to the broader Jewish community—itself diverse—within
which they first developed, and which passed through a series of
violent uprisings against the Roman order in 66–70, 115–17, and
132–34 ce. With each successive wave of Jewish restiveness and
anti-Jewish repression, local Christian communities were faced
with fundamental questions of identity and association with re-
spect to the Jewish roots of their faith. They fell under social and
cultural pressure: from without, for their links to Jewish identity;
from within, for their nonconformity to newly emerging Jewish or-
thodoxies.6 In the face of such conditions, Christians could offer
their own rival claim to the Jewish religious tradition or walk away
from it.
6 Introduction

Onto this scene stepped Marcion. Following what he believed

to be the views of Paul, he pushed for a clean break with the Jewish
religious tradition. It is quite possible that he came from a com-
munity where Christianity had reached a non-Jewish audience
and from the beginning caught on in a form only tenuously con-
nected to its Jewish heritage.7 Marcion applied his intellectual and
organizational gifts to working out a resolution of the troubled
relationship between the parent religious culture and its prodigal
offspring. If Paul was correct that the message of Christ ultimately
transcended the boundaries of the Mosaic covenant, what role
remained for the Jewish scriptures that enjoined, celebrated, and
promoted that covenant? And if those scriptures were obsolete, as
this line of understanding might be taken to imply, where was one
to turn for authoritative guidance? What were to be the distinctly
Christian scriptures?
This book is not about Marcion, but about the canon of Christian
scriptures he introduced as the new touchstone of Christian faith.
Before Marcion there was no New Testament, with him it took its
first shape, and after him it gradually developed into the form we
now know. Before Marcion there were Christian writings that were
read and treated as, in some sense, authoritative. But they had lim-
ited, local circulation and were not incorporated into a larger Bible.
Traditions about Jesus were known, recounted, and recorded. The
readers of these records regarded them as accurate, informed, per-
haps even inspired. But the impetus to collect them into either a
distinct scripture or a supplement to the Jewish one simply had
not arisen. In quite a few places, the majority of texts that would
ultimately be included in the New Testament were completely un-
known. For those who considered the Jewish scriptures as authori-
tative as ever, the growing set of new writings may have been seen
as a secondary, subordinate body of literature. It was for someone
with Marcion’s perspective, for whom the Jewish scriptures were
ideologically problematic, that the stakes were raised on this body
of early Christian literature to the point of elevating it to a unique
status of authority.
So it was that Marcion collected, for the first time in history, a set
of authoritative Christian writings intended to be afforded a status
above that of other Christian literature. We need to deal up front
with the discomfort that many have with Marcion’s role in this de-
cisive event of Christian history. By later standards of orthodoxy,
 Introduction 7

Marcion’s interpretation of the New Testament writings was “hereti-

cal.” But that is a completely separate matter from the value of the
New Testament text he used. This distinction often has not been
appreciated, and it is one of the principal tasks of this book to dem-
onstrate why it should be made, and how much more significant
the Marcionite New Testament becomes as a consequence. Marcion
was a participant in a process going on all around him of defin-
ing Christianity, organizing it, and taking the steps from a loose
movement or set of movements into various institutional forms.
However inevitable one imagines the formation of a distinctly
Christian canon to have been, the fact remains that Marcion took
the decisive initiative, and in doing so he made a permanent im-
pact on the Christian Bible and the faith shaped by reference to it.
Marcion’s New Testament consisted of two parts: the Evangelion,
a narrative account of the teachings and deeds of Jesus related lit-
erarily to the gospel we now know as Luke, and the Apostolikon, a
collection of ten letters of Paul—those very ten, incidentally, that
modern critical scholarship has concluded have the greatest like-
lihood of being authentic. We have some reason to think that he
adopted the latter from an existing set compiled by some unknown
collector of Paul’s letters. But Marcion put his distinctive stamp on
all subsequent attempts to formalize a New Testament for the very
reason that his particular ideology led him to elevate such a set of
the letters of Paul to parity with an account of the life and teach-
ings of Jesus himself. That decision puts Marcion’s work in a direct
line of continuity with later Christian New Testaments, however
delayed or otherwise influenced the formation of the latter might
have been; and that is why the recovery of Marcion’s biblical text is
a recovery of the First New Testament.
Thus, it is not only the idea of a New Testament that can be cred-
ited first to Marcion, but also the distinctive structure of that New
Testament, combining a “gospel” narrative of the life of Jesus with
apostolic letters, specifically, the letters of Paul. There is little to be
said in favor of the claim that the formation of the New Testament
followed an inevitable trajectory, and that the Christian Bible
would have turned out exactly as it did even if Marcion had never
lived. On the contrary, the correspondence between what Marcion
did and what the New Testament ultimately became in the hands
of his triumphant competitors suggests his lasting impact on the
Christian Bible, and so on Christianity itself.
8 Introduction

In order to situate this First New Testament, the introductory

chapters that follow consider this distinctive contribution of Marcion
to Christianity in its historical and religious setting: Marcion him-
self as the enigmatic figure behind the First New Testament, the
sources and methods involved in the reconstruction of the text
Marcion put into circulation among his communities, and the his-
tory of modern research and opinion about it. Furthermore, they
consider the question of the First New Testament’s relationship
with the texts found in the current New Testament, and the signifi-
cance and meaning of this First New Testament as the embodiment
of a decisive moment in the formation of early Christianity.
Following these introductory studies, the reconstructed texts of
the Evangelion and Apostolikon are presented as best as we are
able given the currently available sources, along with a detailed
set of text notes justifying and explaining the reconstruction verse
by verse. The form these reconstructed texts take will be familiar
to those who work in text-critical study of the Bible; that is, those
who, over the last 150 years, have made good use of editions of
the biblical text as attested in the writings of major early Christian
figures, such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of
Alexandria, and others.8 One could very well call the current contri-
bution “the Biblical Text of Marcion,” building on and refining the
one edited by Adolf von Harnack in 1924, and occasionally cited as
“Marcion” in the textual apparatus of modern editions of the New
Testament. In fact, given his dates, Marcion joins the ranks of the
so-called Apostolic Fathers as a witness to the very earliest recover-
able forms of New Testament texts. Yet, because he did not merely
make occasional quotations from or allusions to their content as
other Apostolic Fathers did, but compiled and disseminated com-
plete editions of them, Marcion far exceeds other early witnesses in
the extent of evidence he provides for the state of New Testament
texts in that time.
My intention in preparing this book has been to overcome
two obstacles to appreciating the importance of the First New
Testament. First, study of Marcion’s New Testament has for too
long been held captive by debate over tiny details—a classic case of
not being able to see the forest for the trees. The desire to recover
the exact wording of Marcion’s texts has interfered with full ap-
preciation of what we can learn about its overall content. Those
who endeavor to reconstruct an exact Greek text of Marcion’s New
 Introduction 9

Testament confront major challenges, because our sources (1) are in

multiple languages, not just Greek, (2) often paraphrase or allude
to content, rather than quote verbatim, and (3) often give conflicting
evidence regarding the exact wording of a passage. The resulting
frustration and pessimism over solving these problems is under-
standable, and is one of the reasons that the First New Testament
has not been previously translated and made generally available. I
agree with my colleagues who have worked on this problem that
such a word-for-word reconstruction of the original Greek text is
problematic, because too many unresolved issues remain on indi-
vidual points of wording. Yet, frankly, many of these issues involve
such minor points of grammar as to be all but irrelevant to a basic
English translation. While remaining uncertain of exact wording
in many passages, we have much greater certainty on the pres-
ence or absence of whole passages of meaningful content, regard-
less of which preposition or verb tense may have been used at a
particular point. So we are actually in a good position to read this
first Christian Bible as a whole in its general sweep of themes and
teachings, and in this way appreciate its distinctive message and its
place in the early development of Christianity, while the challenge
of pursuing the exact Greek text continues into the future.9
As a second obstacle, study of Marcion’s New Testament has
generally been subservient to investigations of Marcion as a theo-
logian and key figure in Christian history. But Marcion did not
compose these texts (even if there remains the separate question of
whether he edited them to some degree); he collected them from a
broader existing Christian movement, and bestowed them in their
collected form back to living Christian communities. As we will
see, there are good reasons to question the assumption that these
texts were fundamentally altered for service only to Marcionite
Christians. A number of recent studies, and the evidence compiled
here, argue against a case for Marcion’s editorial hand in the shape
of these texts. They may well provide an unusually early, datable
glimpse into what was considered most essential and significant to
a wide spectrum of the Christian movement in its formative phase.
Even if Marcion’s Church was the primary heir of the particular
form the texts took in the Evangelion and Apostolikon, that fact, in
itself, would connect them with what was perhaps the dominant
form of Christianity in the second century ce. It is long overdue,
therefore, to consider these texts in their own right, as windows
10 Introduction

into earliest Christianity and into the lives, thoughts, and values of
early Christians before Marcion, while imagining how they might
have shaped those lives, thoughts, and values after Marcion, among
those who accepted his First New Testament as canonical scripture.
 Chapter 1

Marcion

What do we know about Marcion himself? Our sources on him are

varied, each with its own agenda and place in a tradition of hostile
attacks on him. They cannot always be treated as independent wit-
nesses, because later writers may merely repeat the statements of
earlier ones, and several of those earlier writings are lost, making it
difficult for us to map literary interdependence.1 We do not know
nearly as much as we would like about how information circulated
in late antiquity, and a late source is not automatically worthless,
since it may preserve information from an earlier one we other-
wise no longer have. Moreover, some writers, no matter how much
closer to Marcion in time, may simply not have bothered to check
their facts very closely, whereas later ones may have worked dili-
gently with Marcion’s own writings. In short, we face many chal-
lenges in sifting our sources for reliable information about Marcion.
No substantial new data on Marcion has been discovered since
Adolf von Harnack made his compilation of it in 1924.2 But the
long-known materials have undergone constant reevaluation in
subsequent decades. In the late 1980s, Gerhard May summarized
the state of the issues. Building on the observations of his prede-
cessors, he cautioned against conflating separate lines of tradition
about Marcion’s life into artificial syntheses, tempting as they are
for filling out a life so poorly known.3 Sebastian Moll has recently
revisited the state of the field, with new suggestions.4 In order to
better understand the circumstances in which Marcion’s creation
of the First New Testament occurred, this chapter attempts to situ-
ate that creation in the very few bits of information about Marcion
in which we have some confidence, contextualizing both man and

11
12 Marcion

text within the social, political, cultural, and religious environment

of the time.
The things we think we know with some confidence about
Marcion’s life—leaving aside his teachings and literary activities
for the moment—easily fit into this paragraph. All of them are suf-
ficiently attested by multiple, plausibly independent witnesses,
and none of them is particularly suspect as serving a polemical por-
trait. Marcion came from the Roman province of Pontus, on what is
today the north coast of Turkey.5 He had his profession in the sea-
trade, being a shipmaster, or shipowner (nauclerus, vαύκληρoς).6
Eventually, he made his way to Rome, probably early in the reign
of the emperor Antoninus Pius (138–61 ce).7 His understanding of
Christianity differed enough from that of leaders within the Roman
Christian community that they could not retain communion with
each other, and Marcion became the organizer and leader of a sep-
arate Christian community that rapidly drew in adherents from
across the Roman Empire. That is all we reliably know; but it is
worth reviewing some of the more interesting elaborations of this
information in our various sources, being alert to their questionable
worth as historical data.
The most solid date we have connected to Marcion—one re-
membered in the Marcionite community itself, and therefore not
suspect as a polemical invention (although Tertullian manages to
use it to make a polemical point)—is “115 years and 6½ months
between Christ and Marcion.”8 The point of reference with Christ
can scarcely be anything else than the date given in the first verse
of the Evangelion: the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, 29 ce.
The calculation yields a date in mid-July 144 ce,9 even if the exact
event commemorated by this date is not clear. One might as well
refer to it, in the witty expression of Sebastian Moll, as “Marcion-
day.”10 Since the date connected to Jesus is the latter’s public advent
as a religious leader (not his birth), it seems reasonable that the cor-
responding event be some sort of advent of Marcion, either in the
mundane or spiritual sense.11 While Epiphanius nearly two centu-
ries later gives a date approximating this one for Marcion’s arrival
in Rome,12 Irenaeus of Lyons, writing much closer to the events,
places Marcion’s arrival in Rome slightly earlier, circa 138–42 ce;13
and Clement of Alexandria, writing at about the same time, also
seems to imply that Marcion started his religious activities already
during the latter part of the reign of Hadrian (117–38 ce).14 From all
 Marcion 13

of this information, we can place the broader dates of Marcion’s life

at approximately 95–165 ce,15 but will continue to use 144 ce as the
one certain date connected to Marcion, and therefore to the First
New Testament.
Regarding Marcion’s arrival in Rome, Tertullian refers to a letter
in which Marcion had expressed in some way an original solidarity
with the faith of the Roman Christians,16 as well as to a remarkable
donation of 200,000 sesterces he contributed to their community.17
These two acts served Tertullian’s argument that Marcion fit the
profile of a typical “heretic”—someone who initially adhered to an
orthodoxy from which he later deviated. Tertullian’s wording18 has
been taken by some as implying that Marcion became a Christian
for the first time in Rome.19 But this interpretation demands too
much specific information from a very broad statement made as
part of a polemical theme.20 Marcion need not have first converted
to Christianity in Rome for Tertullian’s argument to hold good, and
Tertullian surely would have made much of Marcion’s baptism
at the hands of the Roman elders if he believed such a thing had
occurred.
Marcion’s falling-out with members of the Roman Christian
leadership may have been expressed through rival interpretations
of certain sayings of Jesus, regardless of the larger ideological dif-
ferences that may have stood behind the argument.21 Our sources
seem to share the impression that such exegetical conflict lit the
spark of dissension. Tertullian and Philastrius of Brescia (the latter
probably dependent on the former) associate the conflict with two
sayings of Jesus: concerning the good and the bad tree (Luke 6.43)22
and the old and new wineskins (Luke 5.36–37).23 Pseudo-Tertullian
mentions only the first,24 while Epiphanius mentions only the sec-
ond.25 Both images relate to Marcion’s belief that Jesus brought a
fundamentally new message and way of practicing religion at odds
with the Jewish religious tradition.26
A number of dates and references connected to Marcion’s later
activities turn up in our sources. He was still alive at the time Justin
Martyr was writing his First Apology, probably in the mid-150s, and
by that time had achieved remarkable success spreading his ver-
sion of the Christian faith.27 None of our sources place him in Rome
in the period between his break with the local community there
and Justin’s reference, and the latter likewise does not suggest his
presence in the city. But other sources place him back in Rome in
14 Marcion

the following decade, between 155 and 166 ce,28 perhaps returning
to edify the Marcionite community that most certainly remained in
place there.
Unfortunately, the most colorful biographical anecdotes come
from individual sources and cannot be checked against others for
reliability.29 Perhaps the story most worthy of credence is the one
Irenaeus relates from Polycarp of Smyrna, whom he knew “in my
early youth”30 in their common homeland of the province of Asia
(modern west Turkey). Polycarp had apparently rebuffed Marcion
on some occasion, though whether before or after Marcion’s time in
Rome is unclear—just as it is unclear whether Irenaeus had learned
the story directly from Polycarp when he knew him personally,
or learned the story later through a third party, as he had learned
other things about Polycarp’s later life.31 The rejection turns on a
pun in the Greek in which the exchange occurred. When Marcion
met Polycarp, he asked him if he recognized, or acknowledged
(epiginōske), “us”—that is, the Marcionite community. With the
Christian community divided, with whom would Polycarp keep
communion? But since the word for acknowledgment also means
to recognize or know someone personally, Polycarp played on that
second meaning when he answered, “Yes, I recognize you: the
firstborn of Satan!”32 A similar story told by Philastrius of Brescia
and other late sources about an encounter between Marcion and
the apostle John(!) may be a distorted derivative of this episode in-
volving Polycarp.33 Irenaeus goes on to mention Polycarp’s letter to
the Christians of Philippi, without specifically pointing out that the
expression “firstborn of Satan” is used in it by Polycarp to refer to
an otherwise unidentified opponent within Christianity. Either this
was a favorite expression of Polycarp’s, or the person in question is
Marcion. In the letter, Polycarp says:
For anyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh is an antichrist; and whoever does not confess the witness of
the cross is from the devil; and whoever distorts (methodeuēi) the
words of the Lord for his own passions, saying that there is neither
resurrection nor judgment—this one is the firstborn of Satan.34

The issues Polycarp raises here overlap with positions Marcion

held on the transcendent nature of Jesus and the salvation of the
human soul apart from the body by a deity who does not judge.35
Nevertheless, that Marcion is in fact the referent of the allusions in
Polycarp’s letter remains uncertain.36
 Marcion 15

These scant notices are all the direct information we have on

Marcion’s life aside from his biblical and theological activities. We
are left to fill out the context of these latter activities from related
circumstantial evidence connected to Marcion’s homeland, profes-
sion, and possible religious background.

Marcion’s Homeland
From surviving Christian sources, we know next to nothing about
the state of Christianity in Pontus in the earlier part of Marcion’s
life. The book of Acts (18.2) identified Pontus as the homeland of
Aquila, a colleague of Paul’s that the latter mentions in some of his
letters. If we could be certain of this information, we might specu-
late that at some point Aquila could have returned to his native
land and helped spread Christianity there. The First Letter of Peter
is addressed to Christians in the neighboring (and at times admin-
istratively combined) provinces of Pontus and Bithynia, among
other nearby regions, presupposing established communities there
at the time of its composition, which unfortunately cannot be con-
clusively determined. One can observe a striking correlation be-
tween the letter’s stress on Christians being “aliens” in the world,
and the world-view Marcion inherited or developed, even if First
Peter ultimately did not find a place in his New Testament canon.
Fortunately, however, we have a rare non-Christian source of
information on the state of Christianity in the region in the time
when Marcion would have been a young man there, in a letter of
the Roman governor Pliny to the emperor Trajan, circa 112 ce. Pliny
explains his procedure in enforcing a ban on secret societies, in-
cluding Christian clubs. He considered Christianity “a depraved
and extravagant superstition,” which apparently had been pres-
ent in the area for as much as twenty years (or at least there were
people brought before him who had been Christians twenty years
earlier, whether locally or in some other place). He also reports that
two women slaves actually held important positions in the church
as ministrae, or deaconesses, who probably distributed the ritual
meal.37 Under interrogation, some of the Christians provided Pliny
with an account of their religious observances:

On an appointed day they had been accustomed to meet before day-

break and to recite a hymn antiphonally to Christ, as to a god, and to
bind themselves by an oath, not for the commission of any crime but
to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery and breach of faith, and not
16 Marcion

to deny a deposit when it was claimed. After the conclusion of this

ceremony it was their custom to depart and meet again to take food;
but it was ordinary and harmless food.38

Pliny’s subtext in providing this description is that the secret activi-

ties of the Christians did not fit the suspicions that lay behind the
ban on secret societies. This was apparently not a criminal or po-
litical organization, as other secret societies were, nor did it entail
religious rites considered outright immoral by Roman standards.
It was, however, having a deleterious effect on traditional religion
in the province and, to Pliny’s grave concern, had spread not only
through the cities, but also the country towns and villages. Several
modern researchers have pointed to features in common between
Pliny’s Christians and Marcion’s brand of Christianity. These in-
clude the absence of Jewish characteristics in the service, the direct
worship of Christ as something like a deity, and the relatively high
position accorded women. What is missing, of course, is any refer-
ence to either the Old or New Testaments, or to any written texts,
which we would have expected to catch Pliny’s interest as a source
of information on the secretive group.39

Marcion’s Profession
Marcion’s profession in the sea-trade may be the most significant
thing we know about him personally.40 Pontic shipmasters played
a crucial role in supplying grain to Roman armies during two
major campaigns in the reign of Trajan, the Dacian and Parthian
wars.41 For the latter expedition, conducted when Marcion would
have been getting started in his career, Trajan reorganized the gov-
ernance of the area and had new roads built across neighboring
Cappadocia to expedite the shipment of grain from Pontic ports
to the troops campaigning in the upper Euphrates and Tigris river
valleys. Marcion would have learned of the Jewish resistance to
Trajan’s occupation of Mesopotamia, including attacks on supply
lines, and of Trajan’s brutal and ultimately futile efforts to suppress
it. We can do no more than speculate about any impressions made
on Marcion, or any connections he may have drawn between events
under Trajan and the Bar Kokhba revolt of the Jews fifteen years
later. We do know, however, that Marcion came to believe that the
creator of this world favored the Jews, just as their scriptures stated,
and ultimately would give them mastery of it at the hand of a mes-
sianic warrior. Conversely, he held that Christians had nothing to
 Marcion 17

do with such aspirations, and were called upon by Jesus and the
god he spoke for to abstain from violence of any kind. David Balás
sees an ironic historical moment in this exegetical alliance between
non-Christian Jews and Marcion’s de-Judaizing Christianity.
Marcion may have found a way to effect this desirable separation by
using Jewish self-interpretation at several main points. For instance,
by accepting the anti-Christian contention of some Jews that Jesus
Christ was not the Messiah promised by the Old Testament, a Messiah
the Jews rightly expected to be political and warlike, Marcion made
a counter claim that Christ was in fact the self-revelation of a pre-
viously entirely unknown, all-good God. . . . Paradoxically, it was
precisely by having accepted Jewish scriptures and history, at least
to a large extent, in their contemporary Jewish interpretation that
Marcion arrived at his radical dissociation of the two Testaments!42

Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, quelled the Bar Kokhba revolt and is-
sued laws against the free practice of Judaism, including an order
to destroy copies of the Jewish scriptures. Hadrian’s orders brought
to a crisis the simmering issue of Christian ties to Jewish identity.
Whatever the internal developments within Christianity that pre-
pared the way for the creation of a New Testament, it is simply im-
possible to dismiss the coincidence in time of Hadrian’s anti-Torah
campaign and Marcion’s call for the establishment of a distinct and
separate Christian sacred scripture. Given the political and social
circumstances, it is not at all surprising that it was precisely at this
time that Marcion became a major voice for the clear differentiation
of “Christianity” and “Judaism.”
Marcion’s business enterprises are potentially significant for
his role as a religious leader. Ships were the fastest and most ef-
fective means of communication and transport of goods in the
Roman Empire. Through the organization of his business, Marcion
would have had agents or contacts in many major ports through-
out the empire, and would have visited these far-flung places for
business reasons. This means that Marcion would have been un-
usually well-informed about regional differences in the Christian
movement, and would have had access to more local Christian
literature and traditions than most other Christians of his time.43
When, later in life, he realized that the form of Christianity with
which he identified faced competition from rival interpretations
of the faith, he had a tremendous advantage over the latter in his
ability to spread his message rapidly and organize communities
18 Marcion

on an empire-wide scale.44 Many of those engaged in the sea trade

were wealthy, prominent, well-connected people, and they formed
exclusive guilds that coordinated ventures and built up solidarity
in clubs. They were one of the only segments of the population to
have channels of communication independent of government con-
trol. The role they may have played in spreading Christianity must
remain for now mostly speculation. But it may be pertinent to note
that, precisely at the time when Marcion was active, the emperors
Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius both found it necessary to is-
sue laws against people not actually involved in the sea trade being
admitted to membership in its professional associations,45 suggest-
ing that the latter were being employed for some sort of network-
ing beyond their original purpose. Moreover, any explanation of
the Christian innovation in adopting the codex instead of the scroll
as the format for books must take into consideration the previous
primary use of the codex as a shipmaster’s almanac and business-
man’s account ledger.

Marcion’s Religious Environment

Christian texts dating to the lifetime of Marcion vary in their con-
ception of Christian identity in relationship to its Jewish roots.
Marcion’s own position, severing any connection to Jewish scrip-
ture and the kind of God it extols, put him toward one end of the
spectrum of Christian identity. At the other end of that spectrum
stood the Roman Christian community, or at least a large segment
of it, where evidently there was considerably more discomfort with
the figure of Paul than with the Jewish heritage of the faith. From
the evidence of the letter of Clement to Corinth46 and the writ-
ings of Justin Martyr, Christianity in Rome was deeply commit-
ted to its Jewish roots,47 and, when it did not outright reject Paul,48
it relegated him to a very minor place in Christian thought.49 Yet
Christian literature produced by others in Marcion’s lifetime re-
veals a diverse environment in which his break with Christianity’s
Jewish heritage was not a unique aberration.
Some of this Christian literature contemporary with Marcion
reflects a struggle between followers of Jesus and others within
the broader Jewish tradition over the meaning and lasting value
of the Jewish scriptures. The author of the Letter of Barnabas, for
example, insists on the obsolescence of literal application of those
scriptures. The typological and allegorical interpretive tradition
he promotes would come to dominate non-Marcionite forms of
 Marcion 19

Christianity from that point forward and would allow the contin-
ued authority of the Jewish scriptures, primarily as repositories of
symbolic imagery whose meaning was detached from Jewish reli-
gious practice.50 Claiming to be the “true Israel,” such Christians
laid claim to Jewish heritage while breaking continuity with more
literal ways of reading and applying Jewish sacred texts.
Somewhat later than Barnabas, the seven letters penned by
Ignatius51 display considerable concern over the still ill-defined dis-
tinction between Christian and Jewish observances.52 Ignatius ap-
parently was involved in debates with fellow Christians about the
trustworthy foundations of the faith. His opponents refused to be-
lieve anything not explicitly supported by the archeiois, the Jewish
scriptures,53 while Ignatius embraced the independent authority
of “the gospel,” the oral instruction and interpretive tradition of
the Christian communities.54 “For Ignatius,” William Schoedel con-
cludes, “the teachings and myths of Judaism are ‘old’ (cf. Mag. 9.1;
10.2)—a term that he uses to describe what is opposed to God (cf.
Eph. 19.3). ‘Judaism,’ then, is not granted even a historically limited
role in the unfolding of God’s plan.”55
From the same period, the Letter to Diognetus56 goes even fur-
ther in criticizing the Jewish tradition in a manner unqualified
by any claim that Christianity is a truer Judaism, repeatedly em-
phasizing the newness of Christianity, instead of the more typical
claim that it was something ordained from of old.57 According to
the author, no one had any knowledge of God before the coming
of Christ,58 and God held back his “own wise counsel as a well-
guarded mystery.”59 The author concedes that the one God is the
creator, and that the Jews worship this God, but they misunder-
stand his character. So while the author has not taken the step—
which Marcion did—of distinguishing between the creator god of
the Jews and the higher god of the Christians, the Jewish depic-
tion of God comes in for sharp criticism as unworthy of Christ’s
Father. Moreover, the author says, nature in no way serves to direct
attention to its ultimate creator; God conceals all until revealing
it exclusively to his Son. All other faiths, both Greek and Jewish,
are human doctrines60 and earthly inventions.61 God revealed his
true character, his inherent goodness and power to save, only at
the end of time.62 His followers are aliens in this world.63 This text,
then, offers an ideology closely akin to Marcion’s, and suggests
the existence of a wider environment from which Marcion drew
inspiration.64
20 Marcion

In the world Marcion knew, therefore, some strands of Christi-

anity displayed an effort to maintain close ties to Christianity’s
Jewish heritage in both symbolism and practice; others appropri-
ated the Jewish religious tradition with increasing hostility to its
contemporary Jewish practitioners; still others showed themselves
to be on the verge of severing all connections with the Jewish ori-
gins of Christianity.65 On the basis of such early Christian sources,
Charles Nielsen concludes, “The process of dissociating Christianity
from Judaism was already well under way within certain circles in
Asia Minor before Marcion. Marcion pushed the process to its bit-
ter end, but he really did not have very far to go!”66 David Balás
sees a role in the process for pressures connected to the Jewish re-
volts, noting that Marcion’s decision to go to Rome was made at or
shortly after the time of the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt
and anti-Jewish imperial legislation. “Politically and socially,” he
writes, “the Christians, especially hellenistic Christians with no
national or cultural roots in Judaism, found at this time their asso-
ciation with Jewish history an embarrassing and dangerous liabil-
ity.”67 In contrast, Gerhard May reads Marcion’s situation in terms
of broad questions about authority within emerging Christianity:
During the time of Marcion’s appearance, the church was on its way
to a crisis. . . . It was a crisis of the foundations as well as of the con-
tent of the Christian faith, and it developed gradually. . . . The ques-
tion that became more and more urgent was: How does one verify
the one original truth? . . . The problem of the authoritativeness of
the Old Testament—in spite of Paul, never uniformly solved—was
raised anew and pointedly: It was no longer just a question of the
validity of the law. Could the Bible of the Jews, as a matter of fact, be
the revelatory book of the true God?68

Marcion’s Christian Conflict

We have no way of knowing whether Marcion was raised in a
Christian community already disconnected from its Jewish roots,
or later joined such a community, or whether he was himself an
innovator in that direction. Whether due to expulsion from the
synagogues, or dissociation connected to the recurrent repression
of Jews, the circumstances of the time raise a historical question:
what happened when Gentile Christian dependence on a Jewish
Christian core group became untenable, and Gentile Christians ei-
 Marcion 21

ther willingly or unwillingly went their own way? One result was
the sort of religious environment from which Marcion apparently
emerged, in which the Jewish background of Christianity was min-
imized. Another outcome was the sort Marcion found prevalent in
Rome: that is, a fresh appropriation of Jewish elements in a syn-
thesis of formerly distinct Jewish and Gentile missions. These two
different ways of responding to the same situation then came into
conflict in the second century ce.
We do not know if Marcion set out for Rome with the inten-
tion of reforming the Christian community (or communities) there.
He may have thought that any local difference of opinion he had
experienced in the provinces came from ignorance, and that the
Christians in the capital certainly would share the views he re-
garded as “orthodox.” If so, he was in for quite a surprise. John
Knox pictures such a scenario:
Now imagine a zealous and forceful Christian of the early second
century whose Christianity has been of a decidedly non-Jewish type,
who has been nourished on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians and other
writings of that apostle, who has found salvation in the Lord Jesus
Christ and in his God and Father, who has made little use, if any, of
Jewish Scripture, thinking of it as the “law” which Christ has brought
to nought—imagine such a Christian suddenly finding himself in a
community where the historical continuity with Judaism is prized as
one of the most precious values, where ultimate authority is vested
in the Jewish Scriptures, where the sharp Pauline antithesis between
law and gospel, between letter and Spirit, is softened, if not effaced.
Do we not have in such a situation all we need to explain what seems
to have happened several years after Marcion came to Rome . . .?69

If Marcion arrived in Rome with any illusion that he would find

a community living according to his Pauline ideal, he must have
quickly discerned the divergence between his vision and local real-
ity. He began to urge Roman Christians to reform themselves, to
shed the Jewish trappings of their faith, as well as their attachment
to a fleshly rather than spiritual Jesus, and the closely related hope
in their own bodily resurrection, rather than an ascent of their soul
to heaven. His attempt to work out a theological and metaphysi-
cal setting within which to understand the sharp divergence he
perceived between Jesus’ characterization of God and the image
of God in Jewish scripture only would have widened the gulf be-
tween him and other Christian leaders.
22 Marcion

We do not know whether it was Marcion or his opponents who

finally forced the issue. But there was a showdown of some sort,
with Marcion no doubt calling on Roman Christians to join him,
and the local leaders on their side presenting Marcion with an ul-
timatum of conformity, perhaps taking the form of a statement of
faith close in form to the Old Roman Symbol, an earlier version
of the Apostles’ Creed, which seems framed specifically to rule
out several of Marcion’s key positions.70 Marcion rejected the pro-
posed creed, took with him those who had been won to his side,
and organized a rival communion, which he endowed with a New
Testament to replace the Old Testament that alone had scriptural
status for most Roman Christians at the time.71
Those opposed to Marcion, including groups ancestral to later
Christian orthodoxy, produced a string of writings against him, his
teachings, and his New Testament—more than against any other
rival form of Christianity prior to the fourth-century christological
and Manichaean controversies.72 Of this extensive anti-Marcionite
literature, only one is preserved in its entirety: Tertullian’s Against
Marcion (Adversus Marcionem). As pointed out by E. Evans, this
work, written in the first decade of the third century, has the dis-
tinction of containing “the earliest surviving Christian commen-
tary on any book of the New Testament,”73—namely, on the books
of Marcion’s New Testament; we must wait another generation for
the writings of Origen for the first commentaries on books now
found in the modern Christian New Testament. Many more anti-
Marcionite writings, such as those mentioned by Eusebius,74 are
now lost. There were works by Justin Martyr,75 Rhodo,76 Dionysius
of Corinth,77 Theophilus of Antioch,78 Hippolytus of Rome,79 Philip
of Gortyna,80 and Modestus.81 Irenaeus intended to write one, as
he says in his surviving work,82 but Eusebius found no trace that
he ever carried through this intention.83 All of this anti-Marcionite
labor suggests the extent of Marcion’s success, noted with chagrin
by Justin84 and attested in the anti-Christian polemic of the second-
century writer Celsus.85
It is remarkable that so many of these anti-Marcionite tracts are
no longer extant, and one must wonder at the reason for that. Did
they perhaps go too far in some of their remarks? Gerhard May
suggests that what survives of Justin and Rhodo shows that they
did not recognize the scriptural status of a New Testament, since
they characterize the Marcionites as lacking (scriptural) proof of
 Marcion 23

their doctrines.86 While some sought to appropriate the author-

ity of Paul against Marcion, others apparently found it necessary
to attack rather than domesticate Paul himself, and through him
Marcion, under the thin disguise of the arch-heretic Simon Magus
in the novelistic Pseudo-Clementine literature.87 The early orthodox
tracts against Marcion may have been considered largely worthless
to later generations because they reflected views at odds with later
orthodoxy, such as overt criticism of Paul, attacks on the Gospel of
Luke, or a view of sacred scripture that did not recognize a place
for a “new” testament.88
But Marcion also had his supporters, who became convinced as
he did that the Law and Prophets, whose authority was severely
qualified already in the ideology of Paul, could not serve as a sa-
cred text for the Christians, and must yield its place to some set
of the new Christian literature being written and circulated. He
bestowed upon his community a formalized canon consisting of
a single gospel (the Evangelion) and a collection of Paul’s letters
(the Apostolikon), perhaps deliberately modeled in this double
structure as a replacement for the Law and Prophets.89 His action
appears to have served as a catalyst for discussions and debates
about which Christian writings should be accorded this status.
Arguments were made, new sources were sought out, and lists
were drawn up90 (including the so-called Muratorian Canon, with
its explicitly anti-Marcionite concern, whenever and wherever it
was actually compiled91). This process went on for another two
hundred years before any of the proposed canons matched what
modern Christians consider to be the New Testament. Any talk
of a New Testament apart from Marcion’s in the second and third
centuries is anachronistic, and must be treated as a shorthand way
to refer to individual books or subsets of texts recognized as au-
thoritative amid an indeterminate larger set of Christian literature.
Marcion, by issuing a delimited set of Christian texts considered
exclusively authoritative as early as the mid-second century, was
far ahead of his time.
 Chapter 2

Marcion’s
New Testament
“The history of the development of the New Testament Canon,” C.
F. Evans observes in the Cambridge History of the Bible, “is the history
of the process by which books written for the most part for other
purposes and from other motives came to be given this unique
status.”1 Historical hindsight all too easily creates the illusion of
inevitability in this process; but we can discern a distinct before-
and-after transformation of attitudes towards early Christian writ-
ings, with Marcion as the middle term. As Lee McDonald states,
“Although the mid-second–century Church was gradually recog-
nizing the usefulness of a body of Christian literature for its life
and worship, there were as yet no fixed normative collections to
which one could appeal. It was Marcion . . . who first saw the im-
portance of a collection of authoritative Christian writings for wor-
ship and teaching in his community of churches.”2 It is important
to stress here the broad modern consensus of scholars on this point.
“It is denied by none,” F. F. Bruce remarks about that consensus,
“that Marcion played a crucial part in the formation of the New
Testament canon.”3 Or, put more strongly (and perhaps more con-
troversially) in the words of Hans von Campenhausen, the idea of
a New Testament “came into existence at one stroke with Marcion
and only with Marcion,” and it “remains his peculiar and unique
creation.”4
In the time before Marcion we find few quotations from the
books that were to be included in the New Testament. “At most,”
Bruce Metzger observes, “the Apostolic Fathers disclose for this or

25
26 Marcion’s New Testament

that geographical area a certain (or rather, an uncertain) amount

of knowledge and use of several first-century documents that later
came to be gathered into what we know as the New Testament.”5
Metzger demonstrates a clear difference in how these writers in-
formally handled material later included in the New Testament, in
contrast to their more formal, precise citation of Jewish scriptures;
the two sources of instruction simply did not share the same level
of sacredness and authority for these authors. Marcion’s contempo-
rary Justin Martyr, for instance, made use of a collection of stories
and sayings of Jesus culled from various gospels both known and
unknown to us today, with little indication that he considered it im-
portant to preserve the exact wording of anything other than Jesus’
own statements.6 As Campenhausen characterizes the situation,
“In the first one and a half centuries of the Church’s history there
is no single Gospel writing which is directly made known, named,
or in any way given prominence by quotation. Written and oral
traditions run side by side or cross, enrich or distort one another,
without distinction or even the possibility of distinction between
them.”7 Early in the second century, Papias of Hierapolis felt free to
criticize the sequence of the Gospel of Mark, and to prefer oral tra-
ditions to written ones generally.8 The various collections of Paul’s
letters in circulation were only looked upon favorably in certain
circles and were not yet treated as scripture.9
All of this changed with Marcion. He formed for the first time
“a coherent canon,” displaying two crucial features by which Bruce
Metzger justifies this characterization: (1) it contained a fixed num-
ber of books, and (2) it was put forward in place of the Jewish scrip-
tures, as equivalently scriptural.10 Through these moves, Marcion
“first makes Christians conscious both of the idea of a new canon
of Christian literature and of the identification of certain kinds of
documents as carrying greater authority than others, and hence be-
ing ‘canonical.’”11 P. Rougier points out the contrast of perspective
between Papias, writing probably before 130 ce, who shows not
even an inkling of a notion of a New Testament canon and explic-
itly critiques reliance on texts for Christian tradition, and Irenaeus
of Lyons, working half a century later, who argues for the accep-
tance of a four-gospel proto-canon.12 Even Irenaeus was not seek-
ing to define a closed “canon” of Christian scripture, but reported
on and justified a tradition of use for individual authoritative texts
within his community.13 Several researchers have argued that the
rapid formation and dissemination of this four-gospel “canon” be-
 Marcion’s New Testament 27

tween the time of Justin and that of Irenaeus suggests a deliberate,

conscious decision by the leaders of the non-Marcionite party in the
western Roman Empire, with Marcion’s activities there serving as
the catalyst.14
But in fact the process of canonization within non-Marcionite
circles appears to have been a slow one, and we must wait two
hundred years to find one as formally defined as Marcion’s. Harry
Gamble draws attention to the resistance of the mainstream
Christian communities to Marcion’s innovation, casting doubt on
any immediate counter-move at canonization: “The fixation of a
canon by Marcion did not in fact lead to an immediate or concerted
effort in the church to delimit its own authoritative literature, and
the number of writings valued continued for a long time to be large
and fluid.”15 John Barton has argued similarly that the long delay
in formalizing a New Testament canon among the non-Marcionite
mainstream speaks against a direct influence of Marcion on that
process, and might even be read as a self-conscious rejection of
his scriptural move.16 Ongoing debate among biblical scholars
on Marcion’s exact role in the formation of the Christian Bible,
therefore, does not question that Marcion compiled the First New
Testament, but proposes different assessments of how much his in-
novation directly shaped the modern New Testament canon. Yet
even if Marcion’s opponents did not follow him by quickly institut-
ing a closed canon of their own, or by seeking to “restrict the com-
pass of acceptable Christian texts”17 to the same degree that he did,
it nevertheless is difficult to deny that his New Testament remained
the elephant in the room of deliberations over sacred scripture until
the question was settled for the mainstream church as well, and
some of the choices he made undeniably came to be incorporated
into the ultimate form taken by the New Testament.18
Despite a number of qualifications, therefore, we still can affirm
in large part Harnack’s summary of Marcion’s contribution to the
formation of the Christian Bible:19

1. Christians owe to Marcion the idea of a New Testament. It

had occurred to no one before and can best be understood
as originating in the context of Marcion’s rejection of an Old
Testament base for Christianity.20
2. Christians owe to Marcion the particular form of the New
Testament. The equal standing of the letters of Paul with
the memoirs of Christ’s life is something that would not be
28 Marcion’s New Testament

expected in a sacred literature from any precedent up to

that time.21
3. Christians owe to Marcion the prominence of the voice of
Paul in the New Testament, and consequently in subsequent
Christian tradition. Many of Marcion’s contemporaries had
all but forgotten Paul, or subsumed him within the broader
apostolic mass.22
4. Christians owe to Marcion the push towards a Christianity
rooted in its own distinctive scripture, rather than in an oral
tradition of interpreting Jewish scripture, or in a scrip-
tureless system of authority and practice like most Greco-
Roman religions of the time.

Wolfram Kinzig has presented a strong case that it was even

Marcion who first coined the expression “New Testament” as a
designation appropriate to his collection of Christian scriptures—a
name whose origin otherwise has proven difficult to trace.23 The
evidence shows not only some of the earliest appearances of the
expression in discussions of Marcion’s views, but also the degree
to which anti-Marcionite Christian leaders initially resisted the
name before yielding to widespread popular usage, which can be
plausibly attributed to the extensive reach of the Marcionite mis-
sion in the second and third centuries. Kinzig’s case is by no means
proven, however, and the expression remained throughout the
early Christian centuries primarily a theological rather than textual
one. Our sources speak of writings “belonging to” the old or new
covenants in the character of their contents, just as Buddhists at
times speak of texts being “Hinayana” or “Mahayana.” It took a
while for the designation to narrow its reference to a specific col-
lection of texts.

Marcion’s Role as Editor

Did Marcion merely compile and “canonize” texts he found al-
ready in use among certain Christian communities? Or did he select
some, reject others, according to ideological principles? Did he go
on to edit those he selected, in order to bring them into conformity
with his views? Or did he faithfully transmit the texts as he found
them, while simply interpreting them in line with his beliefs? From
the hindsight of the later New Testament canonized by non-Mar-
cionite Christians and in use today, it has been easy to believe the
traditional polemical suspicions of Marcion’s “heretical” motives
 Marcion’s New Testament 29

and methods, in order to explain Marcion’s smaller New Testament

canon and shorter individual books within it. Tertullian, writing
three generations after Marcion, assumed that he had taken an al-
ready existing set of Christian scriptures, universally recognized as
authoritative, and had rejected some, edited others. But we are able
to recognize immediately the anachronism in Tertullian’s assump-
tion. He was not aware that no such authoritative set of Christian
scriptures is anywhere in evidence prior to Marcion, and that even
in Tertullian’s day agreement on such a set was far from universal.24
Multiple gospels had already been written by Marcion’s time,
and he almost certainly knew more than one of them. He may
have commented negatively on some passages from the Gospel of
Matthew in his only known composition, the Antitheses.25 But we
do not know whether he knew of Matthew already when he se-
lected a different gospel for his New Testament, or only learned of
it afterward. Nor do we have any evidence that he knew or com-
mented on any other work not included in his New Testament,
except, of course, the Jewish scriptures, or “Old Testament.” The
primary purpose of the Antitheses was not to debate “canonical”
issues (note the anachronism involved in imagining that it would),
but to compare the religious principles expressed in the Evangelion
and Apostolikon with the ideas and narratives of the Jewish scrip-
tures, in order to demonstrate the incompatibility of the two re-
ligious systems. Although Tertullian and other anti-Marcionite
writers believed that Marcion had deliberately omitted Paul’s
“Pastoral Letters” (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus), we now know
that his Pauline collection contained the same ten letters circulating
among many non-Marcionite churches of his time. Since the earli-
est certain citation of the Pastorals occurs only a generation or two
after Marcion, it may well be that he had no knowledge of them,
or even that they had yet to be written (if they are, in fact, writ-
ten by someone pretending to be Paul, as most modern researchers
conclude). Even the priority given to Paul’s letter to the Galatians
in the Apostolikon, long explained as due to Marcion’s particular
ideological interests, has now been shown to have occurred also in
the ten-letter collection of Paul’s letters circulating among non-Mar-
cionite Christians in Syria.26 In short, we need to break free from
anachronistic judgments that Marcion “omitted” or “rearranged”
texts relative to a later New Testament canon that did not yet exist
in his time. As the first compiler of a New Testament, Marcion was
at liberty to select and arrange texts as he chose, just as were later
30 Marcion’s New Testament

non-Marcionite Christian leaders when they compiled their own

New Testament.
Tertullian further charged that Marcion “mutilated” (caederet)
those texts he did include in his New Testament—that is, that he
altered them by excising passages that contradicted his views, or
occasionally making slight changes in wording for the same pur-
pose.27 More than a century later, Epiphanius similarly referred
to Marcion having “excised” (parekopse) passages. Someone with
Tertullian’s and Epiphanius’ presuppositions about the accuracy of
their versions of these texts, and about Marcion’s motives as a “here-
tic,” would necessarily draw such an inference from the simple fact
that Marcion’s texts were shorter than the versions of the works in
question known to them.28 There was a well-known tradition of cor-
recting corrupted manuscripts of the Iliad and other classic works
of literature by excising what the editors regarded as inauthentic
additions to the text, so it was easy to imagine that someone with
Marcion’s concern with the “corruption” of the “gospel”—that is,
the message of Jesus—would take up the editorial knife in a similar
fashion. Yet Tertullian and Epiphanius found it easy—remarkably
easy—to cite apparent inconsistencies in Marcion’s supposed edit-
ing: passages that were to be found in his texts even though they
contradicted the very views he was busy promoting on the author-
ity of these very texts.29 Either Marcion was an incredibly inept edi-
tor, as Tertullian sometimes suggested, or he had never undertaken
such an ideological purge of these texts.30
The way this issue has been handled by modern biblical re-
searchers is instructive. Despite a number of questioning voices go-
ing back to the very beginning of modern critical study of the Bible,
most have simply accepted the polemical claim that Marcion edited
out portions of the texts he received. When it comes to the evidence
contrary to this claim, modern commentators have either embraced
Tertullian’s answers—that Marcion was an incompetent editor or
cleverly left in passages contrary to his views to allay suspicions
that he had tampered with the text—or have worked to come up
with ideological motivations for Marcion’s editorial decisions that
went unrecognized by Tertullian and others. The common suppo-
sition has been that the polemical testimony to Marcion’s editorial
activity is basically reliable, and fundamental, and everything else
is to be explained in accord with it. Few researchers seem to have
considered the fact that writers such as Tertullian were in no posi-
tion to know the state of texts in or before the time of Marcion, nor
 Marcion’s New Testament 31

did they have any independent information that would have told
them whether Marcion’s or their versions of these writings were
the earlier one.31 For these reasons, the testimony of these oppo-
nents of Marcion on this question is utterly without merit. Many
other critics of Marcion (e.g., Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria,
Ephrem Syrus) say nothing about any tampering with texts.32 Even
Tertullian himself, in the heat of polemic, acknowledged that he
could not actually prove the priority of his community’s versions of
the texts over Marcion’s. Modern commentators rarely have been
as careful to qualify their assertions.
In short, the acceptance by modern researchers of the claims
made about Marcion’s handling of the texts included in his New
Testament is an example of uncritical adoption of polemic as his-
tory.33 First, Tertullian and his associates in this charge against
Marcion are working from an anti-Marcionite bias that shapes
their assumptions. Second, they are writing from a position in
time that makes it impossible for them to have any sure knowl-
edge of the state of either anything like a New Testament canon
or its constituent books at the time of Marcion. Third, we know
for a fact that several of their assumptions are incorrect: there was
no New Testament canon before Marcion, from which the latter
rejected parts unsuited to him;34 there was no larger Pauline cor-
pus from which Marcion excised the Pastorals; there was no uni-
versal, undisputed orthodoxy from which Marcion diverged.35 All
of these are anachronisms that Marcion’s later critics project back
into the circumstances of his activity. In many cases, Tertullian and
Epiphanius claim erroneously that the particular wording of the
Evangelion or Apostolikon is Marcion’s invention, when in fact we
find the same wording in catholic biblical manuscripts. The almost
canonical status afforded the accusations made against Marcion,
therefore, shows a remarkable lack of critical historical assessment
among modern researchers.
Adolf von Harnack, the great historian of Christianity whose
1924 study of Marcion is the chief reference point of all subsequent
scholarship on the subject, helped to perpetuate this uncritical read-
ing of sources hostile to Marcion, inasmuch as he sought rationales
within Marcion’s ideology for the differences between Marcion’s
texts and their catholic versions. Yet even he readily admitted, “No
definite statements by Marcion exist concerning the grounds for
proceeding as he does in his critique of individual passages from
the Gospel or Apostle.”36 He likewise conceded that many passages
32 Marcion’s New Testament

were apparently in Marcion’s text that worked against his theology.

A growing alertness to such issues with the evidence in the research
conducted since Harnack has called into question his claim to have
an accurate grasp of Marcion’s dogmatic principles when it came
to handling the biblical text.37 Any conclusions drawn on this ques-
tion must be based on the evidence of the texts themselves, not any
assumptions about Marcion and his motives. Unfortunately, we
lack the basis for a truly objective comparison, since we are in no
better position than Tertullian when it comes to certainty about the
shape of the texts in question before the time of Marcion. Moreover,
conditioned as we are by a long tradition of making sense of these
texts in the longer form in which they appear in modern Bibles, it
may be hard for us to step back, dismantle that sense, and consider
with an open mind the possible priority of Marcion’s versions.
There is nothing inherently implausible about the idea that
Marcion edited his texts to make them more representative of what
he valued and considered important. In fact, he lived at a time
when gospels were still being actively composed, often by rework-
ing, merging, and elaborating on earlier gospels. The problem with
attributing this sort of authorship to Marcion comes from an ex-
amination of texts themselves, and can be summed up in a series
of questions: Why did not he not produce a more novel set of texts,
fitted exactly to his beliefs? Why do his versions of the texts con-
tain so much material in direct conflict with his own ideas? Why
are the differences in his versions relatively minor in comparison
with non-Marcionite versions, with minimal impact on the overall
message? Why did he leave in passages expressing the exact same
views for which he supposedly removed other passages? Why did
he not add anything? As such questions pile up, it becomes increas-
ingly difficult to make a case for the notion that Marcion’s New
Testament contained texts “mutilated” to conform to his distinctive
beliefs.
The little that we know factually is that Marcion charged that
“the gospel” adhered to by members of the Christian community
in Rome was not authentic, that it diverged from the true record
of “the gospel” known to him.38 We know that he presented to
those who heeded him an textual embodiment of “the Gospel and
Apostle” that he considered authentic, along with a systematic
interpretive exposition of how the faith embodied in these au-
thentic texts was incompatible with the teachings of the Jewish
scriptures. That is all we know. We do not have a single state-
 Marcion’s New Testament 33

ment of Marcion on those passages he supposedly excised from

his texts as corruptions. We cannot be sure that Marcion’s state-
ments regarding a corrupt “gospel” in use in Rome even referred
to a text, rather than to an oral teaching. In fact, the expression
“the gospel” continued to be used in the latter sense of the reli-
gious message of Christianity in general long after Marcion, and
his own innovation in titling a part of his New Testament “The
Gospel” (Evangelion) may have been in pointed response to what
he regarded as the instability of resting authority on an uncodi-
fied set of traditions. Even when Tertullian says that Marcion ex-
cised something from “the gospel,” he often refers not to edits
worked upon a specific gospel text, but to Marcion’s failure to
include in his New Testament all of the gospel materials accepted
in Tertullian’s community, including not only Luke but also
Matthew, Mark, and John.39 These remarks of Tertullian have been
regularly misunderstood in modern scholarship.40 Furthermore,
as noted above, our sources frequently accuse Marcion of hav-
ing changed the wording of passages, but it turns out that the
“changed” wording also occurs in non-Marcionite manuscripts,
so that wording once thought by researchers to be indicative of
his ideology have since been found in lines of textual transmis-
sion outside the confines of his church.41
The reconstruction of Marcion’s New Testament offered in this
study, therefore, does not assume that Marcion edited the texts; nei-
ther does it accept uncritically Marcion’s own implicit claims for
the authenticity of the form of the texts he canonized. Rather, it
makes use of the data we have on the content of Marcion’s canon in
a neutral way, in order simply to present the First New Testament
as a historical event in its own right, and to establish a more se-
cure base from which arguments may be made and conclusions
drawn about the history of these texts both before and after this
event. There is an important place for examining Marcion’s col-
lection of Christian scriptures in itself, and not primarily in terms
of debatable suppositions about Marcion and Marcionism. It may
be that an independent analysis of this collection of texts actually
sheds light on Marcion, rather than the reverse. But, in any case,
Marcion’s New Testament holds its primary significance as the ear-
liest substantial witness we have to texts ultimately incorporated
into the New Testament used by Christians today, and potentially
provides new insight into their literary history and the forms of
Christianity they represent.
34 Marcion’s New Testament

The Sources
Our ability to reconstruct the First New Testament is hampered
by the nature of our sources, all of which are polemical attacks on
Marcionite views written by leaders of other forms of Christianity.
They make no attempt to quote every word of Marcion’s text, and
even when they do quote, they do not always do so exactly. Rather,
they cite that which is relevant to their argument, skipping over
passages that contain nothing they can use against Marcion. The
three principal sources used by Harnack and relied upon in more
recent studies are Tertullian’s Against Marcion from the early third
century, Epiphanius’ Medicine-Chest (Panarion) from the second half
of fourth century, and On the Correct Faith in God (De Recta in Deum
Fide), an anonymous dialogue of the late third to early fourth cen-
tury whose main character is given the name Adamantius. A num-
ber of lesser sources provide important confirmation of readings
given by the major three, or fill in gaps otherwise left by them.

A. Tertullian
Our earliest and best evidence for the content of Marcion’s
Evangelion and Apostolikon comes from books 4 and 5, respec-
tively, of Tertullian’s massive refutation of Marcion’s teachings.42
He undertook this work around the year 207 ce, about half a
century after Marcion’s death. Tertullian’s intent was to show
that even Marcion’s own selected sacred scripture does not sup-
port the heretic’s teaching. This strategy of refutation had been
proposed by Irenaeus (Haer. 1.27.4). As far as we know, the latter
never carried out this plan; but it became a favorite, employed by
Tertullian, Epiphanius, Pseudo-Ephrem A, and, to a lesser degree,
Adamantius. Tertullian proceeds fairly systematically through
Marcion’s texts, and this approach is greatly to our benefit. But
comparison with our other sources shows that Tertullian does skip
over passages. He passes over content that either offered nothing
useful to his polemical purposes or contained elements that would
actually weaken his argument. As he works through the letters of
Paul, he skips over more and more material simply because (as he
expressly says, Marc. 5.3) he considered it redundant to keep mak-
ing the same arguments over and over again.43
Because it is evident that Tertullian had an actual copy of
Marcion’s New Testament in front of him as he worked, modern
researchers universally rate his evidence very highly, and have
 Marcion’s New Testament 35

turned to close readings of his quotations to reconstruct the exact

wording of Marcion’s text. This has proven to be problematic, how-
ever. Research since Harnack has pointed out that Tertullian, in all
of his writings, quotes the Bible loosely, sometimes from memory,
sometimes paraphrased. Although Tertullian is being careful in
Against Marcion to argue against Marcion on the basis of the con-
tent of passages actually included in the Marcionite Bible, there is
no reason to think that he reliably quotes these passages verbatim.
He freely reorders clauses and whole verses within a particular sec-
tion he is discussing according to the flow of his own argument.
Often he merely uses the overall thrust of a passage as the basis
of his comments. It is only when his argument hinges on particu-
lar wording, or in those few instances where he mentions a differ-
ence in wording between the Marcionite text and his own, that we
can rely on Tertullian confidently as a source for a word-by-word
reconstruction of Marcion’s text,44 and the reconstruction must in-
volve comparison with how Tertullian words the passage in other
writings, when quoting from his own texts of Luke and Paul.45
A related concern for those who would reconstruct Marcion’s
text from Tertullian is whether Tertullian was working from a
Marcionite-approved Latin translation, or was using his own trans-
lation skills on a Greek text.46 When the uncertainty over the answer
to this question is combined with the observations on Tertullian’s
loose habits of quotation, one is forced to admit that supposed
variances in wording between Marcion’s texts and those in use
among non-Marcionites must be substantiated by other sources.
Tertullian’s chief value as a source, therefore, comes from the fact
that he provides reliable information on the presence of particular
passages of content in the Evangelion and Apostolikon, whenever
he alludes to them in his argumentation, even if the full extent and
exact wording of the passage remains uncertain.
Although few have questioned that Tertullian had direct access
to the Evangelion and Apostolikon, we cannot be absolutely sure.
A couple of features of his discussion invite caution. First, he fre-
quently comments on Marcion’s interpretation and application of
a particular verse, as if he is looking at Marcion’s Antitheses and
drawing scriptural quotations from it, rather than directly from the
Evangelion and Apostolikon. Second, Tertullian’s selective quo-
tations from the Apostolikon possess a kind of running logic, as
one quoted verse follows upon another in what has the appear-
ance of a connected argument; yet that argument is not Tertullian’s.
36 Marcion’s New Testament

Rather, by selectively skipping over intervening material, a co-

gent Marcionite reading of Paul comes sharply into focus, which
Tertullian does his best to disarticulate and refute. This impression
is subjective, of course, and may be an illusion. But if Tertullian
relied completely on the quotations of scripture in Marcion’s
Antitheses, and did not have direct access to the Evangelion and
Apostolikon, any comment he makes about passages missing from
these texts would be suspect, the result of mere supposition on his
part based on Marcion’s failure to quote them.

B. Epiphanius
Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis on the island of Cyprus in the later
fourth century, provides a second valuable set of firsthand read-
ings from Marcion’s biblical texts, independent of that offered
by Tertullian. His discussion of Marcion’s New Testament, like
Tertullian’s, is part of a larger refutation of Marcionite teaching,
which in turn constitutes only a small portion of a much larger
refutation of all varieties of Christianity known to him besides his
own Nicene faith.47 This Panarion, or “medicine-chest,” against
heresy, dates to around 377 ce. Epiphanius incorporated into it an
anti-Marcionite treatise he had written some years earlier, and his
description of how he composed this treatise is worth quoting in
full.
Some years ago, to find what lies and silly teachings this Marcion
had invented, I took up his very books which he had mutilated, that
named by him Evangelion and that called by him Apostolikon. From
these two books I made a series of extracts and selections of the ma-
terial which was capable of refuting him, and I wrote a sort of out-
line for a treatise, arranging the points in order, and numbering each
saying one, two, three (and so on). And in this way I went through
all of the passages in which it is apparent that, like a fool, he still
retains these leftover sayings of the Savior and the Apostle to his
own disadvantage. For some of the sayings had been entered by him
in an altered form and not matching those in the Gospel according
to Luke nor the characteristic presentation of the Apostolic (section
of the New Testament). But others correspond with those of both
the Gospel and the Apostle—unchanged by him, and yet capable of
disproving his whole case. (Pan. 42.10.2–5)

Epiphanius, like Tertullian, only mentions passages pertinent

to his arguments, but in his case this involves a more concerted
 Marcion’s New Testament 37

effort with regard to the Evangelion to note which passages are

lacking or different in Marcion’s text when compared with the
version of Luke accepted in his own faith community; for some
reason, however, he does not continue this sort of analysis for the
letters of Paul in the Apostolikon. His testimony is valuable, there-
fore, in providing specific notations of textual differences down to
the exact wording of Marcion’s text in its original Greek, at least
with respect to the Evangelion. As regards the order of Marcion’s
text, Epiphanius seems to follow this strictly with only a very few
exceptions. Indeed, his presentation reflects the procedure he de-
scribes of taking notes from Marcion’s text and recording them in a
notebook as notations, or scholia. He has seventy-eight such notes
from the Evangelion and forty from the Apostolikon (eight from
Galatians, sixteen from 1 Corinthians, three from 2 Corinthians,
eight from Romans, three from “Ephesians,” and one each from
Colossians and “Laodiceans”). Yet Epiphanius frequently abbrevi-
ates his quotes, reducing them to the key phrases, and so his evi-
dence, just as Tertullian’s, must be used cautiously. Like Tertullian,
he shows much less interest in sustaining his analysis through the
letters of Paul, and he quite frequently makes sweeping charges
that Marcion had altered the text, without providing any specific
examples.48
Despite potentially offering a more direct witness to the origi-
nal Greek of the Evangelion and Apostolikon, Epiphanius has not
enjoyed the same generally positive assessment among modern
researchers as has Tertullian.49 The striking difference between
Epiphanius’ handling of the Evangelion and of the Apostolikon
does invite some suspicions about his access to the latter. He is able
to comment very precisely on text lacking from the Evangelion in
comparison to Luke, but fails to specify any similar omission in the
letters of Paul (for which we have Tertullian’s testimony), instead
making sweeping, apparently baseless remarks about the corrup-
tion of their texts by Marcion. He also seems confused about some-
thing as basic as which letters were included in the Apostolikon,
referring to both “Ephesians” and “Laodiceans,” even though these
are one and the same letter under its catholic and Marcionite des-
ignation, respectively. From evidence such as this, John Clabeaux
concludes that, “It is clear from an examination of Epiphanius’ cita-
tions from the Marcionite Apostolikon in Panarion 42 that he had no
Marcionite Bible in his hands, despite his claim to the contrary. . . .
His quotations were taken from anti-Marcionite literature that was
Other documents randomly have
different content
 We'd had to——

General Chadbourne.

There you are!

Sam Williams.

If it hadn't been for Mr. Egerton.

Harry Egerton.

Yes, probably they would.

Harvey Anderson.

That's just the point.

General Chadbourne.

Then who is responsible?

Harvey Anderson.

They'd gone to work.

Harry Egerton.

For this, I am. But for conditions here——

General Chadbourne.
(To Captain Haskell)

Remember that.

Workmen.

No! We! We seized the mill!

Harry Egerton.

I led them.

Buck Bentley.

It was we unlocked the gates.

Workmen.

But we marched in, so we're responsible.

Harvey Anderson.

We won't dispute about who did it, partners.

There's glory enough for all.

(Cheers)

I'm in it too.

(He laughs)
Harry Egerton.

But for conditions that produced this strike

God knows and I know it was not these men.
I only wish that that was farther off.

General Chadbourne.

If wrong's been done there's legal remedies.

Harry Egerton.

Conditions, General, that outreach the law.

Sam Williams.
 For it's that 'open market'——

Voice.
(From the crowd)

Who makes the law?

Sam Williams.

Their legal right to buy the cheapest men

And drive them just as hard and just as long
As they can stand it.

Buck Bentley.

And no troops are sent.

Cries.
(Some militiamen joining in)

That's right!

Workmen.

No troops for us! No troops for us!

(This cry is caught up by the crowd and is carried on

back through the mill. Chadbourne looks at the
militiamen and unbuttons his overcoat and feels about
in his pockets)
Harry Egerton.

Pardon me, General, if I speak right out,

But I've seen wages lowered to buy lands,
And I've seen bread taken from these men here
To gamble with. There are some things, General Chadbourne,
 That can't go on. We've but one life to live
And we just can't stand by and see some things
And live. It's not worth while, it's not worth while.
Buck Bentley.

And while you're here I want to say a word,

For possibly we won't see you any more,
And they'll be asking of us up the State.
I never thought of it——

General Chadbourne.
(Handing Haskell a notebook)

Take down their names.

Buck Bentley.

Till Mr. Egerton made his talk that day;

But it's a fact and it stares you in the face:
When Companies are wronged, or think they are,
They touch the wires and the troops are sent,
But when the men are wronged, or think they are,
It's 'legal remedies.'

Sam Williams.

That's well put, Comrade.

Harvey Anderson.

That don't mean anything.

First Militiaman.
(To Haskell)

John Stamper.
First Guard.

I
Guess you know me.

Second Militiaman.

And you can take mine, too.

Harvey Anderson.

Who ever saw the like of this before!

Third Militiaman.

Kelley.

Second Guard.

And mine.

Harry Egerton.

A hundred years from now

They'll write them in the larger book of Fame.

Fourth Militiaman.

This is the third time we've been out this year.

Harvey Anderson.

You look like Israel Putnam and Paul Jones.

Buck Bentley.

We came down here to see the square thing done;

But it's got to work both ways.
Sixth Militiaman.

And mine.

Seventh Militiaman.

And mine.

Harvey Anderson.
(To Chadbourne)

You're all right, partner, only you don't see

The inside of this thing that's happened here.
The day's gone by when two or three big men
Could ride her to and fro for their own gain
And lay her up and starve the crew. That's past.
We're going to take the flags down of the Kings,
Kings of Lumber, Kings of Cotton, Kings of Coal,
From one end to the other of this land,
And we'll all be Americans, North and South
And East and West until you touch the seas.
And there's the thing that's going to fly the mast.

(Points to the flag on the floor)

And when she climbs you'll hear the guns go off

Announcing a new Independence here.

(Tremendous cheering)
(Two militiamen are seen coming up the stairs, the one loaded with
blankets, the other with ten or twelve rifles)
General Chadbourne.
(To Harry Egerton)

And this is final, eh?

Voice.
(From the crowd)

We'll hold the mill!

Workmen.
(Catching sight of the two militiamen)

And the mine too! That's right! And the mine too!

(Tremendous cheering)
Harry Egerton.

If you have any way to guarantee

That these men who have worked here many years
And faithfully, as I know, will have their right
To work respected and at an honest wage,
And that while there are profits to be shared
There'll be no starving time among these men——

General Chadbourne.

Don't think because you're Mr. Egerton

That you're immune. You'll find the laws the same
Whether you're Mr. Egerton or not.

(Starts for the stairs)

If need be I'll call out ten thousand men.

Voice.
(Back in the mill)

Bring on the Constitution and let's vote!

Fifth Militiaman.
 (With the paper)

You'll have your hands full if reports are true.

Harry Egerton.

We none of us can tell what men will do.

The times are changing and the days bring light.

General Chadbourne.

You mean you'll stir up mutiny again?

Harry Egerton.

I'll see they get the truth, then let them choose.
That is a right we all have, General Chadbourne.

General Chadbourne.

You'll have no chance to see them.

(Goes down the stairs, the two guards leading the way)
Harry Egerton.

Very well.
Just say to Governor Braddock it's with him.
We'll keep right on at work. The gates shall be
Open and the men shall come and go.

Captain Haskell.
(To two militiamen who are busy stringing the flag on
the rope)

Damn pretty men you are to raise a flag.

You ought to have a red one.
First Militiaman.

Go on, Haskell.

Second Militiaman.

We'll see what kind of men dare take it down.

Captain Haskell.

Wait till Court Martial sits.

(Disappears down the stairs. There is a movement of

the workmen back into the mill)
Harvey Anderson.
(Shouting)

Now let's to work!

(The militiamen gather left, and to some of them the

rifles, knapsacks, etc., are distributed. Buck Bentley,
who has taken the bugles in his hands, walks to and
fro)
Harvey Anderson.

You'd better be off, Bentley, don't you think?

They'll turn Hell upside down to get that mine.

Buck Bentley.

He wanted to say something to me.

Harvey Anderson.
(Calls rear left to Harry Egerton, who is engaged with
Dicey, a number of workmen being gathered about
them)
 Partner!

(They stand silent, watching the group)

Buck Bentley.

Harry's too easy with him.

A Workman.
(Leaving the group and passing rear, calls to Anderson)

The same old sore.

Harvey Anderson.

You've noticed any change these past few days?

Buck Bentley.

In Egerton, you mean? Ain't it the strain

Of breaking with his family?

(Harry Egerton starts toward them, but Dicey keeps

after him, the men following)
Buck Bentley.
(To Anderson, who has turned aside and half pulled
from his inside pocket a legal looking document)

What——

Harvey Anderson.

His will.

Harry Egerton.
(To Dicey)
 It's a new day, my friend, a glorious day.

Voice.
(Back in the mill)

'Twill soon be night!

Harry Egerton.

Try to forget the past

And everything except that we are men
Working together for the good of all.

Wes Dicey.

That ain't the point though, Mr. Egerton.

Sam Williams.

You've got your vote, Wes, same as we have ours,

You and your friends have. Why ain't that enough?
Or is it that you think the few should rule?

Wes Dicey.

There's got to be good feelin' all around

If it's to hold together as you say;
It's got to be plumbed well. And I don't see,
If it's to be a workers' commonwealth,
How you can keep the mine out. Course it's yours
And in a way you can do as you please,
That is, if you was like most men you could;
But bein' different, standin' for the right,
We don't just see how you can say 'We'll keep
The mine out and devote it to the Cause.'
If the boys ain't the Cause, tell us what is.
Maybe it's as we're ignorant and don't know.
Harry Egerton.

Please do not put things in this bitter way.

The Cause is what you've fought for all these years,
A chance to live a freer, larger life.
But in this struggle are you men alone?
And shall we as we climb to better things
Reach down no help to others, but hold fast
To all we get?

Several.

No! No!

Harry Egerton.

Would that be right?

Wes Dicey.

Another point. For years and years we've had

A Union here, and when the fight came on,
'Twas as a Union that we made the fight.
And Sam knows this is true, 'twas not so much
The cut in wages, though, that took our strength,
As 'twas their breakin' of the Union up
As made us say 'By God, we'll fight or die.'
Ain't that true, boys?

Two Or Three.

That's true.

Wes Dicey.

And then you come

And took the stand you did as they'd no right
 To make slaves of us, closin' of the gates
To make us knuckle down. And you said 'Come,'
And the boys followed you, and here they are.
And many of 'em, if I sound 'em right,
Are wonderin' what we're here for. I'll ask Sam
If he's in favor of the Open Shop.
Sam Williams.

We formed our Union, Wes, when we were slaves,

Same as in war times armies are called out.
But when the war is over they go back.

Wes Dicey.

'Go back.'

Sam Williams.

We're free men now.

Chris Knudson.

We've no foe now

Except ourselves.

Wes Dicey.

All of which means you'll vote

In favor of admittin' every man
To full rights here.

Harvey Anderson.

Look here, pard——

Wes Dicey.
 Are you Sam?

Harvey Anderson.

If it's the soldier boys you're knocking at,

They don't intend to stay, most of them don't.
But as I think they'll be invited to.

(Cheers)

Didn't they leave their Union?

A Militiaman.

The damned dog.

Sam Williams.

I mean to vote, Wes, for that Living Mill

That Mr. Egerton has told us of.
For that's the thing, or something like that thing,
We've worked for all these years. And now it's come,
A place where we can work and be free men,
Having a say in things, as Harvey says,
God help us if we can't get on as friends.

(Jim King takes Dicey aside, where Masters joins them)

Harry Egerton.
(Coming to Bentley and the militiamen)

I want to thank you, Bentley, and you men,

I want to thank you for the help you've been.
You've played the noblest part I ever knew.

Buck Bentley.

We followed you.
Harry Egerton.

No. We have interests here,

The rest of us have interests here; we've homes
And families, and the fight was ours. But you,
You'd never seen a one of us before.
And you came here honorable men, and now
You're traitors through the State, and mutineers.

Buck Bentley.

It's all right.

Harry Egerton.

Yes, indeed, it is all right.

Fifth Militiaman.

They'll be more, too.

Sixth Militiaman.

He'll never call them out.

Harry Egerton.

You've helped to make the history of this land,

And there's not one of you will not be known
And honored for it.

A Militiaman.

Half as much as you.

Harry Egerton.

And now a little toast before you go.

 (Shakes hands with them)

Bentley, Kelley, Stamper, and you all,

Sam, and you, Harvey, Chris, and Mike, and Wes,
You'll join us, you and Jim and Rome?

(The three remain aside talking together)

Harry Egerton.

And you,
And you back there, you of the Living Mill—
For all time, shall we say it?

Subdued Voices.

For all time.

Harry Egerton.
(With a swift glance toward Dicey, King and Masters)

And give our lives, if need be, for this thing?

Subdued Voices.

And give our lives, if need be, for this thing.

Harry Egerton.

This is a glorious day.

Militiamen.
(Leaving)

So long! So long!

Harry Egerton.
 Wherever men get free they'll think of us.

Workmen.

So long! So long!

Buck Bentley.

And there was something else.

The General came while you were speaking.

Harry Egerton.

Ah!

Buck Bentley.

Something about some bugles you said get.

Harry Egerton.

Yes, I forgot. I meant to show you these

That a Committee brought this afternoon.

(Takes a paper from his pocket)

Read them in the meeting, Harvey.

Cries.

Read them now!

Harry Egerton.

Some resolutions of the citizens,

Who are glad we've gone on peaceably to work.
And if at any time we need their help——
Sam Williams.
(Taking a bugle and holding it up to the crowd)

The citizens say blow these if we need help!

Because we've gone on peaceably to work.

(Cheers)

It's work, you see, that wins, comrades.

Chris Knudson.

That's right.

Harry Egerton.

I trust, though, that they'll never need to blow.

Buck Bentley.

'Twill set the land on fire if they do.

A Workman.

The workingmen throughout the State will hear.

Harvey Anderson.

They'll blow in relay, pards, from sea to sea.

(Harry Egerton stands and watches the militiamen

depart. As Bentley goes down the stairs he turns and
looks at Harry Egerton, who lifts his hand to his head
in a sort of military salute)
Chris Knudson.

That's what they say about us, Wes, you know

 That when the thing we've fought is taken away
We'll fight among ourselves.
Wes Dicey.
(To Harry Egerton)

I ain't a man,
And never have been one, to set my views
Against the boys' views. If they're satisfied
And think the new way's better than the old,
And if they'll vote for it, Wes and his friends
Will have no grouch.

Several.

That's all right.

A Voice.

Then come on.

Harry Egerton.

To get along together, as Sam says,

That's what we seek, my friend. The rest will come.

Wes Dicey.

It's for the boys I took the stand I did.

(The workmen go back into the mill. Harry Egerton

watches Dicey until he is lost among the men that pass
out rear)
Harvey Anderson.
(Who has been watching him)

Partner.
Harry Egerton.
(Who has started to follow the men)

What is it, Harvey?

Harvey Anderson.

What's this mean?

Harry Egerton.

We cannot be too patient with these men.

It's a free mill we're trying to build, Harvey.

Harvey Anderson.

'Tain't that I mean.

(Takes the will from his pocket)

Why did you give me this?

Harry Egerton.

As a precaution, Harvey.

Harvey Anderson.
(To Jim King, who lingers about beyond the railing)

We'll be there.

Harry Egerton.

If anything should happen to me, you know,

My father would inherit everything.

Harvey Anderson.
 Yes.

Harry Egerton.

And God meant the mine for other things.

And as administrators you and Sam
And Buck I knew would carry on the work.

Harvey Anderson.

But why just now? Come on and tell me, partner.

There's something up. You ain't been like yourself.
There's something on your heart. What is it, partner?
It ain't the faction?

Harry Egerton.

No.

Harvey Anderson.

About the mine—

That lie they told is eating in your heart.

Harry Egerton.

Have I done anything that you know, Harvey,

That could have wronged the men or any of them?

Harvey Anderson.

You wronged them? What you mean?

Harry Egerton.

In any way?

Harvey Anderson.
 Why they'd die for you, partner. What you mean?

Harry Egerton.

Come here to-night when we can be alone.

There are some things I want to tell you, Harvey,
That you and Sam and Buck must carry out.

Harvey Anderson.
(Looks at him a long while, then lays his hands upon his
shoulders)

We're on the eve of seeing things come true

And there ain't nothing that can stop it, partner.

Harry Egerton.

I don't know what I'd do without you, Harvey.

(They go back through the gate in the railing and out

through the great door, left, whence the crowd has
passed. Rome Masters comes furtively up the stairs
and looks about. He then comes past the sash to the
door, forward left, and begins to pull off the strip that
is nailed across it. He has just loosened it when Jim
King appears upon the stairs and gives a low whistle.
Rome Masters quickly joins him and together they
hurry back through the mill and out the great door,
left. A moment later the First Guard comes up the
stairs, followed by Ralph Ardsley and Bishop
Hardbrooke)
First Guard.

I'll find him.

Bishop Hardbrooke.
 If you please.

(The Guard goes back through the mill)

Bishop Hardbrooke.

I don't like this.

The atmosphere's too charged with victory.

Ralph Ardsley.

I don't believe they even know it's cold.

(Looks about)

It's wonderful the way he's handled things.

It's that, I think, as much as anything
That's won the confidence of the citizens.
I was just sure they'd have a riot here.

(He gets up on one of the stools before the desk and

takes from his overcoat pocket a newspaper which he
spreads out before him)

I've thought about it, Bishop; don't you think

That that injunction Egerton got out
Against the mine, considering everything,
The public feeling—if he has good grounds
For claiming that his own men found the mine—
Aside from the reflection on his son—
A tactical mistake, don't you think so?

Bishop Hardbrooke.

Best not allude to that.

Ralph Ardsley.
 I think so too.

(He reads the paper. The Bishop stands listening to the

indistinct noises that come from the crowd outside)
Ralph Ardsley.

And yet you can't blame Jergens very much.

Something has got to happen pretty soon.
Amalgamated's off again, I see.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

Who is this Harvey Anderson?

Ralph Ardsley.

He's the rough

That kept the men from going back that day.
Drew his revolver. Big man here now. You see
He'd been out on the mountains with a cast,
One of the men the Company had out.
So it's quite possible, as Jergens claims,
That Anderson found the mine. For gold these days—
To get possession of a mine like that—
Men have been killed for less.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

But Harry——

Ralph Ardsley.

That,
That's what I can't get down me, his collusion——

(Cheers outside)
 It's probably Anderson haranguing them.
I don't myself believe that Harry'd do it.

(Tremendous cheering)

There's certainly enthusiasm there.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

What is it, Editor Ardsley?

Ralph Ardsley.

I don't know.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

What's it all mean? What's underneath it all?

Ralph Ardsley.

We're neither of us, Bishop, what we were.

We've lost our power. Something's happening
That we don't understand.

(A pause)

And done by men

That live right here and walk the streets and talk,
Buy vegetables and pass the time of day.
I tell you, Bishop Hardbrooke, you can't tell.

Bishop Hardbrooke.
(Half to himself)

As though they had the Ark of the Covenant.

Ralph Ardsley.
 If any one had said to me last week
That that despondent crowd of shabby men,
After six weeks of battle against odds,
And beaten into silence, starved and cold,
Had in them the capacity for this—
Who was it said we're always in a flux,
That nothing's fixed? We don't know anything.
It's like a case of type; to-day it spells
Egerton and to-morrow M-o-b.
To think of Donald Egerton at bay!
Egad!

Bishop Hardbrooke.

These shouts once rose about the Church,

But somehow we don't hear them any more.

Ralph Ardsley.

Don't think for a moment, Bishop, that you're alone.

We never had the tumult and the shout
That you had in old days, but it's all the same.
The 'Power of the Press'! It makes me laugh.
If I could find a little farm somewhere,
I'd sell my stock to Egerton and get out
And let the world go hang. I'm tired of it.

(Cheers outside)

Yes, there's a ring about it you don't hear

Even in Conventions.

(The Guard enters the mill, back left, and comes

through the gate in the railing)
Guard.
 In a moment.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

Thank you.

(The Guard goes out down the stairs)

Ralph Ardsley.

What's your opinion of the trouble, Bishop?

(To himself)

To think of Donald Egerton at bay!

Bishop Hardbrooke.

We've had the matter up in Conference

Several times.

Ralph Ardsley.

Yes.

Bishop Hardbrooke.

But I somehow feel

We don't get hold of it. The lower classes—
They're going off. I don't believe it's Christ.
You say they're leaving you; and General Chadbourne—
Two thirds, I think you said, of his command.

Ralph Ardsley.

Facing State's prison, too

(Cheers outside. The two men remain silent)

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