MARCION AND MARCIONITE GNOSTICISM

By Cky J. Carrigan, Ph. D. (11/96)

Introduction

What was Marcion's contribution to Christianity, especially to the New Testament Canon? Did
he collect the first canon, or was his canon a reaction to an explicit or implicit canon already in
existence? Casper Rene Gregory called Marcion "in every way the most active and influential
man, bearing the name of Christian, between Paul and Origen."1 Walter Bauer found in Marcion
himself, "the first systematic collector of Paul's literary remains."2 John Knox (1942) suggested
that Luke-Acts may have been written in the late second century to replace or counteract
Marcion's Luke.3 Floyd Filson wrote, "Of all the events that hastened the formation of the New
Testament canon, none was so influential as the action of Marcion. We need not go so far as to
say that Marcion created the idea of a New Testament canon, but his influence was certainly
great."4 Filson's remarks probably correspond more closely with the events of history than the
other remarks.

Life, Works and Theology

Relatively little is known about Marcion (d. c. 160) because his heresy was put down and his
works were destroyed, or lost, or both. What is known of his life, writings and theology are
found, or founded upon, the works of his enemies: Justin Martyr (110-165), Irenaeus (120-202),
Epiphanius (ca. 315-403) and especially Tertullian5 (145-220) who encountered Marcion half a
century after his death.6

Justin Martyr made the earliest known contemporary reference to Marcion in his Apology. Justin
wrote,

And there is Marcion a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to
believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused
many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe,
and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their
opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians.7

Irenaeus recorded Polycarp's personal appellation for Marcion: "And Polycarp himself replied to
Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, "Dost thou know me?" "I do know thee, the
first-born of Satan.""8

Tertullian named Marcion with other Gnostics, whom he regarded among the pagan
philosophers, when he wrote the famous line, "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and
Christians?"9

Marcion was originally from Sinope, Pontus, Asia Minor where his father was bishop. He moved
to Rome in the late 130's, perhaps after being expelled by his father's church. Marcion's departure
from Sinope may have been connected to his already formed, or forming, heretical theology. Or,
as reported by Epiphanius, for seducing a girl.10 In Rome, Marcion became acquainted with
Cerdo the Gnostic from Syria and fully formed his theology.11 He was expelled from the Roman
church community in 144 for his views and subsequently began a new pseudo-Christian
community that survived to the fifth century in Syria.

The lone written work of Marcion was Antitheses. This non-extant work was cited by Tertullian
in Against Marcion. Marcion's Antitheses sought to demonstrate the contradictions between the
Hebrew Bible and Christian writings and the conflict between their two different Gods.
Tertullian wrote, "These are Marcion's Antitheses, or contradictory propositions, which aim at
committing the gospel to a variance with the law, in order that from the diversity of the two
documents which contain them, they may contend for a diversity of gods also."12

In addition to writing Antitheses, Marcion also may have written, or influenced the writing of,
what is called The Marcionite Prologues to the Letters of Paul.13 And of course, Marcion's most
important written contribution was his arrangement and redaction of his own closed canon.

Marcion's theology was very similar to Gnostic theology in many ways. But he differed with
mainline Gnosticism in several important ways as well.14 According to Knox, "Marcion was not
primarily a Gnostic but a Paulinist.15 E. Furguson identified three significant differences
between Marcion's theology and Gnosticism: Marcion made written revelation alone his standard
for truth. He encouraged the organization of the church, and he rejected speculation and allegory.
The Gnostics, however, generally embraced allegory, and rejected church organization and
written revelation.16 Knox represented common thinking when he summarized Marcion's
theology as follows:

(1) The Creator of the world, although a real God, must be distinguished from the higher god,
unknown except as he was revealed in Christ; (2) The Creator of the world is a just God, but
sever and harsh; the God whom Christ revealed is a Father, a God of love; (3) judgment is the
prerogative of the Creator; redemption is the free gift of the God of love; (4) the Jewish
Scriptures represent a true revelation of the Creator, but they do not speak of or for the God
whom alone Christians ought to worship and from whom alone salvation from the present
wicked world is to be received; (5) the revelation in Christ was intended not merely to
supplement or 'fulfil' Judaism but entirely to displace it--the one had no connection with the
other; (6) the Son of the Father did not actually take sinful flesh but only appeared to do so; (7)
there is no resurrection of the flesh; and (8) Paul was the only true apostle, to whom Christ
committed his gospel-- other 'apostles' were false and had misled the church.17

Canon

According to Brooke Westcott, Marcion's Canon is "the first of which there is any record."18
Marcion's Canon demonstrated a two-fold division: The Gospel and The Apostle.19 The Gospel
was an highly edited version of Luke and The Apostle was composed of ten Pauline Epistles.
Marcion's arrangement of the letters in The Apostle were as follows: Galatians, 1 and 2
Corinthians combined, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians combined, Laodiceans (Ephesians),
Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon.
The evidence for this arrangement is Tertullian's order of criticism in Against Marcion Book V,
and the Marcionite Prologues to the Letters of Paul found in many Latin manuscripts.20 In Book
V, Tertullian devoted Chapters 2-4 to Galatians, Chapters 5-10 to First Corinthians, Chapters 11-
14 to Second Corinthians, Chapter 15 to First Thessalonians, Chapter 16 to Second
Thessalonians, Chapters 17-18 to Laodiceans-Ephesians,21 Chapter 19 to Colossians, Chapter 20
to Philippians, and Chapter 21 to Philemon.22 Since Marcion's Canon or texts are not extant, the
order in which Tertullian interacted with Marcion must suffice as primary evidence for Marcion's
content and arrangement.

The above evidence concerning the content and arrangement of Marcion's Canon is strengthened
by Epiphanius. Epiphanius explicitly indicated the order in which ten of Paul's letters came in
Marcion's Bible. The content and arrangement were the same as that implied by Tertullian with
one exception: Philippians and Philemon were inverted.23

There were several significant omissions in Marcion's Luke. Four of the most prominent
omissions were the birth narrative of Jesus (1:1-2:52), the record of John the Baptist, the
genealogy of Jesus, and the temptation narrative (3:1b-4-15).24

There were also omissions in the Pauline corpus. Some scholars suggested that Marcion's base
text was lacking. Others suggested that Marcion purposefully omitted parts of the texts because
of his theology. And some scholars provided for both. Westcott did not believe Marcion altered
the Pauline Epistles. He wrote, "Marcion preserved without alteration the text which he found in
his Manuscript."25

In Marcion's Canon, eight of Paul's ten epistles were basically the same as modern texts.
Galatians and Romans, however were very different. Marcion's Galatians lacked Paul's
interaction with Peter and James in Jerusalem (1:18-24), the account of Abraham's faithfulness
(3:6-9), and other passages: 2:6-9a; 3:1-12,14a,15-25; 4:27-30. Romans did not contain 1:17b,
1:19-21, 3:31-4:25, 8:19-22, 9:1-33, 10:5-11:32, and all of chapters 15 and 16.26

Conclusion

Marcion was very influential in the formation of the New Testament Canon even though his
influence was a negative one. His most important contribution may have been to virtually
guarantee that the Pauline Epistles would eventually enjoy the same status as the Gospels.27
Marcion's critics were forced to decide about the Pauline works and their relationship to the
Gospels, which were already held in high esteem.

The study of Marcion's Canon may not produce clear, unrefutable evidence of the existence of an
orthodox closed canon in the middle of the second century, but Marcion's divergence from the
norm presupposes a norm. His canon implied an already existing practice by the Roman church
to collect and derive doctrines from the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. Westcott was probably
correct when he wrote,

There is indeed no evidence to shew that any definite Canon of the Apostolic writings was
already published in Asia Minor when Marcion's appeared; but the minute and varied hints
which have been already collected tend to prove that if it were not expressly fixed it was yet
implicitly determined by the practice of the Church.28

APPENDIX: GNOSTICISM AND GNOSTIC SCRIPTURES

No gnostic scriptures were commonly received as Christian Scriptures by the church, and no
known ancient canon list included gnostic scriptures. Not until the twentieth century and the
"Jesus Seminar" has this been a serious issue for the church. While the early church clearly
rejected Gnostic works like the Gospel of Thomas,29 the Jesus Seminar has invited The Gospel
of Thomas to the canon.

Gnosticism in Summary30

The pre-twentieth century understanding of Gnosticism was that it was primarily a product of
synthesis between Greek philosophy and Christianity. This was the view of Tertullian and his
anti-heresy peers in the second century and a view largely shared by scholars through the modern
era. Even Harnack (1896) defined Gnosticism in this way. More recently Hans Jonas saw
Gnosticism's origins in the synthesis of Greek and Eastern religion. But, the discovery of the
library at Nag Hammadi Egypt has forced a different view of the origins of Gnosticism. Because
the Nag Hammadi corpus of Gnostic materials included pseudo-Christian, Jewish-Gnostic, and
Hermetic-Gnostic (Persian) documents, the origination of Gnosticism should be considered to be
a broader world-view transcending both Christianity and Greek philosophy.

The Gnostic Scriptures31

The Nag Hammadi codices are only a portion of a larger body of Gnostic writings. Among these
Coptic documents are thirteen codices composing forty-six tractates and six duplicates. A large
number of the tractates are of Christian orientation. Among these are the three Valentinian
gospels: The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, and The Gospel of Truth. The Gospel of
Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus. The Gospel of Philip is composed of sayings,
metaphors, and esoteric arguments. And the Gospel of Truth is a discourse on deity and unity
with possible connections to the canonical Gospel of John.

Other Christian-Gnostic tractates included in the Nag Hammadi documents are the Apocryphon
of James, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, the Treatise on the Resurrection, the
Tripartite Tractate, and the Apocryphon of John in three editions.

________________

1Casper Rene Gregory, Canon and Text of the New Testament (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1907), 81.

2Walter Bauer, in Appendix II of John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1942), 172.

3Knox, Marcion, 114-139.

4Floyd V. Filson, Which Books Belong in the Bible? (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 113.

5Against Marcion (AM) and On Prescriptions Against

Heretics (PH).

6For a full detailed account of the historical source documents on Marcion, see Harnack,
Marcion; and Zahn, Canons.

7Justin Martyr, First Apology, 26, in Apostolic Fathers (AF), vol. 1, edited by Cleveland A.
Coxe (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 171.

8Irenaeus, Against Heresies (AH) 3.3.4, in AF, vol. 1, 416.

9Tertullian, On Prescriptions Against Heretics, 7, in Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), vol. 3, edited

by Cleveland A. Coxe (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 246.

10Epiphanius, Panarion, I, Heretics 42.

11Irenaeus wrote, "Cerdo was one who took his system from the followers of Simon, and came
to live at Rome . . . Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine." AH, 1.27.1,
AF, 352. See Tertullian's remarks about Cerdo and Marcion, AM 1.2., ANF, vol. 3, 272. There is
disagreement among scholars about how much of Marcion's heresy he brought with him to Rome
and how much of it he learned there after consorting with Cerdo.

12Tertullian, AM 1.19, in ANF, vol. 3, 285.

13Marcion's authorship of the so called Marcionite Prologues is seriously questioned by

investigators.

14For a treatment of Marcion and Gnosticism, see Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 162-166. See also the Appendix of this paper for a survey of
Gnosticism and Gnostic Scriptures.

15Knox, Marcion, 14.

16E. Furguson, "Marcion" in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, edited by Walter Elwell

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 686.

17Knox, Marcion, 7.

18Brook Foss Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament
(London: Macmillan, 1896), 318.
19This division is derived by observing Tertullian's terms "the Gospel" in AM 4, and "the
Apostle" in AM 5. Book IV is devoted to Marcion's Luke, and Book V is devoted to the
Marcion's Pauline Epistles.

20The Marcionite Prologues to the Letters of Paul may be found in Knox, Marcion, 169-171 (in
Latin and English); and Souter, Text and Canon, 188-191 (Latin).

21Tertullian expressly identifies Marcion's Laodocea as Ephesians AM 5.17, in ANF, vol 3.,
464.

22Tertullian, AM, 5, in ANF, vol. 3, 429-474.

23Epiphanius, Panarion, I, Haer.42,

24See Harnack's Marcion, for a detailed account of Marcion's text. See also Knox, Marcion, 86,
for a chart regarding the omissions in Marcion's Luke.

25Westcott, History of the Canon, 320.

26Knox, Marcion, 49-50. See also Harnack, Marcion.

27See Knox, Marcion, 36.

28Westcott, History of the Canon, 323.

29Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.25, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 110.

30This brief summary was derived from Elwell, 444f. For further study see Filoramo, A History
of Gnosticism.

31For fuller treatment, see Bentley Layton, Gnostic Scriptures (Garden City, New York:
Doubleday,