Part of a series on |
New Testament apocrypha |
---|
Christianityportal |
The Gospel of Marcion, called by its adherents the Gospel of the Lord, or more commonly the Gospel, was a text used by the mid-2nd-century Christian teacher Marcion of Sinope to the exclusion of the other gospels. The majority of scholars agree that this gospel was a later revised version of the Gospel of Luke, [2] though several involved arguments for Marcion priority have been put forward in recent years. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
There are debates as to whether several verses of Marcion's gospel are attested firsthand in a manuscript in Papyrus 69, a hypothesis proposed by Claire Clivaz and put into practice by Jason BeDuhn. [1] [3] Thorough, meticulous, yet highly divergent reconstructions of much or all of the content of the Gospel of Marcion have been made by several scholars, including August Hahn (1832), [8] Theodor Zahn (1892), Adolf von Harnack (1921), [9] Kenji Tsutsui (1992), Jason BeDuhn (2013), [3] Dieter T. Roth (2015), [10] Matthias Klinghardt (2015/2020, 2021), [4] and Andrea Nicolotti (2019). [7]
Reconstructions of the text of Marcion's Gospel make careful use of second-hand quotations and paraphrases to the text as found in anti-Marcionite writings by orthodox Christian apologists, especially Tertullian, Epiphanius, the Dialogue of Adamantius. Of these secondary witnesses, Tertullian contributes the most material and references, Epiphanius the second most, and the Dialogue of Adamantius the third most. [11]
Like the Gospel of Mark, Marcion's gospel lacked any nativity story. Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus was also absent. The gospel began, roughly, as follows:
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Jesus descended into Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching on the Sabbath days. [12] [13] (cf. Luke 3:1a, 4:31)
Other Lukan passages that did not appear in Marcion's gospel include the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. [14] : 170
While Marcion preached that the God who had sent Jesus Christ was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the vengeful God of Israel who had created the world, [15] : 2 this view was not explicitly taught in Marcion's gospel. [14] : 169 The Gospel of Marcion is, however, much more amenable to a Marcionite interpretation than the canonical Gospel of Luke, because it lacks many of the passages in Luke that explicitly link Jesus with Judaism, such as the parallel birth narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus in Luke 1-2.[ citation needed ]
There are three main hypotheses concerning the relationship between the gospel of Marcion and the gospel of Luke: [16]
1. Marcion's Evangelion derives from Luke by a process of reduction (The Majority view).
2. Luke derives from Marcion's Evangelion by a process of expansion (The Schwegler Hypothesis).
3. Marcion's Evangelion and Luke are both independent developments of a common proto-gospel (The Semler Hypothesis).
The proto-orthodox and orthodox Church Fathers maintained that Marcion edited Luke to fit his own theology, Marcionism, and modern scholars such as Metzger, Ehrman, and Roth have maintained this as well. [17] [18] The late 2nd-century writer Tertullian stated that Marcion, "expunged [from the Gospel of Luke] all the things that oppose his view... but retained those things that accord with his opinion". [19] This still appears to be the view of most scholars today. [2]
According to this view, Marcion eliminated the first two chapters of Luke concerning the nativity, and began his gospel at Capernaum making modifications to the remainder suitable to Marcionism. The differences in the texts below are interpreted by advocates of this hypothesis as evidence of Marcion editing Luke to omit the Hebrew Prophets and to better support a dualistic view of the earth as evil.
Luke | Marcion's Gospel |
---|---|
O foolish and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken (24:25) | O foolish and hard of heart to believe in all that I have told you (24:25) |
They began to accuse him, saying, 'We found this man perverting our nation' (23:2) | They began to accuse him, saying, 'We found this man perverting our nation [...] and destroying the law and the prophets.' (23:2) |
I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth (10:21) | I thank you, heavenly Father... (10:21) |
Late 19th- and early 20th-century theologian Adolf von Harnack, in agreement with the traditional account of Marcion as revisionist, theorized that Marcion believed there could be only one true gospel, all others being fabrications by pro-Jewish elements, determined to sustain worship of Yahweh; and that the true gospel was given directly to Paul the Apostle by Christ himself, but was later corrupted by those same elements who also corrupted the Pauline epistles. In this understanding, Marcion saw the attribution of this gospel to Luke the Evangelist as a fabrication, so he began what he saw as a restoration of the original gospel as given to Paul. [20] Harnack wrote that:
For this task he did not appeal to a divine revelation, any special instruction, nor to a pneumatic assistance [...] From this it immediately follows that for his purifications of the text – and this is usually overlooked – he neither could claim nor did claim absolute certainty. [20]
A "long line of scholars" have rejected the traditional view that the Gospel of Marcion was a revision of the Gospel of Luke, and instead argued that it reflects an early version of Luke later expanded into its canonical form. [21] These scholars see a consistent pattern running in the opposite direction, that Marcion's Gospel usually attests simpler, earlier textual traditions than corresponding content in canonical Luke both at the micro- and macro-level. The following examples (all attested by Greek witnesses to the Gospel of Marcion) illustrate this point of view.
Canonical Luke | Marcion's Gospel |
---|---|
Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their fathers did to the prophets. (6:23) | Your fathers have done the same already to the prophets. (6:23) [4] : 1288 |
O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you and endure you? (9:41) | Faithless generation! How long must I put up with you? (9:41) [4] |
That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. (12:47) | For the slave who knew yet did not act will be flogged many times (12:47) [22] |
Scholars who reject the Patristic hypothesis defend either of the two hypotheses. One group argues that both gospels are independent redactions of a "proto-Luke", with Marcion's text being closer to the original proto-Luke. This position is called the Semler hypothesis after the name of its creator, Johann Salomo Semler. This position has been supported by scholars such as Josias F.C. Loeffler, [23] Johann E.C. Schmidt, [24] Leonhard Bertholdt, [25] Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, John Knox, [15] : 110 Karl Reinhold Köstlin, Joseph B. Tyson, [26] and Jason BeDuhn. [21] [27] The other group argues that the Gospel of Luke is a later redaction of the Gospel of Marcion that significantly revised and expanded it. This position is called the Schwegler hypothesis after its creator Albert Schwegler. [28] This position has been supported by scholars such as Albrecht Ritschl, [29] Ferdinand Christian Baur, [30] Paul-Louis Couchoud, Georges Ory, John Townsend, R. Joseph Hoffman, [31] Matthias Klinghardt, [21] Markus Vinzent, [32] [33] [34] and David Trobisch. [35]
Several arguments have been put forward in favor of those two latter views.
Firstly, there are many passages found in reconstructions of Marcion's gospel (based on comments of his detractors) that seem to contradict Marcion's own theology, which would be unexpected if Marcion was simply removing passages from Luke with which he did not agree. Matthias Klinghardt (in 2008) [36] and Jason BeDuhn (in 2012) [37] have both made this argument in detail.
Secondly, Marcion is attested to have claimed that the gospel he used was original and that the canonical Luke was a falsification. [38] : 8 The accusations of alteration are therefore mutual.
Thirdly, John Knox [15] and Joseph Tyson [39] (both using Harnack's edition), and more recently Daniel A. Smith [40] (using Roth's edition), have all put forth statistical analyses showing that Lukan single traditions are disproportionately lacking in the Gospel of Marcion, while double and triple traditions are disproportionately present. They argue that this result makes sense if canonical Luke added new material to Marcion's gospel or its source, but that it is unlikely if Marcion removed material from Luke.
There are more nuanced variations and combinations of these hypotheses. Knox and Tyson, for example, follow the Semler hypothesis in general, but still posit with the Patristic hypothesis that Marcion removed some passages. Pier Angelo Gramaglia, in his critical translation of Klinghardt's edition, concurs with the overall direction of the Semler and Schwegler hypotheses, but has argued on philological grounds that the Gospel of Marcion and Luke are two successive editions by the same editor. [6] Like several 19th century scholars, Knox, Tyson, Vinzent, and Klinghardt have extended the Schwegler hypothesis to include the canonical Book of Acts, arguing that it is an anti-Marcionite work. [41] [5] [4]
In 2008, Matthias Klinghardt proposed that Marcion's gospel was based on the Gospel of Mark, that the Gospel of Matthew was an expansion of the Gospel of Mark with reference to the Gospel of Marcion, and that the Gospel of Luke was an expansion of the Gospel of Marcion with reference to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. In Klinghardt's view, this model elegantly accounts for the double tradition— material shared by Matthew and Luke, but not Mark— without appealing to purely hypothetical documents, such as the Q source. [38] : 21–22, 26 In his 2015 book, Klinghardt changed his opinion compared to his 2008 article. In his 2015 book, he considers that the gospel of Marcion precedes and influenced the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). [42]
In his 2013 book, BeDuhn argued that understanding Marcion's Gospel as the first two source gospel, drawing on Q and Mark, resolves many of the problems of the traditional Q hypothesis, including its narrative introduction and the minor agreements. [43] Pier Angelo Gramaglia, in his 2017 critical commentary on Klinghardt's reconstruction, made an extended argument that Marcion's Gospel is a two-source gospel, making use of Mark and Q, while canonical Luke builds on Marcion's Gospel in part from a secondary appropriation of Q material. [6] Research from 2018 suggests that the Gospel of Marcion may have been the original two-source gospel based on Q and Mark. [44]
In his 2014 book Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Markus Vinzent considers, like Klinghardt, that the gospel of Marcion precedes the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). He believes that the Gospel of Marcion influenced the four gospels. Vinzent differs with both BeDuhn and Klinghardt in that he believes the Gospel of Marcion was written directly by Marcion: Marcion's gospel was first written as a draft not meant for publication which was plagiarized by the four canonical gospels; this plagiarism angered Marcion who saw the purpose of his text distorted and made him publish his gospel along with a preface (the Antithesis) and 10 letters of Paul. [32] [47] [34]
The Marcion priority also implies a model of the late dating of the New Testament Gospels to the 2nd century - a thesis that goes back to David Trobisch, who, in 1996 in his habilitation thesis accepted in Heidelberg, [48] presented the conception or thesis of an early, uniform final editing of the New Testament canon in the 2nd century. [49]
The Gospel of Luke tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the Messiah from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.
Gospel originally meant the Christian message, but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. Modern biblical scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, but nevertheless, they provide a good idea of the public career of Jesus, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of the later Christian authors.
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as Sacred Scripture by Christians.
Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German Protestant theologian and founder and leader of the (new) Tübingen School of theology. Following Hegel's theory of dialectic, Baur argued that second century Christianity represented the synthesis of two opposing theses: Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity. This and the rest of Baur's work had a profound impact upon higher criticism of biblical and related texts.
Marcion of Sinope was a theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was distinct from the "vengeful" God (Demiurge) who had created the world. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus Christ; his doctrine is called Marcionism. Marcion published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books.
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is largely distinct. The term synoptic comes via Latin from the Greek σύνοψις, synopsis, i.e. "(a) seeing all together, synopsis". The modern sense of the word in English is of "giving an account of the events from the same point of view or under the same general aspect". It is in this sense that it is applied to the synoptic gospels.
Marcionism was an early Christian dualistic belief system that originated with the teachings of Marcion of Sinope in Rome around 144 AD. Marcion was an early Christian theologian, evangelist, and an important figure in early Christianity. He was the son of a bishop of Sinope in Pontus. About the middle of the 2nd century (140–155) he traveled to Rome, where he joined the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo.
Jason David BeDuhn is an American historian of religion and culture, currently Professor of Religious Studies at Northern Arizona University, and former chair of the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Religion.
The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist. Mark the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Mark second and used Matthew and the preaching of Peter as sources. Luke the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Luke and was aware of the two Gospels that preceded him. Unlike some competing hypotheses, this hypothesis does not rely on, nor does it argue for, the existence of any document that is not explicitly mentioned in historical testimony. Instead, the hypothesis draws primarily upon historical testimony, rather than textual criticism, as the central line of evidence. The foundation of evidence for the hypothesis is the writings of the Church Fathers: historical sources dating back to as early as the first half of the 2nd century, which have been held as authoritative by most Christians for nearly two millennia. Adherents to the Augustinian hypothesis view it as a simple, coherent solution to the synoptic problem.
Papyrus 69 is a small fragment dating to the 3rd century. Scholars have debated whether its text is a witness to the Gospel of Marcion or the canonical Gospel of Luke.
The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most churches, the canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation.
Traditionally in Christianity, orthodoxy and heresy have been viewed in relation to the "orthodoxy" as an authentic lineage of tradition. Other forms of Christianity were viewed as deviant streams of thought and therefore "heterodox", or heretical. This view was challenged by the publication of Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum in 1934. Bauer endeavored to rethink Early Christianity historically, independent from the views of the current church. He stated that the 2nd-century church was very diverse and included many "heretical" groups that had an equal claim to apostolic tradition. Bauer interpreted the struggle between the orthodox and heterodox to be the "mainstream" Church of Rome struggling to attain dominance. He presented Edessa and Egypt as places where the "orthodoxy" of Rome had little influence during the 2nd century. As he saw it, the theological thought of the "Orient" at the time would later be labeled "heresy". The response by modern scholars has been mixed. Some scholars clearly support Bauer's conclusions and others express concerns about his "attacking [of] orthodox sources with inquisitional zeal and exploiting to a nearly absurd extent the argument from silence." However, modern scholars have critiqued and updated Bauer's model.
The Q source (also called The Sayings Gospel, Q Gospel, Q document(s), or Q; from German: Quelle, meaning "source") is a written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings (λόγια, logia). Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's oral gospel traditions.
The Hebrew Gospel hypothesis is that a lost gospel, written in Hebrew or Aramaic, predated the four canonical gospels. In the 18th and early 19th century several scholars suggested that a Hebrew proto-gospel was the main source or one of several sources for the canonical gospels. This theorizing would later give birth to the two source-hypothesis that views Q as a proto-gospel but believes this proto-gospel to have been written in Koine Greek. After the wide-spread scholarly acceptance of the two-source hypothesis scholarly interest in the Hebrew gospel hypothesis dwindled. Modern variants of the Hebrew gospel hypothesis survive, but have not found favor with scholars as a whole.
Markus Vinzent is a historian of religion. He was a professor in the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at King's College London, and fellow of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies, Erfurt, Germany.
The Matthean Posteriority hypothesis, also known as the Wilke hypothesis after Christian Gottlob Wilke, is a proposed solution to the synoptic problem, holding that the Gospel of Mark was used as a source by the Gospel of Luke, then both of these were used as sources by the Gospel of Matthew. Thus, it posits Marcan priority and Matthaean posteriority.
David Johannes Trobisch is a German scholar whose work has focused on formation of the Christian Bible, ancient New Testament manuscripts and the epistles of Paul.
Some scholars believe the hypothesis of the chronological priority of the Gospel of Marcion is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. This hypothesis claims that the first produced or compiled gospel was that of Marcion and that this gospel of Marcion was used as inspiration for some, or all, of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthias Klinghardt is a German Protestant theologian and university professor. His theological specialty is the New Testament. He is a proponent of the Marcion hypothesis for the synoptic problem and the gospel of John.
According to late second- and early third-century fathers, Marcion (who was active in Rome in probably the 140s) produced a version of Luke's Gospel shorn of material that he found to be doctrinally unacceptable. For the most part, critical scholarship has been content to affirm these patristic reports.
Tertullian, Epiphanius, and other ancient witnesses, all of whom knew and accepted the same Gospel of Luke we know, felt not the slightest doubt that the "heretic" had shortened and "mutilated" the canonical Gospel; and on the other hand, there is every indication that the Marcionites denied this charge and accused the more conservative churches of having falsified and corrupted the true Gospel which they alone possessed in its purity. These claims are precisely what we would have expected from the two rival camps, and neither set of them deserves much consideration.
The main argument against the traditional view of Luke's priority to [Marcion] relies on the lack of consequence of his redaction: Marcion presumably had theological reasons for the alterations in "his" gospel which implies that he pursued an editorial concept. This, however, cannot be detected. On the contrary, all the major ancient sources give an account of Marcion's text, because they specifically intend to refute him on the ground of his own gospel. Therefore, Tertullian concludes his treatment of [Marcion]: "I am sorry for you, Marcion: your labour has been in vain. Even in your gospel Christ Jesus is mine" ([Tert. Adv. Marc.] 4.43.9).
Die Ausgangsthese einer Edition des Neuen Testaments im 2. Jh. ist nicht neu. Sie geht auf David Trobisch zurück, der schon vor 20 Jahren herausgearbeitet hatte, dass die 27 Einzelschriften des NT nicht in einem längeren, anonymen Sammlungs- und Ausscheidungsprozess zu einer literarischen (und theologischen) Einheit zusammengewachsen sind. 1 Diese Einheit sei vielmehr das Produkt einer einmaligen, historisch in der Mitte des 2. Jh. zu verortenden Edition. Diese Ausgabe trug bereits den Titel „Neues Testament" (η῾ καινη` διαθη´ κη) und war von vornherein als zweiter Teil einer christlichen Bibel, also mit dem Blick auf das „Alte Testament" konzipiert. [The initial thesis of an edition of the New Testament in the 2nd century is not new. It goes back to David Trobisch, who had already worked out 20 years ago that the 27 individual writings of the NT did not grow together into a literary (and theological) unit through a long, anonymous process of collection and elimination. Rather, this unity is the product of a unique edition that can be historically located in the middle of the 2nd century. This edition already had the title "New Testament" (η῾ καινη` διαθη´ κη) and was conceived from the outset as the second part of a Christian Bible, i.e. with the "Old Testament" in mind.]