First English Editions
Adolf von Harnack on Marcion, in English
Harnack's foundational work on Marcion has sat behind a German wall for a century. We have translated it. Both volumes are free to read online, complete, with the scholarly apparatus intact.
Why these editions exist
Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) was the most consequential historian of early Christianity of his generation, and his 1921 Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott remains the starting point for every serious study of Marcion. Almost everyone who cites Harnack on Marcion is citing him secondhand, because the parts that matter most to a reader of the text, his reconstruction of the Apostolikon and the Evangelion and his 1923 supplement, were never published in complete English.
That is a strange situation for the founding document of a field. The reconstruction is where Harnack laid out, verse by verse, what each hostile witness attests, where the witnesses conflict, and how confident he was in each reading. Without it, "Harnack said" is an appeal to authority rather than an argument you can check.
So we translated both volumes into English and published them free. The apparatus, sigla, folio markers, and witness references are all preserved, so a reader can trace any reading back to its source instead of taking our word for it. Where the manuscript evidence is ambiguous, the edition says so.
New Studies on Marcion
Harnack's 1923 Neue Studien zu Marcion, in the first complete English translation
In 1923 Adolf von Harnack published a supplement to his great work on Marcion, answering his critics, revisiting the sources, and closing with the hope that Marcionites would be found again among those who seek God. That supplement has never appeared in complete English until now. This edition carries the full translation of Book One, followed by a modern Marcionite response to the wish Harnack left at the end of it.
29 chapters · free to read
Read free online
Adolf von Harnack's Reconstructed Marcionite New Testament
The Apostolikon, Marcionite Prologues, and the Evangelion
Harnack's 1921 reconstructions of Marcion's Bible, translated into English as a single working edition: his text of the ten letters of Paul, the Marcionite prologues, and his text of the Evangelion, with the apparatus, witnesses, sigla, and folio references preserved so the reader can see exactly what each reading rests on.
40 chapters · free to read
Read free onlineWhat Harnack argued about Marcion
Harnack held that Marcion was not a Gnostic. He found no secret knowledge, no cosmic emanations, no esoteric initiation, only a public canon and a reading of Paul pressed to its conclusion: the God of the Law is not the Father of Jesus Christ. He also held that Marcion was the first to give Christianity a canon at all, and that the orthodox New Testament was assembled in reaction to his.
He did not write as a Marcionite. He wrote as a historian who thought the church had lost something when it condemned Marcion, and he said so plainly at the end of the 1923 supplement. Readers can now see that judgment in his own words rather than in summary.
For how these editions relate to the living Marcionite faith, and for the restored canon in modern English, start with who Marcion was and the True Testament reader.
Also available as downloads
Both editions can be downloaded as EPUB and PDF, alongside the rest of the True Testament library.