The Church Fathers’ charge concerning the Apostolikon

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Tertullian, in that he sets out from the Epistle to the Galatians according to the order of the Marcionite canon, and lets the Corinthian letters, the Epistle to the Romans, and the shorter letters follow upon it, has devoted the content of the whole fifth book of his work against Marcion to the refutation of the Marcionite Apostolikon. One would expect, through so detailed a polemic, to be made acquainted with a series of passages which Marcion had omitted from the text of the Pauline letters. And yet it is in substance only a single passage of any importance concerning whose absence from Marcion’s text a more definite testimony of Tertullian lies before us. This is the passage Gal. 3:7. Tertullian says, c. Marc. 5.3: Sed et cum adjicit: omnes enim filii estis fidei, ostenditur, quid supra haeretica industria eraserit, mentionem scilicet Abrahae, qua nos Apostolus filios Abrahae per fidem affirmat: secundum quam mentionem hic quoque filios fidei notavit. Caeterum quomodo filii fidei? Et cujus fidei, si non Abrahae? Si enim Abraham Deo credidit etc. [But also when he adds, “for you are all sons of faith,” it is shown what the heretical industry had erased above, namely the mention of Abraham, by which the Apostle affirms us to be sons of Abraham through faith; in accordance with which mention he here too marked them as sons of faith. But how sons of faith? And of whose faith, if not Abraham’s? For if Abraham believed God, etc.] Tertullian infers from Gal. 3:26 that the mentio Abrahae [mention of Abraham] omitted by Marcion at 3:7 cannot be missing. This, however, presupposes that Marcion read verse 6. For only if there had previously been talk of the faith of Abraham is there, between the faith of Abraham and the υἱοὶ θεοῦ διὰ πίστεως, the necessary connecting link υἱοὶ Ἀβραάμ. We can therefore infer from Tertullian’s own words nothing further than that in Marcion verse 7 was missing. But since even so the faith of Abraham remains, together with the inference which the Apostle draws from it, how purposeless it would have been for Marcion to have cast out this one verse. Now Jerome, to be sure, asserts in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, at the passage named, that Marcion had expunged the three verses 6–9. But whence does Jerome know this? Does he not in this merely follow Tertullian, since what he adds (sed quid profuit, haec tulisse, cum cetera, quae reliquit, insaniae ejus adversa sunt? [but what did it profit to have removed these things, when the rest, which he left, are adverse to his madness?]) sounds, in content and in tone, wholly Tertullianic? Thus, presumably, only that one passage was missing. How accidental it could have been that the copy of which

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Tertullian made use had precisely this small gap here. But even supposing that Marcion did not read those three verses, one can draw all the less a definite conclusion from this, the more uncertain it is whether in Tertullian there is talk of any other passage of this kind besides that one. Tertullian cites the passage Gal. 4:3 thus: Adhuc, secundum hominem dico, dum essemus parvuli, sub elementis mundi eramus positi ad deserviendum eis. [Still, I speak after the manner of man: while we were little children, we were placed under the elements of the world, to be in bondage to them.] It is assumed that Marcion joined the formula from 3:15 with 4:3. But one has only to look more closely at the passage of Tertullian in its connection. It runs: Atqui non est hoc, humanitus dictum, non enim exemplum est, sed veritas. Quis enim parvulus utique sensu, quod sunt nationes, non elementis subjectus est mundi, quae pro deo suscipit? Illud autem fuit, quod cum secundum hominem dixisset, tamen testamentum hominis nemo spernit aut superordinat. Exemplo enim humani testamenti permanentis divinum tuebatur. Abrahae dictae sunt promissiones et semini ejus etc. Erubescat spongia Marcionis! Nisi quod ex abundanti retracto, quae abstulit, cum validius sit, illum ex his revinci, quae servavit. [And yet this is not spoken in a human way, for it is not an example, but the truth. For what little child, at least in the sense in which the nations are little children, is not subject to the elements of the world, which he takes up in the place of God? But this is what it was: that, although he had said “after the manner of man,” yet no one rejects a man’s testament or adds a codicil to it. For by the example of a human testament that remains in force he was defending the divine one. To Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed, etc. Let Marcion’s sponge blush! Except that I go over again, more than is necessary, what he took away, although it is more forceful that he be refuted from those things which he preserved.] Ritschl too thinks that the expression spongia Marcionis [Marcion’s sponge] refers to the transposition of those words from 3:15 into 4:3. But Tertullian does not at all reproach Marcion with having expunged those words at 3:15 and inserted them at 4:3. He himself, whether from error or in consequence of a divergent reading, sets those words before 4:3, and argues from them against Marcion. Because the κατὰ ἄνθρωπον λέγειν does not fit the ὅτε ἦμεν νήπιοι, in that a parvulus [little child] in the spiritual sense, as parvulus is here said of a natio [nation], must be taken to be subject to the elements of the world, it can be referred back only to the καθ᾽ ἄνθρωπον λέγειν of 3:15, for here the Apostle compares the divine testament with a human one. When Tertullian then adds, Let Marcion’s sponge now blush, that is, let Marcion be ashamed that he has wiped out of the text something which what follows presupposes as necessary, this spongia can refer only to the supposed expunging of the mentio Abrahae, and Tertullian adds further: yet, superfluously, I prove as present what he has expunged, since it is more striking to refute him by what he has left. To be sure, one would suppose that if Marcion expunged the mentio Abrahae at verse 6 or 7, he will also have expunged it at verse 15. But why does Tertullian not say this in plain words? One would suppose it all the more, since Tertullian afterward still says: Sed ut

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furibus solet aliquid excidere de praeda in indicium, ita credo et Marcionem novissimam mentionem dereliquisse, nullam magis auferendam, etsi ex parte convertit. [As something is wont to drop from thieves out of the plunder, as evidence, so I believe that Marcion too left the last mention, although none was more to be removed, even if he altered it in part.] Here, then, he would in any case have left the mentio Abrahae standing. To what end, if it was altogether so repugnant to him? And to what end did he yet again convert it in part, if he left it standing at all? But if he helped himself here, as Jerome asserts of Marcion and Mani at Gal. 4:24, by the allegorical explanation, he could of course have made use of the same expedient elsewhere as well. In short, as can already be seen from the passages in the Epistle to the Galatians, it is utterly impossible to make out, from Tertullian’s vague, unclear, wholly unmethodical talking back and forth, what the alleged Marcionite alterations of the text, so violent as they are said to have been, are supposed to have consisted in. If Marcion believed that he had to cut out everything that sounded far too Jewish to him, why did he fasten only on the name Abraham? Why did he leave standing so much else that must have been at least equally offensive to him? Take, for example, only the passage 4:4: God sent his Son as γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον, which he must have had, since Tertullian, immediately before citing the words of verse 4, ὅτε — τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, says that it is better to refute Marcion from what he has left. Hahn, to be sure, assumed that, since Tertullian cites the words of verse 4 literally only as far as τὸν υἱόν, Marcion had also removed what follows from the text; but this is only Hahn’s manifestly false construction of the text. Ritschl has shown very aptly how absurd the consistent carrying through of the opinion is, that Marcion’s text consisted only of the fragments which Tertullian cites from it word for word. Everything else that is otherwise still cited from the Marcionite text of the Epistle to the Galatians concerns mere variants. Thus, as Epiphanius remarks, at Gal. 5:9 he read not ζυμοῖ but δολοῖ, a variant that is also otherwise found very often. Marcion therefore plainly had only a different reading here; but when Epiphanius remarks in this connection, ἵνα μηδὲν ἀληθὲς παρ᾿ αὐτῷ εὑρεθείη, οὐδαμοῦ σχεδὸν ἄνευ ῥᾳδιουργίας ταῖς γραφαῖς προσενήνεκται, one may measure from this to what charges of the most exaggerated kind the Church Fathers took occasion from the most innocent readings. Still more remarkable is another variant, to which attention must be drawn here all the more because it has been passed over not only by Hahn but also by Ritschl. The passage Gal. 2:4 Tertullian, op. cit., cites thus: Propter superinduc-

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titios falsos fratres, and so on — nec ad horam cessimus subjectioni [On account of the falsely brought-in false brethren, and so on — we did not yield to subjection even for an hour], and remarks on this: Intendamus et sensui ipsi et causae ejus et apparebit vitiatio scripturae. Cum praemittit: sed nec Titus, qui mecum erat, cum esset Graecus, coactus est circumcidi: dehinc subjungit, propter superinductitios falsos fratres, et reliqua: contrarii utique facti incipit reddere rationem, ostendens, propter quid fecerit, quod nec fecisset nec ostendisset, si illud, propter quod fecit, non accidisset. Denique dicas velim, si non subintroissent falsi illi fratres ad speculandam libertatem eorum, cessissent subjectioni? non opinor. Ergo cesserunt, quia fuerunt, propter quos cederetur. Hoc enim rudi fidei et adhuc de legis observatione suspensae competebat, ipso quoque apostolo, ne in vacuum cucurrisset aut curreret, suspecto. Necessario igitur cessit ad tempus, et sic ei ratio constat, Timotheum circumcidendi et rasos introducendi in templum, quae in Actis edicuntur, adeo vera, ut apostolo consonent, profitenti factum se Judaeis Judaeum etc. [Let us attend both to the sense itself and to its cause, and a corruption of Scripture will appear. When he first sets down, “but not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised,” and then subjoins, “on account of the falsely brought-in false brethren,” and the rest, he begins to give the reason for a deed that is in any case contrary, showing on what account he did what he would neither have done nor have shown, if that on account of which he did it had not occurred. Finally, I would have you say: if those false brethren had not slipped in to spy out their liberty, would they have yielded to subjection? I think not. They therefore yielded because there were those on whose account a yielding was made. For this befitted a faith still rude and as yet in suspense about the observance of the law, the Apostle himself also being apprehensive lest he had run, or should run, in vain. Of necessity, therefore, he yielded for a time, and thus his reason for circumcising Timothy and for bringing the shorn men into the temple, which are related in Acts, holds good, so true that they agree with the Apostle, who professes that he became a Jew to the Jews, etc.] Tertullian seeks to show from the connection of the passage that verse 5 cannot be read οὐδὲ (or οἷς οὐδὲ) πρὸς ὥραν εἴξαμεν, and so on, in that he assumes that Titus was circumcised, only not in a compelled way. Since, now, the negation οὐδὲ stood in the Marcionite text, he calls this a vitiatio scripturae [corruption of Scripture] committed by Marcion. Here, however, it lies clear as day before one’s eyes that Tertullian charges Marcion, as an intentional falsification of the text, with what is a mere variant, and here, moreover, precisely the decidedly correct reading. Further light is thrown on this by Jerome’s commentary on the passage named. Jerome is here far from making the same reproach against Marcion. He says, rather, wholly in contrast to the Tertullianic conception of the passage: Si Titus, quum esset ex gentibus, nullo potuit terrore compelli, ut circumcideretur Ierosolymis, in Judaeorum metropoli civitate, in qua tanta Paulus blasphemiae in Moysen flagrabat invidia, ut postea paene a Judaeis interfectus sit — quomodo quidam putant legendum esse: quibus ad horam cessimus subjectioni, ut veritas evangelii permaneat apud vos, et intelligendum, quod Titus ipse, qui compelli ante non potuit ad circumcisionem, rursum circumcisus sit, atque subjectus? Aut quae est ista veritas evangelii, hypocrisi cedere Judaeorum, et quae prius scybala aestimaveris, et quasi damna contemseris, observare, et esse aliquid aestimare, quum nihil sint? Sed et ipsius epistolae sensui valde repugnat, Galatas ad cir-

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cumcisionem revocare, and so on. [If Titus, although he was of the Gentiles, could by no terror be compelled to be circumcised at Jerusalem, in the metropolitan city of the Jews, in which Paul was the object of such burning hostility on account of blasphemy against Moses that he was afterward almost killed by the Jews — how can some think that one is to read, “to whom we yielded in subjection for an hour, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you,” and to understand that Titus himself, who before could not be compelled to circumcision, was again circumcised and subjected? Or what truth of the gospel is this, to yield to the hypocrisy of the Jews, and to observe, and to esteem as something, things which you formerly esteemed as refuse and despised as losses, when they are nothing? But it is also very repugnant to the sense of the epistle itself, to call the Galatians back to circumcision, and so on.] In all this Jerome is entirely right. He then adds further: Itaque aut juxta graecos codices est legendum: Quibus neque ad horam cessimus subjectioni, ut consequenter possit intelligi: ut veritas evangelii permaneat apud vos, aut si latini exemplaris alicui fides placet, secundum superiorem sensum accipere debemus, ut ad horam cessio non circumcidendi Titi, sed eundi Ierosolymam fuerit. [Accordingly, either one is to read according to the Greek copies, “To whom we did not yield in subjection even for an hour,” so that it can consistently be understood, “so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you,” or, if one is pleased to trust some Latin copy, we must take it according to the former sense, so that the yielding for an hour was not the circumcising of Titus, but the going to Jerusalem.] There was, therefore, as our collections of variants also show, and as has already been remarked by Ambrosiaster, this difference of reading at the passage named between the Greek manuscripts and the Latin ones, to which the old Itala too without doubt attached itself. Marcion very naturally followed the Greek reading. Tertullian held to the Latin one. What right, then, did he have to charge Marcion with a vitiatio scripturae, and what inferences can we draw from this at all with regard to his procedure against Marcion?

To this there attach themselves of their own accord the alleged falsifications which Marcion is supposed to have allowed himself in the text of the two Corinthian letters. Compare the list given by Ritschl (pp. 161–163). It contains not a single passage in which the departure from the received text would not have to be regarded as a mere variant. All these passages therefore not only do not ground the slightest suspicion of an intentional alteration of the text, but on the contrary lay very near the conjecture that, if Marcion changed so little in the two Corinthian letters in favor of his system, he will without doubt have made himself guilty of no such arbitrariness in the other letters.

But of course the Epistle to the Romans is supposed to attest this arbitrariness all the more incontestably! Quantas foveas in ista vel maxime epistola Marcion fecerit, auferendo, quae voluit, de nostri instrumenti integritate parebit [How great pits Marcion made in this epistle above all, by taking away what he would, will appear from the integrity of our document], says Tertullian, op. cit., ch. 13, and Hahn now of course sees everywhere in the Epistle to the Romans as well only the most enormous devastation wrought by Marcion. But the proof that Marcion made such gaps, both Tertullian and Hahn have remained owing. Mihi sufficit, says Tertullian immediately thereafter, quae proinde eradenda non vidit, quasi negligentias et caecitates ejus accipere. [It is enough for me to take, as instances of his negligence and blindness, the things which he likewise did not see needed to be erased.] He cites Rom. 2:26 as proof that utique is Deus judicabit, cujus sunt et lex et ipsa natura [in any case that God will judge whose are both the law and nature itself]. After he has then picked out several individual passages, and last Rom. 8:11, he continues: Salio et hic amplissimum abruptum intercisae scripturae, sed ap-

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prehendo testimonium perhibentem Apostolum Israeli, and so on, Rom. 10:2. [Here too I leap a very wide chasm of cut-off Scripture, but I catch hold of the Apostle bearing witness to Israel, and so on.] From there he jumps off again to Rom. 11:33, with the words: Unde illa eruptio? Ex recordatione scilicet scripturarum, quas retro revolverat, ex contemplatione sacramentorum, quae supra disseruerat in fidem Christi ex lege venientem. Haec si Marcion de industria erasit, quid Apostolus ejus exclamat, nullas intuens divitias Dei, tam pauperis et egeni, quam qui nihil condidit, nihil praedicavit, nihil denique habuit, ut qui in aliena descendit? — Qui tanta de scripturis ademisti, quid ista servasti, quasi non et haec creatoris? [Whence that bursting forth? From the recollection, of course, of the Scriptures which he had rolled back, from the contemplation of the mysteries which he had discussed above, concerning faith in Christ coming from the law. If Marcion erased these things by design, why does his Apostle cry out, looking upon no riches of a God so poor and needy as one who created nothing, preached nothing, and in short had nothing, as one who came down into what was another’s? — You who have taken away so much from the Scriptures, why did you preserve these things, as if these too were not the Creator’s?] This is everything that is found in Tertullian about Marcion’s Epistle to the Romans, and upon this wholly tumultuous procedure of Tertullian criticism is supposed to be in a position to ground the proof that Marcion simply struck out whole sections in the Epistle to the Romans! It takes the whole uncritical method of Hahn even to venture such an assertion. Hahn, to be sure, thinks that because Tertullian suddenly jumps from 8:11 to 10:2, Marcion must have wrought particular havoc here; but what a gross misunderstanding on Hahn’s part it is to lay this latter also to Marcion’s charge, in those words where Tertullian himself, with reference to Marcion, speaks only of an intercisa scriptura [cut-off Scripture], and calls only his own salire [leaping] an amplissimum abruptum [a very wide chasm]. Without naming the alleged foveas [pits] of the Scripture which, according to the presupposition, was intercisa, Tertullian (only this can be the sense of his words, ambiguous though they are) has jumped from one point to another, as across a wide chasm, in order always to hold only now to something individual here, now to something individual there, from which he believed he could best argue against Marcion and prove his dogmatic proposition, nullum alium Deum (no God different from the creator of the world) ab Apostolo circumlatum [that no other God was carried about by the Apostle] (op. cit., ch. 1).

The remaining, fairly insignificant departures in the shorter Pauline letters (cf. Ritschl, op. cit., p. 167f.) can without difficulty be taken as mere variants, and the more significant gap which Marcion is supposed to have made in the Epistle to the Colossians, 1:15–17 (with the exception of a few words), has not even been entered in the register of Marcion’s sins by Tertullian, but only by Hahn. Tertullian says, op. cit., ch. 19: Si non est Christus primogenitus conditionis, ut sermo creatoris, per quem omnia facta sunt, et sine quo nihil factum est: si non in illo condita sunt universa in coelis et in terris, visibilia et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive pote-

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states, si non cuncta per illum et in illo sunt condita (haec enim Marcioni displicere oportebat), non utique tam nude posuisset Apostolus: et ipse est ante omnes. Quomodo enim ante omnes, si non ante omnia? Quomodo ante omnia, si non primogenitus conditionis, si non sermo creatoris? — Quomodo autem boni duxit, omnem plenitudinem in semetipso habitare? Primo enim, quae est ista plenitudo, nisi ex illis, quae Marcion detraxit: conditis in Christo, in coelis et in terris, angelis et hominibus, nisi ex illis invisibilibus et visibilibus, nisi ex thronis et dominationibus et principatibus et potestatibus? Aut si haec pseudapostoli nostri et judaici evangelizatores de suo intulerint et ad plenitudinem Dei sui Marcion, qui nihil condidit, ceterum quale est, ut plenitudinem creatoris aemulus et destructor ejus in suo Christo habitare voluerit? [If Christ is not the firstborn of creation, as the Word of the Creator, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made; if in him all things in heaven and on earth were not created, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; if all things were not created through him and in him (for these things would have had to displease Marcion), the Apostle would in any case not have set down so baldly, “and he is before all.” For how before all, if not before all things? How before all things, if not the firstborn of creation, if not the Word of the Creator? — But how did he see fit that all the fullness should dwell in himself? For, first, what is this fullness, if not from those things which Marcion took away: the things created in Christ, in heaven and on earth, angels and men; if not from those invisible and visible things; if not from thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? Or if our pseudo-apostles and Jewish evangelists brought these things in of their own, and Marcion to the fullness of his God, who created nothing — but what sort of thing is it, that the rival and destroyer of the Creator should have willed the fullness of the Creator to dwell in his own Christ?] Tertullian by no means says here that that passage was missing in Marcion’s text. Without determining what Marcion had in his text or did not have, he holds to individual propositions of that passage, in order to argue from them dogmatically against Marcion, insofar as they have as their necessary presupposition that at which Marcion, as Tertullian thinks, must necessarily have taken offense. “How, then, can Christ be before all, if he was not also before all things? Or how can it have pleased him that the whole fullness should dwell in him? That fullness which consists precisely of that which Marcion detraxit [took away],” by which, as goes without saying, is to be understood not what Marcion struck out of the text, but only what he negated in relation to God, insofar as Marcion separated the creator of the world from the supreme God and thereby also denied him the creation. “Or if our pseudo-apostles and Jewish evangelists brought this of their own into the text, and Marcion let it be added to the fullness of his God, who created nothing, how is it possible that the opponent and destroyer of the creator of the world should have willed the fullness of that creator to dwell in his Christ?” Confused as this sounds (unless the text is corrupt in the words et ad plenit. — condidit), one yet sees this much: that here too Tertullian does not say definitely that Marcion struck something out. He says it only hypothetically, si haec — intulerint [if these things — they brought in], and in what follows yet again presupposes that Marcion also let the plenitudo [fullness] please him as a predicate of his God, and thus read it as it reads in our text.

There is only a single definite and reliable testimony about a

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more significant gap which the Marcionite canon had in the text of the Pauline letters. Not Tertullian or Epiphanius, but Origen, says that Marcion did not have the last two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans.¹ Origen too sees in this only a critical act of violence on the part of the interpolator of the evangelical and apostolic writings; but from the standpoint of the newer criticism one must judge otherwise about it, and the testimony of Origen can so little serve to confirm the mutilation hypothesis that from it a clearer light is first shed over this whole question. The statement of Origen certainly deserves all credence, that Marcion did not have those two chapters; but he did not have them only because, as un-Pauline — and as such, critically considered, they must be held, according to their whole content and character — they at that time either did not yet exist at all, or, even if they had already been taken up into manuscripts, were recognized by Marcion as an ungenuine constituent of the Pauline letters. That, while the passionately aroused Tertullian, who strikes quickly and everywhere pursues only what is dogmatic, does not touch this important gap even with a word, the calm, critical Origen expressly names it, without, however, mentioning any other difference of this kind, is no small factor for the right assessment of this matter, and deserves to be heeded all the more because Tertullian, with his unproved, highly suspect assertion, stands in substance entirely alone. Not even Epiphanius agrees with him, in that he says only that Marcion had merely ten Pauline letters, αἷς μόναις κέχρηται, οὐ πᾶσι δὲ τοῖς ἐν αὐταῖς γεγραμμένοις, ἀλλὰ τινα περιτέμνων, τινὰ δὲ ἀλλοιώσας κεφάλαια. Of gaps so extensive as one usually presupposes in Marcion’s text on Tertullian’s authority, even Epiphanius accordingly knows nothing. Only some things, he says, did Marcion cut away, and some chapters he altered or transposed. Since the expression ἀλλοιώσας hardly allows one to think, in this connection, of the omission of the last two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans that is charged against Marcion, Epiphanius perhaps meant what Origen, op. cit., speaks of: in aliis vero exemplaribus, quae non sunt a Marcione temerata, hoc ipsum caput (16, 25–27) diverse positum invenimus. In nonnullis enim codicibus post eum locum, quem

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supra diximus (14, 23), statim cohaerens habetur: ei autem, qui potens est, vos confirmare. [But in other copies, which have not been violated by Marcion, we find this same chapter (16:25–27) placed differently. For in some manuscripts, immediately cohering after the place of which we spoke above (14:23), there stands: “now to him who is able to establish you.”] If, as seems to have been the case with Epiphanius, one knew nothing of the complete omission of the two chapters, then at least that transposition of the doxology, and the rearrangement of the two chapters connected with it, had to be put to Marcion’s account. But one held oneself justified in the charge of the τινὰ περιτέμνειν already by this, that the doxology at the close was missing in some manuscripts. Caput hoc (16, 25–27), says Origen, op. cit., Marcion, a quo scripturae evangelicae atque apostolicae interpolatae sunt, de hac epistola penitus abstulit. [This chapter (16:25–27) Marcion, by whom the evangelical and apostolic Scriptures have been interpolated, removed entirely from this epistle.]

It is in fact highly remarkable how exactly the results of the newer critical investigations concerning the Pauline letters coincide with what, in the various statements about the Marcionite canon, emerges as the only thing proved and secure. As he is supposed to have deprived the Epistle to the Romans of its last two chapters, so the reproach was also made against him that he had shortened the Ἀποστολικόν by whole apostolic letters. But in which letters did he lay hands so high-handedly? Soli huic epistolae, says Tertullian at the close of his work against Marcion, with reference to the letter to Philemon, brevitas sua profuit, ut falsarias manus Marcionis evaderet. Miror tamen, cum ad unum hominem factas literas receperit, quod ad Timotheum duas et unam ad Titum, de ecclesiastico statu compositas, recusaverit. Affectavit, opinor, etiam numerum epistolarum interpolare. [Its brevity alone profited this epistle, so that it escaped the falsifying hands of Marcion. I marvel, however, that when he received a letter written to one man, he rejected the two to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed concerning ecclesiastical order. He aspired, I suppose, to interpolate the number of the epistles as well.] Can one still be surprised, now, that Marcion did not have the three Pastoral letters in his canon? Can one, to the question why he did not have them, give any answer other than only this: he did not have them either because they did not yet exist at all, or because, if he already knew them, he with good ground did not acknowledge them as Pauline?

If we take all these factors together, one may rightly assert that Ritschl has still conceded far too much to the usual view when, as he says at the close of his investigation of Marcion’s Apostolikon (p. 170), he is willing to content himself with representing the reproach of the Church Fathers against Marcion, concerning the Pauline letters in general and in particular, as improbable, and restricts his result to this, that the historical material does not permit the complete decision of the question. For all the incompleteness of the historical material, the

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preponderant probability falls so much on the side opposed to the Church Fathers, and to those who support their view on the authority of the same, that one may hold the question to be settled so far as it is at all possible, in questions of this kind, to come to a definite result. Tertullian, to whom one must hold here before all others, shows himself here too to be so unreliable a witness, caught in presuppositions, that one can now only ask how the suspicion, set in circulation chiefly through him, against Marcion as interpolator of the Pauline letters hangs together psychologically with the rest of his circle of ideas. Individual hints which he himself gives about it perhaps let us see somewhat more deeply into this connection. When Tertullian, in the introduction of his work, ch. 1, says: quod idcirco praestruximus, ut jam hinc profiteamur nos proinde probaturos, nullum alium Deum ab Apostolo circumlatum, sicut probavimus, nec a Christo, ex ipsis utique epistolis Pauli, quas proinde mutilatas etiam de numero forma jam haeretici evangelii praejudicasse debebit [which we have set out beforehand for this reason, that we may now profess that we shall likewise prove that no other God was carried about by the Apostle, just as we have proved that none was by Christ, from the very epistles of Paul, which, likewise mutilated even in their number, the form of the heretical gospel, already known, will have to have prejudged], it is to be seen from this that Tertullian has before his eyes in Marcion, above all, the one who mutilated the Pauline letters even in their number. This refers to the undeniably factual point, that Marcion did not have the three Pastoral letters in his canon. In this Tertullian saw the most evident proof that it will have been with the letters just as with the Gospel. He infers this, however, in the first instance, as can be gathered from his words, only from the twofold point that the epistolae were mutilatae etiam de numero [mutilated even in their number], and that the forma evangelii [form of the gospel] is the one already known. In that he derives the character of the Marcionite canon, thus in the first instance only inferred and presupposed, from the arbitrariness of the heretic, he looks, for the dogmatic purpose which he pursues against him — the refutation of the Gnostic proposition that the creator of the world is another God than the supreme God — entirely to the content of the Pauline letters according to how Marcion will have mutilated it in favor of his proposition. For once the heretic, as Tertullian could not think otherwise, let himself in for such a mutilation only out of heretical arbitrariness, by what other interest could he have been guided in it than by the dogmatic interest of his system? But when Tertullian then came from this presupposition to the matter itself, and looked about for the supposed gaps in the Marcionite text, he only now found that the matter stood otherwise than he had imagined. What, then, was to

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be done? That he will thereby have gained a better opinion of the heretic is not to be assumed. Gaps had nevertheless to be present, even if one could not prove them. Let one now take the passages in question before oneself once more, and observe how Tertullian nevertheless does not venture to come forward with the definite categorical assertion that here this passage, there that passage, was missing in Marcion’s text, but always expresses himself about it only in the form of a mere inference, presupposition, conjecture. Ostenditur, quid supra haeretica industria eraserit, 5.3. Quantas foveas fecerit — de nostri instrumenti integritate parebit, 5.13. Haec enim Marcioni displicere oportebat. [It is shown what the heretical industry had erased above, 5.3. How great pits he made — will appear from the integrity of our document, 5.13. For these things would have had to displease Marcion.] It is likewise equivalent to an intentional evasion when, instead of explaining himself more closely about the alleged gaps, he repeatedly takes the turn of preferring to hold to what Marcion, inconsistently, had still left standing. Validius, illum ex his revinci, quae servavit, 5.3. Mihi sufficit, quae proinde eradenda non vidit, quasi negligentias et caecitates ejus accipere, 5.13. [It is more forceful that he be refuted from those things which he preserved, 5.3. It is enough for me to take, as instances of his negligence and blindness, the things which he likewise did not see needed to be erased, 5.13.] What weight can the assertion, uttered only in general, of an enormous mutilation of the text — the charge of an eradere [erasing], of which one sometimes does not even know whether it is supposed to refer to a definite passage of the text, or only to this, that Marcion, in accordance with his system, so to speak struck out everything pre-Christian from the history of the divine revelations — have, once the matter is looked at from this point of view? Such indefiniteness, ambiguity, unclarity is not the language of a writer who can support his assertion on irrefutable proofs that lie factually before one’s eyes.

Far from it, then, that the usual view of the origin and character of the Marcionite Gospel would be confirmed by Marcion’s Apostolikon. Rather, everything that can be assumed with preponderant probability regarding the Apostolikon agrees completely with the result of the investigations of the Gospel. If an intentional falsification can be demonstrated, and found credible, as little in the one as in the other, then the whole assertion of the Church Fathers, so far as it concerns not merely the factual point, the differences of the Marcionite text and of ours that are indeed present, but the source from which they are supposed to have arisen, appears as a groundless charge, which, through the confidence of the tone in which the Church Fathers bring it forward with so great a unanimity, through the lack of testimonies

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contradicting it, and through the general belief which it has found, with slight exception, even into the most recent time, can gain no appearance of truth. Little as there can be any doubt about this for anyone who investigates the matter more closely, yet on the other hand not only fairness toward the Church Fathers, but the task itself that lies before us here, of grasping a given phenomenon in its pure objectivity, requires that the factors also be weighed by which the Church Fathers themselves were determined in their view of the Marcionite canon. If one wanted to derive the charge brought by them against Marcion solely from the motive of hatred of the heretic, of partisanship and passion, however much such springs of action may also have cooperated, this would itself be only a very one-sided and arbitrary view. Groundless and unjust as their charge is, it yet itself again had its ground in so much else that gave the whole consciousness with which they stood in their time precisely this definite form. In this respect two factors especially come into consideration: first, the dogmatic interest which they had over against a heretic such as Marcion was; then, that what was in question was a phenomenon belonging to the history of the origin of the writings of our canon, for the right assessment of which the Church Fathers, on their standpoint, still lacked the right sense. These two factors came, in the person of Marcion, into so peculiar a connection with one another that the phenomenon lying before us here deserves, for this reason already, to be looked at somewhat more closely. Since Ritschl (pp. 23–27) has already said what is necessary about the former of these two points, we have here, in the first instance, to direct our attention chiefly to the second.