The Edition
The German original. Adolf von Harnack, Neue Studien zu Marcion. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1923. Published as Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 3rd series, vol. 14, no. 4 (= vol. 44, no. 4). Thirty-six printed pages: a main text in four numbered sections, followed by Nachträge und Berichtigungen, addenda and corrections to Harnack’s Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott.
Harnack died in 1930 and the German text of 1923 is in the public domain. The translation in this volume was made from the 1923 first printing, consulted in a public-domain scan.
This edition. Neue Studien zu Marcion is Harnack’s 1923 supplementary study, an extended response to critics of his major work on Marcion, and it has not previously been available to English readers as a whole. This edition is believed to be the first complete standalone English translation of Adolf von Harnack’s Neue Studien zu Marcion.
Attribution.
- The German text of Neue Studien zu Marcion (1923) is by Adolf von Harnack and is in the public domain.
- The English translation, the editorial apparatus, translator’s notes, terminology guide and substantive editorial corrections, and the afterword, Answering Harnack’s Wish: A Marcionite Afterword, are by W. C. Muenchow IV.
- Published by True Testament Publishing.
A note on the translation. It has been checked page by page against images of the printed original, and the points at which the reading remains uncertain are named in the translator’s notes rather than smoothed over. It is offered to readers as a text that can be examined, not as one that closes the questions it raises.
Bibliographic Note
German original: Adolf von Harnack, Neue Studien zu Marcion. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1923.
Series: Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur. Archiv für die von der Kirchenväter-Commission der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften unternommene Ausgabe der älteren christlichen Schriftsteller. Herausgegeben von Adolf von Harnack und Carl Schmidt. 3. Reihe, 14. Band, Heft 4 = 44. Band, Heft 4.
Extent: 36 printed pages (pp. 1–28 main text in four numbered sections; pp. 29–36 Nachträge und Berichtigungen / Addenda and Corrections).
Relation to the main work: This pamphlet is a supplement and reply to the critics of Harnack’s Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (2nd ed., Leipzig 1924; 1st ed. 1921). Unstarred page references (e.g. “p. 95”) point to the first, continuously paginated part of that monograph; starred references (e.g. “p. 229*”) point to the separately paginated Beilagen (appendices and text-reconstructions) bound at the end of it. Since this pamphlet appeared in 1923, all of Harnack’s page references are to the first edition of 1921, the only one then in print. Both kinds of reference have been preserved exactly as printed.
Source used for this translation: the 1923 first printing, consulted in a public-domain scan of the copy bound as an addendum to the Internet Archive copy of Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott.
Page markers: original printed pagination is marked [p. 1] … [p. 36]. Markers stand where the printed page turns; where a page turn falls inside a sentence the marker has been placed at the nearest phrase boundary within that sentence.
Notes: footnotes are Harnack’s own, numbered as in the original (numbering restarts on each printed page). They are gathered immediately after the text of the page on which they stand, under the heading Harnack’s notes. Anything added by the translator is labelled Translator’s note and set in square brackets or in the separate Translator’s Notes section at the end.
Revised October 2026. For this revision the translation was read again against Harnack’s printed German, page by page, from 300 dpi images of the 1923 printing, and every proposed change was confirmed independently against the page image before it was made. The revision restores three numbered paragraphs of Harnack’s argument that had dropped out of the online text (on faith, p. 8; on sin and misery, p. 9; on good and righteous, p. 12), and the first entry of his note on Luke 5:39 in the Addenda (p. 32). It corrects a word on p. 25, where Harnack says the creator-god cannot suppress what is sensual, and restores the Greek σάρξ on p. 18. Harnack’s numbered lists carry their numbers again, the page markers follow the printed page breaks, and the guide and headings added to the Addenda are now marked as the translator’s.