1. Source edition. The translation is made from the 1923 first printing (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs), Texte und Untersuchungen 3rd series, vol. 14, no. 4 (= vol. 44, no. 4). The 1924 reissue of the series volume has not been collated; the one passage where a second witness would settle a reading is the Schlußkammer of p. 31, on which see note 17 below.
2. Relation to the monograph. The pamphlet is an appendix to Harnack’s Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Sections I–IV answer, in order, the four questions Harnack lists on p. 2; the Nachträge und Berichtigungen (pp. 29–36) are corrections to the monograph itself and presuppose the reader has it open.
3. Starred pagination. Harnack’s monograph is paginated in two runs: a continuous run for the study proper, and a second, separately numbered run (marked with an asterisk) for the appendices containing the reconstructed Marcionite texts. Starred references have been reproduced exactly (p. 229*, p. 89*, and so on); they are not typographical errors.
4. Bibliographic titles. All titles of books and periodicals are left in their original languages — German, Latin, French, Dutch, English — including Grejdanus’s Dutch title Marcion Paulinist in zijne Gnadenleer? with its question mark, which is part of the title. German journal abbreviations are also left as printed; only the connecting words (“in der”, “ebendort”) are translated.
5. Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin are reproduced as printed, with Harnack’s accents and breathings. An English rendering follows in square brackets where the surrounding German does not already translate the passage. Latin quotations that Harnack embeds in his own sentence are left untranslated where he plainly expects the reader to construe them.
6. “Catholic” and “ecclesiastical”. Katholisch is rendered “Catholic” throughout in its historical, second-century sense — the emergent Church with a canon and a rule of faith — not in a confessional modern sense. Kirchlich is rendered “ecclesiastical”, “of the Church”, or “churchly” as context requires, and never as “mainstream”; Großkirche is “the Great Church”; Kirchenleute is “churchmen”.
7. “M.” and “Marcion”. Harnack alternates freely between the abbreviation “M.” and the full name. The alternation has been preserved rather than normalized, since in some sentences (“Soweit Bauer” — “Thus far Bauer”) the compressed form marks reported summary rather than Harnack’s own exposition.
8. Emphasis. Letter-spaced emphasis (Sperrdruck) in the German is rendered in bold only where it materially affects the argument — chiefly in the long von Soden and Bauer quotations, where the emphases are Harnack’s own additions (his note on p. 2: “The emphases that follow are mine”), and in a handful of places in his reply where he stresses the decisive point.
9. Speaker attribution. Pages 2–7 consist very largely of the objections of von Soden, Grejdanus and Bauer, summarized and quoted by Harnack. These are not Harnack’s own conclusions. The extended von Soden quotation runs from p. 2 across the page break to the middle of p. 3; the numbered objections 1–4 that follow (pp. 3–4) are von Soden’s; Grejdanus’s objection follows on pp. 4–5; Bauer’s runs from p. 5 to the words “Thus far Bauer” on p. 7, at which point Harnack resumes in his own voice. One bracketed marker, “[Von Soden, quoted by Harnack:]”, has been supplied on p. 2, since the quotation opens across a page break; no other speaker labels have been inserted into Harnack’s text.
10. “M. E.” on p. 3. The “M. E.” (meines Erachtens, “in my judgment”) in the sentence about Marcion’s Zweigötterlehre falls inside von Soden’s quotation and is von Soden’s, not Harnack’s. Harnack’s own m. E. occurs later at pp. 8, 17, 22 and 28, where it is his.
11. The typological argument on p. 3. In von Soden’s series of types, the Gnostics occupy the pole at which the historical Redeemer is dissolved into a system of aeons; Marcion occupies the opposite, modalistic pole, at which the Redeemer is made absolute. The ecclesiastical hypostasis-Christology mediates between them. The translation preserves this assignment.
12. νομιζομένων (p. 3). In the Origen citation, τῶν πεπιστευκέναι νομιζομένων is passive: “those who are reputed / considered to have believed”, not “those who considered themselves believers”.
13. Zur Nachachtung promulgiert (p. 3). Nachachtung is the older German administrative term for observance or compliance; a decree promulgated zur Nachachtung is issued to be obeyed, i.e. as binding. It has nothing to do with contempt (Nichtachtung). Rendered “publicly promulgated as binding”.
14. hinschillert (p. 3). Schillern is the iridescence of a surface that shifts colour as one looks at it. Von Soden’s charge is that Marcion’s righteous God keeps shading over into the evil God — the image of a colour shimmering into another — and then “readily turns into him”. Rendered “shades over … into”.
15. Marcion’s two deities. Der gute Gott is “the good God”; der gerechte Gott “the righteous God”; der fremde Gott “the alien God” (as in the title of Harnack’s monograph, Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott); Schöpfer(gott) “creator (God)”; Weltschöpfer “world-creator”; Demiurg “Demiurge”. Where Harnack sets „gerecht” in quotation marks he is reporting Marcion’s own usage or Bauer’s ironic reading of it; the quotation marks have been kept in every instance.
16. „Gut > Gerecht” (p. 12). The printed text uses the mathematical greater-than sign. It has been retained; it marks a ranking (good above righteous), not simply an opposition.
17. Printer’s errors of substance. Three affect the sense and are flagged in place: (a) p. 7, “keinen Auftrieb, der ihn über das Niveau des Schlechten erheben” — the verb is left uninflected in the printed text; the intended reading is erhebt / erhöbe. (b) p. 31, “Setze eine Schlußkammer nach θέλει” — a misprint for Schlußklammer, closing bracket. (c) p. 19, note 3, “stystematische” for systematische. Nothing else has been silently normalized: where the printed reading is defensible it is translated as it stands, as at pp. 34–35, where Harnack’s own corrected rendering of Zacharias Rhetor reads halten (present tense) and is translated as such.
18. The W-text. Harnack’s “W-Text” is the Western text-type (Codex Bezae and the Old Latin witnesses). The siglum has been kept as printed. Manuscript sigla, both in the body and in the addenda, are reproduced as printed and have not been silently modernized.
19. Harnack’s ZKG volume number (p. 1, note 1). Harnack cites von Soden’s review as Ztschr. f. K.-Gesch. Bd. LX (N. F. III) 1922 p. 193 ff. The Neue Folge III of the Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte is Band XL (40), 1922; Band LX (60) would be 1941. The printed numeral is therefore almost certainly a slip for XL. It has been reproduced exactly as Harnack published it and has not been corrected.
20. Unresolved ancient-source references. A few citations in the addenda could not be checked against a critical edition in preparing this translation: notably the Didymus fragment in Mai (p. 30), the Dionysius of Rome excerpt (p. 34), and the Photius excerpt from Georgius (p. 35). The Justin quotation on p. 29 is printed in the nominative (μισούμενοι καὶ ἐπηρεαζόμενοι), whereas the address of Justin’s Apology has the genitive; Harnack has adapted the phrase to his German syntax, and the printed nominative has been kept.