Investigations II: The Letter Order, the Pastorals, Acts and Revelation

But can one perhaps conclude, from the influence that the Marcion-text has had on the Western text and, beyond it, on other texts as well, that its Latin recension is the mother of the Western Latin [text]? Since the Greek Western text is the presupposition of the Greek Marcion[-text], the dogmatically indifferent readings that they have in [p. 142*] common do not come into consideration here. Then there remain for us only 5 places at which the influence of the Marcion-text on the ecclesiastical tradition could be established, namely Gal. 5:14; Rom. 1:16; 1 Thess. 2:15; Ephes. 4:6; 5:31 (see above, p. 129). Lietzmann¹ has drawn attention to further Marcionite material; he points to Rom. 5:6; 14:10; 1 Cor. 5:8, as well as to Ephes. 1:1; Rom. 1:7, 15, and Rom. 15–16.

At 1 Cor. 5:8, according to Lietzmann himself (p. 33), this concerns only a possibility: at Rom. 1:20 [sic in Harnack’s text], the West reshaped πονηρία [“wickedness”] into πορνεία [“fornication”]. This reminds Lietzmann that, at 1 Cor. 5:8, Cod. G offers the same transformation; since Tertullian (Adv. Marc. V, 7) then passes immediately from 1 Cor. 5:7 to 6:13 with the words “Avertens autem nos a fornicatione manifestat carnis resurrectionem” [“But in turning us away from fornication, he manifests the resurrection of the flesh”], one might conjecture that M. read πορνείας for πονηρίας at 1 Cor. 5:8 — the verse is not transmitted to us for him — and that this is therefore a Marcionite reading. But even if this combination deserved confidence — and Tertullian’s sentence is already sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the whole section 1 Cor. 5:1–7 deals with fornication — it would still be very hasty to designate the reading as Marcionite. It must rather be regarded as a reading of the Western text, since it is dogmatically indifferent. Where would we end up if we ascribed all the special readings of the Western text to M. as their author!

It is not clear to me in what way ἔτι γάρ [“for still”] at Rom. 5:6 is supposed to be a Marcionite reading, since Lietzmann himself defends it as the original (p. 56).

At Rom. 14:10, Lietzmann holds “the judgment seat of God” to be the original reading, and “of Christ” to be a correction. But he himself points out that Χριστοῦ [“of Christ”] is already found in Polycarp (Ep. 6:2); so the reading has nothing to do with M. (the DG text does not have it).

These three places must therefore be rejected as unusable for our purpose; but the questions attached to Ephes. 1:1; Rom. 1:7, 15; and Rom. 15–16 are most closely connected with one another. It is established, from Tertullian’s statement, that M. had the letter to the Ephesians in his canon as the letter to the Laodiceans (see above, on Laod. 1, p. 112). When Tertullian expresses this as follows: [p. 143*] “Marcion et titulum aliquando interpolare gestit, quasi et in isto diligentissimus explorator” [“Marcion was pleased, on this occasion too, to tamper even with the title, as though here too a most diligent investigator”] — one must utterly fail to recognize both the “as though” and the mockery here if one wishes to conclude from this remark (so Zahn) that Tertullian is here testifying that M. made this change on the basis of a critical investigation — which Tertullian would thus have read in him.² The sentence is rather, materially, entirely inconsequential — this “so diligent an investigator” has tampered with the number of the letters, falsified the letters themselves, and at one point not even spared the titles!³ — and if the remark were missing, we would know no less. But for this reason the word “titulus” [title] may also not be pressed, nor may it be asserted that Tertullian is reproaching M. only with having changed the heading, while not charging him with a correction at 1:1 — thus excluding such a correction here. Rather, he makes his remark only about the heading, and then passes immediately to 1:9f. Since, however, we possess no further testimony here, it remains entirely in the dark whether M. found, at 1:1, τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ καὶ πιστοῖς [“to the saints who are in Laodicea, and faithful”] or already τ. ἁγ. τ. οὖσιν κ. πιστοῖς [“to the saints who are, and faithful”]. If he found the former, then the original text was still present in the letter-collection that he revised throughout — for it is not in doubt for me that ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ is the original reading.⁴ In this case, he did not succeed in bringing the correct address back to acknowledgment in Christendom. But if he [p. 144*] already found the corrected text at 1:1, then two possibilities must be reckoned with: either the heading already read “To the Ephesians,” in which case he corrected this as an error, or it still read “To the Laodiceans,” in which case he retained the old heading. But since historical-critical considerations cannot be demonstrated anywhere in him,⁵ the first possibility is, in my view, quite improbable.

In all probability, then, M. simply reproduced what he found: in the heading, Πρὸς Λαοδικέας [“To the Laodiceans”], and at 1:1, either ἐν Λαοδικείᾳ [“in Laodicea”] or the text already stripped of these words. The hypothesis that he himself carried out the stripping, however, hangs entirely in the air. Whether the excision at 1:1 is to be explained by the fact that the Laodicean congregation had, for a time, all but dissolved through inner neglect (see Rev. 3), so that one no longer wished to read a Pauline letter addressed to it, or whether it sprang from the intention of turning the letter into a catholic one — in neither case is there the slightest ground for holding M. responsible for it. In addition: it is, after all, very improbable — because without parallel — that a textual correction of Marcion’s should have achieved such wide currency as the reading τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν καὶ πιστοῖς [“to the saints who are, and faithful”] has in the ancient Church.

But did not “ἐν Ῥώμῃ” [“in Rome”] also go missing at Rom. 1:7, 15 in Marcionite Bibles; is this excision not internally connected with that of “ἐν Ἐφέσῳ” [“in Ephesus”]; and is he not responsible for this omission too? Now, in the first place, the texts of these verses are not transmitted to us for M. at all. The absence of ἐν Ῥώμῃ in them (or, respectively, its replacement by other words) is attested for 1:7 by Origen, G (d, Cod. Fuldensis of the Vulgate, Ambrosiaster — these only indirectly); for 1:15, by G alone. Now, the Western tradition in G is certainly most closely akin to the Marcion-text, and there is therefore a certain probability that ἐν Ῥώμῃ was also missing in M. But in the relationship between the two texts (see above, p. 129) the rule holds that shared readings are to be regarded as ones in which M. followed the other text, for as long as the reverse is not proven. Since this here [p. 145*] cannot be proven, one must judge that, if ἐν Ῥώμῃ was missing in M., he simply followed, as in many dozens of cases, the G recension of the Western text, which did not offer the words.

There remains the most important problem: the absence of Rom. 15–16 in Marcion. M. cannot have struck out these chapters from dogmatic-tendentious motives;⁶ why, then, were they missing in him? Everything that has been said about this problem until recently has been quite unsatisfactory; only Corssen has brought light here, by showing that the chapters were missing in the DG tradition of the Western text; they therefore never came before M.’s eyes at all; consequently it was not he who struck them out, nor did he, say, chance to come into possession of a mutilated copy.⁷ But could he not, after all, have been the one, with the DG tradition only later induced by him to make the excision? In that case one would have to be able to demonstrate a specific motive in M.; but no such motive can be established, for in his excisions he had only a dogmatic-tendentious interest.⁸ But is the problem not simply pushed back a step if one lays it at the door of the DG recension? No; for here it is transposed onto ground on which a solution is easier — indeed, on which one can even be content with a non liquet. With regard to M., our investigation has shown that (apart from a few emendations [Diorthosen], which are also not certainly his own property) his textual corrections rest on the dogmatic-tendentious motive, and that one may not therefore assume secondary intentions in him; the broad ground of the great Church, by contrast, leaves room for assuming the most varied possibilities. It does not fall within the scope of our task to search out the most probable one. Rom. 1:7, 15; Ephes. 1:1; and the absence of Rom. 15–16 may form a common problem, and from what is common to them the motive for the excisions that occurred here [p. 146*] may be abstracted;⁹ but that does not belong to Marcion research, but to the general history of the biblical text in the Church.

A word is still needed about the verses Rom. 16:25–27, which form an entirely independent piece and whose textual history I may presuppose as known. M. did not offer them, and did not know them; but they are plainly strictly Marcionite, and only laboriously and inadequately catholicized by 2 (3) additions. I place the additions in brackets:

“Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel [and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, or: and of the Lord Jesus Christ], according to the revelation of the mystery kept silent through eternal ages, but now made manifest [and, through the prophetic writings,] according to the command of the eternal God, unto the obedience of faith, [made known] to all the nations — to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory,” etc. [Τῷ δὲ δυναμένῳ ὑμᾶς στηρίξαι κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιόν μου (καὶ τὸ κήρυγμα Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ or καὶ κυρίου Ἰ. Χρ.), κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν μυστηρίου χρόνοις αἰωνίοις σεσιγημένου, φανερωθέντος δὲ νῦν (διά τε γραφῶν προφητικῶν) κατ᾽ ἐπιταγὴν τοῦ αἰωνίου θεοῦ εἰς ὑπακοὴν πίστεως εἰς πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (γνωρισθέντος), μόνῳ σοφῷ θεῷ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ᾧ ἡ δόξα κτλ.]

The “prophetic writings” can, quite simply, only designate the Old Testament (against the interpreters who, in understandable embarrassment, think here of Christian prophetic writings); but it is equally certain that the Old Testament prophets cannot possibly stand beside “now” [νῦν]; for this “now” unmistakably indicates the Christian epoch. To this is added that “made known” [γνωρισθέντος], beside “made manifest” [φανερωθέντος], is an overloading. Further, “and the proclamation of Jesus Christ” after “according to my gospel” is almost unbearable.¹⁰ Finally, both the absolute “according to my gospel” and the notion that the hitherto unknown salvation has only now been revealed are Marcionite. We therefore have here the case that later Marcionites gave the letter to the Romans an ending, and that this ending made its way into the ecclesiastical tradition, though with corrections. For more, see my treatise in the Sitzungsberichte of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, 1919, p. 527ff.

Some Marcionite readings have indeed made their way into the tradition of the catholic text, but they are only a few [p. 147*] demonstrable. The overwhelming majority of the readings that can be claimed as Marcionite are, rather, readings of the Western text, to which the Marcion-text — both Greek and Latin — itself belongs.¹¹ No observation, however, leads us to the hypothesis that the Pauline epistles were first translated into Latin in the Marcionite church, and that the catholic church received this translation and corrected it back according to the original Greek text. This hypothesis is also subject to the objection that such a re-correction would have been a very difficult and laborious undertaking.¹² Yet the hypothesis remains standing as a mere possibility, and perhaps someone in the future will investigate the question of whether the Latin translation of the sections of the Pauline epistles that M. excised, and the translation of the Pastoral Epistles into Latin, show noteworthy differences from the translation of the parts that M. and the Church have in common. These common parts represent the text as it was read in Rome shortly before the middle of the 2nd century; they therefore deserve greater attention than they have so far received — this holds especially for the letter to the Romans.

The question naturally arises (see Zahn, loc. cit., I, p. 648) whether M. perhaps drew on several manuscripts for his new “purified” edition. One must, it seems, assume a priori that he did so; for he must surely have searched for “unfalsified” [p. 148*] manuscripts. But since he did not find such and could not find them, it is quite possible that he contented himself with one manuscript. In any case, the use of several manuscripts cannot be demonstrated, and every trace is lacking that he consulted, alongside the Western text, yet another. Nor does either his secular profession or his reforming purpose suggest the assumption that he worked as a technical philologist, even though individual textual changes are virtuosic in the striking brevity with which they bring his dogmatic tendency to expression. His tendentious corrections have been treated above (in the main part) so thoroughly that an investigation here is superfluous.

4. The order of the Pauline letters in Marcion.

The order Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon¹³ is unique.¹⁴ How is it to be explained? The Tübingen school once believed it possessed, in this order, external proof of the inauthenticity of the letters from Thessalonians to Philemon; for in this order there would stand, first, the 4 genuine letters (in chronological order), then (again in chronological order) the spurious ones. No one thinks of this today anymore. Zahn also holds the order to be chronological, but as a whole, in that, with regard to Thessalonians, he assumes that M. either formed a mistaken opinion about the origin of these letters, or placed Thessalonians, on account of their lesser importance, at the end of the first division (where does this division come from?), “whereby he then had the advantage that right at the head of his Apostolikon stood the letter to the Galatians, which was, for him, more important than all the others.” However one may explain this, it is certain, he says, that the order of the letters proves anew “that M., in matters which were for him [p. 149*] dogmatically indifferent, followed historical considerations” (vol. I, p. 623; II, p. 346f). But the crack that this false placement of Thessalonians introduces into this line of reasoning remains, and we know nothing of any chronological studies by M. with respect to the letters. It seems to me that the order is to be explained differently: M. placed the letter to the Galatians first for substantive reasons; it was, for him, the Magna Carta of his Christianity, and satisfied for him the need that the great Church satisfied through its reception of the Acts of the Apostles. From Tertullian IV, 3 and V, 2 we can still perceive most clearly that, for M., all the other Pauline letters stood in the shadow of Galatians. The remaining letters, however, M. arranged, it seems, simply by length. I add here the stichoi [line-counts] of Euthalius, and, in brackets, the letter-count of the letters:¹⁵ Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians: 1460 (54,536); Romans: 920 (35,266); 1 and 2 Thessalonians: 299 (11,479); Ephesians: 312 (11,932); Colossians: 208 (7,745); Philippians: 208 (7,975); Philemon: 37 (1,567). Here it is only striking that 1 and 2 Thessalonians stand before Ephesians; but these were two letters, and the space they required, together with title and closing rule, was accordingly greater than that needed for Ephesians. One may therefore assume that the length of the letters was the principle of their arrangement in M.¹⁶ A “historical” [i.e., chronological] consideration is therefore out of the question.

5. Did the Marcionite Apostolikon already have a chapter-division [Capitulatio]?

Corssen, in his stimulating treatise “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Römerbriefs” [“On the Transmission History of Romans”] (Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, vol. 10, p. 21ff., 25ff.), was the first to point to traces of the oldest chapter-division of the texts in the Western church (in Tertullian). He rightly lays weight on Tertullian V, 7, where the section 1 Cor. 10:6–11 appears as a chapter in its own right (“denique et in clausula praefationi apostolus respondet” — “finally, in the closing clause, the apostle also answers the preface”). If one now proceeds forward from this passage, one comes upon, in V, 8, where Tertullian passes to 1 Cor. 12:1ff, the summarizing [p. 150*] designation “Nunc de spiritalibus” [“Now concerning spiritual things”], without further addition; Tertullian continues in a new sentence: “Dico haec quoque in Christo a creatore promissa” [“I say that these things too were promised, in Christ, by the Creator”]. Two pages further on, still in the same chapter, at the transition to ch. 13, it then reads: “De Dilectione quoque omnibus charismatibus praeponenda apostolus instruxit” [“The apostle also taught that love is to be set above all the [spiritual] gifts”]; Tertullian then leaves the whole of ch. 13 aside, offering only this heading. But even if one goes backward from ch. 10:6ff, one comes, at V, 7, at the transition to 1 Cor. 7:1ff, upon the remark: “Sequitur de nuptiis (congredi, quas Marcion . . . prohibet)” [“There follows [a section] on marriage (the contracting of which Marcion . . . forbids)”]. I have found no other traces. Even for Tertullian, these are not sufficient to ascribe a chapter-division to his biblical text, unless supplemented by other observations (which is, however, the case); but to attribute such a thing to Marcion, or, respectively, to the Western text as he worked it over, they are insufficient. Yet they perhaps acquire a weak evidentiary force if one looks to the Marcionite Gospel; for here, in Tertullian and Epiphanius, where they pass to the pericope of the rich man and poor Lazarus, one comes upon the following observation: Tertullian writes (IV, 34): “Subsequens argumentum divitis apud inferos dolentis et pauperis in sinu Abrahae requiescentis” [“The following argument, of the rich man suffering among the dead and the poor man resting in Abraham’s bosom”]; and Epiphanius, Schol. 44: Περὶ τοῦ πλουσίου καὶ Λαζάρου τοῦ πτωχοῦ, ὅτι ἀπηνέχθη ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ Ἀβραάμ [“Concerning the rich man and Lazarus the poor man, that he was carried away by the angels into the bosom of Abraham”]. Should one assume here that both are referring to a “heading” that stood in M.’s Gospel? Compare also Tertullian IV, 19, on Luke 8:4ff: “De parabolis” [“On the parables”].

6. Marcion and the Pastoral Epistles.

With regard to M.’s relationship to these letters, we know only that M. did not have them in his Pauline letter-collection (see Tertullian V, 1, 21; Epiphanius; cf. Pseudo-Tertullian, under “Cerdo”), but that a group of later Marcionites did receive them (see the prologue to Titus, above, p. 137f*).¹⁷ From this it may be concluded, with great probability, that no explicit prohibition by M. against receiving these letters was known [p. 151*] [to him] — that is, that he did not express himself about them in the “Antitheses” or anywhere else. This is also confirmed by Tertullian, who certainly would not have let it pass unmentioned had he found, in M., a (rejecting) judgment on these letters.¹⁸ From this it may further be inferred that these letters never came into M.’s field of view at all;¹⁹ for he could hardly have kept silent about them in the Antitheses had he found them in several, or even in just one, collection of the Pauline letters. Since, however, this conclusion is itself no longer entirely certain, one may reject it and content oneself simply with the recognition that the Pastoral Epistles were missing in M.

Zahn²⁰ judges quite differently. He asserts that Tertullian could not, on his own, have hit upon the idea that the letters were excluded by M. on account of their private character; accordingly, M. himself must have stated the principle, “and must have justified the exclusion of the letters, among other things, by [the claim] that only what Paul wrote to congregations was fit to serve for the congregation’s edification.” Tertullian’s remark “would be just as inexplicable a piece of foolishness, if he had plucked the principle he presupposes in M. out of thin air, as it is striking, if M. really had, among other things, urged the letters’ character as private correspondence against their reception.” But as regards the letter to Philemon, “M. could reply that it was, indeed, a letter to a congregation, since, according to v. 2, it was addressed at the same time to the congregation that assembled in Philemon’s house” .... ²¹ [p. 152*] “I hold it proven [solely on the ground of the foregoing] that M. not only knew the Pastoral Epistles, but also considered it necessary to justify their exclusion from his Bible; that they were therefore contained in the ecclesiastical Bible of his time. It further follows, however, that M. did not challenge the Pauline origin of the Pastoral Epistles. Had he held them to be spurious, he would have urged this conviction of his, rather than the subtler and far more contestable ground for their exclusion which we happen to learn of through Tertullian.

All this Zahn has read out of a single sentence: “Miror tamen, cum ad unum hominem litteras factas receperit, quod ad Timotheum duas et unam ad Titum de ecclesiastico statu compositas recusaverit” [“I wonder, however, that, having accepted a letter written to a single person, he rejected the two letters to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed concerning church order”]. That is a great deal more than what he inferred, in the case of the title of the letter to the Laodiceans, from the two words “diligentissimus explorator.” I may leave it to the reader whether he finds himself persuaded by the argument, and remark, for my own part, only that what Tertullian says here was, quite simply, the most obvious thing that could be noted at this point. The private letters of Paul in the canon were, in Tertullian’s time and even later, still a problem, and whoever heard that the Pastoral Epistles were rejected somewhere would immediately have had to conclude that this happened because they were not addressed to congregations.

7. Marcion, and the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse of John. Did Marcion already find the catholic Apostolikon before him, consisting of Acts, 1 Peter, 1 and 2 John, Jude, the 13 [letters] of Paul, and the Apocalypse?

In Pseudo-Tertullian’s report on “Cerdo” — the report (ch. 6) belongs to “Marcion” — it is stated: “Apostoli Pauli neque omnes neque totas epistolas sumit; Acta Apostolorum et Apocalypsin quasi falsa reicit” [“He takes neither all nor the whole of the apostle Paul’s letters; he rejects the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse as, so to speak, false”]. These words, in an otherwise [p. 153*] brief report, can hardly be understood otherwise than that statements by M. about these two books — that is, an explicit judgment of rejection — were found; for why does he not also name Jude, 1 Peter, 1 John? M. no longer needed to reject these explicitly, once he had branded the original apostles, wholesale, as false apostles; but concerning the “Book of Revelation,” if it had come into his hands, he had to express himself, since it claimed to be authoritative Christian prophecy, and Acts overturned his whole dogmatic-historical construction if he did not explicitly reject it, in case he had taken notice of it. That both of these things happened is attested precisely by Hippolytus, Pseudo-Tertullian’s source.²²

From this vantage point, however, some passages in Tertullian also gain greater significance — passages that in themselves still leave it doubtful whether Tertullian merely infers M.’s rejection of the two books, or establishes it on the basis of statements by M. himself. He never speaks of M.’s relationship to Jude, 1 Peter, 1 John — precisely because he found no direct statements about these letters — but with respect to the Apocalypse he writes, III, 14: “Nam et apostolus Ioannes in Apocalypsi ensem describit . . . Quodsi Ioannem agnitum non vis, habes communem magistrum Paulum” [“For the apostle John, too, describes a sword in the Apocalypse . . . But if you will not acknowledge John, you have Paul as a teacher common (to us both)”]. In III, 24, Tertullian takes issue with M. over the promise of Christ and the thousand-year kingdom; in this context he cites a statement of M.’s: “Vester Christus pristinum statum Iudaeis pollicetur ex restitutione terrae” [“Your Christ promises the Jews their former state, through a restoration of the land”]. IV, 5 states: “Habemus et Ioannis alumnas ecclesias; nam etsi Apocalypsin eius Marcion respuat,” etc. [“We also have churches that are foster-children of John; for even if Marcion rejects his Apocalypse,” etc.]. Similarly, with respect to Acts, see De praescriptione 22: “Probantibus Actis Apostolorum descensum spiritus sancti. quam scripturam qui non recipiunt, nec spiritus sancti esse possunt” [“The Acts of the Apostles proving the descent of the Holy Spirit — and those who do not receive this scripture cannot belong to the Holy Spirit either”]. Adv. Marc. V, 2: “Quodsi et ex hoc congruunt Paulo Apostolorum Acta, cur ea respuatis iam apparet” [“But if, on this ground too, the Acts of the Apostles agree with Paul, it is now apparent why you reject them”]. On the strength of Hippolytus’s positive testimony, one may indeed adduce these passages: M. rejected the Apocalypse and Acts as false, that is, as books of the God of the Jews.

But does it follow from this that the catholic [p. 154*] Apostolikon of 18 (19) writings already lay before him? By no means; rather, it is in the highest degree improbable that such a collection, or indeed any collection of this kind, lay before him with authoritative standing. The Antitheses, as has been shown in the presentation, expressed themselves in detail about Christ, the original apostles, and Paul. Had M., in his polemic against the catholic tradition, already found himself facing a canonical collection of writings (an Apostolikon), he would have had to polemicize quite differently — namely, not only, as he always does, against the Old Testament, but also against the New Testament of the Church. But there is never any mention of a New Testament of the Church: this is decisive.²³ Nor could he have so simply, and without justification, struck three of the 13 letters of Paul, if a collection of 13 letters had lain before him. Further, we know that the oldest ecclesiastical order of the Pauline letters looked very different from the Marcionite one, which has remained entirely singular. Why did he create this order at all, if an older order of the 13 letters already existed, instead of contenting himself with merely placing Galatians first? And so many more questions can still be raised, all of which lead to the conclusion that no catholic Apostolikon lay before M. — that, rather, his Apostolikon is the earliest one: the Pauline letters presumably still circulated in smaller groups, and the Apocalypse and Acts as individual pieces, in the congregations, when he created his Apostolikon. With him, he was the first in Christendom to realize the concept of a firmly bounded Apostolikon.

[p. 155*] 8. The letters to the Laodiceans and Alexandrians, allegedly forged according to Marcion’s teaching. The Marcionite substitute-book for the Acts of the Apostles. Marcionite Psalms.

The Muratorian Fragment (around A.D. 200) states, lines 63ff: “Fertur etiam ad Laudicenses, alia ad Alexandrinos, Pauli nomine finctae ad haeresem Marcionis, et alia plura quae in catholicam ecclesiam recipi non potest; fel enim cum melle misceri non congruit” [“There is said to be also (a letter) to the Laodiceans, another to the Alexandrians, forged in Paul’s name to (support) the heresy of Marcion, and several others which cannot be received into the catholic church; for it is not fitting that gall be mixed with honey”]. The letter to the Ephesians stood in M.’s canon as the letter to the Laodiceans; the author of this catalogue promptly assumed that this must be a forged letter. This is the easiest explanation of the first statement; for even if the widely circulated forged letter to the Laodiceans already existed around 200, the author would have had to be guilty of a double error if he meant that one; for it has nothing to do with M.’s heresy, and it did not stand in his canon. But what the situation is with the letter to the Alexandrians, forged in the interest of, or according to, M.’s heresy, no one has yet been able to fathom. What Zahn has brought forward on this²⁴ has unfortunately produced no clarification.

Maruta, bishop of Maipherkat (see Beilage V), the polemicist against the Mesopotamian Marcionites around A.D. 400, confirms in outline the Marcionite Bible’s scope and character, but adds further: “They have removed the book of the Πράξεις [Acts] entirely from its midst, and in its place have inserted another book (of Πράξεις?) which they call Sāḵā = ‘Summa’ (the Arabic offers: ‘Liber propositi finis’ [‘Book of the End of the Purpose’]), so that it might accord with their opinions and teachings.” From these words too the assumption suggests itself that the expulsion of Acts was explicitly justified; but the book that they had in its place can, after all, only be the “Antitheses”; for these, too, according to Tertullian, contained an engagement with the original apostles — indeed, probably in their introduction. Beyond this, however, the Antitheses really are a “substitute” for Acts; for it was with Acts that the Church grounded [p. 156*] the concord between the Old and the New Covenant, and between the original apostles and Paul; whereas with the Antitheses, M. grounded the discord between these two magnitudes. Not transparent — and the tradition is also divided — is the title under which the Antitheses appear here; one must rely on the Syriac witness, and probably no actual book-title is meant, but rather the book is to be designated, according to its content and significance, as a “Summa.” This fits the Antitheses very well. The canonical (or semi-canonical) standing of the book in the Marcionite church can also be demonstrated otherwise. But that it is explicitly attested here is of importance.

Maruta also attests, further, Marcionite hymns, or psalms: “They have composed other hymns (psalms), which they recite at prayers, than those of David.” This report coincides with an obscure passage at the close of the Muratorian Fragment, which states: “Arsinoi autem seu Valentini vel Mitiadis (? I still hold ‘Tatiani’ to be the most probable reading) nihil in totum recipimus, qui etiam novum psalmorum librum Marcioni conscripserunt” [“But of Arsinous, or of Valentinus, or of Miltiades (? I still hold ‘Tatian’ to be the most probable reading), we receive nothing at all — who also composed a new book of psalms for Marcion”]. According to this passage, this author knew, just as Maruta did, that the Marcionites sing non-Davidic psalms — Maruta says explicitly: in their worship services; but that hardly needed to be said. This fact is thus established both for the period around A.D. 400 and around A.D. 200; but according to Maruta these psalms are of Marcionite origin, whereas according to the Fragment they derive from Valentinus and other Gnostics. Since Marcion, around 200, was regarded as the worst heretic, Valentinus and the others were meant to be discredited through their association with M. There was evidently a danger present (which did not exist with respect to M.) that works of theirs were being read in the catholic churches, and, in order to ward off this danger, the author of the Fragment draws attention to the fact that they stand close to the arch-heretic. That they wrote a new book of psalms “for Marcion,” that is, “ad haeresem Marcionis,” is, in any case, certainly a strong exaggeration; but perhaps some genuine kernel is contained in the report. For us, the fact that there were non-Davidic psalms in the churches of Marcion must suffice.

[This closes “C. Untersuchungen” (pp. 124*–156*) and, with it, the whole of Harnack’s reconstruction of Marcion’s Apostolikon proper. In the source, a two-page unnumbered half-title leaf follows immediately — reading simply “BEILAGE IV: DAS EVANGELIUM MARCIONS” — before Beilage IV’s own introduction begins at p. 159*. Beilage III’s own opening introduction on witnesses and method (pp. 39*–64*) has since also been translated and verified in full, and appears above, so this reconstruction is complete end to end.]

These notes apply to the Apostolikon reconstruction as a whole. General, project-wide notes are given once, here, at the start; notes specific to an individual letter are gathered under that letter’s own heading below and grow as each letter is added.