Bibliographic Note
German original: Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1921 (first edition); second, improved and enlarged edition, 1924. This translation follows the 1921 first edition. Beilage IV: Das Evangelium Marcions, pp. 159*–237* of the separately paginated Beilagen in that printing, immediately followed by Beilage V. The 1924 second edition is the form normally cited in the scholarly literature; its Beilagen were revised and re-paginated (the reconstructed Gospel text begins at p. 183* there). Starred page numbers in this volume are the 1921 numbers.
Contents of Beilage IV, in Harnack’s order, confirmed against page images:
- A. Einleitung (“Introduction,” pp. 159*–164*): a discussion of the witnesses, organized source by source: an unheaded opening, “1. Tertullian” (160*–163*), “2. Adamantius” (163*), “3. Epiphanius” (164*), and two further unnumbered paragraphs on the remaining patristic witnesses and the Syriac translation.
- B. ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ (“Gospel,” pp. 165*–221*): the reconstruction proper, chapter by chapter, keyed to Luke’s chapter divisions in Roman numerals. Marcion’s Gospel had no birth or infancy narrative and no genealogy; it opened with what corresponds to Luke 3 (the dating of John the Baptist’s ministry and Jesus’s arrival at Capernaum). Harnack does not restart the count as Marcion’s chapter I. He keeps Luke’s numbering (III through XXIV), which is the system used in every Evangelion chapter title in this edition.
- C. Untersuchungen zum Evangelium Marcions (“Investigations on Marcion’s Gospel,” pp. 221*–237*): a concluding excursus, the structural counterpart to the Apostolikon’s own “C. Untersuchungen”: an unheaded opening, “1. Der Charakter des von Marcion benutzten Textes” (“The character of the text used by Marcion,” 222*–~229*), “2. Marcion und die drei anderen Evangelien” (“Marcion and the three other Gospels,” 230*–~236*), and a short closing “Anhang: Marcions Evangelium und Tatians Diatessaron” (“Appendix: Marcion’s Gospel and Tatian’s Diatessaron,” 236*–237*).
Method of reconstruction: as with the Apostolikon, Harnack builds up the Marcionite text of each verse from the same four kinds of witness: (1) Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem Book IV (cited “Tert. IV, n”), whose treatment of the Gospel relies far more heavily on brief summary reports (Referate) than on verbatim citation, especially toward the end of the book; (2) the Dialogue of Adamantius (cited “Adamant.” or “Dial.”); (3) Epiphanius, Panarion 42, whose 78 excerpted passages (against only 40 for the Apostolikon) are, for the Gospel, an unusually important source precisely because Tertullian records omissions so much less often here than for the letters; (4) Ephraem and the Syriac tradition, of limited yield. Sections for which no witness reports either the presence or the wording of Marcion’s text are marked unbezeugt (“unattested”); Harnack then gives his own judgment on whether the passage was probably present, probably altered, or probably absent. This method is stated once here rather than repeated throughout.
Source used for this translation: the same public-domain scan of the 1921 first edition (Internet Archive, item marciondasevange00harn_0) used throughout this project, checked directly against page images, not against OCR alone, page by page as each is translated.
Page markers: original printed starred pagination is marked [p. 159*] … [p. 237*] and so on continuously through the book, following the same convention as Book One.
Notes: footnotes are Harnack’s own critical apparatus. As in Book One, they are collected at the end of each chapter under the heading Notes and Apparatus and numbered straight through the chapter, and most begin with the starred page of the 1921 printing on which they stand. Greek is reproduced as printed, with a bracketed English gloss added by the translator at first occurrence of a clause; Latin quotations are likewise reproduced as printed (in italics), with an English translation supplied immediately after. Anything added by the translator beyond a bracketed gloss is labelled Translator’s note.
Verification: every page of this part was verified against the 1921 page images after translation, and a record of that verification is retained by the translator.