A. Introduction: The Witnesses

A. Introduction [pp. 159*–165*]

[p. 159*] Marcion’s Gospel.

A. Introduction.

As for M.’s Apostolikon, so too for the Gospel, Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Adamantius are the principal witnesses. The yield furnished by the statements of other witnesses (from Hippolytus and Origen down to the Armenian Esnik)¹ is not great.

The principles by which Tertullian and Epiphanius have dealt with M.’s Gospel are the same as with the Apostolikon: they wish to show that, even according to M.’s Gospel, despite all falsification, Christ is the Son of the Creator of the world, and that this [Creator] is the true God. It follows from this that the passages which they pass over in M.’s Gospel may very well have stood in this Gospel, whether unfalsified or falsified; for even where both of them state, in some particularly grave cases or in passing, that M. omitted or falsified this or that passage, this is, given the plan they pursue, only incidental. In Tertullian’s case, moreover, such remarks in his treatment of M.’s Gospel are much rarer than in his treatment of the Apostolikon; yet without intending to, he brings us, in his citations and reports, knowledge of M.’s text at many points. What was set out in the introduction to the Apostolikon concerning the witnesses holds good here too; but a few particular remarks are still necessary. M.’s Gospel has been reconstructed several times in the last century; but the reconstructions after Hahn (Das Evangelium [p. 160*] M.s in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt [“The Gospel of M. in its original form”], 1823), who acquired the foundational merit for the work, were unfavorably determined by tendency-criticism, even though Volkmar, in a commendable manner, freed himself from it (1850, ‘52). But since he mixed in much that was subjective and also did not fully survey the sources, it was only Zahn, in his Geschichte des Kanons [“History of the Canon”] (1892), who substantially did justice to the task. That even this reconstruction, however, is not yet definitive in either material or formal respects, the following new attempt will, it is hoped, demonstrate.

1. Tertullian.

In substance we know much more about M.’s Gospel through Tertullian (Book IV, third edition)² than about the Apostolikon, because he touches on most of the pericopes there, whereas here he skips over entire chapters; but as regards the textual form in detail, this can as a rule be ascertained much more securely for the letters than for the Gospel.³ Tertullian confines himself, for the latter, far more often to brief reports, and toward the end of the work he renounces verbatim communication almost entirely. Yet even in his reports he has held to M.’s text with commendable conscientiousness, as the testimony of the secondary reporters proves at not a few points. Thus he remains our principal source for the Gospel as for the Apostolikon. The energy with which he pursues his opponent, and his diligence, are admirable and give the work — which is, moreover, written with a degree more freshness than Book V — an honored place in the literature of the early church. —

In what language did M.’s Gospel lie before Tertullian? Since it has been shown, for the Apostolikon, that he read it in Latin, it is in itself highly probable that here too [p. 161*] his source-text was Latin; for if the Marcionites in Rome and Carthage already had the Pauline letters in Latin translation, then they will have read the Gospel all the more certainly in this language. But the argument here is somewhat more difficult, since, as noted, Tertullian for the most part gives only reports, in which the question of language can only rarely be raised, especially since the Latin translation, like all old translations, will have adhered very closely to the original. Nevertheless the proof can be furnished here too; for (1) the apparatus will show that Tertullian not only goes throughout, or almost throughout, with the Western text as attested by D-Itala-Vulgate, but at a considerable number of places also with the Latin Western text without D. In all these cases Tertullian would have had to coincide, by mere chance in his own translation — for according to the judgment of all previous critics he is supposed to have translated extemporaneously, on the spot — with Itala manuscripts or the Vulgate, respectively.

(2) That the Latin of the Bible text here too is not his own Latin but a foreign one can still be shown at a few points, despite the report-character of his communications. One reads in him the same Latin as in the Apostolikon, e.g.: “Videte manus meas et pedes, quia ipse ego sum” [“See my hands and feet, that it is I myself”] (IV, 43), or “‘Quoniam,’⁴ he says, ‘recipistis advocationem vestram’” [“‘Because,’ he says, ‘you have received your consolation’”] (Luke 6:24 = ὅτι ἀπέχετε τὴν παράκλησιν ὑμῶν, IV, 15), or IV, 18 “Ecce ego mitto angelum . . . qui praeparet viam tuam” [“Behold, I send an angel . . . who shall prepare your way”] (Luke 7:27; praeparet = praeparabit; here only the reading κατασκευάσει is attested; but praeparet is not transmitted with complete certainty), or IV, 19 “Ab eo, qui non habet, etiam quod habere se putat auferetur ei” [“From him who has not, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away”] (Luke 8:18), or IV, 21 “Qui mei confusus fuerit” [“Whoever is ashamed of me”] (Luke 9:26), or IV, 26 “adpropinquavit in vos regnum dei” [“the kingdom of God has drawn near unto you”] (Luke 11:20), or IV, 33 “Si in mamona iniusto fideles non extitistis” [“If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon”] (Luke 16:11), and the like.

(3) More striking, however, are the passages in which he first gives the Bible text as transmitted to him, but then renders it in his own [p. 162*] language. Luke 6:24 he had (see above) rendered by “recipistis advocationem vestram”; but that was, after all, too much of a good thing in literal rendering for him, and so he introduced it instead with the words: “divites solatio iuvantur” [“the rich are helped by their comfort”]. In IV, 11, on Luke 5:36, he wishes to show that Jesus’s manner of giving “similitudines” [comparisons], together with the word itself, is [drawn] from the Old Testament; accordingly he cites the saying of Ps. 77:2: “aperiam in parabolam os meum” [“I will open my mouth in a parable”], and adds: “id est similitudinem” [“that is, a comparison”]. His text, then, did not offer him the saying of Luke 5:36 as “ἔλεγε δὲ καὶ παραβολήν” [“and he also spoke a parable”], but as “dicebat autem et similitudinem” [“and he also spoke a comparison”]; otherwise he himself would have kept the word “parabola,” which he uses so often, and could have spared himself the argument. In IV, 21 he gives the text (Luke 9:24) as “qui voluerit animam salvam facere” [“whoever wishes to save his soul”], but he himself then replaces this with “servare.” Particularly striking is the rendering, in IV, 23, of Luke 9:41: “O genitura incredula, quousque ero apud vos?” [“O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you?”]. This clumsily literal “genitura” (= γενέα), inadmissible in cultivated speech, he immediately replaces, however, by writing good Latin ten lines further on, and correcting elsewhere too: “O natio incredula, quamdiu ero vobiscum.” Note finally, too, that his text everywhere offered him “beati” (= μακάριοι), but that this word, ennobled by the Church though it is profane, was not yet quite to his taste; he replaces it with “felices” when he himself is speaking (see IV, 25 on Luke 10:23, and IV, 26 on Luke 11:28).

Now, however, it is believed that at one point it can be demonstrated that the text lay before Tertullian in Greek. On Luke 6:20 Tertullian writes (IV, 14): “‘Beati mendici’ — for so the interpretation of the word that stands in the Greek demands — ‘because theirs is the kingdom of God.’” Looked at closely, however, it is much more probable, even at this point, that he had before him a Latin text which offered him not “mendicus” but, like all the Latin witnesses, “pauper.” But since, for the sake of the Old Testament prophecy (Ps. 81:3f; 71:4; 71:12ff; Ps. 9:18ff; 112:5ff; 1 Kings 2:8; Isa. 3:14f; 10:1f — he cites all these passages, and in all of them stands “mendicus”) he wanted to arrive at “mendicus,” he introduced this word here on his own account as the one corresponding, in his view, to the Greek original familiar to him. If, on the other hand, he himself translated freely, he needed no roundabout [p. 163*] justifications to make, but could simply write, without any grounds given: “Beati mendici.”⁵

One may not, therefore, appeal to this passage, and it must accordingly be recognized that, just as the Marcionite Apostolikon, so too the Gospel already lay before Tertullian in the Latin language.

Tertullian’s refutation of M. in this book is certainly an original work; but a comparison of a few passages with those in Irenaeus, Origen, Ephraem, and Epiphanius shows that Tertullian must already have known a polemical work against M. that already contained counter-arguments to the Marcionite interpretations of the Gospel. Unfortunately, however, the number of these passages is so small, and the points of agreement so confined to brief little sentences, that no conclusions can be drawn regarding this older polemical work.

2. Adamantius.

After what has been set out above (p. 54*ff) concerning this witness, no further investigation is needed here. That his testimony is, as a rule, of lesser importance than that of Tertullian and Epiphanius holds true here as well, since he has drawn not from M. himself but from counter-writings; it also remains uncertain at several points whether they derive from M.’s Gospel at all. It is added to this that citations from a Synoptic Gospel are always more uncertain than those from the letters. That the underlying text and Rufinus’s Latin translation often diverge considerably increases still further the difficulties of using them. The citations from the second Dialogue are, as with the Apostolikon, the most reliable. At a few points one must come to the conclusion that the Marcionite text itself has undergone alterations.

[p. 164*]

3. Epiphanius.

The testimony of Epiphanius (see above, p. 62*ff) is even more important for the Gospel than for the Apostolikon, for he has excerpted 78 (77) passages (there, only 40). Of these 78 passages, 35 contain statements about M.’s alterations to the text, whether by omissions or by corrections. Since Tertullian, in the case of the Gospel, has noted omissions far more rarely than in the case of the Apostolikon, these statements of Epiphanius’s are of inestimable value; without them, our knowledge of the Marcionite procedure would be far more meager. The remaining excerpts — mostly more extensive than the preceding ones — Epiphanius had made in order to refute M.’s teachings on their own basis; but they too are not unimportant for establishing the text. Carelessness and misunderstandings are not lacking, because Epiphanius had gathered the material a considerable time before the composition of the Panarion, and did not everywhere still understand it himself when he made subsequent use of it. What needed correction here has been done by Zahn and Holl. It also happens that he charges M. with falsifications where the latter has, after all, only offered a text also attested elsewhere. Beyond the excerpts from the Marcionite Bible, Epiphanius also offers, in the great chapter against M., some further material for establishing the Marcionite text of the Gospel; it has flowed from older polemical writings. Nothing more specific can, unfortunately, be said.

4.

It is certain that Irenaeus knew Marcion’s Bible (Iren. I, 27), and the same holds of Origen (probably also of Hippolytus) and of Isidore of Pelusium (see ep. I, 371). It is, on the other hand, at least doubtful whether Adamantius himself had M.’s Gospel in hand, or only his predecessors, whom he copies out; Jerome did not know it. How long it survived after the time of Theodoret, who destroyed a very great number of copies in his diocese, we do not know. In the Empire, the imperial edicts that the codices of heretics were to be burned (see Arcadius and Honorius, A.D. 398; Theodosian Code XVI, 5, 14) gradually brought about its destruction. Yet the Gospel will have survived as long as the sect itself.

[p. 165*]

5.

That the Gospel was also translated into Syriac follows from the spread of the Marcionite church in the East. Ephraem had examined it, as did, superficially, the author of the Syriac (preserved in Armenian) anti-Marcionite exposition of the parables of the Lord. He knows that it began with the time of Pilate, further that passages from John did not stand in it, and that Luke 5:34 was found in the Gospel. But he gives the text of this saying as the catholic Syrians read it (μὴ δύνασθε τοὺς υἱοὺς … ποιῆσαι, “you cannot make the sons…”) and not as M. read it (μὴ δύνανται οἱ υἱοί, “the sons cannot…”). Here as elsewhere, Schäfers’s claims (p. 208ff) are not well founded, that this Syriac polemicist gave some of his citations after M.’s Bible.⁶ I have gone through the gospel citations that occur in the work and have nowhere come upon textual forms that are, or could be, Marcionite. He even cites (p. 38f) the parable of the wicked vinedressers (Luke 20:9ff), which M. had certainly struck out. It is of interest that he cites (p. 79) the well-known apocryphon:⁷ “He who is near me is near the fire,⁸ but he who is far from me is far from life” (so, and not as elsewhere: “…from the kingdom”); but not even Schäfers claims that this derives from M.’s Gospel.

From Ephraem only a meager yield can be gained for the text.

[This closes “A. Einleitung” (pp. 159*–165*). The heading “B. ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ” and the opening of the reconstruction proper follow immediately below, on the same printed page.]