The Witnesses: 1. Tertullian

[p. 42*]

1. Tertullian.

The Fifth Book against Marcion¹, composed by Tertullian perhaps only a considerable time after A.D. 208/9 and in any case after De carne, De anima, and De resurrectione, is among his ripest and best achievements. It is true that the work no longer sparkles and gleams as the earlier ones do, but the old Christian and literary energy remains. A commendable objectivity, free of digressions and circumlocutions, distinguishes the polemic and the expositions².

Tertullian’s sole purpose in this book was to refute the heretic out of his own Apostolikon — that is, out of what he had allowed to stand. One therefore has, as a rule, no way of establishing, with regard to the numerous sections that Tertullian passes over, whether they stood in M.’s text or not. Since, in the course of the polemic, Tertullian passes over sections ever more frequently so as not to repeat himself — even where they offered him good material³ — we know the text of the letters that Tertullian treated first, in M.’s wording, better than that of the ones examined later⁴. The order, however, in which Tertullian conducted his examination is that of the Marcionite collection, namely: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, Philemon. That M. mutilated the Pauline letters “even as to their number” [etiam de numero], Tertullian remarks [p. 43*] expressly (V, 1 fin.) — that is, as V, 21 establishes, the Pastoral Epistles were missing. He likewise notes the “falsification” also with regard to the titles, in that he represents the title “To the Laodiceans” as a Marcionite “interpolation” (V, 17 init., and already V, 11).

If in these instances he has drawn attention to M.’s interventions, remarks about others are not lacking elsewhere either, even though, strictly speaking, they lay outside his plan. These are most welcome to us; for without them our knowledge of the Marcionite text would be far more limited still. First, Tertullian occasionally identifies individual words that M. either expunged or inserted, namely: V, 3, at Gal. 2:5, οὐδέ [“nor,” inserted]; V, 10, at 1 Cor. 15:47, κύριος [“Lord”] for Ἀδάμ [“Adam”]; V, 15, at 1 Thess. 2:15, ἰδίους added to προφήτας [“their own prophets”]; V, 16, at 2 Thess. 1:8, ἐν πυρὶ φλογός [“in flaming fire,” struck out]; V, 17, at Eph. 2:15, αὐτοῦ [“his”] after σαρκί [“flesh,” struck out]; V, 17, at Eph. 2:20, καὶ προφητῶν [“and prophets”] alongside ἀποστόλων [“apostles,” struck out]; V, 18, at Eph. 3:9, ἐν before τῷ θεῷ [“in God,” struck out]; V, 18, at Eph. 6:2, the words ἥτις ἐστὶν ἐντολὴ πρώτη ἐν ἐπαγγελίᾳ [“which is the first commandment with a promise,” struck out]. Beyond this, he makes more extensive remarks at five places: on Gal. 3:17ff he reports (V, 3, 4) that M. struck out everything in the letter relating to Abraham, with the exception of one passage (4:22), which he allowed to stand — just as something also falls from a thief’s grasp (“the heretic’s industry has erased the mention of Abraham...” “let Marcion’s sponge blush! except that I am going over again, superfluously, what he took away...” “as it is customary for something to fall from thieves’ plunder as evidence, so I believe Marcion too left behind the last mention of Abraham”); on the letter to the Romans (ch. 1) he remarks (V, 13): “how many pits Marcion has dug in this, his very greatest epistle, by removing what he pleased, will be evident from the integrity of our own document”; (V, 14) he leaps from ch. 8 straight to ch. 10 with the words: “here too I leap over a most ample break in the mutilated scripture,” and reports immediately afterward (loc. cit.) that M. had omitted everything that had moved the apostle to the exclamation of Rom. 11:33 (“if Marcion erased these things on purpose, what does his apostle then exclaim?” and: “if you have taken away so much from the scriptures”). On Col. 1:15, finally (V, 19), Tertullian establishes that M. removed 1:15b–16, because it was bound to displease him.

[p. 44*] These definite statements about omissions and alterations are of the greatest importance, because one can immediately read off from them the motives from which M. changed the text.

That Tertullian’s reproduction of the Marcionite text is reliable is because he exercised care and because he had almost exclusively this text before him — that he glanced back and forth at the catholic text is possible, but cannot be shown; for what he cites from it he can very well owe to his memory⁵ — this is shown by almost every page; the cases, too, in which he cites verbatim and those in which he only reports on the wording of the text can almost everywhere be distinguished. The best proof of his reliability, however, is furnished by the passages in which he offers us M.’s peculiar text without himself remarking or saying that a peculiar wording is present here. These passages rival in number those whose wording is confirmed by the secondary reporters, Adamantius and Epiphanius.

Since the motives behind M.’s textual construction and his procedure can be ascertained from what Tertullian and the other witnesses have touched on and discussed, it seems that their application to the sections of the Pauline letters left untouched by the witnesses is simply given. Yet this inference would only be legitimate if M. had proceeded entirely consistently in his incisive criticism. But that is by no means the case. The mere fact that he allowed “Abraham” to stand at one place in Galatians is a warning sign; and there are several more such instances. Neither with regard to the Old Testament citations, nor with regard to concepts such as δικαιοσύνη [“righteousness”], νόμος [“law”], and the like, can one infer his treatment of one passage from his treatment of others. It follows, rather, that Paul’s relationship to the Old Testament and to its God, as M. conceived it, must have been a rather complicated one, which by no means coincided with the unambiguous conception that his opponents ascribed to M. To this may be added: M. evidently wished to strike out as little as possible, and thus to preserve the transmitted text as far as [p. 45*] possible: there are passages enough in which one has difficulty grasping how M. could have brought himself to acknowledge them, uncorrected, alongside his teaching. To this may be added something else: since we have no grounds for assuming that he considered himself infallible in his textual criticism, and since, in his work of purification, he does not appeal to a “revelation,” he had to tell himself that, after the alleged loss of all genuine copies of the Pauline letters, he could only succeed approximately in removing, correctly and completely, the interpolations and textual falsifications “of the pseudo-apostles and the Jewish evangelists” — for it was to them that he traced the corruption of the texts (V, 19). He could, therefore, offer his text only as an approximately correct one; and that he really claimed no more than this is taught by the fact that his own disciples did not receive and regard this text as canonical. They rather continued the work of textual criticism on their own part, partly in a reactionary, partly in a progressive direction. This is still shown to us today by the history of the Marcionite biblical text within Marcion’s own church⁶, and Tertullian, Celsus, and Origen⁷ bear express witness to it. It must therefore be kept in reserve that M. overlooked some passages and did not remove contradictions, and further, that at some places we no longer have before us the original text of M. at all, but that of his disciples. This obliges us to great [p. 46*] caution with regard to analogical inferences concerning M.’s deletions and corrections, where these are not expressly attested to us.

With these preliminary remarks we might close our discussion of Tertullian as a witness to M.’s Apostolikon, were it not for one further question which, admittedly, appears, given the present state of research, to be a wholly superfluous one. “It emerges with complete certainty,” remarks Zahn (Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons I, pp. 603f., 51), “that everything which Tertullian, in Books IV and V, makes the object of his criticism as gospel or apostolic text or material, so far as he does not expressly assert the contrary, he has either translated literally from M.’s Greek Bible or freely excerpted as to its content”... “So far as I know, it has not yet been claimed that M.’s New Testament ever existed in a Latin translation, and it can, in any case, not be disputed that it lay before Tertullian in the Greek original.” This is, in fact, the prevailing — indeed, the sole accepted and never-doubted — opinion. But it has, since those words were written, been very severely shaken by the discovery of the Latin Marcionite Prologues to the Pauline letters (see above), and further, too, by the growing recognition of the influence of the Marcionite biblical text upon the catholic text of the West⁸. Neither of these two considerations, however, is yet decisive; for those Prologues might have been translated into Latin and adopted by catholics without the biblical text to which they belong — admittedly an improbable assumption — and M.’s Greek biblical text might have influenced the Latin catholic biblical text merely through the medium of Greek-Western manuscripts. But the question would be settled decisively as soon as it is shown that M.’s Apostolikon already lay before Tertullian in Latin form; and not only would this question then be settled, but a problem of the highest value for the history of the Latin Bible would also be gained; for if [p. 47*] the Marcionite church already possessed a Latin Apostolikon around A.D. 200, the question arises whether the Marcionite Latin translation of the Pauline letters is not perhaps older than the catholic one⁹.

In what follows I furnish the proof that the Marcionite Apostolikon lay before Tertullian in Latin form¹⁰, and that he examined and combated it in this form¹¹.

[p. 48*] 1. The citations from M.’s Apostolikon in Adv. Marc. V stand out sharply, lexically, syntactically, and stylistically, from Tertullian’s own language. They are therefore not freely shaped by him after the Greek, but taken over. First it should be noted that, while Tertullian himself uses “quod” rarely, and “quia” almost never, for the accusative-and-infinitive construction, both words are very frequent in this vulgar usage in these biblical citations; to this add the following observation: in De pudicitia 16 he himself renders 1 Cor. 3:16 thus: “Non scitis vos templum dei esse?” [“Do you not know that you are the temple of God?”], but in Adv. Marc. V, 6 he cites: “Nescitis quod templum dei sitis?” [“Do you not know that you are the temple of God?” — using the vulgar construction].

At Gal. 4:4 [printed 4:24] Tertullian (V, 4) gives as the Marcionite text: “Cum autem evenit impleri tempus” [“but when it came to pass that the time was fulfilled”]; this is an awkward translation — literal at the wrong point — of ὅτε δὲ ἦλθε τὸ πλήρωμα χρόνου. That Tertullian translated in this way himself is very improbable, and indeed he cites this verse a few chapters later on his own account (V, 8) and writes: “At ubi tempus expletum est” [“But when the time was fulfilled”]. That earlier wording, then, was handed down to him.

At Gal. 6:2 the Apostolikon of M. is cited (V, 4): “Onera vestra invicem sustinete” [“bear one another’s burdens”] (“onus sustinere” occurs in Plautus); but two lines later Tertullian himself writes: “Invicem onera vestra portate.”

Would Tertullian, the virtuoso stylist, have written on his own account, at 1 Cor. 3:19 (V, 6): “Deprehendens sapientes in nequitia illorum” for ὁ δρασσόμενος τ. σοφοὺς ἐν τ. πανουργίᾳ αὐτῶν [“he who catches the wise in their craftiness”]? Would he, on his own account (V, 7), have translated 1 Cor. 5:7: “Ut sitis nova consparsio, sicut estis azymi?” [“that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened”]? Is it his own helplessness that leads him, at 1 Cor. 9:9 (V, 7), to render μὴ τῶν βοῶν μέλει τῷ θεῷ as “numquid de bobus pertinet ad dominum” [“does it pertain to the Lord about oxen?”]? Or his own stylistic insensitivity that renders 2 Cor. 3:15 (V, 11) by “ad hodiernum usque velamen id ipsum in corde eorum” and 2 Cor. 3:18 (loc. cit.) by “eadem imagine transfigurari”?

At 2 Cor. 5:17 (V, 12) the Apostolikon reads: “Si qua ergo conditio nova in Christo” [“if then there is any new creation in Christ”]; but in De ieiunio 14 Tertullian himself writes: “Quodsi nova conditio in Christo.”

At 2 Thess. 2:11 (V, 16), according to the Apostolikon: “Propter hoc erit eis (in) instinctum fallaciae” [rendering διὰ τοῦτο ἔσται αὐτοῖς [p. 49*] (εἰς) ἐνέργειαν πλάνης, “for this reason a working of error shall be sent to them”]. Yet in his own explanation Tertullian avoids instinctus and writes instead “to drive them into error” [ad impingendos eos in errorem] or “the sending-in of deceit” [fallaciae immissio].

At Eph. 1:12 (V, 17) one reads in the biblical text: “praesperavimus in Christum” [“we have before-hoped in Christ”]; this word, so far as I know, does not otherwise occur, and is the slavish translation of προηλπικότες [“who had before hoped”; see further on this passage below as well].

At Eph. 1:20 (V, 17) the Apostolikon reads: “inoperatus est [in] Christum valentiam suam” [rendering ἐνήργησεν ἐν Χριστῷ τὴν ἰσχὺν αὐτοῦ, “he wrought his might in Christ”]; but Tertullian himself avoids the word “valentia” and the literal, Graecizing inoperari (on this rare word see Rönsch, Itala und Vulgata, p. 194).

At Eph. 2:10 (V, 17) the Apostolikon offers “Ipsius sumus factura” [= ποίημα, “we are his workmanship”]; but Tertullian himself always uses “opus”; and just before, at Eph. 2:2 (V, 17), one reads: “Illos delictis mortuos, in quibus ingressi erant” [“those dead in trespasses, in which they had walked”]. Who could credit Tertullian with such Latin (rendering νεκροὺς ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις, ἐν αἷς περιεπατήσατε)?

At Eph. 5:18 (V, 18) the Apostolikon offered: “Inebriari vino dedecore” [“to be drunk with wine, unto disgrace”]; here an adjective “dedecoris” must be assumed, which Tertullian does not otherwise use.

At Eph. 6:17 (III, 14): “galeam salutaris” [rendering τὴν περικεφαλαίαν τοῦ σωτηρίου, “the helmet of salvation”] — hence “salutare” as a substantivized adjective!

At Col. 1:24 (V, 19): “Adimplere reliqua pressurarum” [rendering τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων, “to fill up what is lacking of the afflictions”], and, shortly before, at 1:21: “Nos quondam alienatos et inimicos sensu in malis operibus redigit in gratiam” [“us, once estranged and enemies in mind by evil works, he restores to grace”]. Does Tertullian translate so clumsily on his own account?

At Phil. 1:18 (V, 20) the Apostolikon renders thus: “Nihil mea, sive causatione sive veritate Christus annuntietur” [rendering τί γάρ; εἴτε προφάσει εἴτε ἀληθείᾳ Χριστὸς καταγγέλλεται, “What does it matter to me? Whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed”]; but already in the very next line Tertullian himself writes, more intelligibly: “sive ex causatione sive ex veritate.”

At Phil. 2:6 (V, 20): “Non rapinam existimavit pariari deo” [“he did not consider it a seizure to be made equal to God”]; but in Adversus Praxean 6 Tertullian himself writes: “esse se aequalem deo” [“that he is equal to God”]; for “pariari” is vulgar and Graecizing, even though “pariare” is found a couple of times in Tertullian (compare Rönsch, loc. cit., p. 168).

[p. 50*] These examples will suffice to prove that the biblical text which Tertullian follows in Book V is not a translation of Tertullian’s own making; rather, it bears all the well-known marks of a slavish, at points unintelligibly literal, vulgar, and Graecizing Latin Bible version. The Marcionite Apostolikon, then, lay before Tertullian in Latin translation¹².

2. But there is, further, a series of particular observations that prove this fact directly and irrefutably:

At Gal. 3:26, as all critics assume, the Marcionite text must, according to Tert. V, 3, have read: “Omnes enim filii estis fidei” [“for you are all sons of faith”] (original text: πάντες γὰρ υἱοὶ θεοῦ ἐστε διὰ τῆς πίστεως, “for you are all sons of God through faith”). Tertullian himself even comments on precisely this text. Yet it is entirely out of the question that Marcion should have arbitrarily altered the original text here¹³; for that we have become sons of the good God through faith is one of his principal doctrines — why should he have substituted “sons of faith” for it? The reading, on the other hand, is most simply explained as a scribal error (dittography) in the Latin: “filii fidei” instead of “filii dei”; whereupon “per fidem” [through faith] was naturally lost. The text, then, lay before Tertullian in Latin translation; this conclusion is unavoidable¹⁴.

Further, in the middle of the long citation of Gal. 4:22–24, one reads (V, 4): “Haec sunt enim duo testamenta” [“for these are two testaments”] — or “two [p. 51*] ostensiones” — as we find it translated — “one from Mount Sinai,” etc. Tertullian found, then (no other interpretation is possible), in the Marcionite codex that he followed, “ostensiones”; but he recalled that the text familiar to him himself offered “testamenta” (διαθῆκαι), and introduced this word first, only then conscientiously to replace it with the word that stood in the codex. That he took “ostensiones” to be a paraphrase of “testamenta” (διαθῆκαι) — and did not charge M. with a falsification of the text¹⁵ — was, admittedly, a magnanimous and untenable assumption. Marcion changed the text because he did not want two Testaments to be spoken of here, as though there existed a formal kinship between the dispensations of the Creator of the world and of the good God (in Luke 22:20, too, M. struck out the word “new” before “Testament,” because he did not recognize two Testaments), but only of two “proofs.” The Greek word that he substituted was probably ἐνδείξεις or ἐπιδείξεις. In Latin biblical manuscripts “ostensio” stands at Rom. 3:25, 26; 2 Cor. 8:24; Phil. 1:28 for ἔνδειξις, at 1 Cor. 2:4 for ἀπόδειξις (at Luke 1:80 for ἀνάδειξις), and Tertullian himself writes, Adv. Marc. V, 11: “Accidentia antecedit ipsius rei ostensio” [“the display of the thing itself precedes its accidents”]. But whatever the Greek word may have been — Tertullian had, in the Marcionite Apostolikon, “ostensio” before him here; it was, therefore, Latin¹⁶.

[p. 52*] Further: at V, 8 Tertullian cites Eph. 4:8: “Captivam duxit captivitatem, ‘data dedit filiis hominum,’ i.e. donativa, quae charismata dicimus” [“he led captivity captive, ‘he gave gifts to the sons of men,’ that is, donativa, which we call charismata”]. Had “data” not been handed down to him, and had he been translating independently, he would not have needed to interpret the word as “donativa,” but would simply have written “donativa” straightaway¹⁷ — so “data” was given to him.

At Col. 1:17 (καὶ αὐτός ἐστι πρὸ πάντων, “and he is before all things”) Tertullian (V, 19) renders thus: “Posuit apostolus: ‘Et ipse est ante omnes.’ quomodo enim ante omnes, si non ante omnia?” [“The apostle has stated: ‘And he himself is before all.’ For how could he be before all persons, if not before all things?”]. If Tertullian had wished to arrive at “ante omnia” here, he could, following the Greek text, have simply translated it so; but since he did not do this, it is evident that the text “ante omnes” [“before all (persons)”], and not πρὸ πάντων [“before all (things)”], lay before him.

Further, at Eph. 1:12 Tertullian read, following the Marcionite codex (V, 17): “Ut simus in laudem gloriae nos, qui praesperavimus in Christum” [“that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who have before-hoped in Christ”], and remarks on his own account: “Qui ‘praesperasse’ potuerant, i.e. ante sperasse in deum, quam venisset, nisi Judaei?” [“And who could have ‘before-hoped’ — that is, hoped in God before he came — except the Jews?”]. Here it is surely evident that he read the word “praesperare,” offensive to cultivated ears, in the codex, and renders it by “sperare antequam” [to hope before].

1 Cor. 6:20 Tertullian (V, 7) renders, as a report, thus: “Jam nunc quomodo honorabimus, quomodo tollemus deum [p. 53*] in corpore perituro?” [“how, then, shall we now honor God, how shall we take away God in a perishable body?”]. The word “tollemus” [we shall take away] is an extremely old Latin variant (= ἄρατε, i.e. a misreading of ἄρα γε; see below in the apparatus to this passage), or rather the extremely old Latin reading that later found its way, in isolated cases, into the East (against this, the genuine text simply reads: δοξάσατε τὸν θεόν, “glorify God”). How does Tertullian come to introduce it here, if the text lay before him in Greek?

We know from Adamantius that the Marcionite text of Gal. 6:17 read in an altogether singular way: τῶν δ᾿ ἄλλων εἰκῇ κόπους μοι μηδεὶς παρεχέσθω [“let no one else needlessly cause me trouble”] (as against the ordinary text: τοῦ λοιποῦ κόπους κτλ., “from now on let no one trouble me”) — ἐγὼ γὰρ τὰ στίγματα κτλ. [“for I bear the marks...”]. Tertullian writes: “Persecutores vocat Christi; cum vero adicit stigmata Christi,” etc. [“He calls them persecutors of Christ; but when he adds the marks of Christ,” etc.]. That “τῶν ἄλλων” [“of the others”] can only have arisen from the Latin translation of τοῦ λοιποῦ as “de ceteris” [“concerning the others”], which has thus influenced the Greek text. Tertullian must have had before him either the Latin text “de ceteris” — which occasioned his mistaken paraphrase that finds enemies of Christ here — or else the Greek text already corrected after the Latin. The former is far more probable. The Marcionite text, as will be shown below, agrees at very many places with the recension found in codices D and G; but not only with this, but also word-for-word exactly with their Latin translation d, g, and with the Old Latin [Itala] tradition generally. If this concerned only a few passages, Tertullian might have hit upon the same translation by chance; but given the large number of passages, this assumption is impossible. It is therefore incomprehensible that Zahn, despite this state of affairs, has not allowed his hypothesis — that the Marcionite text lay before Tertullian in Greek — to be shaken. Were that the case, one would have to suppose that, at many points, Tertullian could somehow foresee in advance how the later Latin translator would render the text! It is thus proven that Tertullian had the Marcionite Apostolikon before him in Latin¹⁸. On the consequences of this recognition, see the investigation that [p. 54*] follows the printing of the text. Since the Latin translation is slavishly literal, it presents scarcely any difficulty anywhere to ascertain the Greek text underlying the translation. It is added to this that the Fifth Book against Marcion has not come down to us in poor condition.

But let it also be emphasized here, in closing, that Tertullian, as regards his textual statements, worked carefully and is therefore reliable. This holds not only for the verbatim citations, but also for the reports on M.’s textual readings. Where we are able to check him against secondary reporters, he as a rule passes the test — indeed, often enough, down to the smallest detail — so that the initial scepticism must, on close study, vanish and turn into grateful acknowledgment. Naturally, enough passages remain, even so, among the reports, where no certainty can be gained (particularly as regards word order and the like) as to exactly how M.’s text read.