How to read this volume
Albrecht Ritschl wrote a continuous argument, not a reconstructed text. This book is the English of Das Evangelium Marcions und das kanonische Evangelium des Lucas (Tübingen: Osiander’sche Buchhandlung, 1846): the title page, dedication, preface, contents, introduction, both books, the notes, and the errata leaf. The printed page numbers are marked throughout, so any passage can be checked against the Munich copy.
His notes stay with the page they belong to. In this reading text they are numbered continuously within each of his chapters. Each note still carries the printed key, such as [p. 5, n. 1]. Greek is given as he printed it. A substantial Latin quotation is kept in italics, with an English rendering in brackets. Nothing in those lines is a True Testament reading. The translation does not put house words in his mouth, and it does not soften the charge he is answering. Where he says the Church Fathers accused Marcion of mutilation, that is his word for their charge.
What the argument is
In 1846 Ritschl holds that the Gospel known from Marcion is not a mutilation of canonical Luke. He holds that it is the original stock, which he calls Ur-Luke, and that the canonical Gospel is a later revision of that stock. Book One examines the Church Fathers, the remains of Marcion’s Gospel, and the Apostolikon. Book Two examines the tendency, plan, discourses, and date of the canonical Gospel. That is the 1846 book. It is the book printed here.
What this book is not
Ritschl later withdrew this thesis. That later writing is not translated here, and it is not allowed to change the 1846 argument. This is a translation of a dated scholarly book. It is not a new reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel, and it is not the True Testament.
Second Edition, October 2026. For this second edition the translation was read again against Ritschl’s printed German, page by page, from the Munich scans of the 1846 printing, and every proposed change was confirmed independently against the page image before it was made. The revision corrects places where the English said something other than Ritschl. On p. 34 Hahn’s view has no advantage over Eichhorn’s in agreeing with history; the English had said it has no agreement with history at all. On p. 158 the reason Hahn supposes concerns the one passage, Galatians 3:14, not the others. A note on p. 37 again says that the report about Cerdo would not settle the question even if it were true. Several English renderings of Latin and Greek quotations follow their grammar again: in Tertullian on p. 41 God prefers mercy to washing and to sacrifice; on pp. 73 and 76 Jesus is cast out on account of a single proverb, not deservedly; in Justin on p. 135 Jesus is the one who renamed Peter; on p. 170 Philemon alone was spared by its brevity; and on p. 190 the Greek reads ὁς, “he who,” as printed. Where Ritschl reports the views of Hahn, De Wette and Schleiermacher in indirect speech, the English marks them as theirs, and where he writes wohl, “probably,” the English no longer says “well” or “surely.” Ritschl’s contents page is now translated, his comparison tables display as tables, and the notes of Book One, Chapter IV are linked like all the others. His own misprints are still left as he printed them.