Chapter VI. Marcion’s Gospel and Justin

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Chapter VI

Marcion’s Gospel and the Gospel Citations in the Writings of Justin

That result—that Marcion’s Gospel does not stand in dependence upon the canonical Luke, but that the latter has rather proceeded from a revision of that original

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Gospel—is not yet properly secured by the agreement of the internal criteria alone which presented themselves in the comparison of the two Gospel writings. What is required is to subject the same result to an external test as well. For it is a fairly generally widespread view that Marcion’s contemporary, Justin the Martyr, knew and used the canonical Gospels, and thus also that of Luke;¹ and this circumstance has already been brought as an objection against Eichhorn’s view of Marcion’s Gospel, the view which we have adopted.² Should Justin’s acquaintance with the canonical Luke really prove demonstrable, our investigation as conducted thus far could not, to be sure, be undermined by that; the unresolved contradiction, however, would completely neutralize the usefulness of our investigation for the history of Gospel literature. Yet there is still a good deal to be objected against that assertion. Among the scholars cited there is even still a difference of opinion, in that Credner assumes only a very limited use of the canonical Gospels in Justin, and derives most of his citations from an apocryphal Petrine Gospel, whereas de Wette and Bindemann hold only very slight notices in Justin to be of apocryphal origin, while the majority of them are traced back to a compilation, from memory, of Matthaean and Lukan passages. One sees that this is only a quantitative difference, which does not in the least alter the opposition of that view to our investigation of Marcion’s Gospel. Yet the concession that Justin treated an apocryphal

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Gospel on the same footing as, allegedly, the canonical ones (for he derives all his knowledge of the Gospel history alike from τὰ ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων [the memoirs of the apostles]) is a serviceable weapon against the assumption that Justin used and knew the canonical Gospels at all. The application of that concession against the view of de Wette and of Bindemann has recently been made by Schwegler,³ whose principal arguments we adopt all the more readily, since this is not the place for a detailed investigation of this point.

Bindemann⁴ reckons among the citations of apocryphal origin only the following 4 cases: that Jesus was born in a cave (Dial. c. Tryph., chapter 77); that at his baptism in the Jordan a fire shone forth (ibid., chapter 88); that Jesus, as a carpenter, made plows and the like and drew people’s attention to their symbolic meaning (ibid.); and the saying of Jesus, ἐν οἷς ἂν ὑμᾶς καταλάβω, ἐν τούτοις καὶ κρίνω [in whatever state I find you, in that state I will also judge you] (ibid., chapter 47). de Wette⁵ holds to be apocryphal, besides, the addition to the words that sounded from heaven at Jesus’s baptism, ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε [I have begotten you today] (ibid., chapter 88), and the notice that the Jews declared Jesus to be a magician (ibid., chapter 69). This latter point Bindemann seems to have overlooked; the former he explains as not to the point, for the reason that that addition is also found in various manuscripts of the canonical Gospels. In spite of this, several further citations have been claimed by Credner as well as by Schwegler as non-canonical, the divergence of which from the parallels in the canonical Gospels Bindemann wishes to explain by the freedom of citation from memory. To this class belongs the phrase parallel to Matthew 11:27 and Luke 10:22: οὐδεὶς ἔγνω (γινώσκει) τὸν πατέρα εἰ μὴ ὁ υἱός, οὐδὲ τὸν υἱὸν εἰ μὴ ὁ πατήρ

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[no one knew (knows) the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father], which is found in this form, diverging from the canonical text, not only in the Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 100, and in Apology I, 63, but also, as has already been remarked above, in the Clementine Homilies. Even if it is to be granted that a recollection of words may also become fixed in a false form, that may hold for one person. But when the same form occurs not only in two different writings of one man, separated by several years, but also in the Clementines, the Recognitions, Marcion’s Gospel, in Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, an agreement of so many different persons in one error of memory cannot possibly be assumed. It is the same with the citation of Matthew 5:37: ἔστω ὑμῶν τὸ ναὶ ναὶ, καὶ τὸ οὔ οὔ [let your yes be yes, and your no be no] (Apology I, 16), with which the Clementine Homilies (3, 55; 19, 2), the Epistle of James 5:12, and again Clement of Alexandria agree. A third case is the agreement, striking in spite of its incompleteness, of the saying Ἄν μὴ ἀναγεννηθῆτε οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν [Unless you are born again, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of the heavens] (Apology I, 61) with ἐὰν μὴ ἀναγεννηθῆτε ὕδατι ζῶντι εἰς ὄνομα πατρὸς, υἱοῦ, ἁγίου πνεύματος, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν [unless you are born again with living water unto the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of the heavens] (Clementine Homilies 11, 26). That this citation does not derive from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, is probably warranted by the lack of the characteristic terminology of John, and by the circumstance that the Clementines, which polemicize against the doctrine of the Logos, will not have used the Gospel of John.⁶ Since, then, the Clementines are an Ebionite writing, it is probably to be presupposed that their author made use of the Gospel of the Hebrews; and that the citations of Justin just discussed will also have been taken from the same source is confirmed by this, that the notice of the fire appearing at Jesus’s baptism, as well as the words σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε [today I have begotten you], which Justin too has, were likewise found in that ancient Gospel.⁷ But Bindemann wishes to derive this, diverging from

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the canonical text — the agreement of the Gospel citations in the case of two entirely different men — from memory as well, and however wonderful this would already have to be, he increases the wonder still further by appealing, in support of his thesis, to the fact that there is also an agreement between the citations of Clement of Alexandria, who uses the canonical Gospels, and of Origen, and those of the Clementines and of Justin, together with a clear divergence from the canonical text.⁸ But to wish to explain precisely this striking phenomenon by the same error of memory would be to leave it unexplained, and to raise it into the realm of the miraculous. Here an agreement must be assumed in the text which both parties used, and this can be done all the more easily, since it is well known that in the times of Clement and Origen the canonical text was in great disorder, and in particular had been altered by many readings of apocryphal Gospels.⁹ If, then, those men agree, in their citations that diverge from the canonical text, with those earlier men, this is yet one further proof that Justin and the author of the Clementines will precisely not have had the canonical Gospels, but will have used chiefly apocryphal ones. And in this way the assumption of citation from memory—which one naturally cannot get around, and to which, so far as Justin is concerned, one must in any case, with Bindemann, assign a greater scope than Credner grants¹⁰—nevertheless suffers an appropriate limitation. For a multitude of forms which diverge from the canonical text cannot, when they are found both in Justin and in Clement and Origen, be traced back to memory, but presuppose precisely a divergent text.

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Do we, then, otherwise have sufficient grounds for crediting Justin with acquaintance with the canonical Gospels? The passages which Bindemann cites as quotations from the Gospel of John,¹¹ and in particular Justin’s doctrine of the Logos, are of such a kind that in part only a superficial similarity, and in part a complete independence from the fourth Gospel, must be assumed. A compelling proof that that Gospel underlies them cannot be produced at all.¹² Equally problematic is his acquaintance with the canonical Mark. For even if, in one passage,¹³ a fact is cited which we find only in Mark 3:17, still, given the uncertainty of Papias’s statement that the Gospel of Mark was composed under the authority of Peter, the much more natural explanation is that by those ἀπομνημονεύματα Πέτρου [memoirs of Peter] is meant the Gospel of Peter,¹⁴ which is evidently identical with the Gospel of the Hebrews. Against acquaintance with the canonical Gospels there testifies, further, the designation ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων [memoirs of the apostles]. It can be explained only if the idea of a canonical Gospel literature was remote from Justin. For as soon as the concept of the canonical was once established, the names of the authors of the Gospels were themselves not a matter of indifference, but rather served as the fixed points to which the concept of apostolic canonicity attached itself, as emerges clearly from the statements of Irenaeus and of Tertullian. Justin does, to be sure, also cite Old Testament passages of Scripture often without the author’s name; yet he mentions those names often enough otherwise, whereas the names of the

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canonical evangelists are sought in vain in his writings. There is the further point that even before him, in the writings of the apostolic Fathers, scarcely a trace of Gospel writings is found, still less of canonical ones, as Gieseler has convincingly demonstrated.¹⁵ From this side too, then, no preconception in favor of their use by Justin can be derived; and the testimony of Irenaeus, Clement, and Tertullian to the antiquity of the canonical Gospels, on which Bindemann relies,¹⁶ shows itself, precisely by comparison with that historical phenomenon, to be what it is, namely a dogmatic tradition, which by no arts can be transformed into a historically grounded statement. Justin’s statements as well, in which Bindemann wishes to demonstrate the idea of the inspiration of the Gospel writings,¹⁷ do not, however, contain that idea immediately, but actually only the beginnings of it, which is quite striking when one compares them with the manner in which Justin applies the concept of inspiration to the Old Testament.¹⁸ But if Bindemann explains the lack of development of the concept of inspiration by the fact that it could not be expressed over against Jews and Gentiles, it is not to be inferred from this that Justin had it notwithstanding; for if his purpose as a writer did not prevent him from alluding to it nonetheless, as the passages cited by Bindemann prove, then what emerges from those very passages is that no more than slight beginnings of the concept of inspiration with respect to the New Testament are to be found in him. The circumstance, too, that the ἀπομνημονεύματα [memoirs], as Justin reports,¹⁹ were read aloud in the assemblies of the Christians, presupposes neither the idea of their inspiration nor that of their

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canonicity.²⁰ The teachers of the Church in the second century do, after all, also cite for the most part the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, and have their knowledge of the life and teaching of Jesus partly from oral tradition, partly from that Gospel. Why, then, should there not have been read aloud, in assemblies of worship, a Gospel or Gospels which, even if they lacked the stamp of canonicity, no one nevertheless missed? For this is precisely the false presupposition on which the view of Justin’s Gospels that we contest also rests: that the concept of the canonical, and with it the canonical Gospels, had been dominant from the very beginning. The concept of canonicity is no more apostolic than the origin of the catholic Church. Both are only a result of the struggle among Jewish, Pauline, and Gnostic Christians, in the second half of the second century, which is represented by the three great teachers Clement, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, whereas Justin is not touched by it. For that reason, admittedly, the possibility still remains that Justin really did use the canonical Matthew and Luke; the necessity of this assumption, however, had to be rejected.

We have already indicated above the traces which point to Justin’s use of the Gospel of the Hebrews (or of Peter). This writing had a wide circulation in the second century, and was used by the most respected teachers of the Church, such as Hegesippus, Papias, and Ignatius.²¹ Even after the beginning of the catholic period of the Christian Church it is not neglected by Clement and Origen; Eusebius even places it only among the Antilegomena [disputed books]. But, according to the report of Epiphanius and Jerome, the Gospel of the Hebrews appears in exclusive use among the Jewish-Christian sects, and indeed at the same time under the

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name of Matthew.²² Here, then, there meet the tradition that the canonical Gospel of Matthew is supposed to have been composed originally in the Hebrew language, and the circumstance that Jerome himself had in his hands the Gospel of Matthew esteemed by the Jewish Christians, written in the Syro-Chaldean language but with Hebrew letters, and translated it both into Greek and into Latin.²³ The various statements of Jerome, according to which he once asserts outright the identity of this Gospel with the canonical Matthew, and later repeats that identity only with a restricting remark,²⁴ can be reconciled simply by this: that the two Gospels in question stood, to be sure, not in complete agreement, but still in close kinship, so that the canonical Gospel of Matthew is to be held a redaction of the Gospel of the Hebrews diverging from its original form. The circumstance also fits this well, that some remains of the Gospel of the Hebrews which have been preserved by Epiphanius and Jerome are indeed not found in Matthew, and that Jerome, for that reason, notwithstanding the asserted identity of the two writings, felt moved to translate that old Gospel into his own languages.²⁵ If, then, the kinship of the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of Matthew is raised above all doubt, and if the former was, by general admission, in use by Justin, the assumption is very natural that the citations which, in their expression and in their form, seem to be borrowed from the canonical Matthew come rather from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Yet probably not all of Justin’s Gospel fragments can be traced back to it. A number of them contain such expressions and

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forms which distinguish Luke, in a characteristic way, from the parallel passages in Matthew, and which, for that reason, given the presupposed similarity and kinship between Matthew and the Gospel of the Hebrews, must be opposed to the latter just as they are to the former. If, then, one class of theologians held the view that all of Justin’s fragments were to be traced back to the Gospel of the Hebrews,²⁶ others, on account of the Luke-like citations, have assumed in part that Justin used a Gospel harmony,²⁷ in part that it was a harmony of Luke and Matthew,²⁸ and in part that it was a Gospel of Matthew enriched from Luke.²⁹ But since the name ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων [memoirs of the apostles], and what Justin on one occasion substitutes for it, εὐαγγέλια [Gospels] (Apology I, 66), suggests the view (although he does not exactly require it either) that Justin used several Gospel writings independent of one another, the views of harmonies and the like that have been cited are superfluous. The question is rather only whether the fragments which seem to correspond to our Luke are really taken from it, or whether there perhaps underlay them the same incomplete Gospel which Marcion also used.

In the first place, it is groundless that, as Credner thinks,³⁰ an allusion to the prologue of the Gospel of Luke is to be found in Justin. He appeals once (Dial. c. Tr. [Dialogue with Trypho] 103) to τὰ ἀπομνημονεύματα ἃ φημὶ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων

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καὶ τῶν ἐκείνοις παρακολουθησάντων συντετάχθαι [to have been composed by the apostles and by those who followed them], and in these words Credner finds a look back at the one who calls himself παρακολουθηκώς [having followed closely] (Luke 1:3). But here it is overlooked that this word is still provided with the addition πᾶσιν [all things], that is, τοῖς πράγμασιν [the events] or τοῖς λόγοις [the words]. The author of the third Gospel thus presents himself as one who has followed the whole history of Jesus accurately, whereas those words of Justin mean the followers of the apostles. But whether the Gospels of Luke and of Mark are indicated by this designation, as Credner goes on to say, cannot be warranted by this expression alone. For this reason alone the formula cited could hardly appear quite exact enough to ground such inferences upon it, since it serves to introduce a notice which we find only in Luke, and thus not in a Gospel of an apostle, namely that Jesus shed drops of sweat in Gethsemane. If, then, the mention of the apostles as authors of the Gospels is in any case, at this passage, a rhetorical inaccuracy, who will vouch that the addition of the παρακολουθήσαντες ἐνείνοις [printed ἐνείνοις; the sense is ἐκείνοις, those who followed them] is meant so seriously here? For just as little as Justin, in the expression ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων [memoirs of the apostles], has definite individuals in mind as authors, just as little does the corresponding general formula οἱ παρακολουθήσαντες ἐκείνοις [those who followed them] indicate that he here means a definite person, namely Luke. The expression is therefore in any case too indistinct for Justin’s acquaintance with Luke to be inferred from it. But that Credner does this is all the more striking when one sees that he nevertheless does not want the mention of the event in Gethsemane, which is introduced precisely by that formula, traced back to the Gospel of Luke.³¹ He supports himself in this on the ground that in Luke 22:44 the expression θρόμβοι αἵματος [clots of blood] is too characteristic for this last word to have been passed over, as happens in Justin’s citation.

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This circumstance, however, is sufficiently explained by the fact that Justin’s concern is to demonstrate in Jesus the fulfillment of Psalm 22:14 (ὡσεὶ ὕδωρ ἐξεχύθη καὶ διεσκορπίσθη πάντα τὰ ὀστᾶ μου· ἐγενήθη ἡ καρδία μου ὡσεὶ κηρὸς τηκόμενος ἐν μέσῳ τῆς κοιλίας μου) [I was poured out like water, and all my bones were scattered; my heart became like wax melting in the midst of my belly]. For that purpose, however, the mention of the θρόμβοι [clots] without αἵματος [of blood] was more fitting, since through this addition the incongruence, rather than the congruence, of the two passages compared would have shown itself. We therefore have no cause to doubt that Justin knew that narrative in the form in which we read it in Luke.

Justin also has citations of the sort that seem to derive from the infancy narrative of Luke. In the first place, he knows the angel’s message to Mary and her answer (cf. Luke 1:31, 32, 35, 38),³² then the birth of Jesus with the circumstances which Luke states, that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem on account of the ἀπογραφή [registration] of Quirinus, and that the child was laid in a manger (cf. Luke 2:1–7).³³ The statement of Jesus’s age when he came to the Baptist, namely 30 years, likewise agrees with Luke 3:23 [Corrected in Ritschl’s errata: printed 6, 23], and is set in connection with some other notices which seem to be a further development of Luke 2:40.³⁴ Further, he knows Elizabeth as

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the mother of the Baptist (Dial. c. Tr. 85; cf. Luke 1:57 ff.). By contrast, a statement about the Baptist (οὗ [Ἰησοῦ] καὶ τῆς πρώτης φανερώσεως κῆρυξ προῆλθε τὸ ἐν Ἠλίᾳ γενόμενον πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν Ἰωάννῃ. [of whom [of Jesus] also, and of his first appearance, the spirit of God that had been in Elijah came forward as herald in John.] Dialogue 49; the brackets around Ἰησοῦ are Ritschl’s) seems to be less an allusion to Luke 1:17 than rather a dogmatic reflection lying very near to hand for Justin.³⁵ But one will have to restrict the citations from Luke to those points. For the story of John the Baptist and of the baptism of Jesus, which Justin touches several times in the Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 49, 51, and 88, is partly so little different in Matthew and in Luke that one cannot tell whether Justin took it from the latter, and partly the traces of the Gospel of the Hebrews which we have mentioned above indicate that it is precisely the latter which underlies the citations. The story of the temptation of Jesus by the devil, too, is clearly cited according to Matthew or the Gospel of the Hebrews (Dialogue with Trypho, chapters 103 and 125), in any case not according to Luke. For in the former passage it reads: ὁ διάβολος — γέγραπται προσελθὼν αὐτῷ καὶ πειράζων μέχρι τοῦ εἰπεῖν αὐτῷ· προσκύνησόν μοι, καὶ ἀποκρίνασθαι αὐτῷ τὸν χριστὸν· ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, σατανᾶς· κύριον τὸν θεὸν σου προσκυνήσεις καὶ αὐτῷ μόνῳ λατρεύσεις. [the devil — it is written that he came to him and tempted him, up to the point of saying to him, “Worship me,” and that the Christ answered him, “Get behind me, Satan; you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”] With this, then, the last act of the temptation is supposed to be indicated, up to which the whole temptation is said to have lasted. The demand of the devil just mentioned occupies this place only in Matthew 4:9, whereas in Luke 4:7 it occupies the second place. Also in Justin’s words, τοῦτον τὸν προφήτην (Ἰωάννην) [this prophet (John); the parentheses are Ritschl’s]

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συνεκέκλεικεν ὁ βασιλεὺς Ἡρώδης εἰς φυλακήν [King Herod shut up in prison] (Dial. c. Tr. 49), there is probably no allusion to be found to Luke 3:20, κατέκλεισε ὁ Ἡρώδης τὸν Ἰωάννην ἐν τῇ φυλακῇ [Herod shut up John in prison], because in Justin the account of his execution follows immediately, which is not reported by Luke, but in Matthew 14:3 is introduced by the words, which do, to be sure, diverge somewhat: Η. κρατήσας τὸν Ἰ. ἔδησεν αὐτὸν καὶ ἔθετο ἐν τῇ φυλακῇ [Herod (Η.), having seized John (Ἰ.), bound him and put him in prison]. This will not, however, prevent us from holding the wording in Justin to be a citation from memory of this Matthean passage. These remarks on the narratives of the baptism and the temptation were not made with the intention of inferring immediately from them that Justin had not known them in the Lukan form. To make such a use of Justin’s silence would be inadmissible. What matters, however, is to restrict the actual direct indications of the prehistory of Luke as precisely and as clearly as possible. But even these are of such a kind that it is very doubtful whether they may have been drawn from the canonical Luke, since they contain all sorts of features in which they diverge from it. According to Justin (Dial. c. Tr. 78), Jesus is born in a cave near Bethlehem, a report which is also found elsewhere in apocryphal Gospels and in the Church Fathers,³⁶ but of which Luke knows nothing, who merely reports: ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ — ἔτεκε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς — καὶ ἀνέκλινεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ φάτνῃ· διότι οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος ἐν τῷ καταλύματι. [it came to pass, while they were there — she bore her son — and she laid him in the manger, because there was no place for them in the lodging.] (Luke 2:6, 7.) One might think that Justin’s statement could at least be reconciled with this one of Luke’s. But whereas according to the former it is natural that the child is laid in a manger in the cave used as a stable, this circumstance is motivated in Luke by the overcrowding of the inn; and there is the further point that that cave is supposed to have been situated in the neighborhood of Bethlehem, whereas this is not to be assumed in Luke’s account. Notwithstanding

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this, this divergence of Justin’s from Luke is not to be pressed [printed: premirt], since it may well be assumed that Justin inserted into Luke’s account the report that had come to him from elsewhere. By contrast, there lies an irreconcilable difference between Justin’s Gospel sources and the canonical writings in his statement that Jesus was of Davidic descent through his mother.³⁷ The canonical Gospels, by contrast, trace Jesus’s lineage, as is well known, through Joseph back to David. Accordingly it is not to be believed that Justin had one of these canonical genealogies before him. For his statement is not, for instance, an addition or a false interpretation of the canonical account, but contradicts it directly, and [printed: uud] this circumstance must place it very much in doubt whether the prehistory of Luke was known to him in its integrity. To this is added, finally, the circumstance that Justin adduces, concerning the ἀπογραφή [registration] of Quirinus, statements other than those which are present in Luke. Whereas according to Luke this ἀπογραφή concerned the whole Roman Empire (πᾶσα ἡ οἰκουμένη [the whole inhabited world]), and Quirinus, who carried it out, is called ἡγεμονεύων τῆς Συρίας [governing Syria], according to Justin (Dial. c. Tr. 78; see above) the census is restricted only to Judea, and Quirinus himself is called ἐπίτροπος Ἰουδαίας [procurator of Judea],³⁸ and this in a context in which the utmost accuracy is displayed. However similar this statement is to Luke’s, it adds to the latter, which is already inexplicable in itself, the further error about Quirinus, who never

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was procurator of Judea, but as governor of Syria installed Coponius as the first procurator (ἐπίτροπος [procurator]) of Judea.³⁹ This assertion of Justin’s, then, can likewise not have been drawn from the Gospel of Luke — so little so that the account in that Gospel seems not even to have been known to him at all. For if this account was once already regarded as a credible report, one was not permitted to depart from it; and if two different statements were both current side by side, we should be entitled to expect, even if not a correction of the other, at least this much: that Justin would not have touched so doubtful a point at all. Credner,⁴⁰ who gives this difference its full weight, proposes to explain it, just as he does the difference between πᾶσα ἡ οἰκουμένη [the whole inhabited world] and Ἰουδαία [Judea], from a different translation of a common Hebrew source, since the Hebrew language would probably have been able to employ only one expression where the translators write in part ἡγεμών [governor], in part ἐπίτροπος [procurator]. But even if this explanation holds for the first difference, in the case of this second one there is still the further circumstance to be noted, that Quirinus is named in one place as hegemon of Syria, and in the other as the first procurator of Judea, by which that solution is excluded. If we are accordingly compelled to assume that Justin could not have had this notice from Luke either, then the other notice, previously set aside, of the cave in which Jesus was born, which stands precisely in connection with that statement, also comes forward again with all its weight, and contributes to our declaring it altogether improbable that Justin followed Luke in these reports. But if this stands firm, then it is also not necessary, but rather just as improbable, that the angel’s message to Mary, which Justin mentions, was taken from the Gospel of Luke. For if we presuppose this, it again cannot be seen

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why Justin should have so evidently contradicted, on other points, the same Gospel on which he relied at this point. The single mention of Elizabeth can just as well come from oral tradition. Further, however, Justin’s acquaintance with the prehistory of Luke is also rendered problematic by the fact that, in a passage where it mattered to defend the doctrine of the preexistence of Jesus against the view that he received the powers of the divine Spirit only later, and where he then appeals to the spiritual power dwelling in Jesus from the beginning (Dial. c. Tr. 87, 88; see above), he does not at the same time make use of the proof which the twelve-year-old Jesus (Luke 2:44 ff.) offered him.⁴¹ This is to be explained only if he did not know this story, if, that is, the prehistory of Luke in its integrity did not lie before him. It is, rather, probable that both Justin and the author of the third Gospel drew from common sources, of which, moreover, it must also remain uncertain whether they were written or oral. But what follows from this result for our investigation of the Marcionite Gospel? Evidently this: that Marcion is also innocent of the fact that the prehistory of Luke was missing from his Gospel. If Justin already mentions Marcion in his first writing (composed in the year 138 or 139),⁴² and both in this writing and also in the later Dialogue evidently demonstrates no acquaintance with the Lukan prehistory, however many citations he also adduces from the remaining parts of Luke, then one will rightly have to hesitate to raise against Marcion the charge of mutilation with respect to the prehistory, and thus his acquaintance with it

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as necessary to presuppose. The beginning of the Marcionite Gospel, to be sure, which Tertullian reports in indirect speech as follows: Anno quintodecimo principatus Tiberiani eum descendisse in civitatem Galilaeae Capernaum [In the fifteenth year of the principate of Tiberius (Tiberiani) he descended into Capernaum, a city of Galilee],⁴³ is supposed to bear in itself the stamp of mutilation,⁴⁴ evidently because in it there stand together the words which in Luke stand partly in chapter 3:1 and partly in 4:31. But the opposite assumption is just as easy: that the words which belong together in Marcion were only later separated by someone else. In themselves they bear no contradiction. But if the usual view is once to hold good, how is it to be explained that Marcion took from chapter 3:1 only that one chronological notice? Did dogmatic considerations, perhaps, prevent him from adopting the other chronological notices heaped up there as well? One should not believe it! But until a ground has been found why Marcion took only that one formula from Luke 3:1, we must prefer the other view, that only a later hand separated the chronological notice from the narrative at Capernaum and joined it with the rest:⁴⁵ namely the same person who gave the Gospel

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of Marcion the form which it presently has as the Gospel of Luke, and who added the prehistory to it.

The further question, however, is whether Justin, although with respect to the prehistory he confirmed our view of Marcion’s Gospel, does not perhaps agree, in the remaining citations, with Luke rather than with the Marcionite Gospel. The decision of this question will depend on the judgment to be passed concerning two passages. The one contains the statement that at his arrest no one came to Jesus’s aid.⁴⁶ In the case of this statement, which diverges so much from the canonical Gospels, the same Gospel may have underlain it which Marcion used, and in which, as we have seen, the section was missing (cf. Luke 22:49–51) in which Luke narrates that one of Jesus’s disciples hurried to his aid with the sword. This indication, however, seems to be neutralized at once by the passage already discussed, concerning the inward struggle of Jesus in Gethsemane.⁴⁷ This passage was missing in Marcion’s Gospel, and since we find it only in Luke, and Justin appeals in connection with it, with the greatest decisiveness, to his written sources, nothing else, it seems, remains but to infer from this Justin’s acquaintance with Luke. This could happen without damage to our view of Marcion’s Gospel, since between Marcion’s appearance and the composition of the Dialogus cum Tryphone [Dialogue with Trypho] enough time must be assumed for the working-out and

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dissemination of the third Gospel to fall within it. But it does not fit the view established by Justin’s other citations. And so we shall probably return to the explanation already indicated above, which is suggested by the divergence of the copies of the canonical Luke precisely at this passage,⁴⁸ namely that in the original Gospel as well, which was in Marcion’s hands and, as it seems, in Justin’s too, the passage under discussion was disputed, that is, present only in individual copies. This result, that Justin and Marcion used on the whole the same Gospel, has forced itself upon us more than we sought it, and must therefore also be capable of being maintained against an objection which can be raised against it on the basis of three agreeing passages in Justin. For Justin alludes several times to the point that after the resurrection Jesus demonstrated to the disciples, out of the Old Testament, the necessity of his death, in agreement with Luke 24:27, 44 ff.⁴⁹ But these very passages we have not found in Marcion’s Gospel, but have had to assign them to the reviser. And yet Justin seems to refer to them. Admittedly, a consideration of the

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appearances of the risen one narrated in Luke is not to be denied, but they are treated by Justin so freely that one does not yet, on that account, have to assume that he really read in his text of interpretations of the prophets by Jesus. For, in the first place, there is found in all three passages a statement foreign to the Gospels, that after the crucifixion the disciples had become unfaithful to the Lord and had denied him. Further, he relates, in the context of the third passage (Dialogue 106), that Jesus μετ' αὐτῶν διάγων ὕμνησε τὸν θεὸν, ὡς καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀπομν. δηλοῦται γεγενημένον [while he dwelt with them, sang a hymn to God, as is shown to have happened also in the ἀπομν. (memoirs, printed in abbreviation)], but that this is evidently said only in order to be able to apply a passage of the Psalms, διηγήσομαι τὸ ὄνομά σου τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου, ἐν μέσῳ ἐκκλησίας ὑμνήσω σε κτλ. (Psalm 8:22) [I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you, and so on], to Jesus. Such an interpretation of the Old Testament was now, however, the chief matter for Justin and his contemporaries; but in order to accredit it, the reflection readily suggested itself of tracing it back to Jesus, of whom it was said in the Gospel as well that he had convinced the disciples of the necessity of his death. This dogmatic reflection is not to be mistaken, especially in the passage from the Apology. It is entirely natural in Justin’s sense, and needs no written passage for its explanation. So it is, then, not necessary in this case either to presuppose Justin’s acquaintance with the third canonical Gospel.

The remaining citations, which in themselves bear a Lukan character, correspond throughout to the parts of the Gospel of which the original writing of it that Marcion used consisted, and at least indirectly confirm our assumption that Justin used the same Gospel as Marcion. The inaccuracy of the citations, and the obvious mixing of forms which belong partly to Matthew (or the Gospel of the Hebrews) and partly to Luke, and which is brought about by citation from memory, also make it impossible to check the use of that Luke-like Gospel. There is the further point that the Gospel citations extend only to small parts of the Gospel history. Therefore

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we can adduce only one further characteristic case, in which, so far as can be recognized from the inaccurate and mixed form, Justin let himself be guided by the Gospel known to us from Marcion. In a series of Gospel sayings (Apology 1, 16) he also cites the following words: πολλοὶ δὲ ἐροῦσί μοι· κύριε, κύριε, οὐ τῷ σῷ ὀνόματι ἐφάγομεν καὶ ἐπίομεν καὶ δυνάμεις ἐποιήσαμεν; καὶ τότε ἐρῶ αὐτοῖς· ἀποχωρεῖτε ἀπ' ἐμοῦ ἐργάται τῆς ἀνομίας. Τότε κλαυθμὸς ἔσται καὶ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων· ὅταν οἱ μὲν δίκαιοι λάμψωσιν ὡς ὁ ἥλιος, οἱ δὲ ἄδικοι πέμπωνται εἰς τὸ αἰώνιον πῦρ. [Many will say to me: Lord, Lord, did we not eat and drink in your name, and do mighty works? And then I will say to them: Depart from me, workers of lawlessness. Then there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when the righteous shine as the sun, and the unrighteous are sent into the eternal fire.] The first part of this citation is mixed from the parallels Matthew 7:22, 23 and Luke 13:26, 27. The second has a similarity to Matthew 13:42, 43, and has in particular the phrase λάμψωσιν ὡς ὁ ἥλιος [shine as the sun] in common with that passage; with Luke 13:28, on the other hand (in the Marcionite form: ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων ὅταν ὄψησθε πάντας τοὺς δικαίους ἐν τῇ βασ. τοῦ θεοῦ, ὑμᾶς δὲ ἐκβαλλομένους ἔξω [there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when you see all the righteous in the kingdom of God, but yourselves cast out; βασ. abbreviates βασιλείᾳ]), it agrees in the arrangement. If, now, the individual expressions do indeed lean more toward Matthew, it nevertheless seems easier to assume that Justin’s memory borrowed the section from the place where something analogous stands immediately one after another (Luke 13:26–28), than that his memory brought the section together out of pieces far removed from one another, especially since there was no necessity at all of adding the second half of the citation. If this imputation may rightly be made, it is then also clear that he could introduce the Matthean formula δίκαιοι ἐκλάμψωσιν ὡς ὁ ἥλιος [the righteous shine out as the sun] only if something analogous, namely the Marcionite reading, is presupposed.