ReconstructionResearch

This is the method printed in the Reader's Guide of the True Testament. Every verse carries one of two marks.

(A) Attested. A father held the line, or the prosecutable half of the line, in a Marcionite file. The stamp sits on that lemma. It does not cover the next verse, and it does not cover a whole letter.

(P) Probable. A printed line no father quoted. It is printed only when every requirement below holds.

1. It belongs to a case a father was already fighting, or to a book he already said Marcion had. That can be an attested argument on one side or both, the chapter that makes an attested sequel intelligible, or a whole letter under a letter-warrant, as Philemon is. It is not a floating piety with no book and no fight.
2. No ancient witness records that stretch as a cut. Silence is not a cut-mark. An explicit leap is. The leap is evidence of a cut. It is not a map of every verse between the two banks. A greeting left unquoted is a habit, not a hole.
3. The line does not import the catholic load already refused elsewhere: the Creator identified as Father of Jesus, the privileges of Israel as a salvation-history, Law still in force as a remaining covenant, the weekly store and Jerusalem couriers, clerical subjection, anathema, or a gag on women that contradicts attested prayer and prophecy.
4. Deleting the line would invent a book-shape no father described: a letter with no close, or a gospel with no descent-line between fights a father was already prosecuting.

If another reconstructor already includes the line on independent grounds, that supports the printing. That support is not required, and it is not a stamp.

A Probable verse is read as the argument of the book it sits in, gospel or letter. It is printed because the book is a book. It is not a hidden Attested verse, and it is not used to establish a doctrine the Attested lines do not already carry.

One row is one verse. Rows follow canonical Luke numbering, because that is the only numbering every edition shares. The True Testament reference (Ev.) is shown on each row it maps to, since the True Testament does not always number one to one with Luke.

One chip per source. A filled chip means that source keeps the verse; an empty chip means it leaves it out. Hover a chip, or open the verse, for the exact call.

Attested only. On by default, this counts only True Testament verses a writer quoted, so the True Testament is measured on the same footing as the reconstructions. Switch to Attested + Probable to see the full True Testament.

How each column is read. Hahn, Zahn, Harnack printed Greek texts: a verse they print counts as kept, and a verse they list with no Greek, written ( ), counts as in part. Ritschl, Baur argued passage by passage: each of their calls comes from our translation with its page, a verse they leave open counts as in part, and a verse they never discuss follows their own statement that Marcion's text otherwise matched. The modern editions are recorded verse by verse from each book.

Open a verse to see every source's call in plain words: Includes, In part, Left open, Omits or Not discussed, each with the page it rests on. From there you can open the True Testament verse or its Greek.

Chapter overview. Each chapter shows how many of its verses each source keeps. Darker means more.

Pairwise agreement compares every two sources at a time: of the verses either one keeps, what share do both keep? The figure is the average over all pairs. For example, if two sources each keep 10 verses and share 8 of them, that pair agrees on 8 of 12, or 67%.