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Epiphanius was familiar with copies of the Acts of Pilate, which gave March 18 as the date of the crucifixion; and it is remarkable that this date coincides with the full moon, and also falls on Friday. Such a combination gives unusual weight to the tradition, particularly as there is no ready way to account for its rise, as in the case of March 25.
Some of their opinions resembled what we at this day mean by Socinianism. With respect to the Scriptures, they are specifically charged, by Irenaeus and by Epiphanius, with endeavouring to pervert a passage in Matthew, which amounts to a positive proof that they received that Gospel. Negatively, they are not accused, by their adversaries, of rejecting any part of the New Testament.
The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many went as far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy! The Reformers would tolerate no science that was not in accordance with Genesis.
In the next place, the occurrence of a revised Jerusalem creed in the Ancoratus is natural. Epiphanius was past middle life when he left Palestine for Cyprus in 368, and never forgot the friends he left behind at Lydda. We are also in a position to account for its ascription to the council of Constantinople.
He does not say that the statements of Tertullian and Epiphanius are untrustworthy, simply and absolutely, but only that they need to be applied with caution on certain points. Such a point is especially the silence of these writers as proving, or being supposed to prove, the absence of the corresponding passage in Marcion's Gospel.
There is a somewhat similar account by Epiphanius, and more incidental allusions in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. The notices that have come down to us of the writings of Basilides are confusing. It is not altogether clear how far Eusebius is using the words of Agrippa Castor and how far his own.
A passage is quoted from Canon Westcott, in which it is stated that while Tertullian and Epiphanius accuse Marcion of altering the text of the books which he received, so far as his treatment of the Epistles is concerned this is not borne out by the facts, out of seven readings noticed by Epiphanius two only being unsupported by other authority.
Credner, Beiträge, ii. 152. The Greek has been preserved in the shape of long extracts by Epiphanius and others. The edition used is that of Stieren, Lipsiae, 1853. Zeitalter, p. 126 sq. 'Judith' in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon. I feel it due to the author to say that I have found his long lists of references, though not seldom faulty, very useful. Compare also p. 24 above.
The exact contents and character of that Gospel are not quite so clear, and its relation to the Synoptic Gospels, and especially to our third Synoptic, which bears the name of St. Luke, is the point that we have to determine. The Church writers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius, without exception, describe Marcion's Gospel as a mutilated or amputated version of St. Luke.
This is also confirmed by the statements in Epiphanius and the Apostolic Constitutions that the Simonians gave "barbarous" or "foreign names" to their Aeons. That is to say, names that were neither Greek nor Hebrew. None of these names are mentioned by the Fathers, and probably the Greek terms given by the author of the Philosophumena and Theodoret are exoteric equivalents of the mystery names.
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