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I pass over these, and come at once, without further delay, to the one point which seems to me really to decide the character of Marcion's Gospel and its relation to the Synoptic. The argument to which I allude is that from style and diction.
If the reader should happen to possess the work of Rönsch, Das Neue Testament Tertullian's, to which allusion has frequently been made above, and will simply glance over the pages, noting the references, from Luke iv. 16 to the end of the Gospel, I do not think he will need any other proof of the sufficiency of the grounds for the reconstruction of Marcion's Gospel, so as at least to admit of a decision as to whether it was our present St.
This will tend to show that, even at that early period, there must have been some comparison and correction a convergence as well as a divergence of manuscripts, and not always a mere reproduction of the particular copy which the scribe had before him; at the same time it will also show that Marcion's Gospel, so far from being an original document, has behind it a deep historical background, and stands at the head of a series of copies which have already passed through a number of hands, and been exposed to a proportionate amount of corruption.
Ritschl, and after him Baur and Schwegler, adopted more decidedly the view that the canonical Gospel was constructed out of Marcion's by interpolations directed against that heretic's teaching.
Certain broad lines indeed we can mark off as between the earlier and later forms of the Old Latin, though even here the outline is in places confused; but at what point are we to insert that most remarkable document of antiquity, the Curetonian Syriac? To judge from these alone, we should naturally conclude that the Syriac was simply an older and purer type than Marcion's Gospel and the Latin.
Then, wherever the patristic statements give us the opportunity of comparing Marcion's text with the Synoptic and this they do very largely indeed the two are found to coincide with no greater variation than would be found between any two not directly related manuscripts of the same text.
Luke is an expansion by interpolation of Marcion's Gospel, or of a document co-extensive with it. No third hypothesis is tenable. It remains, then, to enquire which of these two Gospels had the priority Marcion's or Luke's; which is to stand first, both in order of time and of authenticity. This, too, is a point that there are ample data for determining.
Such an assumption involves time, and I think it is a safe proposition to assert that, in order to bring the text of Marcion's Gospel into the state in which we find it, there must have been a long previous history, and the manuscripts through which it was conveyed must have parted far from the parent stem.
The critics have set themselves to show that the variations in Marcion's Gospel either could or could not be explained as omissions dictated by the exigencies of his dogmatic system. This was a task which suited well the subtlety and inventiveness of the German mind, and it has been handled with all the usual minuteness and elaboration.
With the exception of these thirty words inserted, and some, also slight, alterations of phrase, Marcion's Gospel presents simply an abridgment of our St. Luke. Does not this almost at once exclude the idea that they can be independent works? If it does not, then let us compare the two in detail. Out of fifty-three sections peculiar to St.
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