Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
But the slower it was the more certainly do such phenomena as these of Marcion's text throw back the origin of the prototype from which that text was derived.
There can be no doubt that Marcion's readings are, in the technical sense, false; they are a deviation from the type of the pure and unadulterated text.
There will still be the third possibility that Marcion's Gospel may be altogether independent of our present Synoptic, and that it may represent a parallel recension of the evangelical tradition. This would leave the date of the canonical Gospel undetermined.
It would be easy to multiply these points, and to carry them to any degree of detail; if more precise and particular evidence is needed it shall be forthcoming, but in the meantime I think it may be asserted with confidence that two alternatives only are possible. Either Marcion's Gospel is an abridgment of our present St. Luke, or else our present St.
Marcion's Gospel, it is known, presents certain readings which differ both from the received and other texts. Some of these are thought by Volkmar and Hilgenfeld to be more original and to have a better right to stand in the text than those which are at present found there.
The affirmation of the antiquity of Marcion's Gospel rests upon the simple axiom that every event must have a cause, and that in order to produce complicated phenomena the interaction of complicated causes is necessary.
Equally erroneous was Marcion's interpretation of the concluding verses of the chapter which dealt with the distinction between old and new. He indeed was intoxicated with 'new wine' though the real 'new wine' had been prophesied as far back as Jer. iv. 4 and Is. xliii. 19 but He to whom belonged the new wine and the new bottles also belonged the old.
If Marcion's Gospel was an extract from a manuscript containing our present St. Luke, then not only is it certain that that Gospel was already in existence, but there is further evidence to show that it must have been in existence for some time. The argument in this case is drawn from another branch of Biblical science to which we have already had occasion to appeal text-criticism.
Marcion's Gospel began with the descent of Jesus upon Capernaum in the fifteenth year of Tiberias. Tertullian makes points out of this, also from the account of His preaching in the synagogue and of the expulsion of the devil. After this incident Marcion's Gospel represented our Lord as retiring into solitude. It did this as it would appear in words very similar to those of the Canonical Gospel.
Generally it is true that the object of the Fathers is not critical but dogmatic, to refute Marcion's system out of his own Gospel. But when all deductions have been made on these grounds, there are still ample materials for reconstructing that Gospel with such an amount of accuracy at least as can leave no doubt as to its character.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking