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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.
The earlier critics who impugned the traditional view appear to have leaned rather to the theory that Marcion's Gospel and the canonical Luke are, more or less, independent offshoots from the common ground-stock of the evangelical narratives.
Luke and the fourth Gospel. Zacchaeus is peculiar to St. Luke. Yet, not only does each of the sections relating to these personages re-appear in Marcion's Gospel, but it re-appears precisely at the same place. A marked peculiarity in St. Luke's Gospel is the 'great intercalation' of discourses, ix. 51 to xviii. 14, evidently inserted without regard to chronological order.
Several criticisms which I had been led to make in the Fortnightly I now find had been anticipated, and these have been cancelled or a note added in the present work; I have also appended to the volume a supplemental note of greater length on the reconstruction of Marcion's text, the only point on which I believe there is really very much room for doubt. Tertullian, De Praescript. Haeret. c. 38.
From this controversy we may conclude that there was a strong likeness between Marcion's Gospel and the third Synoptic, and that it is impossible to know which is the earlier of the two. "At the very best, even if the hypothesis that Marcion's Gospel was a mutilated Luke were established, Marcion affords no evidence in favour of the authenticity or trustworthy character of our third Synoptic.
Luke from iv. 16 onwards all but eight were found also in Marcion's Gospel. They are found, too, in precisely the same order. Curious and intricate as is the mosaic work of the third Gospel, all the intricacies of its pattern are reproduced in the Gospel of Marcion.
The only way in which the inference drawn from the text of Marcion's Gospel can be really met would be by showing that the text of the Latin and Syriac translations is older and more original than that which is universally adopted by text-critics. I should hardly suppose that the author of 'Supernatural Religion' will be prepared to maintain this. If he does, the subject can then be argued.
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