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Updated: April 30, 2025
Marcion thought this text so objectionable, that he altered the words, so as to invert the sense. Nothing could be more in the character of a Roman governor than these words. But that is not precisely the point I am concerned with.
On the other hand, I have been very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed parallel with the canonical Gospels, and which are now lost such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian.
Marcion attempted to sunder the God of Nature and the God of the Old Testament from the God of the Gospel. It is difficult to enumerate all the fanciful theories propounded by the Gnostics, and which arose from the attempt to engraft Orientalism upon Christianity.
For the Scripture is a creature, and a certain bare letter." This is Hosius' saying, uttered altogether with the same spirit and the same mind wherewith in times past Montane and Marcion were moved, who, as men report, used to say, when with a contempt they rejected the Holy Scriptures, that themselves knew many more and better things than either Christ or the Apostles ever knew.
Still the issue is not inconsiderable: for, upon the second hypothesis, if the editor of our present Gospel made use of that which was in the possession of Marcion, his date may be though it does not follow that it certainly would be thrown into the middle of the second century, or even beyond, if the other external evidence would permit; whereas, upon the first hypothesis, the Synoptic Gospel would be proved to be current as early as 140 A.D.; and there will be room for considerations which may tend to date it much earlier.
It must suffice to mention that this gospel is not cited by Papias; that Justin, Marcion, and Valentinus make no allusion to it, though, since it furnishes so much that is germane to their views, they would gladly have appealed to it, had it been in existence, when those views were as yet under discussion; and that, finally, in the great Quartodeciman controversy, A. D. 168, the gospel is not only not mentioned, but the authority of John is cited by Polycarp in flat contradiction of the view afterwards taken by this evangelist.
Two Epistles professing to be addressed to the Laodiceans and Alexandrines are dismissed as forged in the interests of the heresy of Marcion. The Epistle of Jude and two that bear the superscription of John are admitted.
But if Jesus claimed to be the Son of Man, if, standing before the Jews as a man, He claimed as man the power of forgiving sins, He thereby showed that He possessed a real human body and not the mere phantasm of which Marcion spoke.
Among the Christians, Marcion and his votaries rejected the books of Moses and the prophets, and introduced other fashionable Scriptures. Carpocrates and his followers did the same, and rejected the whole of the Old Testament, and contended that Jesus Christ was but a man like all others.
There is also an evident reason for the omission of the first chapters which relate the human birth of Christ, which Marcion denied, and one somewhat less evident, though highly probable, for the omission of the account of the Baptist's ministry, John being regarded as the finisher of the Old Testament dispensation the work of the Demiurge.
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