Markus Vinzent's Blog

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Why did Marcion produce and use a Gospel

Why did Marcion produce and use a Gospel, if it was not already a known literary genre?
Having another, a new testament, over and against an old testament, was core to Marcion’s understanding of Paul, Jesus and Christianity, as one can see from his work. Tertullian writes:

Since therefore it was under Antoninus that, as I have proved, Marcion first brought this god
on the scene, at once, if you are in your senses, the fact is clear. The dates themselves put it beyond argument that that which first came to light under Antoninus did not come to light under Tiberius: that is, that the god of Antoninus' reign was not the God of the reign of Tiberius, and therefore he who it is admitted was first reported to exist by Marcion, had not been revealed by Christ. To prove next that this is a fact, I shall take up the rest <of my argument> from my opponents themselves. The separation of Law and Gospel is the primary and principal exploit of Marcion. His disciples cannot deny this, which stands at the head of their document, that document by which they are inducted into and confirmed in this heresy. For such are Marcion's Antitheses, or Contrary Oppositions, which are designed to show the conflict and disagreement of the Gospel and the Law, so that from the diversity of principles between those two documents they may argue further for a diversity of gods. Therefore, as it is precisely this separation of Law and Gospel which has suggested a god of the Gospel, other than and in opposition to the God of the Law, it is evident that before that separation was made, <that> god was still unknown who has just come into notice in consequence of the argument for separation: and so he was not revealed by Christ, who came before the separation, but was invented by Marcion, who set up the separation in opposition to that peace between Gospel and Law which previously, from the appearance of Christ until the impudence of Marcion, had been kept unimpaired and unshaken by virtue of that <sound> reasoning which refused to contemplate any other god of the Law and the Gospel than that Creator against whom after so long a time, by a man of Pontus, separation has been let loose.[1]

What information does Tertullian give us with regard to origin and purpose of Marcion’s work? Already in the first sentence, Tertullian clearly states what, unfortunately, is barely preserved in Evan’s English translation, namely that this was the ‘proper and principle work of Marcion’ (proprium et principale opus est Marcionis), a work which came from his own hand, and which was his major writing, what supposes that he also wrote other things, and Tertullian mentions a letter of Marcion. The introduction of the God of the ‘Gospel’, as Marcion according to Tertullian calls the work soon after, was not simply a theological fiction, but a work, a written opus.  This character of a written document by a distinct author is endorsed by what follows in Tertullian’s quote in which he argues that Marcion’s God ‘had not been revealed by Christ’, but has been a recent invention by Marcion himself ‘which first came to light under Antoninus’. In taking directly to Marcion’s arguments in his opus, published ‘under Antoninus’, Tertullian mentions Marcion’s ‘separation of Law and Gospel’ which is the ‘primary and principal exploit of Marcion’ and ‘stands at the head of their document’. Again, Tertullian clearly refers to this written and published piece of work. Marcion’s Antitheses are credited for the arguments that supported this separation of Law and Gospel, as we read in Tertullian. Marcion was not content with Paul’s letters alone, he needed a Gospel document as a counter-narrative with counter-sayings to the Torah. Tertullian adds: Marcion’s document (instrumentum) served for the initiation and introduction into his ‘heresy’ (quo denique initiantur et indurantur in hanc haeresim), hence the entire work was his catechism and the introductory reading for candidates and students. At the beginning, this catechism did – very similar to, for example, the Didache – set out the cross-road between the way of light and the way of darkness, but instead of relying on Jewish wisdom, Marcion use the Jewish Scriptures to equate the way of darkness with that of the God and his creation referred to and revealed by the Jewish Scriptures, of which he quoted sayings and narrative examples. Instead, Marcion introduced interested candidates and his students to the new documents of his new teaching. Based on Paul’s distinction of law and gospel, Marcion confronted the quotes from the Old with quotes from his New Testament to introduce his candidates into the way of light. In the same way as he used stories and samples from the Jewish Scriptures (which candidates clearly expected) as highlights of a negative portfolio, it is only logical that he must have also been gathering Christian traditions to have contrasting examples, crafted together into a coherent narrative that did not fall short or behind of the narratives that the Jewish Scripture provided. Hence, there was a strong reason for Marcion to create a storyline with sayings to surpass the Old Testament. To be able to do this, he needed to go beyond the texts that Paul provided in his letters and take recourse to Christian traditions. He gave the most startling examples first in his Antitheses, contrasting them with extracts from the Old Testament, and substantiated this antithesis with the following letters of Paul and the entire Gospel narrative. Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, served three purposes: It 1) supported the Antitheses, as it provided the full text from where his quotes in the Antitheses derived from, conceived as diametrically set against the Torah (Paul’s opposition between Law and Gospel), 2) gave light to and illustrated Paul’s letters and 3) provided the sample of the antithetical hermeneutical key, found in Paul’s letters, for discerning Christian traditions. 
The overall reason for putting together this unique work of a ‘New Testament’ (Antithetical preface, Gospel, Paul’s letters) was, therefore, not primarily an intellectual enterprise alone – although as the product of a classroom teacher, it certainly was this as well – but it was the introductory, catechetical, core reading of Marcion’s school community, ‘that document by which they are inducted into and confirmed in this heresy’. Tertullian adds again that the product stemmed from Marcion’s hand (a Marcion commentatum, qui instituit separationem) and that before such separation between Law and Gospel, the distinction between the God of the Gospel and that of the Law did not exist 

[1] Tert., Adv. Marc. I 19. 


  1. I thought you might be interested in this. My good friend Professor Ruaridh Boid of Monash University and an expert in Samaritanism points to the origin of the word 'gospel' in Samaritan Aramaic from the concept of 'the announcement of the Jubilee':

    The Samaritan Arabic commentary on the Torah, on Leviticus XXV:9. Slightly condensed and slightly re-arranged translation. “The High Priest and the King acting together are to send heralds out on the Day of Atonement to go into all countries over the next six months blowing the shofar in every land and region [not just Canaan] with the announcement [bashâ’ir, plural of bashîrah] of the information of the approach of the Jubilee Year and the release of captives SO THAT IT REACHES THE WHOLE NATION”. The Arabic bashîrah = the Hebrew bassorah. The person doing it is the mubashshir = Hebrew mevasser, or the bashîr. Notice carefully that the bashîrah is not the information, but the announcement of it. This is the connotation of the Greek euangelion. Notice that the meaning only becomes clear and sharp in the context of the SAMARITAN halachah.

    The point of course is that I have always thought the Marcionite idea of 'release from the Law' necessarily developed from the fact that the very term 'gospel' = besora (cf the Written Gospel Klyne Snodgrass) developed from the concept of freedom from the Law within Judaism.

    That's why the arguments of Tertullian would have seemed so stupid to a Marcion. You know when he says 'Well if Jesus was against the Law why are there 12 apostles? Why does Paul reference the Law?' The underlying concept would have been that the Law already predicted the redemption attained by the Marcionites. He didn't hate the Law but understood that freedom from it was predicted from with its pages

  2. Why did you stop posting? Is everything all right. Your blog is so great, it's a pity that if you abandoned it.

  3. dear Dennis,

    In fact, I am still posting, although against blogger habits, some posts are remote, as I rework older posts. Just look how Marcion's Gospel reconstruction is growing weekly,
    Best yours Markus