Marcion was a second-century religious leader who was important in the development of early Christianity. He promoted a collection of versions of some of the Pauline letters and a gospel similar to Luke that, from what has been reconstructed from the available sources, look like shorter versions of the letters and gospel that we see in the Christian Bible. However, it is not clear who wrote Marcion's Evangelion (the Gospel of the Lord that he appears to have championed - here referred to as Ev, but also known as Mcn or *Ev) and it's relation to the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, nor what was Marcion's Apostolicon and it's relation to the Pauline Epistles.
It may sound very odd to ask who wrote Ev and 'Marcion's epistles (The Apostolicon), because surely Marcion did, didn't he? The majority of people who have looked into this agree, in particular the two who are the primary sources of our knowledge about Marcion: Tertullian and Epiphanius, and because we have no extant copies of any documents known to be Marcion's own writings we must rely to a great extent on these two ancient writers. Unfortunately, both were very heavily biased against Marcion, and as a result few people have attempted to look past this bias to see if it was justified. For various reasons I am attempting to do exactly that, using my skills in looking for patterns in large amounts of data (see About Me) to attempt to uncover what Marcion's gospel and epistles contained, and how they were created.
When I look at what has been written about Ev [then Mcg] I feel how I imagine the writer of the Gospel according to Luke perhaps felt when he wrote his introduction:
Now many have undertaken to compile an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, like the accounts passed on to us by those who were eyewitnesses and servants of the word from the beginning. So it seemed good to me as well, because I have followed all things carefully from the beginning, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know for certain the things you were taught. (NET Bible)
The writer of Luke clearly thought that what had been previously written was not adequate for his readership, and I feel the same way regarding Ev. The reports I have read appear to make too many assumptions regarding Marcion’s motives, and about what the exact contents of Ev might have been (and the same applies to the epistles in his Apostolicon). So, to paraphrase Luke:
Now many have undertaken to compile an account of the writing of Marcion’s epistles and gospel, like the accounts passed on to us by those who read Marcion’s epistles and gospel from the beginning. So it seemed good to me as well, because I have followed all things carefully, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent reader, so that you may know for certain the things Marcion wrote.
The use of the introduction to Luke above is not just intended to provide a slightly humorous lead-in to the work that follows. Use of an edited version of text from Luke here is apposite to the analysis of Ev, because large portions of what we know as Ev is so similar to Luke, and the corrsponding epistles are so similar to the Paulines. Indeed, as indicated above, many people believe that Ev and the epistles are simply edited versions of Luke and Paul respectively.
Accordingly, this site includes a detailed verse-by-verse discussion of various features of Ev in comparison with the equivalent text from Luke, and in the Marcion Luke Parallel pages it provides a side-by-side listing of the reconstructed (English) text of Ev and that of Luke, together with notes taken from several sources identifying possible areas of uncertainty. Similarly, Marcion's Apostolicon: The Pauline Epistles provides a verse-by-verse discussion of what we think of as Marcion's version of the Pauline epistles.
There is something that needs to be clarified before continuing: We often use ‘Luke’ to refer to the author of the gospel attributed to a person of that name, but we also often refer to that gospel itself as just ‘Luke.’ While generally the context prevents confusion, where questions of authorship arise it is important to be able to distinguish the two. In the case of Ev gospel we have three ‘entities’ to consider: Marcion himself; the gospel; and the person who created the gospel (who may or may not have been Marcion), so in the rest of this site the three will be distinguished as follows:
Marcion: The person himself, or, where the meaning is unambiguous, the gospel attributed to him;
Ev: Specific text in Marcion’s gospel (This makes it possible to distinguish Marcion’s gospel from his versions of the Pauline epistles, e.g. McGal);
aMarcion: The actual creator (author) of Marcion, i.e. allowing it to have not been Marcion the person. (Where “Marcion” as the author is used in direct quotes this usage is not changed).
The links below allow you to either follow through this analysis in order, or to skip various steps if you so choose. In addition, the navigation above provides immediate access to all the pages on Marcion in this web-site.
Next Page: Who Was Marcion?
For a verse-by-verse analysis of the text of Ev, see Marcion’s Gospel, Compared Verse by Verse With Luke, or for just a side-by-side listing of the (English) text compared with that of Luke, see the Marcion Luke Parallel.
If you want to avoid all the details of the analysis, go either to the Summary pages, or just straight to the Conclusions.
To see what Marcion's version of the Pauline epistles contained, go to Marcion's Apostolicon: The Pauline Epistles.
To see how the Synoptic Problem may be impacted by Ev, go to Marcion's Gospel and the Synoptic Problem.
If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding Marcion or this page please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net