Luke 1 and 2

For a side-by-side English translation of the text of Marcion's Gospel of the Lord and Luke 1 and 2, see Luke Chapters 1 - 3

Summary:

Marcion's Gospel of the Lord (Mcg) contains nothing from Luke 1-2. It is therefore possible that Mcg is based on an early version of Luke that also did not contain these chapters.

Details:

Most reconstructions of Mcg agree that it has a number of significant omissions when compared to canonical Luke, of which the most prominent are in the early chapters of Luke:

Epiphanius expressly states that Mcg contained nothing of Luke 1 and 2: 

At the very beginning he [Marcion] excised all of Luke’s original discussion – his “inasmuch as many have taken in hand” and so forth, and the material about Elizabeth and the angel’s annunciation to the Virgin Mary, John and Zacharias and the birth at Bethlehem; the genealogy and the subject of the baptism.

While Tertullian has no comment in Adv. Marcion IV to suggest that Marcion actually removed the first two chapters of Luke, it is clear that from what he does write that Mcg did not have any of this text. For example, he makes the following statement in On the Flesh of Christ: 

Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ, denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he might deny His nativity.

In this respect Mcg matches Mark (which also has none of this material), and is similar to Matthew (which has nothing corresponding to Luke 1, and just three passages in common with Luke 2).

As described in Luke Chapters 1 and 2, the evidence strongly suggests that Luke (or a predecessor) originally started with Jesus’ ministry, and did not include any events prior to this. Although this could be viewed as evidence that Marcion removed from Luke anything to do with Jesus’ origin in order to ‘match’ this early version of Luke, it is more reasonable to view it as Marcion using as his base text something that began with Jesus’ ministry. On this point both Tyson and Andrew Gregory comment that Knox wrote:

Marcion would surely not have tolerated this highly ‘Jewish’ section; but how wonderfully adapted it is to show the nature of Christianity as the true Judaism and thus to answer one of the major contentions of the Marcionites! And one cannot overlook the difficulty involved in the common supposition that Marcion deliberately selected a Gospel which began in so false and obnoxious a way.

After a discussion of the details of Luke 1-2, Tyson adds:

These considerations make it highly probable, in my judgment, that the Lukan birth narratives were added in reaction to the challenges of Marcionite Christianity. It would be very difficult to explain why Marcion would choose a gospel with these, to him, highly offensive chapters at the beginning only to eliminate them. Further, it would be difficult to imagine a more directly anti-Marcionite narrative than what we have in Luke 1:5-2:52.

In a review of Dieter Roth’s The Text of Marcion’s Gospel,’ Judith Lieu takes up this issue, and examines what this might mean for New Testament Studies:

... But suppose, however, that rather than being a corrupt version of (canonical) Luke, Marcion’s Gospel was in fact an earlier precursor to it, perhaps producing the corollary that canonical Luke was to some extent a corrective to it. An example for this might be the birth narratives (Luke 1-2), which Irenaeus already accuses Marcion of excising, presumably because they contradicted his conviction that Jesus was sent from God without undergoing normal birth and therefore being possessed of a flesh different from that other mortals share. Yet students of the New Testament have long recognized the distinctive style of Luke 1-2, and the fact that there are few explicit continuities with the chapters that follow: might these chapters have been added subsequently, precisely to counter any views, such as those of Marcion, that questioned the full humanity of Jesus?

Such a possibility might seriously disrupt one of the fundamental principles — or, rather, hypotheses — on which much New Testament study is built. Often early in their introduction to the critical field, generations of students have been taught to observe and to analyze the interrelationships between the so-called Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke: most adopt the majority position that both Matthew and Luke drew on Mark, with additional shared material between Matthew and Luke being explained either by further literary dependence (usually of Luke on Matthew) or, more commonly, by their recourse to a lost common source (‘Q’); a minority might opt for the older principle of Matthean priority. The exercise, however, depends on the assumption that the texts to be studied, compared, and explained are in all that is essential — allowing for known textual variants — those known through the subsequent canonical manuscript tradition. Inserting Marcion’s Gospel early into the equation would be far more significant than the discovery or the removal of Q; it would demand rethinking the theological as well as the literary processes in the formation of a threefold (or fourfold) Gospel tradition and the timescale against which they took place.

The master-narrative, that Marcion’s Gospel was derivative from “canonical” Luke, has been questioned in the past, in particular within the vigorous debates of the mid-nineteenth century associated with F.C. Baur and the so-called Tübingen school. Although subsequently, the priority of Marcion’s Gospel, and its corollary that canonical Luke was some extent a corrective, have had occasional champions, in recent years it has been vigorously revived, and has become the lynchpin in far-reaching rewritings of the history of the Jesus traditions, and of the development of Christian thought. In particular, although published very late in the progress of Roth’s research, scholars such as Matthias Klinghardt and Markus Vinzent have given Marcion’s Gospel something closer to the place usually occupied by Mark, namely as being the earliest written Gospel.

On the assumption that Marcion edited Luke, do we have any mss evidence to support the possibility that he began with a version of Luke that omitted chapters 1 and 2? Because Epiphanius referred directly to Marcion not containing Luke 1-2 we know that he saw these chapters in his copy of Luke. Tertullian comments on Jesus’ ‘sudden’ appearance in Mcg 3:1a, but on its own this does not necessarily mean that he saw nothing of Luke 1-2 in Mcg. Instead, as in Adv Marcion III he points out that ‘his’ Jesus is the subject of many prophecies, which appears to be Tertullian’s way of saying that Mcg does not have anything from the Old Testament (although it in fact does). Then, when the spirit of the unclean devil calls Jesus “the Holy One of God” in Mcg 4:34, Tertullian points out that this could not be Marcion’s ‘unannounced’ Jesus, but instead the Jesus of which the angel had said to Mary:

"Wherefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called the Holy One, the Son of God;" [1:35] and: "Thou shalt call his name Jesus." [1:31]

Tertullian also has the following in “On the flesh of Christ,” where in Chapter 2 he writes (in reference to Marcion, with equivalent verse numbers added):

Clearly enough is the nativity announced by Gabriel. But what has he [Marcion] to do with the Creator's angel? The conception in the virgin's womb is also set plainly before us. [Lk 1:26-38] But what concern has he with the Creator's prophet, Isaiah? He will not brook delay, since suddenly (without any prophetic announcement) did he bring down Christ from heaven. [Lk 3:1a] Away, says he, with that eternal plaguey taxing of Cæsar, and the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling-clothes, and the hard stable. [Lk 2:1-7] We do not care a jot for that multitude of the heavenly host which praised their Lord at night. [Lk 2:13] Let the shepherds take better care of their flock [Lk 2:8] and let the wise men spare their legs so long a journey; [Mt 2:1] let them keep their gold to themselves. [Mt 2:11] Let Herod, too, mend his manners, so that Jeremy may not glory over him. Spare also the babe from circumcision, that he may escape the pain thereof; nor let him be brought into the temple, lest he burden his parents with the expense of the offering; [Lk 2:22-24] nor let him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at the point of death. [Lk 2:25-35] Let that old woman also hold her tongue, lest she should bewitch the child. [Lk 2:36-38]

This confirms that Tertullian knew Luke 1-2, and that Mcg contained nothing from these chapters, but does not answer the question of whether Marcion himself knew these chapters, but then omitted them from his gospel. Mss P45 and P75, both most likely written in the 3rd century, give us the text of most of Luke, but unfortunately both are missing Luke 1 and 2, with P45 starting at Lk 6:31, and P75 starting at Lk 3:18, so neither can help answer this question. However, P4 (dated to the 2nd half of the 2nd century) includes verses from all six initial chapters of Luke (Lk 1:58-59;  1:62-2:1, 6-7; 3:8-4:2, 29-32 34-35; 5:3-8; 5:30-6:16), so proving the existence of Luke 1-2 no later than the end of the 2nd century.

Epiphanius and Tertullian both knew Luke 1-2, and P4 contains verses from both chapters, so if Marcion edited a copy of Luke from around the mid-2nd century, it most likely included Luke 1-2. However, if Marcion’s 'base text' was instead a significantly earlier document, or Mcg itself was written by some other person, then is a definite possibility that it did not contain  text the we see in these chapters.

Next Luke 3:1 – 4:15, 4:31a