Luke 15

For a side-by-side English translation of the text of Marcion's Gospel of the Lord and Luke 15, see Luke Chapter 15

Summary:

From Ernest Evans on Adv. Marcion IV: Appendix 2: In ch. 15 he omits vv. 11-32 [the prodigal son] but retains the lost coin and the lost sheep.

Details:

Luke 15:1-10 – Lost Sheep and Lost Silver

Tertullian refers to both parables, but only in the most general way:

Who sought after the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver? [15:1-10] … Therefore the purport of neither parable has anything whatever to do with him to whom belongs neither the sheep nor the piece of silver, that is to say, man.

As Epiphanius makes no comment on these verses, all we can say is that both parables were present in Mcg, and that neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius noted any difference from what they expected.

Luke 15:11-32 – The Prodigal Son

The majority of Luke 15 (vv. 15:11-32) is taken up with the parable of the prodigal son. This parable, which does not have parallels in either Matthew or Mark, is not mentioned by Tertullian and, as stated by Epiphanius, did not exist in Mcg:

Again, he falsified the entire parable of the two sons, the one who took his share of the property and spent it on dissipation, and the other. (Scholion 42)

The silence from Tertullian indicates that he saw nothing worthy of note here in Mcg, but it seems unlikely that he would fail to mention the omission of this long parable if he expected to see it, so the conclusion is that it was not in his copy of Luke. Despite this, it is certain that Tertullian did know this parable, as he refers to it in Of Patience, Chapter 12, On Repentence, Chapter 8, and the whole of On Modesty, Chapters 8 and 9, but without indicating the source. It is possible that Tertullian knew the parable from the Diatessaron, while in A Critical and Historical Enquiry Into the Origin of the Third Gospel Sense suggests that it may have originally been in Matthew, and only later moved to Luke:

… Tertullian makes no mention of the parable of the Prodigal Son, and does not say that the Canonical Gospel contained it. Epiphanius, however, asserts that Marcion cut it out bodily from the Gospel; and this statement, collated with Tertullian's silence, is clear proof to my mind that it had been interpolated in later times into the Canonical Gospel of Luke… As the parable was not in Luke, it must, I think, have been in one of the other Gospels. Matthew probably contained it in the second century, as the recital of the incidents of the parable is put into the mouth of the Apostle Matthew in the Apostolic Constitutions, Bk. n. xxxix. and xli., a work probably of the third century, but much interpolated in later centuries.

Irenaeus does not mention it in his list of the contents of this gospel (Ad Her., III. xiv. 3). It is certain, however, that it was contained in one of the Gospels, for Irenaeus makes accurate reference to its details in two passages (IV. xiv. 2 and xxxvi. 7). Tertullian also has accurate references in his other writings to the parable, and he calls it by its conventional name of the Prodigcal Son (Of Patience, xii., On Repentence, viii., On Modesty, viii. and ix.). As the parable was not in Luke, it must, I think, have been in one of the other Gospels.

Sense expands on his views in A Free Enquiry Into the Origin of the Fourth Gospel, where in a long footnote he writes:

Irenaeus, in Bk. ill. 17, 3, refers to a story very similar to the parable of the Good Samaritan, but it is not the same. He speaks of it, not as a parable, but as an actual incident in the life of Jesus, in which the Lord himself took a personal part. It is clear that Irenaeus derived the story from an unknown Apocryphal Gospel, but not from the Canonical Gospel of Luke. I can find no trace of the existence of this parable in the Canonical Gospel in the second and third centuries and greater part of the fourth till after the time of Epiphanius. From the silence of Tertullian regarding it, it is clear that it did not exist in Marcion's Gospel; and from his abstinence of remark that Marcion had erased it, it follows that it did not exist in the Canonical Gospel. The same observations are applicable to the silence of Epiphanius regarding the parable. The parable was absent both in Marcion's Gospel and in the Canonical Gospel of Luke of that period, and hence the dead silence regarding it of both these great denouncers of Marcion.

Regarding the parable of the Prodigal Son, Irenaeus speaks of it in Bk. iv. 14, 2, and again in Bk. iv. 36, 7: and there can be no doubt that the parable which he describes was identical with Luke xv. 11-32, although he does not attribute it to Luke. Clement of Alexandria, perhaps, makes an obscure allusion to it, “after the image of the rich man's son in the Gospel" (Paed., II. I, 9), while deprecating disorderly living. One would naturally conclude, from these references to the parable, that the latter had been admitted into the Canonical Gospel in the interval between the publication of the third and fourth Books of Irenaeus' great work. But against such a conclusion is the fact of the dead silence regarding this parable maintained by Tertullian in his close criticism of Marcion's Gospel in Bk. iv. of Anti Marcion. The only inference that can be drawn from Tertullian's silence is that the parable was absent from both Marcion's Gospel and the Canonical Gospel of Luke.

There is no doubt that the parable was wanting in Marcion's Gospel; but it is hard to believe that, if it existed in the Canonical Gospel, a close and hostile critic like Tertullian, who notes the omission or change of single words in the two Gospels, would have silently let slip the great opportunity of pointing out the deletion of the finest parable in the Gospel of Luke and of assigning suitable reasons for the erasure. I therefore conclude that Irenaeus derived his knowledge of the parable, which he omits in his statement of the contents of Luke's Gospel, from an unknown Apocryphal Gospel, current in his time. Tertullian refers elsewhere (De patientia, xii., and De penitentia, viii.) to the parable of the Prodigal Son, but he does not mention the source of his information. The parable was probably introduced late in the third century, or in the fourth century, into the Canonical Gospel of Luke. It is referred to in the Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 41, but is put into the mouth of the Apostle Matthew. Epiphanius says that it was cut out by Marcion (Scholion, xlii.); the real fact, however, was that the parable was absent in both Gospels, but was latterly put into the Canonical Gospel of Luke, and not cut out in Marcion's Gospel.

A point in favor of this supposition by Sense is that Mt 21:28-31 and Lk 15:11-32 both contain parables regarding two sons, neither of which has a parallel in the other gospel, so suggesting the possibility that one is a later development of the other.

Next Chapter: Luke 16