Luke 3:1 – 4:15, 4:31a

For a side-by-side English translation of the text of these verses of Marcion's Gospel of the Lord and Luke, see both Luke Chapters 1 - 3 and Luke Chapter 4

Summary:

Marcion's Gospel [Mcg] contains Mcg 3:1a followed immediately by Mcg 4:31a, so having Capernaum before Nazareth.

Details:

In Appendix 2 of ‘Marcion’s Treatment of the New Testament – The Gospel,’ Ernest Evans wrote:

Omitting chapters I and 2, and most of 3 and 4 [the nativity, the baptism and temptation, with the genealogy, and all reference to Bethlehem and Nazareth], Marcion's gospel begins with 3:1, In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, and 4:31, God descended into Capernaum, a city of Galilee.

Although there is agreement that Marcion's gospel began at Mcg 3:1, followed by Mcg 4:31a, it is not clear exactly how much of Mcg 3:1 was present. In Adv. Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 7, Tertullian reports that Mcg began (verse references added):

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius [3.1a] (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he "came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum," [4:31a]

Tertullian clarifies ‘Marcion’s proposition’ in “On the Flesh of Christ,” where in Chapter 2 (following his references to Luke 1-2), he writes:

After such a fashion as this, I suppose you have had, O Marcion, the hardihood of blotting out the original records (of the history) of Christ, that His flesh may lose the proofs of its reality. But, prithee, on what grounds (do you do this)? Show me your authority. If you are a prophet, foretell us a thing; if you are an apostle, open your message in public; if a follower of apostles, side with apostles in thought; if you are only a (private) Christian, believe what has been handed down to us: if, however, you are nothing of all this, then (as I have the best reason to say) cease to live…

Rejecting, therefore, what you once believed, you have completed the act of rejection, by now no longer believing: the fact, however, of your having ceased to believe has not made your rejection of the faith right and proper; nay, rather, by your act of rejection you prove that what you believed previous to the said act was of a different character.

As indicated in Luke 1 and 2, Epiphanius states that Mcg did not have “the genealogy and the subject of the baptism,” and as in Luke the passage immediately following the genealogy is the temptation, it would seem natural for Epiphanius to have indicated that it was also not in Mcg if this was the case. However, he says nothing specific about the temptation, continuing instead:

All this he took out and turned his back on and made this the beginning of the Gospel, “In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,” [3:1a] and so on. He starts from there then and yet, again, does not go on in order. He falsifies some things, as I said, he adds others helter-skelter, not going straight on but disingenuously wandering all over the material.

Epiphanius then has nothing else to report until he comments on Mcg 5:14. Unfortunately, as he does in several other places, he does not specify what text “and so on” includes, but it is reasonable to assume that this did not differ from what he saw immediately following Lk 3:1a in his copy of Luke. As he states that “the genealogy and the subject of the baptism” [Lk 3:2b-28] were not present, and assuming that his copy of Luke was essentially the same as ours, the most that he could be referring to is Lk 3:1b-2a:

Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, [3:1b] Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, [3: 2a]

Hippolytus, in his Refutation of All Heresies, Book VII, Chapter 19, provides yet more confirmation that Mcg began with Mcg 3:1a, and, in common with Tertullian, suggests that Mcg had no parallel to Lk 3:1b-2a:

Marcion, adopting these sentiments, rejected altogether the generation of our Saviour. He considered it to be absurd that under the (category of a) creature fashioned by destructive Discord should have been the Logos that was an auxiliary to Friendship— that is, the Good Deity. (His doctrine,) however, was that, independent of birth, (the Logos) Himself descended from above in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and that, as being intermediate between the good and bad Deity, He proceeded to give instruction in the synagogues.

By omitting (or at least, not referring to) Mcg 3:1b-2a, Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Hippolytus all agree with Clement of Alexandria, who in Book 1 of his Stromata writes:

And our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year, when first the census was ordered to be taken in the reign of Augustus. And to prove that this is true, it is written in the Gospel by Luke as follows: And in the fifteenth year, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, [Lk 3:1a] the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zacharias. [Lk 3:2b] And again in the same book: And Jesus was coming to His baptism, [Lk 3:21b] being about thirty years old, [Lk 3:23a] and so on. And that it was necessary for Him to preach only a year, this also is written: He hath sent me [Isa 61:1b] to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. [Isa 61:2a] This both the prophet spake, and the Gospel. (Stromata 1:21)

The above suggests that Clement did not see either vv. 3:1b-2a or the end of vv. 3:21b-22 in his copy of Luke, supporting Tertullian and Epiphanius regarding Mcg. However, he also quotes what appears to be a shorter variant of Isa 61:1-2, suggesting that he may have also seen this in his copy of Luke. NA27 omits “to heal the brokenhearted” from Lk 4:18 because many “weighty mss” (NET) do not include it, and so it is possible that Clement may have seen an even shorter (and earlier) extract from Isa 61:1-2, for which we do not have mss support.

In Adv. Marcion IV Tertullian provides very little specific information regarding his knowledge of the early chapters of Mcg, but there is a clue in his chapter 11, where he makes this comment about John the Baptist in Mcg 5:33:

“Whence, too, does John come upon the scene? Christ, suddenly; and just as suddenly, John!”

Here he is making the point that just as Jesus appears suddenly in Mcg with no prior introduction, so too does John, indicating that the material regarding John in Luke 3 was not in Mcg. However, Tertullian does not make a similar comment regarding the appearance of Herod in Mcg 9:7, the implication of which is that this was not Herod’s ‘introduction’ in Mcg. As Lk 3:19 had no parallel in Mcg, and he does not mention Herod in Mcg 8:3, it is possible that Tertullian instead saw Herod mentioned at Mcg 3:1, but, like Epiphanius, had no reason to further qualify the year of Jesus’ appearance by listing other people. It should also be noted that in Adv. Haer. I.27 Irenaeus states that Jesus came “into Judæa in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Cæsar.”

These points on their own cannot be taken as conclusive evidence that either Herod or Pilate were referred to here in Mcg, but it would make perfect sense for the ‘grand beginning’ we see in Lk 3:1 to have been created that way initially, rather than having been added to Luke later (especially if Luke 1-2 had also been added by then). Nevertheless, it seems less likely that the high priests would have been referred to at this point in Mcg, so on balance, it seems reasonable to assume that Lk 3:2 had no parallel in Mcg.

Although (as noted above) Tertullian did not see any of the early references to John in Mcg, he clearly knew this material, as he refers to Lk 3:4-5 in Adv. Marcion V, chapter 3:

The law, indeed, had to be overthrown, from the moment when John "cried in the wilderness, Prepare the ways of the Lord," [3:4] that valleys and hills and mountains may be filled up and levelled, and the crooked and the rough ways be made straight and smooth [3:5]

From this and other references in works by Tertullian we can be certain that he knew Lk 3:2-22, and that because the first place in Mcg at which he saw a reference to John was in Mcg 5:33, none of these verses relating to the baptism were present in Mcg. He also has no comment on the temptation in the wilderness in Mcg 4:1-15, so on this basis he may not have seen these verses in Mcg either. Baring-Gould comments that this was the case, even though according to him it would have suited Marcion to include them:

The narrative of the Temptation is not in Marcion’s gospel. It can have been no omission of his, for it would have tallied admirably with his doctrine. He held that the God of this world believed Christ at first to be the Messiah, but finally was undeceived. In the narrative of the Temptation the devil offers Christ all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. He takes the position which in Marcion’s scheme was occupied by the Demiurge. Had he possessed the record of the Temptation, it would have mightily strengthened his position.

Baring-Gould supplies no mss evidence to indicate how he knows that this passage was not in Mcg, but Tertullian’s words in “Against Praxeas” show that he knew this passage in both Matthew and Luke (emphasis added):

Here the old serpent has fallen out with himself, since, when he tempted Christ after John's baptism, he approached Him as the Son of God; surely intimating that God had a Son, even on the testimony of the very Scriptures, out of which he was at the moment forging his temptation: If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. [Mt 4:3] Again: If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from hence; [Lk 4:9] for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning you — referring no doubt, to the Father — and in their hands they shall bear you up, that you hurt not your foot against a stone. [Mt 4:6b] Or perhaps, after all, he was only reproaching the Gospels with a lie, saying in fact: Away with Matthew; away with Luke! Why heed their words? (Against Praxeas, Ch 1)

As Tertullian clearly knew Luke’s version of the temptation, his lack of comment on this passage cannot be used as a reason to exclude it from Mcg. However, taking note of his statement that: 'In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius [Mcg 3.1a] (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he "came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum," '[Mcg 4:31a] it may be that Tertullian is inferring that none of the intervening verses that he saw in his copy of Luke (which includes the temptation) were in Mcg, and that he therefore felt no need to emphasize this on a passage-by-passage basis. However, Tertullian has no comment on the genealogy in Lk 3:23-38, and as we know from Epiphanius that it was not present in Mcg it is therefore possible that it was not in Tertullian’s copy of Luke either, and this position is supported by the fact that none of these verses are referred to by Tertullian in any of his works.

Taking all the above into account, it is likely that Mcg began as indicated above by Tertullian. Finally, the wording of Acts 1-2 suggests that this may also have been the way that Luke began before Acts was written, i.e. beginning with Jesus’ teaching and healings:

The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, [Ac 1:1] Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: [Ac 1:2]

Here we have Ac 1:1 stating that Luke (“The former treatise”) began with Jesus’ actions (“all that Jesus began to do and teach”), with no mention of John or Jesus' origins, which, from the information given above, is how Mcg began.

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