Tertullian's Evidence vs. Epiphanius

How Much of Luke Was Not Present in Marcion's Gospel?

Although Tertullian and Epiphanius differ in the way that they comment on the beginning of Marcion's Gospel of the Lord (Mcg), they mainly agree as to what text of Luke was or was not present in Mcg. Together they leave us in no doubt that Mcg had no infancy narrative and instead began with what we see as Lk 3:1a followed by Lk 4:31a, with Tertullian writing:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he "came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum,"

Although 'came down' could be interpreted as meaning that Jesus came down (or descended) from heaven, there is no specific reason to read this into the text, especially given the clear obvious meaning in Luke. Other than this there was nothing in Mcg to Lk 4:16, but beginning with Jesus in Capernaum before going to Nazareth, contained nothing from Lk 1 and 2, only Lk 3:1a from Lk 3, and in total only 10% of the verses we see in the first four chapters of Luke. Of the rest of Luke Tertullian then records only four specific places (counting the Nazareth instance as one) in which Mcg did not contain text that we see in Luke, and three more where he appears to have seen text in Luke that we see in Matthew instead. This very short list is significantly different from the many specific instances identified by Epiphanius, as Sense remarks:

Tertullian barely or only generally accuses Marcion of removing the preliminary chapters of the Gospel, but rather states that he made a beginning from a certain place in the Canonical gospel. But he specifically and very plumply charges him with removing certain verses, clauses, and words from the Gospel of Luke. And it ought to be remarked that the erasures or omissions and alterations charged by Tertullian against Marcion are not those charged by Epiphanius. Tertullian apparently does not support Epiphanius so far as these erasures are concerned, and vice versa… and it is difficult to think that Tertullian only mentioned these comparatively insignificant erasures or variations, and passed over the considerable erasures, amounting to 97 verses, which Epiphanius two centuries after charged against Marcion.

Sense mentions 97 verses. Other reconstructions report different numbers, some of which are due to the uncertainty regarding the end of Epiphanius’ quotations (with Epiphanius not using our versification), some due to assumptions regarding what Marcion ‘might have’ removed, and some due to assumptions regarding the text of Luke seen by Epiphanius. According to this author the total here is 110 verses. It should be stressed that these verses are just those identified by Epiphanius in his 78 scholia, and do not include the 192.5 verses more loosely referred to by both Epiphanius and Tertullian as having been omitted by Marcion from Luke 1-4.

In total, Tertullian reports that 192.5 verses (plus short pieces of text in seven other places) of Luke were not present in Mcg, while Epiphanius reports a total of 302.5 omitted verses. Both saw a great deal of difference between Luke 1-4 and the equivalent text in Mcg. However, while Tertullian reported almost no difference between the rest of Mcg and what he saw in Luke 5-24, Epiphanius noted that Mcg did not contain 110 verses that he saw in Luke. This is a direct result of the fact that Tertullian was only trying to identify differences between 'his' Jesus and Marcion's Jesus (to refute Marcion), and so ignored other differences between Luke and Mcg, while Epiphanius was specifically just identifying textual differences.

Next: Conclusions

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding Marcion or my analysis please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net