Two Gospels, or Two Versions?

Previous page: Who Was Marcion?

We typically 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 differentiate between the two. In the case of Marcion’s gospel we have three ‘entities’ to consider: Marcion himself, the gospel attributed to Marcion, and the person who created the gospel (who may or may not have been Marcion). In the rest of this document the three will be referred to as follows:

This nomenclature is not intended to exclude either the possibility that each synoptic gospel only existed in one version, or that if more than one version did exist, different versions may have had different authors. Where it is necessary to distinguish a possible early version of Luke from what we see today, today’s version will be referred to as canonical Luke.

In this site Mcg is compared with Luke because of the obvious very strong textual relationship between the two. The intention is that the information provided here will make it clear where:

However, any effort such as this runs into an immediate problem: There are no extant mss that we can specifically identify as being Marcion’s work (but note the possibility that some fragmentary mss identified as Luke might in fact be mss of Mcg) . As far as we know all copies of Mcg were destroyed (possibly in an effort to wipe out his teachings) or lost, and as a result we have to rely on reconstructions created by using information from people who wrote about him. As noted at The Development of the Canon of the New Testament: “Marcion wrote only a single work, Antitheses (Contradictions), in which he set forth his ideas. Since it has not been preserved, we must be content with deducing its contents from notices contained in the writings of opponents.”

The two primary sources are Tertullian: ‘Adv. Marcion, Book IV’ (207-208 A.D.), and Epiphanius: ‘Panarion, section 42’ (c. 375 A.D.). In both cases the author compares the text of Mcg with that of Luke, and notes or comments on differences between the two (in almost all cases assuming that the differences are due to Marcion changing something in Luke), or text in Mcg that Marcion ‘should’ have removed because it went against his theology, but didn't remove. Tertullian makes many statements regarding why Marcion would have made (or did not make) particular changes, but in the main his comments fall into three categories:

Epiphanius also indicates that any differences between Mcg and Luke are due to Marcion making changes to support his theology, but neither Tertullian nor Epiphanius allow that the differences might have been due to aMarcion having started from a base text that was different from the text of Luke that they had before them, and based his theology around that. This is despite the fact that in Chapter 4 of Adv Marcion Book 4 Tertullian states that the contents of Luke had been subject to change prior to Marcion, when he facetiously comments that:

... an amender of that Gospel [Luke], which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone -- so long looked for by Christ.

In other words, there had been earlier versions of what he knew as Luke, and it is therefore possible that rather than editing canonical Luke, aMarcion might have had access to, and edited, one of these earlier versions.

As described in ‘Supernatural Religion’ by Walter Cassels, towards the end of the 18th century the view that Marcion edited Luke began to be challenged, and the argument swung backwards and forwards until in 1850 Volkmar swayed many to his opinion that the differences between Luke and Mcg were due entirely to action by Marcion. This opinion was still common at the end of the 19th century, when, in 'A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according to St. Luke,' Alfred Plummer wrote:

This question may be regarded as naturally following the discussion of S. Luke's peculiarities and characteristics, for it is by a knowledge of these that we are able to solve it. The question has been keenly debated during the last forty years, and may now be said to be settled, mainly through the exertions of Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, and Sanday …

It is now conceded on all sides that Marcion’s gospel does not represent the original S. Luke, and that our Third Gospel has not been largely augmented and interpolated, especially by the addition of the first three chapters and the last seven verses; but that Marcion’s gospel is an abridgment of our S. Luke, which therefore was current before Marcion began to teach in Rome in or before A.D. 140. The statements of early Christian writers (not to be accepted as conclusive without examination) have been strongly confirmed, and it is right to speak of Marcion’s gospel as a "mutilated" or "amputated" edition of S. Luke.

However, not everyone agreed with this view, and in 1908 Charles B. Waite wrote the following:

Canon Westcott is equally explicit in acquitting Marcion from the accusation made against him by the early fathers of the church. He says: "Tertullian and Epiphanius agree in affirming that Marcion altered the text of the books which he received, to suit his own views; and they quote many various readings in support of the assertion. Those which they cite from the epistles, are certainly insufficient to prove the point; and on the contrary, they go to show that Marcion preserved without alteration, the text which he found in his manuscript. Of the seven readings noticed by Epiphanius, (in the epistles), only two are unsupported by other authority: and it is altogether unlikely that Marcion changed other passages, when, as Epiphanius himself shows, he left untouched those which are most directly opposed to his system."

Waite goes on to suggest that what we know as canonical Luke probably post-dates Mcg:

At the same time, the fact that nearly every word of Marcion is in Luke, besides much additional matter, is strongly suggestive of the theory, that the author of Luke had before him, besides other material, the Gospel of Marcion entire. On the supposition that Marcion was last written, it is difficult to conceive why he should have excluded so large a part of the Gospel of Luke, especially as it is now conceded that it was not done for dogmatic purposes. On the other hand, if Luke was written last, the accumulations were in accordance with the spirit of the age, and the practice of the times. Besides, it was necessary to have a gospel different from that of Marcion, who was a heretic.

The Rev. S. Baring-Gould also believed that Marcion was unlikely to have made many of the changes to Luke of which he is accused:

Tertullian assures us that Marcion had cut out of St. Luke's Gospel whatever opposed his own doctrines, and retained only what was in favour of them. This statement, as we shall see presently, was not strictly true.

But what is far more conclusive of the originality of Marcion’s gospel is, that his Gospel was without several passages which occur in St. Luke, and which do apparently favor his views. Such are Luke 11:51, 13:30 and 34, 20:9-16. These contain strong denunciations of the Jews by Jesus Christ, and a positive declaration that they had fallen from their place as the elect people. Marcion insisted on the abrogation of the Old Covenant; it was a fundamental point in his system; he would consequently have found in these passages powerful arguments in favor of his thesis. He certainly would not have excluded them from his Gospel, had he tampered with the text, as Irenaeus and Tertullian declare. (The lost and hostile gospels, 1874)

There is another point to consider: Around 150 AD Justin Martyr appears to quote from several places in Luke, but it has been suggested that these quotations may have come from a gospel harmony or a sayings source instead (Helmut Koester: From Jesus to the Gospels: interpreting the New Testament in its context). The earliest known reference to Luke as the author of his Gospel appeared around 180 AD, when Irenaeus attributed the Gospel to Luke as the physician and follower of Paul (Adv. Haer. III.3.1, 3.3, III.14.1). As a result, it is at least conceivable that Luke (in the form that we know it) did not actually exist until after Marcion appeared.

Since the mid-20th century we have been able to examine several papyri (in particular P45 and P75) that provide mss support for many textual variations in Luke, some of which exactly match differences that we see in Mcg. Consequently, we must allow for the possibility that at least some of the stated differences between Mcg and Luke either pre-date Mcg, or are caused by later (possibly even post-Marcionite) changes to Luke. We must also consider that the versions of Luke used by Tertullian and Epiphanius may have differed from that known in Marcion’s time, or from what we know as canonical Luke. The problem is essentially one of directionality, i.e. which is more likely to have come first. William Sanday states the issue in this form:

The question in debate may be stated thus. Did Marcion, as the Church writers say, really mutilate our so-called St. Luke (the name is not of importance, but we may use it as standing for our third Synoptic in its present shape)? Or, is it not possible that the converse may be true, and that Marcion's Gospel was the original and ours an interpolated version?

Sanday’s position is essentially just either-or: Either Marcion edited Luke, or aLuke interpolated Mcg, but he does at least mention one other possibility: ”that Marcion's Gospel may be altogether independent of our present Synoptic, and that it may represent a parallel recension of the evangelical tradition,” but he does not engage this possibility. Given that Sanday uses the close literary relationship between Mcg and Luke as part of his argument, this is not surprising. However, Knox concludes his discussion of the vocabulary of Mcg by pointing out that the position of Sanday (and others) is too limiting:

May I conclude by mentioning two possibilities bearing on the general question of the priority of Luke or Marcion which are often overlooked, but may prove to be relevant. First, it would be possible for Marcion's Gospel to be older than Luke and yet for Luke to antedate Marcion himself. In other words, if adequate reason should be found for regarding Marcion's form as more primitive than Luke's, we should not necessarily have to date Luke as late as the middle of the second century, since the larger work may well have existed side by side with the earlier form which Marcion preferred.

And secondly, it is possible that we have been too much inclined to take the position that either Luke expanded Marcion or Marcion abridged Luke. The possibility should not be lost sight of that back of both Marcion and Luke may lie a gospel, larger than Marcion's version and shorter than Luke's, from which both are derived.

Although Knox does not say so in so many words, his position does allow for the possibility that Mcg might actually have been created by editing an earlier version of Luke. Sanday considers this unlikely because of, as he sees it, the homogeneity between those parts of Luke that are not in Mcg when compared with those parts that are, so concluding that Mcg must be an edited version of Luke. However, Knox sees flaws in Sanday’s analysis, and more recently Matthias Klinghardt has taken up the position of Knox, stating “that in many ways it is much easier to regard Luke as an enlarged edition of Mcn [Klinghardt’s abbreviation for Mcg] than the other way round.” However, he then goes further, and brings the subject of the possible priority of Mcg over Luke to bear on the synoptic problem:

The observation that in some cases Luke seems to be earlier and in other instances Matthew seems to be earlier, cannot be explained with the help of a simple “Benutzungshypothese” (the proposal of MwQH [Mark without Q Hypothesis]) but necessarily requires an additional source. Thus the Janus-faced character of the double tradition is one of the strongest arguments for the 2DH: The assumption of “Q” seemed to solve this problem of mutual influence in the double tradition. For want of an alternative text that could explain this problem of mutual influence in the double tradition, many scholars seem to put up with “Q” in spite of the apparent weaknesses of the 2DH.

There is, however, an additional, yet long neglected text which indubitably belongs in the maze of the synoptic tradition and which, contrary to the hypothetically reconstructed document “Q”, is well attested by ancient sources: the gospel of Marcion, or, more precisely, the gospel which was used by Marcion and the Marcionites… Subject to the condition that Mcn was prior to Luke and thus ought to be included in the discussion of the synoptic relations, the whole picture changes considerably.

Did Marcion edit a copy of Luke by removing text to make it fit his theology, or did he perhaps come across (possibly via Cerdon) an earlier version of what became Luke that did not include passages he is accused of removing, and base his theology around that? If Mcg indeed is, or is edited from, an earlier version of what we see as Luke, could this have been seen and used by aMatthew? Which of these scenarios are closest to the truth remains to be seen. Because no mss of Mcg are extant, in order to evaluate what differences aMarcion might have come across, or have made, we need to look for evidence outside of Mcg itself, and for that we have to rely heavily on the writings of Tertullian and Epiphanius.

Next: Tertullian and Epiphanius

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. regarding this topic or this page please email me at davidinglis2@comcast.net