Lost and Hostile Gospels

This Gospel bore a close resemblance to that of St. Luke. “Marcion,” says Irenaeus, “has disfigured the entire Gospel, he has reconstructed it after his own fancy, and then boasts that he possesses the true Gospel.”396

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.397 This statement, as we shall see presently, was not strictly true.

Epiphanius is more precise. He goes most carefully over the Gospel used by Marcion, and discusses every text which, he says, was modified by the heretic.398

The charge of mutilating the Canonical Gospels was brought by the orthodox Fathers against both the Ebionites on one side, and the Marcionites and Valentinians on the other, because the Gospels they used did not exactly agree with those employed by the middle party in the Church which ultimately prevailed. But the extreme parties on their side made the same charge against the Catholics.399 It is not necessary to believe these charges in every case.

If the Gospels400 were compiled as in the manner I have contended they were, such discrepancies must have occurred. Every Church had its own collection of the “Logia” and of the “Practhenta” of Christ. The more voluminous of these collections, those better strung together, thrust the earlier, less complete, collections into the back-ground. And these collections were continually being augmented by the acquisition of fresh material; and this new material was squeezed into the existing text, often without much consideration for the chain of story or teaching which it broke and dislocated.

Marcion was too conscientious and earnest a man wilfully to corrupt a Gospel. He probably brought with him to Rome the Gospel in use at Sinope in Pontus, of which city, according to one account, his father was bishop. The Church in Sinope had for its first bishop, Philologus, the friend of St. Paul, if we may trust the pseudo-Hippolytus and Dorotheus. It is probable that the Church of Sinope, when founded, was furnished by St. Paul with a collection of the records of Christ's life and teaching such as he supplied to other “Asiatic” churches. And this collection was, no doubt, made by his constant companion Luke.

Thus the Gospel of Marcion may be Luke's original Gospel. But there is every reason to believe that Luke's Gospel went through considerable alteration, probably passed through a second edition with considerable additions to it made by the evangelist's own hand, before it became what it now is, the Canonical Luke.

He may have found reason to alter the arrangement of certain incidents; to insert whole paragraphs which had come to him since he had composed his first rough sketch; to change certain expressions where he found a difference in accounts of the same sayings, or to combine several.

Moreover, the first edition was published in the full heat of the Pauline controversy. Its strong Paulinianism lies on the surface. But afterwards, when this excitement had passed away, and the popular misconception of Pauline sola-fidianism had become a general offence to morals and religion, then Luke came under the influence of St. John, and tempered his Gospel by adding to it incidents Paul did not care to have inserted in the Gospel he wished his converts to receive, or the accuracy of which, as disagreeing with his own views, he was disposed to question.

Of this I shall have more to say presently. It is necessary, in the first place, briefly to show that Marcion's Gospel contained a different arrangement of the narrative from the Canonical Luke, and was without many passages which it is not possible to believe he wilfully excluded. For instance, in Marcion's Gospel: “And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go, show yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that as they went, they were cleansed. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed,” &c. Here the order is Luke xvii. 12, 13, 14, iv. 27, xvii. 15. Such a disturbance of the text in the Canonical Gospel could serve no purpose, would not support any peculiar view of Marcion, and cannot therefore have been a wilful alteration. And in the first chapter of Marcion's Gospel this is the sequence of verses whose parallels in St. Luke are: iii. 1, iv. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 16, 20 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44.

Thus the order of events is different in the two Gospels. Christ goes first to Capernaum in the “Gospel of the Lord,” and afterwards to Nazareth, an inversion of the order as given in the Gospel of St. Luke. Again, in this instance, no purpose was served by this transposition. It is unaccountable on the theory that Marcion corrupted the Gospel of Luke; but if we suppose that Luke revised the arrangement of his Gospel after its first publication, the explanation is simple enough.

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 favour his views. Such are Luke xi. 51, xiii. 30 and 34, xx. 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 favour of his thesis. He certainly would not have excluded them from his Gospel, had he tampered with the text, as Irenaeus and Tertullian declare.

Yet Marcion would not scruple to use the knife upon a Gospel that came into his hands, if he found in it passages that wholly upset his doctrine of the Demiurge and of asceticism. For when the Church was full of Gospels, and none were as yet settled authoritatively as canonical, private opinion might, unrebuked, choose one Gospel and reject the others, or subject any Gospel to critical supervision. The manner in which the Gospels were composed laid them open to criticism. Any Church might hesitate to accept a saying of our Lord, and incorporate it with the Gospel with which it was acquainted, till satisfied that the saying was a genuine, apostolic tradition. And how was a Church to be satisfied? By internal evidence of genuineness, when the apostles themselves had passed away. Consequently, each Church was obliged to exert its critical faculty in the composition of its Gospel. And that the churches did exert their judgment freely is evidenced by the mass of apocryphal matter which remains, the dross after the refining, piled up in the Gospels of Nicodemus, of the Infancy of Thomas, and of Joseph the Carpenter. All of which was deliberately rejected as resting on no apostolic authority, as not found in any Church to be read at the sacred mysteries, but as mere folk-tales buzzed about, nowhere producing credentials of authenticity.

Marcion, following St. Paul, declared that the Judaizing Church had “corrupted the word of God,”401 meaning such “logia” as, “I am not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets.” “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all is fulfilled.”402 These texts would naturally find no place in the original Pauline Gospels used by the Churches he had founded. In St. Luke's Gospel, accordingly, the Law and the Prophets are said to have been until John, and since then the Gospel, “the kingdom of God.”403 But the following verse in St. Luke's Gospel is, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the Law to fail” – a contradiction of the immediately preceding verse, which declares that the Law has ceased with the proclamation of the Gospel. This verse, therefore, cannot have existed in its present form in the original Gospel of St. Luke, and must have been modified when a reconciliation had been effected between Petrine and Pauline Christianity.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the verse should read differently in Marcion's Gospel, which contains the uncorrupted original passage, and runs thus “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of my words to fail;” or perhaps, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the words of the Lord to fail;” for in this instance we have not the exact words.404

But though Marcion certainly endured the presence of texts in his Gospel which militated against his system, he may have cut out other passages. Passages, or words only, which he thought had crept into the text without authority. This can scarcely be denied when the texts are examined which are wanting in his Gospel. No strong conservative attachment to any particular Gospels had grown up in the Church as yet; no texts had been authoritatively sanctioned. As late as the end of the second century (A.D. 190), the Church of Rhossus was using its own Gospel attributed to Peter, till Serapion, bishop of Antioch, thinking that it contained Docetic errors, probably because of omissions, suppressed it,405 and substituted for it, in all probability, one of the more generally approved Gospels.

The Church of Rhossus was neither heretical nor schismatical; it formed part of the Catholic Church, and, no objection was raised against its use of a Gospel of its own, till it was suggested that this Gospel contained errors of doctrine. No question was raised whether it was an authentic Gospel by Peter or not; the standard by which it was measured was the traditional faith of the Church. It did not agree with this standard, and was therefore displaced. St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome assert, probably unjustifiably, that the orthodox did not hesitate to amend their Gospels, if they thought there were passages in them objectionable or doubtful. Thus they altered the passage in which Jesus is said to have wept over Jerusalem (Luke xix. 41). St. Epiphanius frankly tells us so. “The orthodox,” says he, “have eliminated these words, urged to it by fear, and not feeling either their purpose or force.”406 But it is more likely that the weeping of Jesus over Jerusalem was inserted by Luke in his Gospel at the time of reconciliation under St. John, so as to make the Pauline Gospel exhibit Jesus moved with sympathy for the holy city, the head-quarters of the Law. The passage is not in Marcion's Gospel; and though it is possible he may have removed it, it is also possible that he did not find it in the Pauline Gospel of the Church at Sinope.

St. Jerome says that Luke xxii. 43, 44, were also eliminated from some copies of the Canonical Gospel. “The Greeks have taken the liberty of extracting from their texts these two verses, for the same reason that they removed the passage in which it is said he wept… This can only come from superstitious persons, who think that Jesus Christ could not have become as weak as is represented.”407 St. Hilary says that these verses were not found in many Greek texts, or in some Latin ones.408

But here, also, the assertion of St. Jerome and St. Hilary cannot be taken as a statement of fact, but rather as a conclusion drawn by them from the fact that all copies of the Gospel of St. Luke did not contain these two verses. They are wanting in the Gospel of our Lord, and may be an addition made to the Gospel of St. Luke, after it had been first circulated. There is reason to suppose that after St. Luke had written his Gospel, additional matter may have been provided him, and that he published a second, and enlarged, edition of his Gospel. Thus some Churches would be in possession of the first edition, and others of the second, and Jerome and Epiphanius, not knowing this, would conclude that those in possession of the first had tampered with their text.

The Gospel of Marcion has been preserved to us almost in its entirety. Tertullian regarded Marcionism as the most dangerous heresy of his day. He wrote against it, and carefully went through the Marcionite Gospel to show that it maintained the Catholic faith, though it differed somewhat from the Gospel acknowledged by Tertullian, and that therefore Marcion's doctrine was untenable.409 He does not charge Marcion with having interpolated or curtailed a Canonical Gospel, for Marcion was ready to retort the charge against the Gospel used by Tertullian.410

It is not probable that Tertullian passed over any passage in the “Gospel of the Lord” which could by any means be made to serve against Marcion's system. This is the more probable, because Tertullian twists the texts to serve his purpose which in the smallest degree lend themselves to being so treated.411

St. Epiphanius has gone over much the same ground as Tertullian, but in a different manner. He attempts to show how wickedly Marcion had corrupted the Word of God, and how ineffectual his attempt had been, inasmuch as passages in his corrupted Gospel served to destroy his system.

With these two purposes he went through the whole of the “Gospel of the Lord,” and accompanied it with a string of notes, indicating all the alterations and omissions he found in it. Each text from Marcion's Gospel, or Scholion, is accompanied by a refutation. Epiphanius is very particular. He professes to disclose “the fraud of Marcion from beginning to end.” And the pains he took to do this thoroughly appear from the minute differences between the Gospels which he notices.412 At the same time, he does not extract long passages entire from the Gospel, but indicates their subject, where they agreed exactly with the received text. It is possible, therefore, that other slight differences may have existed which escaped his eye, but the differences can only have been slight.

The following table gives the contents of the Gospel of Marcion. It contains nothing that is not found in St. Luke's Gospel. But some of the passages do not agree exactly with the parallel passages in the Canonical Gospel.

The Gospel (Τὸ Εὐαγγέλιον).413

Chap. i.414

1. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate ruling in Judea, Jesus came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and straightway on the Sabbath days, going into the synagogue, he taught.415

2. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.

3. And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice,

4. Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, Jesus?416 Art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.

5. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.

6. And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.

7. And he arose out of the synagogue,417 and entered into Simon's house. And Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought him for her.

8. And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever, and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them.

9. And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.

10. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.418

11. And he came to Nazareth;419 and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day,420 and he began to preach to them.421

12. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.422

13. And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here.423

14. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout the land;

15. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.

16. And many lepers were in the time of Eliseus the prophet in Israel,424 and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.

17. And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,

18. And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.

19. But he passing through the midst of them, went his way to Capernaum.425

20. And when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him, &c. (as St. Luke iv. 40-44).

Chap. ii.

Same as St. Luke v.

Verse 14 differed slightly. For εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς, Marcion's Gospel had ἵνα τοῦτο ἦ μαρτύριον ῦμιν, “that this may be a testimony to you.”

Chap. iii.

Same as St. Luke vi.

Verse 17, for μετ᾽ αὐτῶν, Marcion read ἐν αὐτοῖς; “among them” for “with them.”

Chap. iv.

Same as St. Luke vii.

Verses 29-35 omitted.

Chap. v.

Same as St. Luke viii.

But verse 19 was omitted by Marcion.

And verse 21 read: “And he answering, said unto them, Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?426 My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.”

Chap vi.

Same as St. Luke ix.

But verse 31 was omitted.

Chap. vii.

Same as St. Luke x.

But verse 21 read: “In that hour he rejoiced in the Spirit, and said, I praise and thank thee, Lord of Heaven, that those things which were hidden from the wise and prudent thou hast revealed to babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.”427

And verse 22 ran: “All things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man hath known the Father save the Son, nor the Son save the Father, and he to whom the Son hath revealed;”428 in place of, “All things are delivered to me of my Father; and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.”

And verse 25: “Doing what shall I obtain life?” “eternal,” αἰώνιον, being omitted.

Chap. viii.

Same as St. Luke xi.

But verse 2: “When ye pray, say, Father, may thy Holy Spirit come to us, thy kingdom come,” &c., in place of “Hallowed be thy name.”429

Verse 29: in Marcion's Gospel it ended, “This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it.” What follows in St. Luke's Gospel, “but the sign of Jonas the prophet,” and verses 30-32, were omitted.

Verse 42: “Woe unto you, Pharisees! ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over the calling430 and the love of God,” &c.

Verses 49-51 were omitted by Marcion.

Chap. ix.

Same as St. Luke xii.

But verses 6, 7, and “τῶν ἀγγέλων” in 8 and 9 omitted.

Verse 32 read: “Fear not, little flock; for it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”431

And verse 38 ran thus: “And if he shall come in the evening watch, and find thus, blessed are those servants.”432

Chap. x.

Same as St. Luke xiii. 11-28.

Marcion's Gospel was without verses 1-10.

Verse 28: for “Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets,” Marcion read, “all the righteous,”433 and added “held back” after “cast.”434

Verses 29-35 of St. Luke's chapter were not in Marcion's Gospel.

Chap. xi.

Same as St. Luke xiv.

Verses 7-11 omitted.

Chap. xii.

Same as St. Luke xv. 1-10.

Verses 11-32 omitted.

Chap. xiii.

Same as St. Luke xvi.

But verse 12: “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who will give you that which is mine?”435

And verse 17: for “One tittle of the Law shall not fall,” Marcion read, “One tittle of my words shall not fall.”436

Chap. xiv.

Same as St. Luke xvii.

But verse 2: εἰ μὴ ἐγεννήθη, ἢ μύλος ὀνικὸς,437 “if he had not been born, or if a mill-stone,” &c.

Verses 9, 10: Marcion's Gospel had, “Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise do ye, when ye shall have done all those things that are commanded you.” Omitting, “Say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.”

Verse 14: “And he sent them away, saying, Go show yourselves unto the priests,” &c., in place of, “And when he saw them, he said unto them,” &c.438

Verse 18 ran: “These are not found returning to give glory to God. And there were many lepers in the time of Eliseus the prophet in Israel; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”439

Chap. xv.

Same as St. Luke xviii. 1-30, 35-43.

Verse 19: “Jesus said to him, Do not call me good; one is good, the Father.”440

Verses 31-34 were absent from Marcion's Gospel.

Chap. xvi.

Same as St. Luke xix. 1-28.

Verses 29-48 absent.

Verse 9: “For that he also is a son of Abraham,” was not in Marcion's text.

Chap. xvii.

Same as St. Luke xx. 1-8, 19-36, 39-47.

Verses 9-18 not in Marcion's Gospel.

Verse 19: “They perceived that he had spoken this parable against them,” not in Marcion's text.

Verse 35: “But they which shall be accounted worthy of God to obtain that world,” &c.441

Verses 37, 38, omitted.

Chap. xviii.

Same as St. Luke xxi. 1-17, 19, 20, 23-38.

Verses 18, 21, 22, were not in Marcion's Gospel.

Chap. xix.

Same as St. Luke xxii. 1-15, 19-27, 31-34, 39-48, 52-71.

Verses absent were therefore 16-18, 28-30, 35-38, 45-51.

Chap. xx.

Same as St. Luke xxiii.

Verse 2: “And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this one perverting the nation, and destroying the Law and the Prophets, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and leading away the women and children.”442

Verse 43: “Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me.”443

Chap. xxi.

Same as St. Luke xxiv. 1-26, 28-51.

Verse 25: “O fools and sluggish-hearted in believing all those things which he said to you,” in place of, “in believing all those things which the prophets spake.”444

Verse 27 was omitted.

Verse 32: “And while he opened to us the Scriptures,” omitted.

Verse 44: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you.” What follows in St. Luke, “that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, concerning me,” was omitted.

Verse 45 was omitted.

Verse 46 ran: “That thus it behoved Christ to suffer,” &c.; so that the whole sentence read, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, That thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.”

Verses 52 and 53 were omitted.

I shall now make a few remarks on some of the passages absent from Marcion's Gospel, or which, in it, differ from the Canonical Gospel of St. Luke.

1. It was not attributed to St. Luke. It was Τὸ Εὐαγγέλιον, not κατὰ Λουκᾶν. Tertullian explicitly says, “Marcion inscribes no name on his Gospel,”445 and in the “Dialogue on the Right Faith” it is asserted that he protested his Gospel was the Gospel, the only one; and that the multiplicity of Gospels used by Catholics, and their discrepancies, were a proof that none of these other Gospels were genuine. He even went so far as to assert that his Gospel was written by Christ,446 and when closely pressed on this point, and asked whether Christ wrote the account of his own passion and resurrection, he said it was so, but afterwards hesitated, and asserted that it was probably added by St. Paul.

This shows plainly enough that Marcion had received the Gospel, probably from the Church of Sinope, where it was the only one known, and that he had heard nothing about St. Luke as its author; indeed, knew nothing of its origin. He treated it with the utmost veneration, and in his veneration for it attributed its authorship to the Lord himself; supposing the words of St. Paul, “the Gospel of Christ,”447 “the Gospel of his Son,”448 “the Gospel of God,”449 to mean that Jesus Christ was the actual author of the book.

Marcion, it may be remarked, would have had no objection to acknowledging St. Luke as the compiler of the Gospel, as that evangelist was a devoted follower of St. Paul. If he did not do so, it was because at Sinope the Gospel read in the Church was not known by his name.