Marcion of Sinope

Background

Marcion (c. 85–c. 160), "that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism" (Tertullian, Prescription 30), was the first figure on record to promulgate a fixed Christian scripture-list: an edited Luke plus ten Pauline letters, with the Old Testament rejected wholesale. Per Irenaeus' account preserved by Eusebius, he developed Cerdon's doctrine that the God of the law and prophets is not the Father of Jesus Christ — "the former was just, but the latter good" (Eusebius, HE IV.11). Tertullian records that he began as a believer "in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome" before his break (Prescription 30); Polycarp, meeting him, answered his "Do you know us?" with "I know the first born of Satan" (Eusebius, HE IV.14.7). Everything we know of him comes from his enemies; his Antitheses is lost.

Positions held in this wiki

Marcion propounds no view the wiki defends; he is the catalyst of Canon Formation — New Testament, where every party's theory must pass through him: - For the maximalist view, his knife proves the corpus older than his canon: "Marcion expressly and openly used the knife, not the pen" (Tertullian, Prescription 38) — excision presupposes a prior authoritative Luke and Paul. - For Adolf von Harnack's development view, Marcion is the first canon-maker, and the catholic canon is the counter-canon forged against him. - For Tertullian's ecclesial-authority view, his demonstrable lateness and derivativeness (Prescription 30, 38) is the praescriptio's star exhibit. - The Muratorian Canon (in corpus, new ingestion) shows the boundary-drawing in action: it rejects letters "forged under the name of Paul" connected with "the heresy of Marcion," and "those… who wrote the new Book of Psalms for Marcion" (Muratorian fragment §3–4).

Key works in our corpus

Corpus gap: nothing survives in Marcion's own voice. In-corpus attestation: Tertullian, Prescription 30 and 38; Eusebius, HE IV.11, IV.14, V.13 (V.13 preserves Rhodo on the splintering of the Marcionite movement); Irenaeus, AH I.27 and IV.8 chapter synopses; the Muratorian fragment. Harnack's Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (1921), the classic modern study, is not in corpus.

Principal critics

• Tertullian — five books Against Marcion (not in corpus) plus the Prescription's standing argument.
• Irenaeus of Lyons — classes him with Cerdo among the heresies (AH I.27 synopsis).
• Eusebius of Caesarea — transmits the hostile dossier (Irenaeus, Polycarp, Rhodo).
• On the other flank, Adolf von Harnack is his modern rehabilitator-of-sorts, treating him as the unwitting father of the New Testament idea.

See also

• Tertullian and Irenaeus of Lyons — the primary adversaries through whom he must be read.
• Adolf von Harnack — the development view that makes Marcion pivotal rather than peripheral.
• Bart D. Ehrman — contemporary framing of Marcionism within early Christian diversity.