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Loading...Yesterday I mentioned Marcion as one of the prime early Christian thinkers who argued that Jesus was so much divine he was not at all human. I have decided that I need to provide more background to make sense of the particular way he appears to have come to that conclusion, by discussing in a bit greater depth his overall theological views, so far as we can know them.
I did that before on the blog many years ago. Here I do it again!
Marcion was active in the 130s and 140s; he came to Rome to become part of the Christian community there in 139; he apparently was booted out about five years later when the church leaders found his forcefully-proclaimed views unacceptable. He then went around Asia Minor (whence he originally came, from Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea) establishing churches. He held popular views that attracted lots of followers.
Marcion and his followers believed that Jesus — whom they considered their Lord and Savior — was not connected with Judaism. (That seems weird to us, because in the Gospels he absolutely is; but keep reading: Marcion didn’t have our Gospels). Jesus had nothing to do with the Law, since he represented a different God from the one who gave the Law. The Law was given by the Creator of this world who called Israel to be his people and then judged them, and all people, harshly, for not obeying his law, leading to universal condemnation. Jesus came from a different God, a previously unknown God, who was not the God of the Old Testament, but a higher spiritual being who intervened on behalf of people to save them from the wrath of the Creator.
There are many, many things about Marcion’s system of belief that we would love to know that we simply do not. The main reason is that Marcion’s own writings have not been passed down to us from antiquity. That should not be a huge surprise. Other Christians considered Marcion to be an arch-heretic, an evil representative of the Devil come to deceive the faithful. They censored his writings and simply refused to copy them. That was the easiest way to destroy books in antiquity. You didn’t have to have a public book-burning. If you simply didn’t copy a book, it wouldn’t survive.
We know of two books from Marcion. The first was his own composition, the Antitheses, which I mentioned in the previous post, a book that appears to have laid out in stark contrast the differences between the God of the Jews who gave the Law and the previously unknown God of Jesus who provided salvation. Marcion claims he learned of this contrast from the writings of the apostle Paul, his hero, who did indeed differentiate between his “gospel” and the law.
His second book was his canon of Scripture, an edited collection of ten of Paul’s letters and a version of the Gospel of Luke.
Because we don’t have either writing, we have to
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Quote – ‘Marcion didn’t have our Gospels’
Sounds an odd thing to say. Why wouldn’t he? Lots of others did.
Luke was quoting Matt and Mark when he compiled his own Gospel in the 50’s maybe.
And there’s the Epistles from Paul, Jesus’ brother, Peter etc..
In fact, Marcion might have had MORE of the Gospels then we do today.
Every historical claim requires historical evidence. What makes “sense” to a modern person is not “evidence.”
Some books (not as erudite as Dr Ehrman’s) claim that Marcion was a gnostic because of his 2 gods/docetic beliefs. But can we say categorically that Marcion was never seen as a gnostic but rather as something quite distinct? For instance, did Tertullian think Marcion was a type of gnostic?
Irenaeus certainly does. But I don’t know of any modern scholars who do.
How early on did Christians begin to consider Paul’s letters as scripture?
The earliest evidence is 2 Peter 3:16, which includes Paul’s letters among the “Scriptures”
You mentioned that Marcion didn’t have our gospels. Why not? Weren’t the four canonical gospels in existence by the time Marcion arrived in Rome (139 CE)?
THe problem is that htere were not good distribution networks of ancient writings, so lots of places simply had not heard of books found in other places (I guess an analogy might be art movies today: released on some places where others ahve not heard of them; or even books; lots of books are out there, but most of us have never heard of them — even though we *do* have distribution networks today.)
> Weren’t the four canonical gospels in existence by the time Marcion arrived in Rome
Might not part of the problem (that Marcion didn’t seem to know or use the four) be that at the time they weren’t canonical? Just four among many gospels and other proto-scriptural writings that were around.
That may be part of the problem — and it’s certainly true they were not canonical. My view is that he considered authoriative the one that he knew growing up, before he came to Rome.
Is there a book you could recommend on the history of atonement theology or perhaps you have another blog post? Were there other points of view at the beginning, e.g. Jesus showed us that the worst most ignominious things could happen to humans and his spirit lives on? Or was everyone an “atone-ist?” It sounds as if since Marcion was involved in the details of how Jesus sacrifice counted towards atonement, it was a concept well in place by Marcion’s time.
I’m afraid I’m not an expert on the later history of the theory and don’t know what books I would recommend. sorry!
What about the birth of Jesus? If Marcion accepted “a version of the gospel of Luke,” and held a docetic view of Jesus, how might he have dealt with Luke’s nativity narrative?
Tertullian claims that Marcion said that Jesus descended from heaven in the fifteenth year of Tiberius as a full grown man!
So he would have just ignored Luke’s nativity narrative, edited it out? Or perhaps it wasn’t part of the version of Luke Marcion had?
My view is that it wasn’t part of the gospel that he grew up with, but was added as a second edition. Others think he just chopped them out.
You stated, in response to a comment on your earlier post, that you don’t see a connection between Marcion and Gnosticism, yet his theology seems rooted in the same dualism that is at the base of most Gnostic thought. Instead of one leading to another, do you think that both Marcion and the Gnostics were drawing on a (Platonic?) dualism that was simply entrenched in Greek paideia?
I think the GNostics were definitely coming out of a middle-Platonic tradition. Marcion, though, shows no evidence of any philosophical knowledge/training. He seems to have been getting it from his understanding of Paul’s binary: Law and Gospel. (His theology is very different from various GNostic views, up and down the line, on nearly every point…)
Having Marcion’s writings firsthand would be very illuminating for historians’ understanding of the development of patristic christianities especially the docetist forms. But suppose we take for granted that all the writings Marcion had access to concerning the life and teachings of Jesus were composed no earlier than the end of the 1st century, after composition of GJohn. Is it remotely conceivable from a historical perspective that Marcion’s writings could shed light on the historical Jesus away from his Jewishness, towards a gnostic, docetic figure in history? I suppose historiography is inherently naturalistic, hence it would always stay clear of affirmation of the alleged supernatural character of a historical figure. Historians who see zero value in GJohn – which some Christians in the patristic era had read in a docetic direction – as a source of information about the historical Jesus, would be even less inclined to accord historical value to Marcion’s writings had they survived firsthand.
Great post! You do a marvelous job in explaining the lack of manuscripts and the flaws in the theology. It is my understanding that Marcion’s views lasted in many of the Asia Minor churches even until the 4th century. Do we know whether Marcion return to this area and tried to spread his views after 144? I have ordered von Harnack’s book and looking forward to reading it!!
Yes, he apparently used Asia Minor as the center of his missionary focus.
“The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels” by Matthias Klinghardt is presenting Marcion as a author of the first gospel (source material for all cannonical gospels) and as an inventor of gospel genre – sayings connected with narration. Similar scenario is proposed by Markus Vinzent in “Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels”. What is your opinion about Marcion Hyphotesis ?
I think it is easily refuted. Matthew and Luke are almost certainly to be dated near the end of the first century; they used Mark which is therefore earlier, usually dated to ca. 70 CE. Marcion cannot have been active until many decades after that. So it’s an intersting thesis, but not surprising that almost no one is convinced (in fact, apart from the people who advance it, I don’t know anyone — Gospel scholar or Marcion scholar) who is!
I can understand why the early Christian Fathers wanted to dismiss the teachings of Marcion. These ‘un-earthly’ teachings about Jesus are the start of a stream of thought that takes us through to the modern day ‘extra-terrestrial’ theories of Erich von Daniken.
Dr. Ehrman,
I have a question about Paul’s Christology. I know it’s just speculation since we can’t know the answer either way, but I’d like to hear your view nonetheless.
Do you think that Paul would have been inclined to a view similar or close to what we later call docetic?
No, I really don’t. For him the fact that Jesus died a real, human, bloody death is very important. But how he *explained* how a divine being became “human” — we don’t know.
Ah yes, sorry –
I phrased my question poorly. I know that Paul’s view of the death and ressurection of Jesus was what you described above. I was thinking about his incarnation Christology and if we maybe could infer something from his letters as to how he would have explained his view of the pre-existence of Jesus and how it relates to his view of the historical Jesus. You answered my question perfectly, even though I did a poor job to articulate what I was wondering about. Thanks!
(English is my second language, so feel free to exclude this comment if the grammar in it make it incomprehensible ).
Phillipos98, you might be interested in this article: https://ehrmanblog.org/was-christ-an-angel-according-to-paul/
There, Dr. Ehrman lays out the case that Paul thought Jesus was an angel, who came to the world in the form of a human.
Professor, Marcion’s “previously unknown God” of Jesus vs Israel’s creator sounds a bit like some of the gnostic beliefs particularly Jesus coming from the realm of Barbello in the gospel of Judas… Was Marion an early Christian Gnostic?
Lots of people are asking me that. I better devote a post to it!
I recently watched a lecture by Dr. Alec Ryrie, which I’d highly recommend — https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/two-kingdoms-in-the-third-reich — where he discussed how Protestant churches in Germany reacted to Nazism, too often with collaboration and acquiescence. He discussed how the German “Dejudaisation Institute” produced a “Volkstestament”, an attempt to produce a version of the Bible with the Jewish parts removed. “As you can imagine,” Dr. Ryrie dryly notes, “it was quite brief.” It had no Old Testament, of course, and includes just John and a composite synoptic gospel, with scriptural fulfillment references removed, along with lightly-edited versions of Paul’s letters.
I don’t know that the Dejudaisation Institute was thinking of Marcion at all, but it’s notable that their Volkstestament ended up resembling Marcion’s canon in many ways. I don’t think Marcion was motivated by hatred of Jews, but I do find it curious that there were two separate attempts in history to remove Jewish influence from Christianity, and I’m glad that neither caught on.
Dr. Ehrman
I have a question for later or you may have addressed this earlier. Do you think the numerous examples of Jesus reaching out to non Jews (e.g. the good samaritan ) and those of
humble status ( e.g. a tax collector) was historical. I believe you suggested, “He who is without sin cast the first stone,” was possibly not historical. I think you believe these out reaching statements were, in general, historical. My reason for pushing this is I think that is what is unique about Jesus and I think this is something that speaks to us today regardless of how we feel about the status of Jesus. In short I am asking do you think this is the absolute main message of the historical Jesus that transcends the hundreds of minor questions that divide Christians and others.
Sinners: yes; non-Jews: I kind of doubt it. Most Jewish teachers taught only Jews.