Christian Texts and History • Vinzent's arguments in part for versions of the canonical gospels being written in reaction to Marcion's

Here follows the text in a new critical edition, as the ones given by de Bruyne and Harnack reveal several inaccuracies of their readings of the manuscripts. The text is based on R with the deviations noted in the critical apparatus:

The Gospel of John was published and distributed to the churches by John while he was still alive, as the Hieropolitan, called Papias, the beloved disciple of John, has reported in his explications, namely the last (?) five books. Marcion, the heretic, however, wrote down a Gospel/described the Gospel while John dictated correctly the true one. Since he [Marcion] has been disapproved by him [John], because he [John] noticed 'Antitheses' against him, John rebuked him. He [Marcion], indeed, had brought to him writings or letters from the brethren who were in Pontus.

The version of T (and other manuscripts) underlines that John himself has written the Gospel (after Revelation) and that he has distributed it to the churches ‘in Asia’. It seems, however, that the T version is influenced by the Prologue to the Gospel of Luke, where we read ‘Iohannes apostolus scripsit apocalypsin in insula Patmos deinde evangelium in Asia’, which resonates with what Irenaeus mentions in Adversus haereses III 1,2: ‘And he [John] issued the Gospel while he lived in Ephesus, Asia.’

If we read the text with the R tradition – and to clarify the connection between the first part and the second part we remove the full stop between ‘recte’ and ‘verum’, this raises the questions: What is meant by ‘contraria sentiebat’? What did John disapprove of and why did he rebuke Marcion? The answers to these questions can only have been given in the first part of the text.

The explanation can start with the causal clause ‘quod contraria sentiebat’. The subject of sentiebat needs to be John, the one who, therefore, disapproved of Marcion and rebuked him: John had noticed ‘opposites’ in Marcion. In the context of Marcion, of course, ‘contraria’ will most certainly not mean simply ‘opposing views or ideas’; more specifically the term hints at the Antitheses of Marcion that he had placed before his Gospel in its published version of his New Testament.⁹¹

• 91 see Tertertullian, Adv. haer. I 19,4, who speaks about Antitheses Marcionis, id est contrariae oppositiones (see ibid. II 29), or ibid. IV 1,1, or mentions the work’s title as Antitheses (opus ex contrarietatum oppositionibus Antitheses cognominatum), or Irenaeus’ Asian presbyter who speaks of contrario opponentes, Iren., Adv. haer. IV 28,1; and Refutation of All Heresies, VII 37

If this were so, then Papias wants us to believe that John had dictated his Gospel at the same time as Marcion had written down his own Gospel (not that Marcion commented on or wrote down John’s Gospel, as ‘descripsit’ could also mean this). According to Papias John’s Gospel, not Marcion’s, was the ‘true’ Gospel. Moreover, it transpires that Marcion and John knew of each other’s work in progress.

Different from our interpretation, commentators have opted to alter the manuscript readings or have questioned the reliability of the text: D. Aberle replaced ‘Marcion’ with ‘Cerinthus’; B.W. Bacon calls the information a ‘curious anachronism’; D. de Bruyne believed it to be ‘not the right text’; while A. v. Harnack disqualified the fragment as ‘a chronological and material nonsense’, something ‘unbearable’, and together with D. de Bruyne he deleted ‘ab Iohanne’ as ‘a thoughtless addition’.

However, these solutions overlook, as we will see in more detail below in our treatment of Tertullian, that the text does, indeed, reflect a historical reality. Papias refers to John being a reaction to Marcion, explicable from what Tertullian reports about Marcion’s Gospel.

According to the text as it stands, John must have known of Marcion’s Gospel, must have read the Antitheses (contraria) and, as a result of the latter, rejected Marcion.⁹⁷

• 97 see also Filastrius, Haer. 45: ‘Marcion devictus atque fugatus a beato Iohanne evangelista et presbyterio de civitate Effesi.’

Conversely, Marcion, when publishing his Gospel with the Antitheses, must have known of John’s Gospel (which perhaps was still in the making), as he makes reference to it in his Antitheses, which is reported by Papias here and supported by Tertullian, when he informs us about Marcion criticizing John’s Gospel in his Antitheses:

Adv. Marc. IV 2,2 From among the apostles the faith is introduced to us by John and by Matthew, while from among apostolic men Luke and Mark give it renewal . . . IV 3,2 ... Marcion has got hold of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel [see Gal. 2:14 which he referred to his own gospel], and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ [which was preserved in his own]: and on this ground Marcion strives hard to overthrow the credit of those gospels which are the apostles’ own and are published under their names [hence John and Matthew], or even the names of apostolic men [hence Luke and Mark], with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others. IV 3,3 And yet, even if there is censure of Peter [as the source for Mark] and John [taken as the author of John] and James, who were esteemed as pillars (see Gal. 2:9), the reason is evident ...

As will become apparent by looking to more sources, the so-called chronological nonsense starts making sense, as soon as we discover:

1. that Marcion’s Gospel was not produced in one go, but in two stages, first in a draft that found its way to the public, and second in a published version (with the Antitheses and Paul’s letters attached), and
   .
2. that the Gospel-writing of our Synoptics and John happened almost simultaneously with Marcion’s.

The chronology, therefore, makes sense and John can have disapproved of Marcion’s Antitheses,99 even if the term ‘contraria sentiebat’ indicates that Marcion’s Antitheses did not directly attack John.

• 99 See B.W. Bacon, ‘The Anti-Marcionite Prologue to John’ (1930), p. 49. A further indication of John being a reaction to Marcion’s Antitheses can be found in Tertullian's De carne Christi III: ‘If you had not rejected the Scriptures which were against your own opinion (‘opinioni tuae resistentes’) the Gospel of John would have confounded you.’

The last sentence of Papias’ fragment harmonizes with this interpretation, as it becomes clear that the ‘writings or letters’ (perhaps the Latin equivalent for [...] which Marcion ‘'had brought to him [John] ... from the brethren who were in Pontus'’ indicates that Marcion had, indeed, connections with the author of John’s Gospel and that he gave him writings or letters which John reacted.

Was Marcion in hope of winning John for his case? It may also be a hint that Marcion did not start collecting Paul’s letters and writing his Gospel only after having arrived at Rome, but that potentially he had worked on these projects for some time before his Rome stay.

Statistics: Posted by MrMacSon — Sun Jan 26, 2025 6:57 pm