The charge of mutilating and interpolating the Gospel of Luke is first brought against Marcion by Irenæus,(2) and it is repeated with still greater vehemence and fulness by Tertullian,(3) and Epiphanius;(4) but the mere assertion by Fathers at the end of the second and in the third centuries, that a Gospel different from their own was one of the Canonical Gospels falsified and mutilated, can have no weight whatever in itself in the inquiry as to the real nature of that work.(5) Their arbitrary assumption of exclusive originality and priority for the four Gospels of the Church led them, without any attempt at argument, to treat every other evangelical work as an offshoot or falsification of these. The arguments by which Tertullian endeavours to establish that the Gospels of Luke and the other Canonical Evangelists were more ancient than that of Marcion(6) show that he had no idea of historical or critical evidence.(7) We are, however, driven back upon such actual data regarding the text and contents of Marcion's Gospel as are given by the Fathers, as the only basis, in the absence of the Gospel itself, upon which any hypothesis as to its real character can be built. The question therefore is: Are these data sufficiently ample and trustworthy for a decisive judgment
from internal evidence? if indeed internal evidence in such a case can be decisive at all.
All that we know, then, of Marcion's Gospel is simply what Tertullian and Epiphanius have stated with regard to it. It is, however, undeniable, and indeed is universally admitted, that their object in dealing with it at all was entirely dogmatic, and not in the least degree critical(1). The spirit of that age was indeed so essentially uncritical(2) that not even the canonical text could waken it into activity. Tertullian very clearly states what his object was in attacking Marcion's Gospel. After asserting that the whole aim of the Heresiarch was to prove a disagreement between the Old Testament and the New, and that for this purpose he had erased from the Gospel all that was contrary to his opinion, and retained all that he had considered favourable, Tertullian proceeds to examine the passages retained,(3) with the view of proving that the Heretic has shown the same "blindness of heresy" both in that which he has erased and in that which he has retained, inasmuch as the passages which Marcion has allowed to remain are as opposed to his system, as those which he has omitted. He conducts the controversy in a free and discursive manner, and whilst he appears to go through Marcion's Gospel with some regularity, it will be apparent, as we proceed, that
mere conjecture has to play a large part in any attempt to reconstruct, from his data, the actual text of Marcion. Epiphanius explains his aim with equal clearness. He had made a number of extracts from the so-called Gospel of Marcion which seemed to him to refute the heretic, and after giving a detailed and numbered list of these passages, which he calls [———], he takes them consecutively and to each adds his "Refutation." His intention is to show how wickedly and disgracefully Marcion has mutilated and falsified the Gospel, and how fruitlessly he has done so, inasmuch as he has stupidly, or by oversight, allowed much to remain in his Gospel by which he may be completely refuted.(1)
As it is impossible within our limits fully to illustrate the procedure of the Fathers with regard to Marcion's Gospel, and the nature and value of the materials they supply, we shall as far as possible quote the declarations of critics, and more especially of Volkmar and Hilgenfeld, who, in the true and enlightened spirit of criticism, impartially state the character of the data available for the understanding of the text. As these two critics have, by their able and learned investigations, done more than any others to educe and render possible a decision of the problem, their own estimate of the materials upon which a judgment has to be formed is of double value.
With regard to Tertullian, Volkmar explains that his desire is totally to annihilate the most dangerous heretic of his time,—first (Books i.—iii.), to overthrow Marcion's system in general as expounded in his "Antitheses,"—and then (Book iv.) to show that even the Gospel of Marcion
only contains Catholic doctrine (he concludes, "Christus Jesus in Evangelio tuo mens est" c. 43); and therefore he examines the Gospel only so far as may serve to establish his own view and refute that of Marcion. "To show," Volkmar continues, "wherein this Gospel was falsified or mutilated, i.e., varied from his own, on the contrary, is in no way his design, for he perceives that Marcion could retort the reproach of interpolation, and in his time proof from internal grounds was hardly possible, so that only exceptionally, where a variation seems to him remarkable, does he specially mention it."(1) On the other hand Volkmar remarks that Tertullian's Latin rendering of the text of Marcion which lay before him,—which, although certainly free and having chiefly the substance in view, is still in weightier passages verbally accurate,—directly indicates important variations in that text. He goes on to argue that the silence of Tertullian may be weighty testimony for the fact that passages which exist in Luke, but which he does not mention, were missing in Marcion's Gospel, but he does so with considerable reservation. "But his silence alone," he says, "can only under certain conditions represent with diplomatic certainty an omission in Marcion. It is indeed probable that he would not lightly have passed over a passage in the Gospel of Marcion which might in any way be contradictory to its system, if one altogether similar had not preceded it, all the more as he frequently drags in by force such proof passages from Marcion's text, and often plainly with but a certain sophistry tries to refute his adversary out of the words of his own Gospel. But it remains always possible that in his eagerness he has