thus taunts his opponent, evidently under the impression that the two passages were in Luke, immediately after he had accused Marcion of having actually expunged from that Gospel, "as an interpolation,"(1) the saying that Christ had not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them,(2) which likewise never formed part of it. He repeats a similar charge on several other occasions.(3) Epiphanius commits the same mistake of reproaching Marcion with omitting from Luke what is only found in Matthew.(4) We have, in fact, no certain guarantee of the accuracy or trustworthiness of their statements.
We have said enough, we trust, to show that the sources for the reconstruction of a text of Marcion's Gospel are most unsatisfactory, and no one who attentively studies the analysis of Hahn, Ritschl, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, and others, who have examined and systematized the data of the Fathers, can fail to be struck by the uncertainty which prevails throughout, the almost continuous vagueness and consequent opening, nay, necessity, for conjecture, and the absence of really sure indications. The Fathers had no intention of showing what Marcion's text actually was, and their object being solely dogmatic and not critical, their statements are very insufficient for the purpose.(5) The materials have had to be ingeniously collected and sifted from polemical writings whose authors, so far from professing to furnish them, were only bent upon seeking in Marcion's Gospel such points as could legitimately, or by sophistical skill, be used against him. Passing observations, general
remarks, as well as direct statements, have too often been the only indications guiding the patient explorers and, in the absence of certain information, the silence of the angry Fathers has been made the basis for important conclusions. It is evident that not only is such a procedure necessarily uncertain and insecure, but that it rests upon assumptions with regard to the intelligence, care and accuracy of Tertullian and Epiphanius, which are not sufficiently justified by that part of their treatment of Marcion's text which we can examine and appreciate. And when all these doubtful landmarks have failed, too many passages have been left to the mere judgment of critics, as to whether they were too opposed to Marcion's system to have been retained by him, or too favourable to have been omitted. The reconstructed texts, as might be expected, differ from each other, and one Editor finds the results of his predecessors incomplete or unsatisfactory,1 although naturally at each successive attempt, the materials previously collected and adopted have contributed to an apparently more complete result. After complaining of the incompleteness and uncertainty of the statements of Tertullian and Epiphanius, Ritschl affirms that they furnish so little solid material on which to base a hypothesis, that rather by means of a hypothesis must we determine the remains of the Gospel from Tertullian.(3) Hilgenfeld quotes this with approval, and adds, that at least Ritschl's opinion is so far right, that all the facts of the case can no longer be settled from external data, and that the general view regarding the
Gospel only can decide many points.(1) This means of course that hypothesis is to supply that which is wanting in the Fathers. Volkmar, in the introduction to his last comprehensive work on Marcion's Gospel, says: "And, in fact, it is no wonder that critics have for so long, and substantially to so little effect, fought over the protean question, for there has been so much uncertainty as to the very basis (Fundament) itself,—the precise text of the remarkable document,—that Baur has found full ground for rejecting, as unfounded, the supposition on which that finally-attained decision (his previous one) rested."(2) Critics of all shades of opinion are forced to admit the incompleteness of the materials for any certain reconstruction of Marcion's text and, consequently, for an absolute settlement of the question from internal evidence,(3) although the labours of Volkmar and Hilgenfeld have materially increased our knowledge of the contents of his Gospel. We must contend, however, that, desirable and important as it is to ascertain as perfectly as possible the precise nature of Marcion's text, the question of its origin and relation to Luke would not by any means be settled even by its final reconstruction. There would, as we shall presently show, remain unsolved the problem of its place in that successive manipulation of materials by which a few Gospels gradually absorbed and displaced the rest. Our own synoptics
exhibit unmistakable traces of the process, and clearly forbid our lightly setting aside the claim of Marcion's Gospel to be considered a genuine work, and no mere falsification and abbreviation of Luke.
Before proceeding to a closer examination of Marcion's Gospel and the general evidence bearing upon it, it may be well here briefly to refer to the system of the Heresiarch whose high personal character exerted so powerful an influence upon his own time,(1) and whose views continued to prevail widely for a couple of centuries after his death. It was the misfortune of Marcion to live in an age when Christianity had passed out of the pure morality of its infancy, when, untroubled by complicated questions of dogma, simple faith and pious enthusiasm had been the one great bond of Christian brotherhood, into a phase of ecclesiastical development in which religion was fast degenerating into theology, and complicated doctrines were rapidly assuming that rampant attitude which led to so much bitterness, persecution, and schism. In later times Marcion might have been honoured as a reformer, in his own he was denounced as a heretic.(2) Austere and ascetic in his opinions, he aimed at superhuman purity, and although his clerical adversaries might scoff at his impracticable doctrines regarding marriage and the subjugation of the flesh, they have had their parallels amongst those whom the Church has since most delighted to honour; and at least the whole tendency of his system was markedly towards the side of virtue.(3) It would of course be foreign to our
