Tertullian On the Marcionite 'Heavenly Gospel' (Against Marcion Book 4:Chapters 2 and 3)

We have been drawing from the Marcionite testimony in the Dialogues of Adamantius to see prove that their refusal to identify a human author for the gospel has everything to do with the Markan interest in the 'heavenly Torah.'

Here is Tertullian's testimony from the beginning Chapter Two of Book Four Against Marcion:

I pass on next to show how his [i.e. Marcion's] gospel — certainly not Judaic but Pontic — is in places adulterated: and this shall form the basis of my order of approach.

The rejection of the Marcionite claim to possess a 'Judaic gospel' is consistent with other statements in Against Marcion where the Marcionites are portrayed as attaching themselves to Jewish interests and causes. The Marcionites 'wrongly' think the messiah will be a man of war etc.

In other words, I think that Tertullian is rebutting a Marcionite claim to possess a 'Jewish gospel.' Instead he argues it is from Pontus.

Again we are so used to thinking that the mission to the Gentiles was 'only natural' while the Marcionites (Tertullian Against Marcion 3) appealed their message to proselytes to Judaism.

So Tertullian says just before this statement - again against the Marcionite position - that:

Long ago did Isaiah proclaim that the law will go forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem — another law, he means, and another word. In fact, he says, he shall judge among the gentiles, and shall convict many people, a meaning not of the one nation of the Jews, but of the gentiles who by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles are being judged and convicted in their own sight in respect of their ancient error [Tert AM 4:1]

Again Tertullian (or his original source) seems to be consistently rebutting a Marcionite argument that the apostle's mission was only to the Jews and - as I see it - was more of a 'restorer' of the heavenly Torah than the missionary to the Gentiles.

In any event Tertullian continues with his original argument by saying:

I lay it down to begin with that the documents of the gospel have the apostles for their authors, and that this task of promulgating the gospel was imposed upon them by
our Lord himself. If they also have for their authors apostolic men, yet these stand not alone, but as companions of apostles or followers of apostles

This is the standard Catholic opinion and Tertullian goes on to cite the typical Marcionite objection (that we also saw in Adamantius' Dialogues):

It matters not that the arrangement of their narratives varies, so long as there is agreement on the essentials of the faith — and on these they show no agreement with Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, attaches to his gospel no author's name, — as though he to whom it was no crime to overturn the whole body, might not assume permission to invent a title for it as well.

I have never read a single scholar who knows what to do with this statement. I have shown in a previous post that the reference is to Mark 1:1 appearing at the beginning of the Marcionite 'super gospel' and taken as a title of the world as a whole.

The underlying emphasis again is that the gospel is a heavenly Torah - undoubtedly borne out of the 'revelation' mentioned by the apostle in 2 Cor 13:1f.

In other words the apostle (whoever he was or whatever name he was recognized by) received a revelation of the Gospel. It came from heaven. It was not written by the apostle in the same way Mohammed is not understood by Muslims to have 'written' the Quran.

Of course Tertullian wants to turn around this emphasis on a heavenly Torah or a heavenly revelation by arguing that the Marcionite 'are hiding something':

At this point I might have made a stand, arguing that no recognition is due to
a work which cannot lift up its head, which makes no show of courage, which gives no promise of credibility by having a fully descriptive title and the requisite indication of the author's name.

Tertullian says that

Marcion is seen to have chosen Luke as the one to mutilate.

which is quite a weakly worded statement. The original Latin is:

Nam ex iis commentatoribus quos habemus Lucam videtur Marcion elegisse quem caederet.

Holmes translates the same passage as:

Now, of the authors whom we possess, Marcion seems to have singled out Luke for his mutilating process

The million dollar question of course is why does Tertullian hesitate? Why doesn't he make his statement echo the certainty that almost every other scholar who borrows from his original testimony - i.e. 'Marcion singles out Luke'? Why add the qualifying idea that Marcion only 'seems to single out' or 'can be argued to falsify Luke'?

The obvious answer is that Tertullian knows this is bu----it.

The reason Marcionites thought that their gospel came from Christ or heaven was because it began with Mark 1:1 'the gospel of Christ' which they took as the title of the work.

The Diatessaron similiarly begins with these words.

Of course it was Irenaeus who developed Luke and Acts in order to refute the claims of the Marcionites. The fact that 'Luke' is only some jackass follower of an apostle rather than an apostle himself echoes the low rank that 'Mark' holds in the tradition (i.e. he is now developed into only a 'hearer' of Peter, it is Peter's gospel - a position refuted by the Marcionite interestingly in Adamantius' Dialogue also).

As Tertullian writes:

Now Luke was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple, in any case less than his master, and assuredly even more of lesser account as being the follower of a later apostle, Paul, to be sure: so that even if Marcion had introduced his gospel under the name of Paul in person, that one single document would not be adequate for our faith, if destitute of the support of his predecessors.

As such we have to be clear here - in no way, shape or form is the Marcionite gospel identified as 'according to Paul' or any human author. It simply begins with Mark 1:1 as I have already noted.

Now notice that Tertullian actually proceeds with a very dangerous argument arguing that Paul himself not only did not write a gospel or Luke's gospel but that (a) he knew of an earlier gospel and (b) Luke came after the widespread promulgation of this text (notice the words of Luke 1:1 - 4 which seem to support this idea of a 'correction' of previous efforts following thereafter). So Tertullian writes:

For we should demand the production of that gospel also which Paul found , that to which he gave his assent, that with which shortly afterwards he was anxious that his own should agree ... If he therefore who gave the light to Luke chose to have his predecessors' authority for his faith as well as his preaching, much more must I require for Luke's gospel the authority which was necessary for the gospel of his master.

So according to the Catholic claims, Luke's gospel was produced only after another text was in wide circulation. But this certainly wasn't the Marcionite interpretation.

The Marcionites held that the apostle received a heavenly revelation (like Moses) and then was shocked to learn that another version of that text was in circulation which no longer retained the 'heavenly fire' of that original text.

Tertullian goes on to say that the Marcionites rejected the existence of a figure called Luke in their tradition and similarly

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, and accuses also certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ: 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, or even the names of apostolic men, with the intention no doubt of conferring on his own gospel the repute which he takes away from those others.

If you really look at the argument here it is difficult to see where the argument of 'the apostle' begins and that of 'Marcion' ends. There is a blur in distinction as the apostle similarly accuses 'false apostles' of corrupting his gospel just as Marcion accuses those same 'false apostles' of affixing their names to a text which was once simply identified as a 'heavenly gospel' with no human author.

Indeed Marcion is indeed - as Tertullian notes accusing 'the apostles of
dissimulation or pretence, even to the debasing of the gospel ... [that] false apostles have falsified the truth of their gospel, and from them our copies are derived' but asks:

what can have become of that genuine apostles' document which has suffered from adulterators—that document which gave light to Paul, and from him to Luke? Or if it has been completely destroyed, so wiped out by a flood of falsifiers as though by some deluge, then not even Marcion has a true one. Or if that is to be the true one, if that is the apostles', which Marcion alone possesses, then how is it that that which is not of the apostles, but is ascribed to Luke, is in agreement with ours?

Again Tertullian is using the Marcionite emphasis of a heavenly Torah without human author against them. The Marcionite position was clearly that the apostle was only receiving a divine revelation (2 Cor 13) of which he was human receptacle.

Notice again what follows:

Or if that which Marcion has in use is not at once to be attributed to Luke because it does agree with ours — though they allege ours is falsified in respect of its title — then it does belong to the apostles. And in that case ours too, which is in agreement with that other, no less belongs to the apostles, even if it too is falsified in its title.

That is a complete misstating of the Marcionite position. The easiest way to explain their position is to imagine it to be a text like that which was in the hands of Justin Martyr (i.e. a 'gospel harmony' principally of Mark and Luke but which began with Mark 1:1).