Many Marks, Many Matthews, Many Lukes: Rethinking Marcion’s Antitheses and the Markan Gospel Connection [Part One]

Introduction

In the mid-2nd century, the supposed controversial teacher "Marcion of Pontus" provoked a crisis in the early church by promoting a distinctive Gospel and a collection of “Antitheses.” Traditionally, Marcion’s Antitheses is understood as a separate book juxtaposing Old Testament law with the new message of Christ, circulated alongside his edited Gospel of Luke (Evangelion). Church Fathers like Tertullian describe Marcion as having “devised for [his Gospel] a sort of dower, in a work composed of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled Antitheses”. This Antitheses aimed to prove that the Creator God of the Jews and the Supreme God of Jesus were “two, [different] gods – one for each Testament”. But could the term “antitheses” in Marcion’s context refer not to an independent book at all, but rather to a layer of material added onto a Gospel text itself? Recent scholarly discussion suggests that in a certain rhetorical framework, “antitheses” might denote contrastive sayings appended to a base Gospel (specifically a Mark-like gospel), rather than a standalone volume of excerpts. This reinterpretation has far-reaching implications: it would mean Marcion’s Gospel was perceived as a modified Markan text with antithetical teachings woven in, rather than simply a mutilated Luke.

This post will explore this hypothesis in depth. We will examine the conditions that would make such a reading possible, review patristic evidence that Marcion’s Gospel was once seen through a Markan lens, and consider how Tertullian’s and others’ testimonies can be re-read in this light. In doing so, we step into a complex scholarly puzzle involving lost writings (like a pre-Tertullian Against Marcion), variant Gospel traditions, and the fluid formation of the New Testament canon. By pulling together the latest research and ancient sources, we aim to understand whether Marcion’s “Antitheses” were less a separate text and more an interpretive layer within a Gospel narrative framework – a framework possibly based on the Gospel of Mark. Ultimately, this perspective ties into a broader realization that early Christian communities used “many Marks, many Matthews, and many Lukes,” with our canonical four Gospels emerging from a diverse array of gospel materials.

Marcion’s Antitheses: Book or Gospel Layer?

There is no doubt that Marcion himself compiled a work called the Antitheses. According to the 3rd-century writer Hippolytus (Refutation of All Heresies 7.25), Marcion “attempted to write a work which he styled Antitheses. In this book, he was in the habit of uttering whatever slanders occurred to him against the Creator of the universe.”. This confirms that the Antitheses was a textual composition used by Marcion to contrast the God of the Hebrew Bible with the higher God revealed by Christ. Tertullian likewise knew of this work and criticizes Marcion for effectively creating “the Gospel according to the Antitheses.” He says Marcion gave his edited gospel a “dowry” in the form of the Antitheses – “a work composed of contrary statements… compiled to sever the law from the gospel and thus divide the Deity into two… gods”. Clearly, the patristic authors saw the Antitheses as a polemical tool to promote Marcion’s dualistic theology (two gods, two testaments).

However, what exactly was the Antitheses text and how did it relate to Marcion’s Gospel (Evangelion)? The traditional view is that it was a separate book, perhaps arranged as a list of Old Testament versus New Testament statements set in opposition. For example, Marcion might quote “An eye for an eye” from the Law and contrast it with Jesus’ “Love your enemies”. Indeed, Tertullian’s understanding is that the Antitheses contained just such comparisons: “statements set in opposition” between the Law and the Gospel. He even implies Marcion circulated his Antitheses alongside the Evangelion as a kind of interpretive key for readers: “to encourage belief of this Gospel [Marcion] devised… the Antitheses… that by such means he might also patronize belief in ‘the Gospel according to the Antitheses’.”. In other words, Marcion’s followers read the Gospel in light of the Antitheses, which highlighted the contradictions between the two dispensations.

My new hypothesis, however, challenges this clear separation between Gospel and Antitheses. It posits that an ancient reader or opponent of Marcion – operating under certain presuppositions – could interpret “the Antitheses” not as a physically distinct book, but as the additions or alterations Marcion made within his Gospel itself. If an interpreter assumed that Marcion’s base text was something like the Gospel of Mark (rather than Luke), then “antitheses” might refer to the contrasting sayings Marcion affixed to that Markan narrative. In this reading, Marcion’s Evangelion would be understood as essentially a Gospel of Mark augmented with antithetical teachings (especially those resembling the famous Matthean Antitheses from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21–48). The phrase Tertullian mocks – “the Gospel according to the Antitheses” – could be taken to mean a Gospel text colored throughout by antithetical (law-versus-gospel) statements, rather than a canonical Gospel accompanied by a separate booklet. This is a subtle but important shift in understanding what Marcion’s Antitheses signified in practice.

For this reinterpretation to be viable, several conditions in the 2nd-century context must converge, as recent scholars have noted:

• 1. A Pre-Tertullian Against Marcion Existed: There are indications that an earlier anti-Marcionite treatise pre-dated Tertullian’s Latin Adversus Marcionem. Irenaeus around 180 CE remarks that Justin Martyr had written a work against Marcion, and we know Theophilus of Antioch (c. 180) also wrote an Against Marcion. These works are now lost, but Eusebius records their existence. Such an early tract (likely composed in Greek) could have formed the backbone of later writings. Tertullian himself, writing ca. 207 CE, even alludes to the evolutionary nature of his own work: he mentions that he had produced multiple editions of Adversus Marcionem and that earlier drafts had circulated without his approval. This suggests he was reworking existing material. It is conceivable that Tertullian’s source material included an earlier anti-Marcion polemic (perhaps by Justin or one of his pupils, or even by Irenaeus) which he translated/adapted into Latin.

• 2. The Early Anti-Marcion Source Did Not Identify Marcion’s Gospel as “Luke”: Today, we equate Marcion’s Gospel with a redacted version of Luke, but this identification became fixed mainly through Irenaeus and Tertullian. Earlier critics of Marcion may not have been certain which canonical Gospel Marcion was using – they just knew he had “a gospel.” Importantly, Justin Martyr, in the 150s, does not name Marcion’s gospel as Luke; he refers to Marcion’s “memoirs” of Jesus but without authorial attribution. It was Irenaeus who explicitly stated that Marcion “mutilated the Gospel of Luke,” cutting away the Nativity and other portions. If our hypothetical earlier treatise was composed before Irenaeus’s pronouncement gained wide currency, it might have attacked Marcion’s Gospel without insisting it was Luke’s. In fact, that treatise might have proceeded simply by comparing Marcion’s Evangelion to the “true” Gospel (which could be conceived as a composite of the Synoptic tradition generally, or the authoritative apostolic gospel in whatever form). In that case, the antitheses Marcion introduced would be seen as deviations from the one true gospel story, rather than specifically as cuts from Luke. Only later did the Church solidify the notion of four named Gospels, allowing heresiologists to retroactively label Marcion’s text as a mangled Luke.

• 3. Identifying Marcion’s Gospel with Mark Was Plausible in Early Discourse: Surprisingly, there is evidence that Marcion’s Gospel resembled the Gospel of Mark in some respects, and some early Christian writers might have seen it that way. Marcion’s Evangelion notably lacks a birth narrative, beginning (as we know from Tertullian and Epiphanius) at Luke 3:1 – the 15th year of Tiberius, when Jesus is an adult. This is exactly where Mark’s Gospel begins (with Jesus as an adult and John the Baptist’s preaching). Moreover, Marcion’s Gospel was comparatively short and action-focused, much like Mark. Several textual features of Marcion’s Gospel, as reconstructed by scholars, show closer affinity to Mark’s shorter readings than to Luke’s longer form. For example, Marcion’s version of Luke 5:39 (according to Tertullian) lacked the final phrase “and no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new…” – a verse present in canonical Luke but absent in Mark’s parallel, suggesting Marcion’s text aligns with Mark’s form. These and similar instances raise the question: Did Marcion actually use Luke, or did he use a Mark-like Gospel which the orthodox later identified as “Luke” for convenience? We know from Origen’s account of Celsus (c. 177 CE) that outsiders observed Christians “altering the original gospel text, three, four, or many times over”. Celsus mocked Christians for fragmenting one original Gospel into several versions, implying that by the late 2nd century multiple gospel texts (perhaps an early fourfold collection) were in circulation. In such a fluid textual environment, Marcion’s Gospel could have been seen as simply another variant “gospel” – possibly an offshoot of the primitive Markan tradition – rather than explicitly the work of Luke the physician. Indeed, Hippolytus’ Refutation of Heresies pairs Marcion with the philosopher Empedocles, known for a cosmic dualism of two fundamental principles. Hippolytus accuses Marcion of “transferring the arrangements of [Empedocles’] entire heresy into the evangelical narratives”. Notably, Empedocles was sometimes nicknamed dikhotomós (split in two) for his doctrine of opposing forces. By aligning Marcion with Empedocles, Hippolytus implicitly acknowledges that Marcion read the Gospel narrative in a radically dualistic (antithetical) way. And which Gospel narrative did Marcion primarily use? Hippolytus does not specify “Luke” in this context; he speaks generally of “the evangelical narratives.” One could infer that Marcion’s gospel story was close to the earliest narrative (Mark) but injected with stark oppositions of good and evil, law and grace – an Empedoclean Mark, so to speak. Thus, the idea of Marcion working off a Markan base text while appending his antithetical doctrines is not a wild anachronism, but something that fits the conceptual world of 2nd-century heresiology.

Given these conditions – an early source text later adapted by Tertullian, an initially ambiguous identification of Marcion’s source gospel, and the plausibility of a Mark-like gospel with added antitheses – we can approach Tertullian’s and others’ testimony with fresh eyes. If Marcion’s “Antitheses” were understood by some not as a separate volume but as a layer of oppositional teaching within a gospel, many puzzling features in the patristic accounts become explicable.

Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem: Signs of a Mark/Matthew Base

Tertullian’s Against Marcion Book 4 is our primary source on Marcion’s Gospel, but it is a perplexing work. Tertullian ostensibly organizes Book 4 as a commentary, moving through Jesus’ life as told in Luke (since by Tertullian’s time it was dogma that Marcion “mutilated Luke”). Yet alert readers have long noticed that **certain chapters of Tertullian’s commentary make far better sense if the underlying comparison text were Matthew or Mark, not Luke. In particular, chapters 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 of Adversus Marcionem contain arguments that seem out of place in a strictly Lukan framework. Tertullian frequently accuses Marcion of cutting out passages that are not even present in Luke’s Gospel to begin with—but are present in Matthew’s Gospel. This strongly suggests he was relying on an earlier source that used Matthew (or a Matthew-like gospel) as the yardstick to measure Marcion’s deviations.

A striking example is Tertullian’s discussion of Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce. In Luke, Jesus’ teaching on divorce is brief and appears in a later context (Luke 16:18, a single verse). Yet Tertullian’s treatment is extensive and clearly draws on the fuller pericope found in Matthew. He quotes Christ’s words, “Moses… because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so”, which is a saying unique to Matthew 19:8. He even explicitly cites “the Gospel of Matthew” for Jesus’ exception clause: “Whoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery”, referring to Matthew 5:32. These Matthean verses do not exist in Luke’s Gospel at all. Tertullian is effectively arguing, “Marcion, you reject that other Gospel which testifies to the same Christ and gives the fuller context – a context in which Christ upheld the Creator’s marriage law when properly understood.”. His line “you have rejected that other gospel which witnesses to the same verity” is telling. The “other gospel” here can only be Matthew (or a Matthew-like source), since he then draws solutions from it.

This anomaly makes sense if Tertullian inherited a source that originally compared Marcion’s Gospel to Matthew’s account to expose how Marcion either eliminated or corrupted Jesus’ teachings. For a polemicist in the 150s–170s, Matthew—with its emphasis on Jesus’ fulfillment (and reinterpretation) of the Law—would be the ideal contrast to Marcion’s rejection of the Law. Indeed, Irenaeus had laid out the plan for such a refutation: he wrote that he intended to “refute Marcion from his own writings”, starting with the gospel, and presumably to do so section by section. It is plausible that either Irenaeus or another wrote a detailed rebuttal of Marcion where for each episode in Marcion’s gospel text, a parallel from the true gospel (Matthew or a harmony of the four) was brought to bear. When Tertullian adapts this material but forces it into a Lukan order, the seams show – as in the divorce discussion.

Another example: Tertullian repeatedly mentions Marcion deleting the “headlines” of certain teachings of Christ—specifically the antithetical sayings. He complains that Marcion “removed” sayings like “I came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it” or the contrasts “You have heard it said of old… but I say to you”. Those phrases are characteristic of Matthew 5:17 and 5:21–48, the Matthean Antitheses. Canonical Luke does not contain any exact parallel of Matthew 5:17 (Luke has no “fulfill the law” saying) and Luke’s version of the antitheses is much shorter (Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, Luke 6, lacks the explicit “you have heard... but I say” format). So if Marcion’s Gospel was based on Luke, why would Tertullian say Marcion “deleted” these Matthean verses? The logical answer is that Tertullian’s source assumed the authentic gospel included Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount; thus, from that perspective Marcion must have expunged those sayings (since Marcion’s text had nothing of the sort).

In chapter 4.9, Tertullian even pauses to note the peculiar arrangement of his argument. He admits he might have “attacked [Marcion’s Antitheses] in a separate treatise hand-to-hand” but finds it “more convenient to refute them in and with that very gospel to which they refer”. This statement hints that his battle against Marcion’s Antitheses is being waged within the gospel commentary itself. And indeed, he often merges rebuttals of Marcion’s Antitheses (the theological contrasts Marcion drew) with rebuttals of Marcion’s Gospel text simultaneously. It’s almost as if an earlier two-pronged treatise (one prong against the Antitheses and one against the Evangelion) has been fused in Tertullian’s presentation. The resulting fusion is not always coherent strictly as a commentary on Luke – because it wasn’t originally written as such.

Modern scholars like Peter von Kirby have suggested that the puzzling “Luke commentary” in Adversus Marcionem 4 can be explained if one hypothesizes that one of Tertullian’s major sources compared “the Gospel according to Matthew” with “the Gospel used by Marcion (according to his Antitheses)”. In that source, Marcion’s text showed additions, omissions, and changes when laid next to a Matthew-like gospel (and indeed most changes looked like removals of material present in Matthew). Tertullian inherited this source, but by his time the party line was that Marcion had corrupted Luke; so he retrofitted the inherited comparisons to a Lucan framework, largely by quoting Luke’s text when available but still relying on the earlier analysis where it wasn’t. This retrofitting was imperfect, leaving “scars” in the text where Matthew’s ghost shines through.

The incomprehensibility of chapters 7–9 in a purely Lukan frame thus becomes evidence for the existence of a pre-Tertullian Adversus Marcionem. The fact that Tertullian – a capable scholar – seemingly bungles the beginning of his Luke commentary (getting entangled with Matthew’s content) suggests he’s editing an older document. If he were composing from scratch, he would simply follow Luke and avoid irrelevant digressions. The best explanation is that Tertullian’s Latin Against Marcion is in part a translation/adaptation of a Greek anti-Marcion treatise compiled perhaps a generation earlier (maybe ca. 170 CE). It’s even conceivable that Irenaeus of Lyon wrote this original treatise. We know Irenaeus was deeply concerned with Marcion and promised a special engagement with Marcion’s own text. Although Irenaeus’s major work Against Heresies only gives a summary critique of Marcion in Book 1, some have theorized he (or an associate like Rhodon or Justin’s students) penned a more detailed refutation that circulated separately. Tertullian, and later Epiphanius (4th century), may have both drawn on this earlier source. This would explain why Tertullian and Epiphanius – writing in different languages and eras – often share the same unusual readings when quoting Marcion’s Gospel. It would also explain why Adversus Marcionem sometimes reads like a patchwork, oscillating between pure commentary on Marcion’s text and theological polemic addressing Marcion’s principles (his Antitheses). The two were originally distinct threads that Tertullian wound together.

Marcion’s “Antitheses” Within a Markan Framework

If we accept that an early patristic author could view Marcion’s Gospel as essentially Mark plus antithetical supplements, then many pieces fall into place. Mark’s Gospel, in its canonical form, is a terse narrative with little explicit teaching about the Law. Early Christians often regarded Mark as incomplete or in need of augmentation. Papias of Hierapolis (c. 120 CE) famously wrote that Mark “wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatever he remembered of the things said or done by the Lord… for he had not been a direct follower of Jesus, but later of Peter”. Papias then adds that “Matthew compiled the oracles (sayings of the Lord) in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he could.” In Papias’s view, Matthew’s Gospel was essentially an expansion and ordering of Mark’s memoirs, adding the Lord’s discourses to the bare narrative. In other words, a tradition already in the early 2nd century saw one gospel as a supplement to another. This is precisely what we are considering for Marcion’s text: that Marcion took a base Gospel (one very similar to Mark in form, i.e. lacking birth stories and law-heavy discourses) and “affixed” to it material of a highly antinomian, dualistic character.

What sort of material? Most likely, “Antitheses” in this sense refers to stark sayings of Jesus which contrast the old way and the new way. The prime template for such sayings is the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. There Jesus proclaims, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘Thou shalt not [do X]… But I say to you [do Y].” These pronouncements (on murder vs. anger, adultery vs. lust, retaliation vs. non-resistance, etc.) set the authority of Christ’s word over against the Torah of Moses. To an antinomian like Marcion, who taught that the Creator’s laws were harsh and that Christ brought a new principle of grace, the Matthean Antitheses would have been highly appealing – except that in Matthew they still assume the same God speaking! It is conceivable that Marcion’s Antitheses included quotations or paraphrases of such Jesus sayings (perhaps taken from a source like Matthew or an oral tradition), re-framed to emphasize the opposition between the two deities. In fact, Pseudo-Adamantius (a 4th-century dialogue that likely draws on Marcionite material) preserves a telling fragment: at one point the Marcionite in the dialogue cites a dominical saying, “No one puts a patch of new cloth on an old garment”, to illustrate the incompatibility of the Gospel with the old law – a saying which in the New Testament context (Mark 2:21) is not about the law per se. The Marcionite interpretation, however, reads it as an antithesis, as if Jesus were declaring the two covenants unmixable. This suggests that Marcion’s Antitheses collection may have blended Gospel verses (some genuine, some perhaps modified or attributed differently) with Old Testament verses in opposing pairs.

Now, if a Church Father presumed Marcion’s base text was Mark, what would he think the word “Antitheses” referred to? Likely to those inserted sayings of Jesus that aren’t found in Mark but ought to be there if Jesus taught the radical dualism Marcion claims. Hippolytus’ account again is enlightening: he thought Marcion “despoiled Empedocles” by transferring his ideas into the gospel narrative. Empedocles taught the world is governed by two opposing forces (Love vs. Strife); Marcion taught two opposing gods (Love/Good vs. Justice/Evil). Hippolytus says Marcion “constructed his whole heresy out of Empedocles and transferred it into the evangelical narrative”. Notably, Hippolytus does not say Marcion wrote a Gospel himself, but that he adapted the existing narrative to his doctrine. Immediately after, Hippolytus mentions Marcion’s work Antitheses by name and describes Marcion “utterting slanders” against the Creator in it. The juxtaposition in Hippolytus of Marcion’s Antitheses and his alteration of the gospel narrative suggests that the Antitheses could be thought of as the heretical layer within the Gospel – the “Empedoclean” layer of stark oppositions and slanders against the Creator. In Hippolytus’ conceptual world, the Gospel of Mark itself was not heretical – but read in a certain way, or with certain additional sayings, even Mark could be turned into a vehicle of dualism. After all, Mark is the shortest, most open-ended gospel; one could add in a few pointed sayings to radically change its tone. Hippolytus actually assigns Empedocles as the philosophical progenitor for Mark’s Gospel in his schema of pagan parallels (since Mark emphasizes action and could be seen as lacking explicit monotheistic clarity, perhaps) – just as he assigns Plato to John and Aristotle to Matthew, according to some reconstructions. In such a schema, to say Marcion used a “Mark-based” gospel with antitheses is to say Marcion took the most dualism-compatible gospel narrative and made its implicit contrasts explicit.

In summary, re-imagining Marcion’s Antitheses not as a separate book but as a perceived layer of oppositional teaching attached to a Markan Gospel allows us to make sense of diverse data:

• Tertullian’s testimony is not contradicted, but reframed: Marcion did compile a work of Antitheses, but Tertullian’s phrase “Gospel according to the Antitheses” can be read as a jibe that Marcion’s entire gospel was governed by those oppositional principles – effectively, a Mark-like gospel edited to serve the Antitheses. Tertullian says he’d prefer to tackle Marcion’s Antithesis statements one by one, “were it not easier to refute them using that very gospel [of Marcion’s] which they support”. This implies the controversies raised by the Antitheses appear within Marcion’s gospel text (when read with Marcion’s interpretations). Thus, he refutes Marcion by walking through Marcion’s Gospel narrative and countering the inferred “antitheses” point by point with Scripture and reason.

• Philosophumena (Hippolytus) actually reinforces this view: by aligning Marcion with Empedocles and noting Marcion’s Antitheses in the same breath, Hippolytus confirms that Marcion’s innovation was reading antithesis into the Gospel. He even remarks that Marcion had a disciple named Lucian (or Lucanus) who further “blasphemed” and perhaps altered texts – showing that even within Marcionism there were variant versions (Celsus also alludes to Marcionites altering texts). Hippolytus understood “antitheses” not necessarily as a bound volume separate from the Gospel, but as the idea of dueling principles injected into Christian teaching. In a world where Christians had multiple gospels, the Marcionite could claim his gospel carried the true, higher teachings (antitheses) that the others lacked. A Catholic writer could retort that those “antitheses” were spurious additions to an originally unified gospel.

• Epiphanius in the 4th century, who had Tertullian’s work as a guide, occasionally expresses confusion that echoes this issue. When listing Marcion’s omissions, he sometimes accuses Marcion of cutting material that is in Matthew or Mark, not in Luke – essentially copying Tertullian’s misattributions. This shows the longevity of that source’s perspective. Epiphanius even has to explain why Marcion’s gospel (purportedly Luke) lacks sections like the Sermon on the Mount: he assumes Marcion must have cut them, whereas modern scholars would say Luke never had them in the first place. The simplest explanation: Epiphanius (and Tertullian’s source) treated the “Gospel” in a conflated sense, not strictly delineated by our four names. They likely had a Gospel harmony or a broad memory of Jesus tradition where all key sayings belonged to “the Gospel” in general. Thus Marcion’s Gospel was measured against “the Gospel” (singular) which included Matthew’s content. This echoes what Celsus observed: Christians speak of the Gospel, but “some of the believers, like men who are drunk, alter the original Gospel, now in one way, now in another, and so its character is transformed, three or four times or even more, to make it able to refute objections.”. Origen, commenting on this, admitted he knew of no orthodox Christians changing the Gospels, but he did know of heretics like Marcion and the Valentinians doing so. In Celsus’s statement, “three or four times” could hint at the number of Gospel versions (perhaps the emerging fourfold Gospel) or at repeated editorial revisions. Either way, the boundaries between Matthew, Mark, Luke were not as fixed for people like Celsus (and perhaps earlier Christians) as they became later. This blur allowed an anti-Marcion writer to think of Marcion’s Gospel in relation to both Luke’s narrative and Matthew’s sayings.

• Clement of Alexandria provides a fascinating side-glimpse into how an expanded Mark might have been read in a quasi-esoteric way. In his work “Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?”, Clement bases his exposition on the story of the rich young man (Mark 10:17–31). Clement’s version of the text, presumably the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark, mentions merely a “certain man” (Greek tis) came to Jesus – not calling him a ruler (whereas Luke’s version calls him “a certain ruler”, Luke 18:18). This small difference is intriguing: Marcion’s Gospel in the form known to us (via Epiphanius) also reads simply “a certain man” in that verse, not identifying him as a ruler. It seems both the Alexandrian text and the Marcionite text preserved the Markan phrasing. Clement, moreover, turns the whole question into an allegory, asking who the “rich man” really is – and uses language hinting at a hidden identity: “Let not even this (question) cause you despair… even if you should come to learn who the rich man is” (Quis Dives, 1). He employs an optative phrase μάθοις ὅστις ἐστίν (“you might come to learn who he is”), a construction often signaling a mystery to be revealed. Some scholars have speculated (and the forum source you provided strongly argues) that Clement and perhaps other Alexandrian teachers identified this rich man with none other than the Apostle Paul in a symbolic way. It’s conjectural, but consider: Paul was from a wealthy background (a Roman citizen, taught by Gamaliel), zealously kept the commandments “from youth” (Phil 3:5–6 claims faultless Torah observance), yet he had to lose everything and follow Christ. The rich man who calls Jesus “Good Teacher” and is told to “sell all, give to the poor, and come follow me” could allegorically point to Paul’s own calling (giving up his status and persecutory zeal to follow Christ). We know Marcion revered Paul as the one true apostle. It would be poetic (and very much in line with allegorical exegesis of that era) if Marcion saw this anonymous “someone” (tis) in the Gospel story as a cipher for himself or his fellow Gentile-Pauline Christians. In fact, Tertullian sarcastically remarks that Marcion impudently identifies with that character: “Marcion now argues more earnestly with that I-know-not-what fellow of his (apud illum suum nescio quem), a ‘co-sufferer’ and ‘co-hater’ (syntalaipōros, symmisoumenos) about the incompatibility of Law and Gospel…” (Against Marcion 4.11, paraphrased). Tertullian is here ridiculing Marcion for creating a scenario (perhaps in his Antitheses or commentary) where the rich man dialoguing with Jesus represents a Marcionite perspective – a compatriot in despising the Law. This comment, referenced by Adolf Harnack in his seminal study on Marcion, suggests Marcion indeed dwelt on that pericope. Harnack conjectured that “this individual [the rich man] was likely, for Marcion, the representative of all his like-minded companions”. In other words, Marcion saw the man asking “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” as a stand-in for the Marcionite believer who rejects salvation by Jewish law-keeping in favor of Christ’s call.

  Luke’s editorial change – calling the man “a ruler” – may have been intended to blunt such creative identification. By making him explicitly a Jewish archon, Luke’s Gospel makes the figure more concretely a member of the Jewish establishment (hence not an Everyman). But Mark’s and Marcion’s unnamed “someone” is open to interpretation. Clement of Alexandria took that openness in a pedagogical direction (teaching that wealth need not bar one from salvation if used charitably), possibly hinting at Pauline spiritual wealth. Marcion (and perhaps the Gnostics) took it in a radically antinomian direction (no amount of law-keeping avails; one must forsake it all to follow the Good God). Thus, again we see many Markan traditions being expanded in different directions: Matthew expanded Mark with a Jewish-Christian slant, Luke expanded Mark with a historical/apologetic slant, and Marcion expanded (or trimmed) Mark with a Pauline, law-versus-gospel slant. As one forum commentator quipped, this scenario truly gives us “Many Marks, Many Matthews, Many Lukes.”

“Many Marks, Many Matthews, Many Lukes” – The Fluid Gospel Tradition

The case of Marcion and the Antitheses is a window into the broader fluidity of the Gospel tradition in the 2nd century. Far from the later notion of four untouchable, clearly delineated Gospel books, the early decades after the Apostles saw the Jesus story told and retold in various forms and editions. The canonical Gospels themselves bear witness to this: Matthew and Luke both draw upon Mark as a source, but each modifies the order, expands the content, and targets a particular theology or audience. Luke openly acknowledges that “many have undertaken to compile a narrative” of Jesus’ life and that he himself is arranging the material “in order” (Luke 1:1–3). Papias’ remarks confirm that even earlier, there was talk of different written accounts, some less ordered (Mark) and others more filled out (the Hebrew Matthew logia).

By around 170–180 CE, the Church was wrestling with this multiplicity. Irenaeus famously asserted that the canon must have exactly four Gospels – no more, no less – comparing them to the four winds and four corners of the earth (a bit of theological numerology meant to sanctify the status quo). His insistence suggests that prior to his time, there may have been disputes: some perhaps wanted to accept only one Gospel (like Marcion did, or the Ebionites who preferred only Matthew/Hebrew gospel), others used more than four (gnostics had additional ones, e.g. Gospel of Thomas, of Peter, of the Egyptians, etc.). Pagan critics like Celsus seized on the Christians’ lack of a single authoritative story: “the Christian writings are a lie,” he sneered, saying their fables are so poorly constructed that “some of them, after a drunken bout, distort the Gospel from its original form, altering it in three, four, and even more different ways, so that they can deny the contradictions when challenged”. This is a remarkable testimony. It implies that by c. 177, educated people knew of different Christian gospels – perhaps the four Gospels or various revisions – and saw the hand of revisionists behind them. Origen, in response (c. 248 CE), does not deny that changes were made, but he distances orthodox Christians from that charge: “I do not know of any [Christians] who have altered the Gospel, apart from the Marcionites and possibly the Valentinians…”. In Origen’s eyes, heretics like Marcion were guilty of modifying Gospel texts – precisely the accusation Marcion’s camp would hurl back at the catholics! Indeed, Marcion likely claimed his Gospel was the true one of Paul, and that the others had been overlaid with Jewish elements. This claim is the mirror image of Irenaeus’ claim that Marcion cut up Luke. It’s clear that in the second century, textual authority was contested, and the Gospel texts were malleable in the hands of rival theologians.

The upshot is that the New Testament Gospels are the surviving tip of an iceberg of Gospel material and debate. Recognizing this gives context to why someone like “Secret Alias” (the forum author in your material) would say bluntly: “An honest assessment of the evidence from antiquity is many Marks, many Matthews, many Lukes.” The canon we have was only stabilized later. Clement of Alexandria around 200 CE illustrates this transitional phase. In his Stromateis (Miscellanies) 1.21, Clement casually refers to material from “the Gospel according to Luke” – one of the first explicit uses of that title in extant literature, showing that by then the idea of distinct “according to [Name]” Gospels was taking hold. Yet Clement also alludes to other gospel material (he knows of a tradition dubbed “the secret Gospel of Mark” in a controversial letter, and he quotes a saying of Jesus not in our four Gospels elsewhere). He and other Alexandrians clearly had access to more Jesus traditions than just the canonical four, but they viewed the four as primary. It’s telling that Clement is also the one who preserves the tradition that Matthew (the Hebrew one) was a “expanded” Mark, and Luke an expansion of earlier gospels for Gentile use, etc., in Eusebius’ Church History 6.14.

This dynamic situation explains both Marcion’s approach and the orthodox response:

• Marcion could plausibly present his Gospel not as a mutilation but as a restoration – perhaps of an original Pauline gospel that the others corrupted with Judaism. If indeed Marcion’s text was closer to Mark in form, he might argue that the longer versions (Matthew, Luke) were additions done by Judaizers. There is some evidence Marcionites accused the catholic church of “falsifying the Gospel” by blending it with Law-observant teachings (they possibly pointed to Matthew’s Gospel as an example of a Judaized text)【forum discussion】. The Antitheses may have even contained statements to that effect – one fragment preserved by a 4th-century source quotes Marcion’s Antithesis as proclaiming “the kingdom of the good God, who has nothing in common with the judge [Creator]”, a poetic line not directly antithetical but encapsulating the idea of total separation between the realms. Marcion’s followers like Apelles later softened some views but still “selected from the Gospels whatever pleased [them]” and discarded the rest. Many Markan traditions, indeed.

• The orthodox, confronting this, took a two-pronged strategy: (a) Affirm the unity of Jesus’ teaching with the Creator’s purpose (hence Tertullian and others labored to show no contradiction between Old and New when rightly understood), and (b) Canonize a set of Gospels that embodied the diverse witness but were officially limited to four. By having multiple Gospels, the Church could ironically counter Marcion’s selective approach by saying: we include all valid perspectives (Matthew’s more Jewish orientation, Luke’s more Gentile-friendly stance, Mark’s simplicity, John’s high Christology) – anything outside these is spurious. This was a way to box in the narrative and prevent further wild editing. It also meant that moving forward, Christians would treat these four texts as fixed references—ending the era of creative editing of Gospel material (at least openly).

So where does that leave “the Gospel according to the Antitheses”? It appears to have been a moment in time in the struggle: a moment when someone like Tertullian could imagine that Marcion basically wrote a new gospel according to his own antithesis-principles, and thus needed to be refuted by showing Jesus’ true story and sayings in context. It reminds us that what we now call heresy and orthodoxy often shared the same vocabulary and sources, differing chiefly in interpretation and selection. The line Tertullian uses – “Even in your Gospel, Christ Jesus is mine” (Adv. Marc. 4.8) – is powerful. He’s telling Marcion: Even the portions of Luke/Mark you retain, properly understood, support the Catholic Christ, not your two-god doctrine. In effect, “your labor has been in vain, Marcion; your own gospel witnesses against you.” Such confidence underscores that by Tertullian’s day the Church felt it had the hermeneutical upper hand: it could interpret any Jesus story in line with the Old Testament’s God, whereas Marcion’s interpretations (the antitheses) were eisegesis, imposing a foreign dualism onto the text.

Conclusion

Re-examining Marcion’s Antitheses through the lens of a Mark-based gospel framework deepens our understanding of early Christian textual debates. It suggests that the boundary between a “gospel” and a “commentary” could blur: Marcion’s commentary-like Antitheses may have bled into his gospel text, and opponents treated the combined product as one aberrant “Gospel of Antithesis.” This perspective illuminates why Tertullian’s Against Marcion is structured as it is, and why it occasionally reads as if Marcion had added Matthean sayings to a shorter gospel – because that is essentially how at least one strand of the orthodox critique conceptualized Marcion’s strategy. The hypothesis also highlights the network of early anti-heretical writers sharing material: Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius – building on each other’s work to preserve the “integrity” of the Gospel against various “affixes” and omissions. Ironically, in doing so they preserved echoes of those very alternate traditions (as we detect with the Matthean snippets in Tertullian’s work).

Finally, embracing the idea of “many Marks, many Matthews, many Lukes” urges modern readers to approach early Christian history with humility and honesty. The formation of the New Testament was not a tidy process of divine hand-delivery of four biographies, but a messy evolution of texts in community, debate, and even subterfuge. Acknowledging this does not diminish the value of the canonical Gospels; rather, it enriches our appreciation of them as products of a dynamic discourse – one in which figures like Marcion played a provocative role. The Church’s eventual victory in that discourse – canonizing four Gospels and marginalizing others – should not blind us to the fascinating diversity that preceded it. It is in studying that diversity, through cases like Marcion’s Evangelion and Antitheses, that we gain a clearer picture of how early Christians defined the “true” Gospel of Jesus Christ.