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Saturday, November 7, 2026

Irenaean Echoes in Epiphanius on Marcion

The agreements do not all have the same origin or evidential value. Several belong to an older argumentative tradition already visible in Irenaeus. Others concern particular reported readings and remain relevant to reconstructing Marcion’s texts. The strongest result is that Tertullian–Epiphanius agreement cannot be treated automatically as two independent inspections of a Marcionite manuscript. The identity of any intermediary, and the contribution of Irenaeus’s projected separate refutation, remain questions to be established.

This study uses Williams’s annotations as a guide, checks the Irenaean antecedents, and separates reports of readings from the arguments constructed around them. It is a selected comparison of diagnostic cases, not a numerical census of every citation or a stylometric demonstration. AH means Irenaeus’s Adversus haereses; AM means Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem. Gospel scholion numbers belong to Panarion 42.11; Pauline scholia and their refutations belong to 42.12.3. Dual Pauline numbers, such as 9/17, retain the two numberings displayed by the edition.

Williams’s annotations as a source guide

Williams’s opening note distinguishes a reconstructed Hippolytan framework, Irenaean additions, Eusebian information, and Epiphanius’s earlier canonical dossier. These are distinct source claims. His references to Pseudo-Tertullian concern the Adversus omnes haereses epitome, not Tertullian’s five-book Against Marcion. A comparative “cf.” is not itself a demonstration of direct borrowing.

Table 1 Irenaean leads in Williams’s annotations
Topic	Williams 2009 locator	Earlier material indicated	Question for this investigation
Opening source assessment	p. 294 n. 1	Hippolytan Syntagma; Irenaeus; Eusebius	A model of compilation; not a claim that every biblical lemma comes from Irenaeus.
Origin and theology	p. 294 n. 2; p. 296 nn. 8, 10–11, 13	AH 1.27.1–2	Distinguish inherited descriptions of a teacher from the wording of his books.
Soul-only salvation and rejection of the older scriptures	p. 297 nn. 17, 19	AH 1.27.1, 3	Doctrinal parallels are not automatically textual variants.
Inverted salvation in Hades	p. 298 n. 21	AH 1.27.3	Compare the named persons and the explanation, including alterations.
Arguments concerning divine territories	p. 298 n. 26; p. 300 nn. 27–29	AH 2.1.2–5	A particularly useful control for adaptation of an earlier argument.
Mutilated Luke	p. 302 n. 32	AH 1.27.2	The general identification and mutilation charge already belong to earlier heresiology.
Refutation from the opponent’s accepted writings	p. 302 n. 33	AH 1.27.4	Compare the program before assuming that its repetition announces a new investigation.
Chronology within the Pauline refutation	p. 352 n. 206	AH 3.4.2–3	Earlier heresiology also appears inside the later scriptural argument.

The first column identifies the topics; the locators make the annotations checkable. The final column states this study’s source-critical use of them. The following comparisons are an independent assessment of the ancient passages, not an attribution of all the proposed relationships to Williams.

A demonstrable adaptation of an argument

The clearest control is the discussion of spatially limited divine powers. In AH 2.1.2–3, a deity bounded by another reality fails to contain everything and is inferior to the reality containing it. A Pleroma and what lies outside it require a separating third reality, producing a regress. In 2.1.5, the allocation of separate realms creates a further problem for the alleged antagonism between their possessors.

Epiphanius 42.7.3–7 takes over this reasoning while fitting it to his account of three principles. Consequently the further superior authority becomes a fourth. This is an observable adjustment of an inherited argument. It is more informative than two authors quoting the same biblical sentence, because the argument does not arise from the wording of Marcion’s Gospel or Paul. The number changes to fit the new target while the logical machinery survives.

Tertullian AM 1.15.2–4 belongs in the comparison: a place containing the higher god must exceed him, and the place itself becomes a claimant to divinity. His short formula maius est id quod capit eo quod capitur, “what contains is greater than what is contained,” expresses the common logic. Tertullian does not reproduce every step of Epiphanius’s revised sequence. The evidence supports an inherited argumentative complex more securely than one particular stemma.

Comparison of the passages and their evidential weight

Table 2 Fifteen comparisons
Case	Ancient references	Agreement and material difference	Assessment
1. A containing realm greater than its god	AH 2.1.2–3; AM 1.15.2–4; Pan. 42.7.3, 6–7	All three arguments make spatial enclosure compromise divine supremacy. Tertullian also makes the enclosing place a competitor for divinity. Epiphanius adds a superior distributor of the three gods’ territories.	Strong inherited argumentative complex. No Marcionite biblical reading is needed to generate this agreement. The precise route to each later author remains a separate question.
2. A third boundary becomes a fourth authority	AH 2.1.3, 5; Pan. 42.7.4, 6–7	Irenaeus’s argument against a Pleroma and what lies outside it introduces a third separating reality. Epiphanius, starting from three principles, asks for a fourth surveyor or boundary-setter. He also uses the argument from peaceful allocation of territories.	Especially clear Irenaeus–Epiphanius adaptation. Tertullian 1.15 shares the containment argument, not the whole rewritten third-to-fourth sequence. Do not turn this into a three-way verbal identity.
3. The salvation of Cain and exclusion of the righteous	AH 1.27.3; Pan. 42.4.3–4	Both reports reverse the expected salvation of scriptural figures and begin the excluded group with Abel, Enoch, and Noah. Epiphanius expands the lists; his rationale is not a verbatim reproduction of Irenaeus’s explanation that the righteous suspected another trial by their god.	Inherited heresiological report with editorial change. It is not a quotation from the Gospel or Paul. No corresponding identical catalogue in Tertullian is being claimed here.
4. Saving another creator’s property	AH 5.2.1; AM 1.23.1–9; Pan. 42.6.1–2; 42.8.1–5	The objection treats the salvation of another maker’s humanity as a problem of ownership and justice. Epiphanius develops it through the distinction between buying and redeeming; Tertullian disputes the rationality of goodness directed to another’s human creation.	Shared anti-dualist reasoning. Irenaeus supplies a surviving antecedent. This does not establish that the whole later discussion was copied from one particular lost treatise.
5. Goodness and justice belong together	AH 3.25.2–4; AM 5.13.14–15; Pan. 42.6.4–7	Irenaeus joins saving goodness to judgment. Epiphanius argues that a just judge must also be good and reward goodness. Tertullian applies the combination to Romans 7:12 and the law’s just and good commandment.	Older polemical framework, differently applied. The argument can shape the selection and interpretation of a Pauline lemma; it is not itself a special Marcionite reading.
6. Refuting Marcion from what he retains	AH 1.27.4; AH 3.11.7; AH 3.12.12; AM 4.6.2; AM 5.4.2; Pan. 42.9.5–6; 42.10.2–7	The reduced Gospel and Pauline collection are made to defeat their possessor. In each later author, the surviving material is represented as sufficient to establish continuity with the Creator.	A documented prior program. The method alone cannot distinguish inherited research from fresh collation, and does not cancel Epiphanius’s express claim of consultation.
7. Lord of heaven	AH 4.2.2; AM 4.25.1; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion and elenchus 22	All use the lordship of heaven to identify Christ’s Father with the Creator. Irenaeus gives the fuller saying with Father and earth. Epiphanius explicitly alleges their omission; Tertullian’s displayed quotation is shorter.	Shared argument; uneven textual testimony. A short citation in Tertullian is not equivalent to an explicit statement that both words were absent from his exemplar.
8. Abraham’s daughter and Sabbath healing	AH 4.8.2; AM 4.30.1; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion and elenchus 39	Irenaeus and Epiphanius infer that care for Abraham’s daughter shows that Christ is not alien to Abraham. Tertullian’s immediately comparable discussion defends the lawfulness of the Sabbath cure through the ox-and-ass saying.	Close Irenaeus–Epiphanius exegesis; partial Tertullianic parallel. Tertullian must not be credited here with repeating the same daughter-of-Abraham inference.
9. The righteous and the kingdom	AH 4.8.1; AM 4.30.4–6; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion and elenchus 40	Irenaeus argues from the patriarchs’ presence in the kingdom. Tertullian and Epiphanius both use a generalized reference to righteous people, but Tertullian describes entry; Epiphanius insists on their being inside rather than entering.	Shared controversy and a possible shared textual feature, with a material difference. Do not reconstruct one identical Greek sentence or one identical argument from the agreement.
10. A testimony to you, followed by the fulfillment gloss	Luke 5:14; AM 4.9.9–10; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion 1 and elenchus 1(d)	Both have the second-person testimony formulation and connect it with Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, invoking the thought or wording of Matthew 5:17.	A valuable quotation-and-explanation cluster. It could travel in an earlier exegetical dossier. No exact surviving Irenaean source for this complete cluster has been identified in this study.
11. Calling instead of judgment	Luke 11:42; AM 4.27.4; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion and elenchus 26	Tertullian has vocationem; Epiphanius reports κλῆσιν in place of κρίσιν. This is a specific lexical agreement, not just a common doctrinal conclusion.	A genuine candidate for an inherited reading. It could come from Marcionite copies or a shared report of their text. A matching reading in surviving Irenaeus has not been established.
12. The rock was Christ	AH 4.27.3; AM 5.7.12–14; Pan. 42.12.3, 1 Corinthians scholion and elenchus 9/17	The wilderness narrative in 1 Corinthians 10 establishes continuity between Christ and the God active in Israel. The common material extends beyond the isolated identification of the rock.	An earlier exegetical dossier is plausible. The sequence within Paul is not an independently distinctive sequence, and the inference is readily suggested by Paul’s text itself.
13. The body dies and therefore rises	AH 5.7.1–2; AM 5.9.3–4; Pan. 42.5.1–7	Irenaeus distinguishes mortal bodies from souls and uses the sown grain. Tertullian and Epiphanius sharpen the argument through what falls or dies and can consequently rise. Their linguistic elaborations differ.	A shared resurrection argument, not a demonstrated variant. Irenaeus supplies the conceptual cluster; the exact etymological form should not be attributed to him without additional evidence.
14. Bones in the risen Christ	AH 5.2.3; AM 4.43.6–7; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion and elenchus 78	Tertullian and Epiphanius display a shortened bones formulation; Irenaeus’s corresponding argument mentions both bones and flesh. Epiphanius’s explanation itself also speaks of both.	Shared bodily-reality polemic; uncertain origin of the shorter citation. This comparison does not show that Marcion deleted flesh, or that surviving Irenaeus furnished the shorter wording.
15. Ephesians and Laodiceans	AM 5.17.1; Pan. 42.9.4; 42.11.7–10; 42.12.3, Laodiceans scholion 40	Tertullian treats Laodiceans as the changed title of the letter the church calls Ephesians. Epiphanius lists Ephesians among ten and then adds Laodicean material, including words identifiable as Ephesians 4:5–6.	Agreement on a name is not agreement on the reported collection. An extra separate book, a duplicated dossier entry, and a retitled letter cannot be silently equated. No surviving Irenaean explanation for this discrepancy has been identified.

Two quotation clusters that deserve particular weight

Luke 5:14 is a useful test of transmission together with interpretation. Tertullian’s vobis and Epiphanius’s ὑμῖν make the testimony second person. Both then connect the healing and the Mosaic offering to the fulfillment of the Law, invoking Matthew 5:17. A Marcionite exemplar could explain a shared reading. By itself, that exemplar does not explain why the same added scriptural gloss accompanies it. A transmitted lemma-and-commentary unit is therefore a serious alternative. The comparison does not identify its author. Epiphanius uses Matthew 5:17 in his explanation; this must not be redescribed as his explicit testimony that Marcion removed that sentence from Luke.

Luke 13:28 combines agreement with an important disagreement. Irenaeus uses the named patriarchs to defend Abraham’s salvation. Tertullian speaks of righteous people entering the kingdom, while Epiphanius reports righteous people in the kingdom and expressly bases his argument on their being there already. Both later reports can preserve a generalized wording behind their polemic; they do not attest exactly the same sentence. Their arguments also differ: Tertullian links exclusion, punishment, and kingdom to one God, while Epiphanius recovers the patriarchs behind the general designation and adds the implication of bodily teeth. This case cannot be reduced either to pure copying or to two identical independent transcriptions.

Controls against overextending the Irenaean hypothesis

Table 3 Agreements that must not be silently converted into three way parallels
Passage	Earlier comparison	What the Epiphanian control shows
Galatians 2:5	AH 3.13.3; AM 5.3.3–5	The positive yielding argument is not reproduced in Epiphanius’s Galatians entries. It cannot be counted as a three-author agreement here.
1 Corinthians 15:49	AH 5.9.3; AH 5.11.2; AM 5.10.10–11	The specifically hortatory image-bearing argument is not reproduced in Epiphanius’s resurrection entry 16/24. The common subject of resurrection does not supply the missing argument.
2 Corinthians 4:4	AH 3.7.1–2; AM 5.11.9–11	The shared repunctuation in Irenaeus and Tertullian is not reproduced in Panarion 42’s 2 Corinthians entries, which select 1:20, 4:5–6, and 4:13. It is not an established three-way parallel.
Luke 24:25	AM 4.43.4; Pan. 42.11, Gospel scholion 77	The reports agree in moving away from an explicit reference to the prophets, but Tertullian has third-person speech and Epiphanius first-person speech. Roth’s 2022 article, nn. 54–56, is an important check against harmonizing these reports into one exact Greek reading.

The three Pauline controls matter because the preceding comparison of Tertullian with Irenaeus identified them as particularly diagnostic. Their absence from the corresponding Epiphanian arguments prevents their use as proof that all three authors inherited one continuous dossier. Silence does not disprove use of an earlier source; selection and abbreviation remain possible. It simply supplies no positive third witness for those particular features.

The compiled character of the canonical study

The catalogue and the rebuttals should be analyzed separately. Epiphanius presents an earlier selection of lemmata and then supplies explanations of why those lemmata defeat Marcion. Agreement between the later explanations can arise from older polemic even when a lemma was independently checked. Conversely, a writer may transmit a useful earlier lemma while adding an explanation of his own.

The chronological material in the Pauline resurrection refutation is a useful illustration. The reference to Hyginus and Marcion’s lateness belongs to the heresiological tradition compared with AH 3.4.2–3. It is not information obtainable by reading 1 Corinthians 15. Its presence inside the Pauline exposition demonstrates that source-based argument and discussion of a scriptural passage can occupy the same unit. It does not establish that the Pauline lemma itself was copied from Irenaeus.

The change of Pauline order is also explicitly acknowledged. At 42.12.2–3 Epiphanius says that the earlier selection put Romans first according to the church’s order, and that he now presents the material with Galatians first according to Marcion’s order. That statement explains a feature of the composition which should not be treated as an unacknowledged contradiction. It neither proves that his selections came from another author nor authenticates every assertion about the collection.

Epiphanius’s claims at 42.10.2 and 42.11.16 remain evidence: he represents himself as having handled the books and compiled material from Marcionite copies. A shared source can coexist with such consultation. The test is whether an individual report has features best explained by textual inspection, an earlier excerpt, conflation, memory, or editorial inference. Williams’s framework does not authorize deleting the consultation claim, and no dishonesty is demonstrated merely by showing use of earlier literature.

Which source models survive the comparison

Reuse of surviving Irenaeus. For the containment argument, the salvation catalogue, the prior refutation program, and some exegetical themes, an extant antecedent already exists. A lost work is not required to explain the existence of these themes.
An Irenaean tradition through intermediaries. A handbook, excerpt collection, or later anti-Marcionite dossier could transmit selections and readings together. The reconstructed Syntagma is relevant to Epiphanius’s framework, but its role in any proposed route to Tertullian must respect chronology and cannot simply be assumed.
The projected separate refutation of Marcion. Irenaeus’s announcements at 1.27.4 and 3.12.12 make this a concrete hypothesis to investigate. They do not supply the lost text, prove its completion, or identify a particular later sentence as its descendant.
Shared polemic plus consultation of Marcionite copies. This combined model remains possible. Reading a manuscript does not make every argument original; using an older argument does not show that no manuscript was read.

The present evidence establishes inherited polemical material most securely. It supports testing a common textual dossier where an unusual reading and an unusual explanatory gloss occur together. It does not establish one exclusive intermediary or justify attributing every Tertullian–Epiphanius agreement to Irenaeus.

Passage for the paper

The agreement of Tertullian and Epiphanius cannot be assumed at the outset to constitute the agreement of two independent readers of Marcionite manuscripts. Epiphanius’s treatment incorporates earlier heresiology, and the surviving work of Irenaeus provides controls for recognizing its adaptation. The argument against spatially limited gods in Panarion 42.7.3–7 reworks the containment and boundary argument of Adversus haereses 2.1.2–5, even converting the further separating authority from a third into a fourth to accommodate the new presentation. Tertullian’s corresponding containment objection shows that this argumentative complex was already available to the anti-Marcionite tradition. Such agreement concerns inherited polemic rather than a distinctive feature of Marcion’s canon.

The scriptural agreements require a further distinction. At Luke 5:14, the shared second-person testimony formulation travels with the same fulfillment-of-the-Law explanation; at Luke 13:28, agreement in the reference to righteous people coexists with a difference between entering the kingdom and being within it. The former raises the possibility of a transmitted quotation-and-commentary unit, while the latter warns against constructing an identical text from related reports. The evidential weight of a particular reading therefore depends on identifying what each witness actually attributes to Marcion and discounting what may derive from their inherited explanatory tradition. This procedure preserves genuine textual evidence while preventing a shared polemical source from being counted twice as independent corroboration.

Sources and verification

Primary references in Table 2 identify the passages required for checking the comparisons. The readings are not reconstructed by translating Williams’s English back into Greek. Short original-language expressions are used only where needed; English descriptions of the comparisons are new.

Frank Williams, trans., The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1–46), 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2009), Panarion 42, especially the pages and annotations identified in Table 1. Consultable combined PDF. Printed page numbers are used; PDF links include the preliminary-page offset.
Karl Holl, ed., Epiphanius, vol. II, Panarion 34–64, GCS 31 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1922), heresy 42. Open Greek and Latin digital transcription. Some digital Greek has OCR defects; no inference is based on an isolated apparent OCR form.
Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, passages linked in the tables. The New Advent reference translations are Roberts–Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers 1 (1885). The argument concerns the surviving content; verbal conclusions across Greek and the ancient Latin version require separate textual control.
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, Latin text linked by book in the tables. Ernest Evans edition and translation (1972), online index. The linked Latin Library text provides the chapter and subsection divisions used here.
Dieter T. Roth, “The Testimony for Marcion’s Gospel in NA28: Revisiting the Apparatus to Luke in the Light of Recent Research,” New Testament Studies 68.1 (2022): 52–60, especially nn. 22 and 54–56. DOI and article record. These notes supply a check on citation abbreviation and the differing testimony to Luke 24:25, not an endorsement of the source genealogy proposed here.

The source genealogy is argued from identifiable parallels and differences. No percentage of dependence, exhaustive stemma, or certainty about the contents of an unavailable Irenaean work is claimed.

Did Epiphanius Consult Marcion’s Bible?

Epiphanius explicitly claims earlier firsthand access to Marcionite books. His account does not establish that he had those books beside him while composing the Panarion. The distinction matters. The chapter presents an earlier collection of excerpts and a subsequent exposition of them. The Pauline ordering, repeated material and confused treatment of “Laodiceans” raise substantial questions about that process. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate that the claim of earlier access was invented.

There is also an important correction to the proposed argument: Epiphanius notices and explains why his first Pauline list begins with Romans. That explanation must be tested, rather than omitted. The surviving sequence is nevertheless more peculiar than simply adopting the church’s order.

1. What he actually claims

In Panarion 42.10.1–3, Epiphanius introduces work undertaken before the present compilation. The crucial expressions are ἀπὸ ἐτῶν ἱκανῶν, “a considerable number of years ago,” and αὐτὰς δὴ τὰς τοῦ προειρημένου βίβλους … μετὰ χεῖρας λαβών: he says that he took up the actual books of the person under discussion. He identifies them as the so-called Gospel and Apostolikon.

He then describes selecting τὰ ἐλέγξαι αὐτὸν δυνάμενα—material capable of refuting Marcion—and numbering the extracts. In 42.11.16 he strengthens the documentary claim with ἐξ ἀντιγράφων τοῦ Μαρκίωνος, “from copies of Marcion,” in describing his short compilation of notes.

These are claims to direct documentary consultation. But the object claimed is a copy or copies identified as Marcionite, not Marcion’s autograph, and the claimed consultation predates the Panarion. Even a truthful report would not automatically give us Marcion’s second-century text without subsequent Marcionite transmission or correction.

The phrase ἕως τέλους διεξῆλθον in 42.10.3 says that he worked through to the end. It should not be converted into a promise to publish every textual difference: the explicit selection criterion is polemical usefulness. [Primary text: 42.10.1–8; 42.11.13–17.]

2. Did scholars accept the claim?

There is a real disagreement, and acceptance of earlier access must be separated from confidence in every quotation.

Scholar / work	Position relevant to access	Qualification
Theodor Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons II/2, pp. 409–419	Accepted an earlier extraction from Marcion’s Bible.	Argued that Epiphanius did not have or reconsult that Bible when writing the Panarion. Position checked through Schmid’s discussion, pp. 153–155.
Adolf von Harnack, Marcion, supplementary pp. 64–67	Accepted Zahn’s broad account of the sources.	This is acceptance of the earlier consultation, not proof of continuous access. Checked through Schmid, p. 153.
John J. Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul (1989), p. 14	Rejected the claim: the quotations could come from anti-Marcionite literature.	The 1989 position is reported by Scherbenske, p. 272 n. 58, and Wright, p. 43 n. 124. Schmid directly quotes and contests the earlier formulation, pp. 154–155.
Ulrich Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos (1995), pp. 150–196	Defends earlier access to a Marcionite Bible, followed by reuse of excerpt notes.	His argument includes the concentration of Old Testament citation formulas in the 1 Corinthians extracts. He distinguishes the two presentations and warns that their wording is not uniformly reliable.
Eric W. Scherbenske, “Marcion’s Antitheses and the Isagogic Genre” (2010), pp. 271–272 nn. 58–59	Expressly follows Schmid against Clabeaux on direct access.	Discusses a prior notebook and possible imitation of Marcion’s argumentative format; the latter remains a hypothesis.
Jason BeDuhn, The First New Testament (2013), p. 37	Allows a distinction between better access to the Gospel and weaker access to the Apostolikon.	Reported here through Martin Samuel Wright’s 2018 dissertation, p. 43 n. 124; this assessment did not independently inspect that page of BeDuhn’s book.
Markus Vinzent, Die älteste Sammlung paulinischer Briefe … (2025), pp. 110–115	Retains Epiphanius as an important Greek witness and discusses his excerpt-making account.	Emphasizes variant forms of the lists and contamination by canonical readings; proposes a copying/leaf-order explanation for the rearrangement.

The strongest defence is therefore not “Epiphanius says so, so it must be true.” It is that the character and selection of the material can be explained by actual excerpt-making. The strongest objection is that a derivative anti-Marcionite dossier could also preserve useful quotations, while the mistakes undermine the inference from the autobiographical claim to the accuracy of the surviving record.

3. Comparable claims elsewhere: which are actually doubtful?

Other chapters justify scrutiny, but they do not supply a general proof that every claim of access is false. Three comparisons are especially useful.

The Phibionites/Borborites and their literature (26.17.4–18.2). Epiphanius says that he encountered attractive female recruiters, read their books, resisted conversion and reported members to bishops. His own account distinguishes learning about practices from performing them. Bart Ehrman questions whether such contact could give him reliable knowledge of the secret rituals he describes, and raises the possibility that theology was turned into invented scandal. Ehrman also acknowledges that Stephen Benko and Stephen Gero defended historical elements of the report. This is a disputed case, not a unanimous verdict.

The Greater Questions of Mary (26.8.1–3). Here the issue narrows to a purported quotation from a sectarian book, an especially close analogy to the Marcion question. Its alleged contents fit Epiphanius’s accusations about the group’s sexual ritual. Whether a book existed, whether he read it, and whether his account of it is accurate are three separate questions. The surviving public discussion by Ehrman challenges the evidential link between contact, books and rituals; the NASSCAL entry documents the excerpt and the scholarly debate. It is unsafe either to authenticate the passage merely because he quotes it, or to announce a consensus that he fabricated it.

The Ebionite Gospel (30.3.7; 30.13–14). Epiphanius identifies the Gospel used by his Ebionites with Matthew and “according to the Hebrews,” while his quoted material includes Greek wordplay and combinations of Synoptic material. Michael Kok’s scholarly survey questions both the identification and whether the Gospel really belonged to the group as Epiphanius reconstructs it. This shows how possessing or quoting a text can coexist with mistaken classification and inherited heresiological assumptions. It does not show that the quoted Gospel was invented.

A further internal warning is his hesitant claim to have encountered the Sethians in 39.1.2: τάχα δὲ οἶμαι, approximately “perhaps, I think.” He cannot precisely remember the location, yet invokes firsthand knowledge and writings. This is evidence of uncertain recollection, not a demonstrated lie.

The useful principle is specific: a claim of personal contact or documentary access requires corroboration for the particular conclusion drawn from it. Neither alleged contact with a sect nor an alleged manuscript in hand automatically establishes the accuracy of an ethnography, a Gospel’s title, or a textual reconstruction.

4. Why 118?

Epiphanius supplies the arithmetic in 42.13.2–3: 78 Gospel scholia + 40 Apostolikon scholia = 118. These are numbered units of his argument, not 118 biblical verses and not 118 independently established editorial alterations. An item may contain several verses, nonconsecutive fragments, a retained passage, a deletion allegation, or a verbal variation.

There is no surviving statement that explains why he stopped at precisely this number. There are, however, four clear constraints on interpreting it.

The project is selective. In 42.10.2 he selects what can refute Marcion. In 42.12.1 he calls his Gospel argument sufficient. A complete apparatus was not his stated aim.
“Retained testimony” is a polemical description, not an accurate taxonomy of every item. Some scholia explicitly allege material missing from Marcion’s Gospel. His concluding presentation of all 118 as still preserved in Marcion cannot be applied literally to each item.
The numbered units are not all independent. Gospel scholia 56 and 57 both concern Luke 20:37–38, the argument from Moses and the God of the patriarchs. Elenchus 57 says he repeats it because the Saviour repeated it. Whatever explains the duplication, the count is not a count of distinct variant locations.
He interprets the total religiously. In 42.13.3 he connects eighteen with the Lord’s name and one hundred with the blessing on the right. This is explicit numerical symbolism. It does not demonstrate that he fabricated or selected material in advance to reach 118.

There is an additional inconsistency: “Laodiceans” already supplies Apostolikon item 40, yet 42.13.4 describes its testimony as additional to the preceding material. The wording of the conclusion and the numbered inventory are not a transparent statistical record.

The positive answer to “why so few?” is therefore that we possess a selected refutation built from an excerpt collection. Restriction by purpose, availability of notes, and later editing can all explain its size. The exact causal reason for the terminal number remains unknown.

Work / letter	Position in claimed Marcionite order (42.9.4)	Position of heading in first Pauline inventory (42.11.8)	Scholia	Cumulative item numbers in final exposition
Galatians	1	9	8	1–8
1 Corinthians	2	10	16	9–24
2 Corinthians	3	11	3	25–27
Romans	4	1	8	28–35
1 Thessalonians	5	2	0	—
2 Thessalonians	6	3	0	—
Ephesians	7	4	3	36–38
Colossians	8	5	1	39
Philemon	9	6	0	—
Philippians	10	7	0	—
“Laodiceans”	additional	8	1	40

Four acknowledged letters yield no excerpts: 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Philemon and Philippians. In 42.12.3 Epiphanius says they have been distorted and declines to select from them. That explanation deserves testing: Tertullian discusses the Thessalonian letters and Philippians, and expressly says in Adversus Marcionem 5.21 that Philemon escaped alteration. The Philemon disagreement is real. Different copies, Epiphanius’s polemical overstatement, or confused/limited notes remain possible explanations; dependence on a lost dossier is another hypothesis.

5. The Romans-first problem: an explicit explanation and a surviving difficulty

Epiphanius gives two presentations of the Pauline excerpts. The first, in 42.11.8, begins with Romans. The second, in 42.12.3, begins with Galatians. His intervening explanation says that he had made the earlier arrangement according to the Apostolikon with Romans first, whereas here he presents the material in Marcion’s arrangement. The unmistakable clause is τὴν πρὸς Ῥωμαίους τάξαντες πρώτην, “putting Romans first.” In 42.12.2 he explicitly says that Galatians stands first in Marcion.

This answers why Romans can appear first in his notes without his believing it stood first in Marcion’s canon. The first list’s Romans excerpts already carry cumulative numbers 28–35; Galatians carries 1–8. Those numbers show awareness of the other order even within the rearranged presentation.

But the first list is not a full adoption of the church’s order. Its succession after Romans is Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians, “Laodiceans,” Galatians and the Corinthians. Galatians and the Corinthians have been displaced as a block, not redistributed into their ecclesiastical positions.

Presentation	Actual succession of headings / letters
Claimed Marcionite order, 42.9.4	Gal → 1 Cor → 2 Cor → Rom → 1 Thess → 2 Thess → Eph → Col → Phlm → Phil; plus material called Laodiceans
First excerpt presentation, 42.11.8	Rom → 1 Thess → 2 Thess → Eph → Col → Phlm → Phil → Laod → Gal → 1 Cor → 2 Cor
Summary catalogue, 42.11.10	Rom → Eph → Col → Laod → Gal → 1 Cor → 2 Cor → 1 Thess → 2 Thess → Phlm → Phil
Final exposition, 42.12.3	Gal → 1 Cor → 2 Cor → Rom → 1 Thess → 2 Thess → Eph → Col → Phlm → Phil; then Laod
Ecclesiastical positions given by Epiphanius himself	Rom → 1 Cor → 2 Cor → Gal → Eph → Phil → Col → 1 Thess → 2 Thess; pastoral letters and Hebrews vary in placement; Phlm is 13th or 14th

The order is strong evidence for editorial handling of a collection, but it cannot identify who first made that collection. Personal excerpt slips, an assistant’s copying, and an inherited anti-Marcionite dossier are distinguishable possibilities. An explanation is present in the text; its compressed account of the first ordering is not wholly satisfying.

Vinzent (2025), pp. 112–113, proposes a leaf/copying-order disturbance. Such a mechanism can explain the block movement, but remains a reconstruction. It also has to account for the Romans-first explanation already present in the work.

6. The strongest problems for unqualified firsthand authority

Observation	What it supports	What it does not establish
The work describes an older excerpt collection and reproduces it with explanations.	A distinction between original consultation and later composition.	That the old collection was necessarily written by someone else.
The Pauline order changes, and the first list’s numbering presupposes Galatians first.	Rearrangement of notes or copied material.	An author unaware of Marcion’s claimed order.
Ephesians and “Laodiceans” are separated; the latter quotes Eph 4:5–6.	Serious confusion concerning the identity and extent of the Pauline collection.	A certain explanation of whether that confusion began in his sources, notes, or later work.
Four letters provide no scholia; Philemon’s alleged corruption conflicts with Tertullian.	Selection gaps and an inadequately supported blanket claim.	The nonexistence of those letters in a Marcionite collection.
Gospel scholia 56 and 57 duplicate the same episode.	A count of polemical items rather than distinct locations.	That numerical symbolism caused the duplication.
The two Pauline presentations have differing textual forms in the manuscripts.	A need to inspect the apparatus and distinguish presentation, copying and biblical harmonization.	That every difference is either Marcion’s change or Epiphanius’s invention.

Schmid’s manuscript analysis counts differences between the two presentations in 22 of the 40 Pauline scholia; Holl’s printed text harmonizes many of them. This makes the apparatus essential. It does not make all 22 differences false Marcionite readings. The exact source of each difference still needs testing. [Schmid, pp. 158–168.]

A useful example is 1 Corinthians 14:19. The relation of the alleged reading concerning “the law” to the ordinary wording is affected by editorial supplements: an apparent addition can instead be understood as a replacement. The transmitted source, the editor’s reconstruction and a reconstruction of Marcion are separate stages. [Schmid, p. 189.]

7. What this contributes to the proposed inherited-dossier argument

The evidence supports a restrained but important proposition: the Panarion is not a fresh, complete and consistently controlled collation of Marcion’s canon. Its Greek extracts are valuable witnesses mediated through selection, notes, exposition, copying and editorial reconstruction. A claim of access cannot cancel those complications.

A stronger claim—that Epiphanius never consulted a Marcionite copy, and simply adopted an earlier anti-Marcionite dossier—is a defensible research hypothesis, represented by Clabeaux, but not a conclusion established by the 118 or by Romans appearing first. Identifying that dossier specifically with Irenaeus’s lost Adversus Marcionem requires additional evidence: distinctive shared errors, unusual combinations of passages, or sequences that are better explained by a common Greek source than by independent biblical reading.

Even agreement between Epiphanius and Tertullian can have several causes: a common biblical textual tradition, a common polemical source, or independent consultation of related Marcionite copies. Conversely, their disagreement can arise through different copies, memory, polemic or transmission. Each proposed parallel must discriminate between these explanations.

The most useful formulation for the paper: Epiphanius’s claim is explicit and has been defended by major scholars, but what survives is an edited dossier of selected testimonies whose organization and textual instability prevent us from treating it as transparent eyewitness documentation. The hypothesis of an inherited dossier should be tested against that material rather than inferred from the assertion that he gives no explanation for its order.

Appendix: the 40 Pauline units

The numbers below follow the cumulative Galatians-first numbering of the final exposition. References identify the ordinary biblical parallels; they do not assert that every canonical word stood in Marcion’s copy. Descriptions summarize the subject or allegation without endorsing the claim of alteration. The split between 1 Corinthians items 9 and 10 is retained, giving sixteen items from that letter.

Item	Letter / local item	Biblical parallel(s)	Contents / allegation
1	Galatians 1	Gal 3:11b, 10a, 12b	Composite citation about faith, law, curse and doing.
2	Galatians 2	Gal 3:13; 4:23	The tree/curse saying joined to the promise and free woman.
3	Galatians 3	Gal 5:3	Circumcision and obligation to the whole law.
4	Galatians 4	Gal 5:9	Alleged substitution of “corrupts” for “leavens.”
5	Galatians 5	Gal 5:14	Fulfilment of the law through love of neighbour.
6	Galatians 6	Gal 5:19–21	Catalogue of works of the flesh.
7	Galatians 7	Gal 5:24	Crucifying the flesh and its passions.
8	Galatians 8	Gal 6:13	Circumcised people who do not keep the law.
9	1 Corinthians 1	1 Cor 1:19	Scriptural testimony against worldly wisdom.
10	1 Corinthians 2	1 Cor 1:31	Boasting in the Lord.
11	1 Corinthians 3	1 Cor 2:6	Rulers/principalities of this age coming to nothing.
12	1 Corinthians 4	1 Cor 3:19–20	Two scriptural testimonies concerning wisdom and thoughts.
13	1 Corinthians 5	1 Cor 5:7	Christ as Passover sacrifice.
14	1 Corinthians 6	1 Cor 6:16	Union with a prostitute and the two becoming one flesh.
15	1 Corinthians 7	1 Cor 9:8–9	Law/Moses wording, with verses cited out of sequence.
16	1 Corinthians 8	1 Cor 9:9	God’s concern for oxen.
17	1 Corinthians 9	1 Cor 10:1–9, 11	Composite wilderness narrative and its application to Christians.
18	1 Corinthians 10	1 Cor 10:19–20	Idol sacrifices and demons; alleged addition concerning sacrificial meat.
19	1 Corinthians 11	1 Cor 11:7, 14	God’s image/glory and a prohibition on long hair are combined.
20	1 Corinthians 12	1 Cor 12:24	God’s arrangement of the body.
21	1 Corinthians 13	1 Cor 14:19	Speaking five words; disputed wording concerning the law.
22	1 Corinthians 14	1 Cor 14:21	The law’s testimony concerning other tongues.
23	1 Corinthians 15	1 Cor 14:34	Women’s silence and the law.
24	1 Corinthians 16	1 Cor 15:1, 17, 11, 3–4, 54–55	A resurrection dossier combining nonconsecutive verses.
25	2 Corinthians 1	2 Cor 1:20	God’s promises and the Amen.
26	2 Corinthians 2	2 Cor 4:5–6	Preaching Christ and God’s command concerning light.
27	2 Corinthians 3	2 Cor 4:13	Spirit of faith; alleged omission of the scriptural citation formula.
28	Romans 1	Rom 2:12–13	Judgment with/without law; doing the law.
29	Romans 2	Rom 2:25	Circumcision and keeping the law.
30	Romans 3	Rom 2:20b	Knowledge and truth in the law; earlier verse placed after 2:25.
31	Romans 4	Rom 5:6	Christ’s death for the ungodly.
32	Romans 5	Rom 7:12	The holiness, justice and goodness of the law.
33	Romans 6	Rom 8:4	The law’s requirement fulfilled in believers.
34	Romans 7	Rom 10:4	Christ and the end/fulfilment of the law.
35	Romans 8	Rom 13:8	Love of neighbour as fulfilment of the law.
36	Ephesians 1	Eph 2:11–14	Gentiles, Israel, covenants and reconciliation.
37	Ephesians 2	Eph 5:14	The summons to awaken and rise.
38	Ephesians 3	Eph 5:31	The marriage saying and the allegedly missing wife clause.
39	Colossians 1	Col 2:16–17	Food, calendar observances, shadow and fulfilment.
40	“Laodiceans” 1	Eph 4:5–6	One Lord, faith, baptism and God; classified separately by Epiphanius.

Sources and verification

The primary assessment used Holl’s Greek in the First1KGreek transcription and Frank Williams’s translation. The ordering and counts were checked against both presentations in Panarion 42. Schmid’s discussion, pp. 150–196, and Vinzent’s, pp. 110–115, were inspected directly. Scherbenske’s discussion and notes were read in the retrieved PDF text. Where an earlier scholar is known here through a later discussion, the table says so. This is an audit of the access claim, count and Pauline organization, not a new critical edition of all 118 scholia.