1. Marcion's Gospel and Luke: The History of Research in Current Debate
- Author
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Dieter T. Roth
- Subjects
Literature ,Church Fathers ,Literature and Literary Theory ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Philosophy ,History of scholarship ,Religious studies ,Gospel ,Scholarship ,Originality ,Argument ,business ,Order (virtue) ,Period (music) ,media_common - Abstract
The issue of the relationship between Luke and Marcion's Gospel has been revived recently in several discussions of Marcion and Luke-Acts.1 Although this renewed interest is to be welcomed because of the importance of the question for the study of the canon, the fourfold Gospel collection, the Synoptic Problem, and text-critical issues pertaining to the Gospels in the second century, it is curious that numerous, including the most recent, summaries of the veritable flurry of work in Germany in the 1840s and 1850s have been marred by inaccuracies. These erroneous views have then, at times, been employed to develop a connection to and draw support from the purported consensus of German scholarship by the mid1850s on the relationship between Luke and Marcion's Gospel, when no such consensus actually existed. Thus, the incorrect impression has arisen that recent advocates of the position that Luke was the product of a significant redactional revision after the time of Marcion are renewing a supposed consensus that resulted from the intense discussion of the issue in Germany 150 years ago. In the light of this besetting problem, the purpose of this article is to revisit the scholarly debates concerning Marcion's Gospel in the mid-nineteenth century in order both to provide an accurate presentation of the history of scholarship in this period and to address the claims found in recent discussions. I. THE PROLIFIC (AND PROBLEMATIC) PERIOD OF THE 1840S AND 18508 The primary figures involved in the lively debate of this period were F. C. Baur, Albrecht Ritschi, Adolf Hilgenfeld, and Gustav Volckmar.2 However, it was a long and critical review article by F. C. Albert Schwegler that marked the beginning of this period of investigation.3 Schwegler contended that the critical study of Marcion's Gospel had regressed since the work of J. G. Eichhorn, who had provided an extended summary and discussion of the challenges that had arisen to the traditional view, universally recognized to have been held by the church fathers, that Marcion had mutilated a copy of Luke.4 In Schwegler's estimation, the theory that Marcion had edited Luke based on his theological proclivities was entirely untenable, and therefore the traditional view finds itself entangled in "multiple, irresolvable contradictions and difficulties."5 Albrecht Ritschi pressed forward in this Une of thought in 1846, when, in the preface to his monograph, he set forth this thesis: "Marcions Gospel is not a mutilation of the Gospel of Luke, but rather its basic root [Grundstamm]"6 Since he considered the verdicts of Tertullian and Epiphanius concerning the relationship between Marcion's Gospel and Luke to be historically worthless, Ritschl sought to evaluate the relationship between the attested elements of Marcion's text and Luke based upon a criterion of connection [Zusammenhang].7 This criterion assumed that redactional activity, because it introduces foreign material, can be recognized as destructive of the original connection in or between pericopes.8 Ritschl devoted almost sixty pages of his monograph to setting forth the text of Marcion's Gospel on the basis of this criterion and to arguing that Marcion's Gospel reveals the better connection of pericopes. Therefore, one should conclude that Luke has added that which was missing from Marcion's Gospel rather than conclude that Marcion excised anything from Luke.9 Shortly after Ritschl's work appeared, Baur built on Ritschl's thesis in identical comments appearing in two publications, an article and a book.10 Despite occasionally criticizing how Ritschl applied his methodology, Baur agreed that there was "striking evidence for the originality of Marcion's text."11 As he continued with his argument, Baur contended that based on the data one must, without doubt, view Marcion's text as original and Luke as secondary. In fact, Baur concluded that Marcions Gospel was merely the text Marcion had at hand and that all the differences between it and Luke can only be seen as interpolations by a later hand. …
- Published
- 2008
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