I have to admit, being trained in conventional terms, for a long time, I did believe so. The reading of his New Testament, however, has taught me a very different lesson.
Here a small section of my forthcoming English version of "Christ's Torah" which deals with the figure of John the Baptist in Marcion's Gospel (please pass on your views and comments which I am happy to integrate into the forthcoming publication - the book will be published by Routledge):
A first, important question is why Marcion
mentions John at all in his Gospel. Did he know the non-Christian account of
John the Baptist in Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities? Yet, scholarship is
becoming more sceptical about the reliability of Josephus.[1]
Whatever source Marcion has in mind, his mention of John speaks for his
assumption that the Baptist was a historical figure, so that he could use him to
mark the boundary between the time of Jewish prophetism and the novelty that was
brought by Jesus. From the way he portrays him, Marcion saw him as a prophet
and teacher of righteousness,[2]
and he must have seen the danger that Jesus's message could either be
identified with or at least equated with that of John. As we can see from Marcion's
search for and presentation of Paul's letters, which is confirmed in his
handling of the Gospel material of the oral tradition, Marcion seems to have
been a thorough historian and did not aim at writing historical fiction. This
is all the more true since a prophetic figure unknown to his audience and
readership could hardly have served Marcion's argument. It is therefore
astonishing that Marcion hardly receives any attention in the relevant research
on John.[3]
Nevertheless, as already the placing of John demonstrates, Marcion sharpened
his material and brought it in line with his historical and theological views,
outlined by Tertullian in his report about Marcion’s preface, the Antitheses.
The first
introduction of the Baptist in *Ev clearly prepares the core antithetical
passage of *Ev 16, quoted before with the Baptist being regarded as the border between
the Jewish Law and Prophets on the one side, and the Gospel on the other. For
it is said in *Ev that the news of Jesus's miracles - preceded by the raising
of the young man of Nain (*Ev 7:11-16) - reached John the Baptist, but that John
"took offence" "when he heard of his (= Jesus') deeds" (*Ev
7:18), a remark, as we will later see in more detail, has been cut out by the
redaction that turned *Ev
into Lk.
In *Ev, Jesus's
answer to the question of John's disciples whether it was he who was coming or
whether they should expect someone else - which in Lk sounds somehow random -
reads: "Blessed are you if you take no offence at me!" (*Ev 7:23). The
verse refers directly to vers 7:18 and makes clear that John did, indeed, take
offence at Jesus. That John is seen as a person who is not blessed by Jesus underlines
the gulf that Marcion sees between the Baptist and the Saviour. This is
precisely, how Tertullian understands this passage and comments on it: Following
Marcion, "John took offence when he heard of Christ's powers, as if Christ
were of another",[4]
indeed, as if he were "another Christ" who "taught or worked new
things".[5]
Tertullian contradicts Marcion by emphasising that "John
however, both as Jew and as prophet, was quite sure that no one is God except
the Creator", hence that the Christ of the
Gospel was not sent by another God than the God who is depicted in the Torah as
the Creator and who has sent the Jewish prophets.[6]
Tertullian’s commentary shows that he understood *Ev to be an expression of
Marcion’s antithetical view, a crux which he highlighted, contradicted and
which, as we can see from the alteration that the text underwent in the redaction
of Lk was eradicated from this Gospel. Just as Tertullian wished to see John
not as a division between on the one side Law and Prophets and on the other the
Gospel, but rather as a bridge, a parenthesis[7]
or an ‘in-between’ between Jewish and Christian traditions, so the canonical editors
redacted *Ev to remove Marcion’s edge of John serving as a boundary marker.
Marcion, however,
is consistent in *Ev, as can be seen from Tertullian who refers to this
consistency when he states his intention to contradict him in his views on John:
"I shall
make it my purpose to show both that John is in accord with Christ and
Christ in accord with John, the Creator's Christ with the Creator's prophet,
that so the heretic may be put to shame at having to no advantage made John's
work of no advantage."[8]
This comment argues against the missing of
the verses on Christ’s baptism by John in *Ev. According to Tertullian, *Ev
lacked this passage that one can find in Lk 3:21-22,[9]
because this act of baptism served Marcion as a justification for the
antithesis between John and Christ, and, as the next pericope will show,
between John’s disciples and Jesus's disciples. “For”, Tertullian argues,
"if John's
work had been utterly without effect when, as Isaiah says, he cried aloud in
the wilderness as preparer of the ways of the Lord by the demanding and
commending of repentance, and if he had not along with
the others baptized Christ himself, no one could
have challenged Christ's disciples for
eating and drinking, or referred them to the example of John's disciples who
were assidous in fasting and prayer: because if any opposition had stood
between Christ and John, and between the
followers of each, there could have been no demand for imitation, and the force
of the challenge would have been lost."[10]
From this Tertullian concludes that Christ
belongs to John, and John to Christ, and both to the Creator, that both were
"preachers of the Law and of the Prophets."[11]
In *Ev 5:33-37, on the other hand, it is said:
"33 And they
said to him: 'Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees
fast steadily and offer prayers, but yours eat and drink?' 34 Jesus said to
them: "Can the wedding guests possibly fast while the bridegroom is with
them? 35 But days will come, and when the bridegroom is taken away from them,
then they will fast in those days. 37 New wine is not poured into old
wineskins. But if so, the new wine will burst the skins, then the wine is lost,
and also the wineskins. 38 Instead, new wine is poured into new wineskins. And
both remain preserved.↑36b
And no one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth onto an old cloak. But if so, it all
tears, and it will be of no use for the old. For it will result in a larger tear.’↓"[12]
What Tertullian read as a criticism of
John's disciples and of John's way of life was certainly not without anti-Jewish
and -pharisaeic undertone. Yet, was this Marcion’s intention? For to mention
the fasting of John's disciples in the same breath as that of the disciples of
the Pharisees, and to reproach both of them for practising constantly prayers
and accusing the disciples of Jesus of non-asceticism, was certainly no praise
of John's piety. Jesus’s answer rejects the Johannean criticism and equates Christ
with the bridegroom in whose present celebrations replace ascetic practices.[13]
Moreover, Tertullian believes he has discovered an inner contradiction in Marcion,
who otherwise insisted on asceticism himself: "Now deny,
if you can, your utter madness, Marcion: you go so far as to assail the law of
your own god."[14]
- for how could he call Christ a "bridegroom", if Marcion otherwise
preached marital abstinence and insisted on asceticism?
The following
comparison from the quoted verses 36 -37 is no less contradictory, for these
angered Tertullian even more, since he did not want to read again Marcion’s contrast
between the "best God" and the "Creator" that was laid out
in them.[15]
From reading Tertullian
it thus becomes even clearer than from mere sight that Marcion used the example
of the new wine and the old wineskins to impart his message, that his saviour
Christ revealed a new way of life, a series of new commandments and a new form
of Scripture, i.e. the new wine that does not fit into the old wineskins of the
Law and the Prophets and thus into the Jewish tradition. The reasoning in *Ev
is not insignificant: Christ would "tear apart" the Jewish tradition,
which would mean a larger gap for both sides with a downfall of both, just as
the pouring of Christian novelty into the old frame of Judaism would destroy
both – as the novel cult is only served by a novel container or grounding, the
older cult will not be threatened by the novel content, and both will have a
future.
As this argument reveals,
Marcion did not recognise in Christ's appearance an anti-Johannean,
anti-Pharisaic or at all anti-Jewish attack directed against Law and Prophets,
as Tertullian interpreted Marcion, but Marcion advocated a novel frame for
Christ and his new message, which he only saw guaranteed in a new form, based
on a new scriptural foundation.
But even though
the qualification of the Jewish tradition as "old" could also be
quickly misunderstood as a disqualification and devaluation, as happens with
Tertullian (and Justin before him), Marcion was also concerned with the fate of
the Jewish tradition. For it is clear from the second example of the unrolled
patch on an old garment that Marcion was also concerned that neither new nor
old should tear when he speaks of the new then being of "no use to the
old".
Accordingly, Marcion
also saw a benefit of the "Gospel" and Christ for the Jewish
tradition. What did this consist of? In the image of the example, it is first
of all that there is no "greater rift". Even though Marcion provided
Jewish (and non-Jewish) followers of Christ their distinct identity (Christanismus) in setting them in antithesis
to a Jewish identity (Judaismus), as
he stated in his preface, his intention was the avoidance of a separation or an
antagonism between these two cult forms. Hence he was neither anti-Jewish nor
did he press for a downfall of the old Jewish tradition. The reflexion upon the
possibility, however, that the Christians could be a threat to Jews and Jews to
Christians might be mirroring the historical situation after the Second Jewish
war, when the identity of both were fragile. The example of the wineskins and
the cloak also intimate that despite Marcion’s stressing of innovation, he
admits that Christianity was inconceivable without its antithetical
counterpart, Judaism. Or, taken it as a political statement, Christianity
sailed under Roman-political protection of Jewish privileges which was only
possible as long as Christianity and Judaism were further recognized as
belonging together and both survived.
Perhaps Marcion
had already seen the danger of Christianity going its own way at the cost of
Judaism, as it will develop in confrontation with and downright against the position
of Jews in the period that followed. For the post-Marcionite history of the
Christian-Jewish relationship moved in a completely different direction than
the one Marcion had wished for. While Marcion opted for a distinct identity of
Christians in antithetical conjunction with Jews, slightly younger scholars
like Justin rejected the ownership of Jews of their tradition and prophets and developed
a supersessionist Christian theology towards the Jews. Against Marcion's
intention, his antitheses have nevertheless set a fuse that has been lit again
and again in the course of history by less reflective igniters and led in the
20th century to the explosive catastrophe of the Holocaust.
[1] See the sceptical view in C.K. Rothschild,
“Echo of a whisper”. The uncertain authenticity of Josephus’ witness to John
the Baptist (2011).
[2] A similar
portray is painted by my former colleague at London King’s College, J.E. Taylor, The immerser. John the Baptist within
Second Temple Judaism (1997).
[3] No mentino of
him, for example, is made in ibid.
[4] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 18,4: „Sed scandalizatur
Ioannes auditis virtutibus Christi, ut alterius.“
[5] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 18,4: „qua alium Christum
sperans vel intellegens qui neque [haberet] unde speraret, ut nihil novi
docentem vel operantem.“
[6] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 18,5: „Ioannes autem certus
erat neminem deum praeter creatorem, vel qua Iudaeus, etiam prophetes.“
[7] See J. Ernst, Johannes der Täufer -
der Lehrer Jesu? (1994).
[8] Tert., Adv.
Marc. IV 11,4: „Nunc illud tuebor, ut demonstrem et Ioannem
Christo et Christum Ioanni convenire, utique prophetae creatoris, qua Christum
creatoris, atque ita erubescat haereticus, Ioannis ordinem frustra frustratus.“
[9] “21 When all
the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying,
heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a
dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am
well pleased.’”
[10] Tert., Adv.
Marc. IV 11,5 continuing what has been quoted from Tertullian before: „Si enim nihil omnino administrasset Ioannes,
secundum Esaiam vociferator in solitudinem et praeparator viarum dominicarum
per denuntiationem et laudationem paenitentiae, si non etiam ipsum inter
ceteros tinxisset … quia, si qua diversitas staret inter Christum et Ioannem et
gregem utriusque, nulla esset comparationis exactio, vacaret provocationis
intentio.“
[11] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 11,6: „Adeo Ioannis erat Christus et Ioannes
Christi, ambo creatoris, et ambo de lege et prophetis praedicatores et
magistri.“
[12] For the trans.
(with minor alterations) see M. Klinghardt,
The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels (2021), 1287.
[13] See Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 11,6.
[14] Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 11,6: “Nega te nunc dementissimum, Marcion. Ecce legem tui
quoque dei impugnas.”
[15] On Marcion’s “best
God”, see, for example, Tert., Adv. Marc. IV 15,2; 16,7 (deus optimus et tantum bonus, patientiae iniuriam
facere).
