Marcion and the Corruption of Paul’s Gospel

Abstract

That Marcion’s authoritative texts were a form of the canonical Gospel of Luke and a Pauline corpus is well established, yet the relationship between these is far less certain. Although it is widely assumed that Marcion identified or authorised his gospel through a reading of Paul’s defence of his gospel in Gal 1–2, this relies heavily on Tertullian who is driven by his own rhetoric and agenda. Tracing the different defences by Irenaeus and Tertullian of the authority of the gospel and of conflict between Paul and Peter alerts us to the complex negotiations involved in the textualization of the early Christian message, and in the attempts to hold together the Pauline revolution and the remembering of Jesus traditions. Marcion represents a different stage in this process, and although we can reconstruct for him a narrative, it is one which is fragmentary and remains allusive. Contemporary attempts to get beyond the rhetoric and special pleading must always be sensitive to the ideological framing that has accompanied narratives of the past from the start.