The Gospel of Marcion, called by its adherents the Gospel of the Lord, was a text used by the mid-2nd century Christian teacher Marcion to the exclusion of the other gospels. Its reconstructed fragments now appear among the New Testament apocrypha.
So many Catholic Christian apologists wrote treatises against Marcion after his death, in addition to the noted work of Tertullian, that it has been possible to reconstruct almost the whole of Marcion's Gospel of the Lord from their quotations. Marcion, then, is known only through his critics, who considered his doctrines a deviation from orthodox Christianity.
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There are two possible relationships between Marcion's gospel and the Gospel of Luke.
Church Fathers wrote, and the majority of modern scholars[2][3] agree, that Marcion edited Luke to fit his own theology, Marcionism. The late 2nd -century writer Tertullian noted that Marcion, "expunged [from the Gospel of Luke] all the things that oppose his view... but retained those things that accord with his opinion" [4] This view seems likely because Luke's gospel was complete by Marcion's time.
In his gospel Marcion eliminated the first two chapters concerning the nativity and beginning at Capernaum and made modifications of the remainder suitable to Marcionism. The differences in the texts below highlight the Marcionite view that, first, Jesus did not follow the Prophets and, second, the earth is evil.
| Luke | Marcion |
|---|---|
| O foolish and hard of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken (24:25) | O foolish and hard of heart to believe in all that I have told you |
| They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man perverting our nation . . .’ (23:2) | They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man perverting our nation . . . and destroying the law and the prophets.' |
| I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth... (10:21) | I thank Thee, Heavenly Father... |
In 1881 Charles B. Waite[5] suggested that Marcion's Gospel may have preceded Luke's Gospel. John Knox (not the same as the Scottish reformer John Knox) in Marcion and the New Testament (1942) also defends this hypothesis. In the 2006 book Marcion and Luke-Acts: a defining struggle, Joseph B Tyson makes a case for not only Luke but also Acts being responses to Marcion rather than Marcion's gospel being a rewrite of Luke.[6]
Theologian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930),- in agreement with the traditional account of Marcion as revisionist - discussed the reasons for his alterations to Luke. According to Harnack, Marcion believed there could be only one true gospel, all others being fabrications by pro-Jewish elements, determined to sustain worship of Yahweh. Furthermore, he believed that the true gospel was given directly to Paul by Christ himself, but was later corrupted by those same elements, who also corrupted the Pauline epistles. He saw the attribution of this gospel to "Luke" as another fabrication. Marcion thus began what he saw as a restoration of the original gospel as given to Paul.[7]
Von Harnack wrote that: