Dashed religious hopes can create profound anxiety and intellectual dislocation as people begin to ask, what has gone wrong? The destruction of the Temple illustrates this. The Jews believed that surely God would protect his Temple and his holy city, Jerusalem. That was the confident assertion of many of the Psalms, which took comfort in proclaiming that God would protect his people in this place: “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation: ‘This is my resting place forever; here I will reside’” (Psalm 132:13—14). The psalmist tells the people to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers’” (Psalm 122:6—7). Yet, in 70, the unimaginable happened: the destruction of the Temple, the city, and, according to Josephus, over a million Jewish lives. Deep dismay ran throughout the Jewish community. How could this have happened? If Zion (Jerusalem) was God’s dwelling place and it had been destroyed, where was God now? Were the promises of protection to be believed?
Difficult questions also existed on the side of the Proto-Orthodox Christians. Important issues had bubbled to the surface, and there were also some significant unmet promises that provoked considerable anxiety. By the 140s, just over a century after Jesus’ death, people were asking hard questions about the shape of the new religion.
For one thing, they asked, why should the Jewish writings be retained? It is important to remember that even by the 140s, there was as yet no Christian Bible—no “old” versus “new” testament. We need to recognize that what was considered scripture was fluid for centuries. Nor should we imagine that every Proto-Orthodox congregation had easy access to all the writings now included in our Old and New Testaments. Likely they possessed very few, and the ones they did have might very well not have been writings that were eventually included in our New Testament, the precise contents of which were not decided upon until the late fourth century.
In practice, early Christians used the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. They probably differed on what status they accorded it, however, given the distaste the Proto-Orthodox had toward its message. When would they ever have had the opportunity to read it? And why? What purpose would that serve, except perhaps to show that the ancient Jewish scriptures pointed the way to Jesus?
Paul’s letters began to be circulated, probably as a collection, but not used by the Ebionites. Different gospels were issued and treasured by different factions within early Christianity. The Proto-Orthodox, Ebionites, and Gnostics all read their own favorites, ignoring the others. There was no common body of literature to which all of the early factions within Christianity subscribed. Each of the various communities gathered around the texts it preferred and that reinforced its “take” on the religion. The process was circular. Each community produced writings that reflected their own point of view. Then they used these writings to bolster their position. Writings with which they disagreed, reflecting the viewpoints of others, were rejected as “false teachings” or “heretical.” Thus the Proto-Orthodox rejected the Gnostic scriptures. The Ebionites rejected all of Paul, the Gospels of Luke and John, and the virgin birth portions of Matthew. This really complicated theological debate, for the various factions were not arguing from the same base of evidentiary texts.
Scores of writings survive from early Christianity that were considered authoritative by some communities but did not end up being included in the New Testament. These include dozens of Gnostic writings as well as such influential Proto-Orthodox texts as the Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, and the prized romance, the Acts of Thecla.1 The latter writing told the story of the heroic deeds of Thecla who underwent tremendous pain and suffering in her quest to join the new faith. She heard Paul preaching and responded eagerly to his asceticism, rejecting marriage and sexuality. She abandoned her fiancé, defied her family, amazed Paul, fended off a potential rapist, escaped torture, and, after baptizing herself, engaged in a productive Christian missionary career. The work was a first-rate romance, urging women to renounce marriage as a way of entering into the public domain in a leadership capacity. It was the favorite reading of many a Christian in the second century.
Another Proto-Orthodox document that did not get included in the new Testament was the extremely influential Infancy Gospel of James.2 Dating from the midsecond century, this interesting writing explored the special birth of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as her exceptional, pure upbringing at home and in the Temple. This document puts forward the concept of the immaculate conception. This concept differs from that of the virgin birth, for it applies to Mary, not Jesus. According to this writing, Mary also had an exceptional birth under mysterious circumstances. When she was twelve, Joseph, a much older widower, became her protector-husband. Four years later, at age sixteen, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. The narrative then turns to the birth of Jesus. Mary gives birth in a miraculous way to Jesus in a cave—not in a stable or manger—just outside Bethlehem. The ancient Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is built over a cave, reflecting this long-standing tradition. This site is still accessible to visitors today.
The Infancy Gospel of James substantially advanced the theology of Mary, answering the question of why she, of all the Jewish women of the time, had been chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus. Later documents would build upon this writing. As Jesus became increasingly viewed as divine, Mary became spoken of not only as “Mother of Jesus” but also as “Mother of God,” understood as mother of God incarnate. Some, recognizing her closeness to Jesus, referred to her as “Co-Redemptrix,” that is, co-redeemer, for her crucial role in salvation history. The Infancy Gospel of James almost made it into the canon of the New Testament.
It was not until the late-second century that the idea of a “new” versus an “old” testament emerged. Nor were the contents of what is now known as the New Testament determined until 367. In that year, Bishop Athanasius in Egypt issued a famous letter that listed the twenty-seven books that now make up this collection. The shape of the New Testament was determined politically by the Proto-Orthodox faction favored by Constantine and subsequent Roman emperors. The New Testament was a partisan document that supported one—but only one—faction of early Christianity.
With the proliferation of new writings and the rejection of Torah observance on the part of the Christ congregations, the question naturally arose: Why preserve the Jewish writings at all? What possible Christian use could they reinforce? Actual Proto-Orthodox practices were clearly at odds with the Jewish teachings reflected in these documents. Why create bewilderment among newcomers to the fold? Why expose new, Gentile converts to a body of literature whose central teaching—that of Torah observance—was ultimately to be rejected? Why read or refer to such literature when its primary message had then to be shunted aside or drastically reinterpreted? It simply was not germane to their experience—not the least bit relevant, except with the wildest of intellectual gyrations.
In the previous chapter, we noted how early writers within Proto-Orthodoxy rejected the Jewish interpretation of scripture. They teased out of the texts fanciful allegorical interpretations to explain away the clear requirements of dietary, circumcision, and Sabbath laws. These explanations probably struck many at the time (as they do us) as ridiculous, contrived, and completely unpersuasive. But allegory represented one way of salvaging the Hebrew Bible for Christian purposes.
Others invented links between the Old Testament and the growing body of Christian literature in a desperate attempt to preserve the relevance of the ancient Jewish writings. Were there, they wondered, covert references to Jesus within selected passages of the Jewish writings, especially in the Prophets? Matthew, for instance, had attempted to do this, wrenching a passage in Isaiah from its original historical context to refer to a virgin birth of Jesus. Still others resorted to imaginative devices, suggesting that occurrences in the Jewish writings be seen as “types” or a “foreshadowing” of later Christian events. The crossing of the Red Sea (or Sea of Reeds), for example, could be seen as a type of baptism, the crossing of the Christian convert from death into new life. Moses on Mount Sinai was a type of Jesus on the mount giving his famous sermon as the new Moses. Joshua entering Canaan by crossing the Jordan River was a type of Jesus entering the afterlife. This “recycling of history” approach was also as imaginative as it was arbitrary, and in this, typology did not differ from allegory. But, for some, it preserved the relevance of the Jewish writings: they foretold the Christian message, albeit in an obscure fashion.
All these maneuvers only delayed the inevitable question: Why read the ancient opaque texts at all, especially when newer writings were available?
Around 140, one of the most brilliant Christian minds of the second century, an influential leader named Marcion, proposed a radical strategy for understanding the Jewish scriptures, one that he thought was consistent with the views of Paul. He questioned the assumption that the Christian community needed to retain the ancient Jewish writings at all. His position will be examined shortly.
Another issue that bothered Christians midsecond century was how should Jesus be understood as a Messiah. The criteria for being the Messiah were clear in Jewish writings. The Messiah was expected to assist God in restoring Israel and Jerusalem to prominence, bringing about the universal worship of the one God, establishing universal peace, ending wickedness, and redeeming the righteous. The Messiah would be instrumental, as God’s agent, in inaugurating a new world order. It was not necessary that a Messiah have a special birth, be divine, suffer, or be resurrected any more than it would be necessary for any other just and righteous individual. All these considerations were utterly irrelevant to the Jewish concept of the Messiah. What was essential was that the world be dramatically changed. Anyone living at the time of redemption would immediately recognize “the after” as fantastically different from “the before.”
This hadn’t happened. Political reality had failed to live up to religious expectations. The midsecond century was definitely not the messianic era. The world did not bask in universal peace. The worship of the one God did not exist. Israel and Jerusalem were not preeminent—Rome was absolutely triumphant. Because of the destruction caused by the two Jewish wars against Rome (66—70; 132—135), the Temple and its priesthood had been destroyed, the population was reduced, and Jerusalem was proclaimed a Roman city. Lee Levine traces the aftermath of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome:
Aelia Capitolina was built on the site of Jerusalem. The city bore a decidedly pagan character for the next several centuries, and Jews were banned from the city.… The end of the Bar-Kokhba hostilities also saw the beginning of an exodus of Jews from their homeland to countries of the Diaspora. For the first time, we read of sages who took up residence in Babylonia.… In Palestine, the Jews were forbidden to observe some of their most traditional and basic practices, including prayer, study, circumcision, holiday observance, etc., for a number of years.3
Clearly the messianic era had not yet arrived. Earlier on, in the first century, many had expected Jesus to return any moment, to actualize what he had announced. Leaders in Jerusalem had asked the resurrected Jesus if this was the time when he would “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6). They recognized that while Jesus had announced the Kingdom of God, it had not yet appeared. Fulfillment lay within the future. Time was marching on, however. How long could people cling to the view that redemption was at hand?
The members of the Dead Sea Scroll group had sustained their hope in imminent world transformation for well over a century. That was a remarkable achievement—most millennial sects cannot sustain an unrealized promise for so long. The Dead Sea Scroll community, however, witnessed their dreams dashed as the Romans swept down from the Galilee in 68, crushing Qumran in its path. Burying their scrolls in caves around Qumran, they anticipated that they would survive the temporary Roman setback, and would return to retrieve their precious hoard, and wait for God’s triumph to materialize. This never transpired.
Somewhat later, Rabbi Akiva’s hopes that Bar Kokhba would be revealed as the Messiah were also dashed in the 130s during the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome. That brave revolt had been decisively defeated by Rome. In the contemporary world, many wonder how long the devoted followers of Rabbi Schneerson will wait for him to return to be unveiled as the Messiah? How long is long enough? This was the same issue that Christians back in the second century faced: How long could they wait, sustaining the expectation, week after week, year after year, that Jesus would return soon to complete what he had announced?
Christians advanced differing strategies for dealing with the delay of the promised messianic era. Probably some quit the movement, as failing to live up to its promises. This often happens with millennial sects that promise something dramatic on a specific date that fails to materialize: the movement then peters out. This happened to the Christian groups that gathered on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, on December 31, 1999, in the belief that surely this would be an auspicious time for God to make good on his promises. They were there ready to greet the Messiah at the stroke of midnight, at the dawn of the new millennium, having sold all their possessions back in the United States.
Some second-century Christians continued to say that, eventually, Jesus would return to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. That is, after all, what he talked about and promised, and they clung to this hope. This represents a “this-worldly” or literal interpretation of the expectation. As the decades passed, enthusiasm for this approach withered. What is the length of a promise that does not materialize? How long can an unmet promise be sustained as a legitimate hope without its eventually being perceived as false?
But there were other ways of coping with the problem of the delayed reappearance. Some began to spiritualize the concept, maintaining that the promised messianic era was not a political entity—not a transformed world after all. On this view, the Kingdom of God came to be located within the hearts and minds of believing Christians. The Kingdom message became reinterpreted as something spiritual—something available to everybody, in the here and now. This meant abandoning the expectation that the world would be changed in favor of the view that people would be changed. In this view, the Kingdom was a present reality that all could access. There was no need to wait for Jesus to return. Gnostics—the ancient “New Agers”—veered in this direction, contending that “the living Jesus” was available everywhere, for all who search sincerely for insight. For them the Kingdom of God was a present reality. It was just there, waiting for insightful people to discover it.
Others, however, adopted a supernatural interpretation. On this view, the Kingdom of God was attainable in an afterlife, in a place or state called heaven, not on earth. Christians would be rewarded with eternal life in a heaven, a supernatural realm, after death. Nonbelievers would be relegated to a hell, either a place of punishment or a state of nonexistence. Thus there was no need for Jesus to return. A supernatural interpretation meant that the dream of a transformed world was abandoned. This was not, however, the biblical expectation at all. The world to come is depicted as a transformation of this earth, and resurrection as a coming back to life on this planet. The supernatural heaven-hell reinterpretation of the Kingdom message spatialized the message that was originally temporal in nature.
The original concept of resurrection, whether from the Pharisaic or Christian camp, viewed redemption as something that would happen on earth at some time in the future, at a point in history when God will make good on his promises to restore the world to its original pristine form, without sin and without evil. Those righteous people who are alive when this happens will automatically be transformed, to suit conditions in the new terrestrial environment. Those who had died—and were righteous—would come back to life, transformed, again to suit the circumstances of the newly created world. Paul set forth this view of resurrection, for instance, toward the end of his letter 1 Corinthians, and, in this, he builds on the traditional Jewish view. Thus, in its inception, the idea of redemption was a temporal one: the righteous will inherit the earth, at some point in the future, when God decides to re-create the world. The dead are truly dead, “waiting” for resuscitation by God at some point at the end of time.4
The heaven-hell reinterpretation represented a new concept on the Christian scene, one that is not typically found within the biblical narrative. It is a spatial concept, locating the afterlife in another dimension, place, or state, which we enter immediately upon death. The origin of this approach lies within Greek philosophy—the works of Plato, Orphism, and the neo-Platonists in particular— or within ancient Egyptian religion, the religion of the pharaohs with its examination and judgment upon the individual soul at death. According to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Osiris and forty-two judges weigh the human soul in accordance with forty-two criteria for admission into the afterlife. This otherworldly view is often tied in with a view of human personality as involving an immortal soul, an indestructible soul substance. According to this view, judgment occurs at the time of death, and then the immortal soul is sentenced to a future eternity, either in heaven or hell (or, in some theologies, in an intermediate state called purgatory).
These otherworldly interpretations of the expectation preserved the emphasis on transformation, either spiritually in this life or supernaturally after death. Both reinterpretations, however, abandoned the need for a return of Jesus to transform the world. Thus there was no waiting for Jesus to return and so the problem of the delay was solved. This was not, however, the original biblical expectation. These otherworldly interpretations represented creative solutions to an immense pastoral problem faced by early Christian leaders.
These differing strategies are still at work within contemporary Christianity. Some look for a transformed universe with Jesus the Messiah returning to Israel—soon, within our lifetimes. This is typical of the theology of Evangelical Christianity. Others look for individuals transformed spiritually or redeemed in a heavenly afterlife, views often found within liberal Protestantism and Catholicism. Contemporary discussion today mirrors the divergence of views found within second-century Christianity regarding the true identity of the Kingdom of God.
As we shall see, Marcion confronted this important problem and offered an innovative, more radical strategy for understanding Jesus as Messiah.
Finally, there was growing concern how best to interpret the nature of Jesus. While the earliest gospel, Mark, had focused on the adult mission of Jesus, later ones such as Matthew and Luke claimed a special birth for Jesus. Remarkably, these were the only two writings in the New Testament that put forward virgin birth stories. Mark did not mention it, nor did Paul or the Gospel of John. The idea of a virgin birth was not rooted in Jewish thought—although there were unusual births to women well past menopause—nor was it part of messianic expectation. The Messiah, on most views, was to be fully human, not a God-human hybrid. The virgin birth concept was Gentile in origin. Whatever the intent of the unknown writers of Luke and Matthew, the virgin birth narratives in no way singled out Jesus as unique. Roman emperors, Greek heroes, and ancient Egyptian pharaohs all claimed special births, and these parallels are now well known.
In ancient Egyptian times, for instance, two pharaohs had claimed special divine-human births or “theogamies.” In the fifteenth century B.C., Queen Hatshepsut claimed a divine-human origin in a relief in her splendid temple, Deir el-Bahri, near the Valley of the Kings at Luxor. The god Amon is depicted as her father and Queen Ahmose as her mother. Similarly, in the fourteenth century B.C., in the magnificent Temple of Luxor, Amenhotep III is depicted as having a divine-human birth. In this instance, a sequence is presented with an annunciation of an impending special birth; the conception between the god Amon and the human Queen Mutemwiya; the birth; and the presentation. This annunciation-birth-presentation narrative is suspiciously similar to the sequence outlined in the virgin birth story in Luke.
Freke and Gandy as well as Harpur point out many similarities between the special birth of Jesus and the divine-human births of other religious and political figures.5 These include Attis (a god and virgin mother Cybele); Pythagoras (god Apollo and human mother Parthenis), Caesar Augustus (god Apollo and mother Atia), the Persian religious figure Zoroaster, and many more.
The growing interest in the late first century and early second century in the divine-human birth of Jesus reached its pinnacle in the Infancy Gospel of James. Its focus was partly on Mary’s special birth under mysterious circumstances as well as the virgin birth of Jesus. Because of her exceptional purity and her own “immaculate” conception, Mary was chosen by God to be the bearer of Jesus. At the very young age of sixteen, according to this document, she gave birth to Jesus. This occurred in such a way that there was no distension of the hymen, so that Mary remained physically a virgin throughout the entire process. In fact, a midwife, Salome, had the temerity to doubt God and conducted a bold postpartum examination. This somewhat lurid document vastly extended the interest raised by Matthew and Luke in the divine birth of Jesus.
This dovetailed with another development. With the growing problems surrounding the messianic status of Jesus and the failure of the world to be changed dramatically as expected, the spotlight shifted to the divine aspect of the person of Jesus. The virgin conception and virgin birth stories paved the way for the development of the God-human. Ancient mystery religions shared similar motifs. The religious figure of the mystery cults was viewed as having a special divine-human birth; as being a God incarnate (a special Son of God); and as suffering, dying, and rising to save mankind. That’s the common pattern.
This figure of the God-human was well known throughout the Mediterranean world of the time, and, in various forms, it was the theological underpinning of many Gentile religions of the time. Egyptian religion provided the cult of Osiris, a divine being who suffered, died, and rose from the dead and who granted righteous individuals eternal life. In Greece, Dionysus was the offspring of the god Zeus and the mortal Semele, and he, too, constituted a dying-rising God-man savior. The religion of Mithraism from Persia, focusing on the God-man Mithras, exhibited the same features. These parallels in no way diminished the stature and importance of Jesus. They placed him on a par with other major religious and political leaders of his time. They did not, however, make him unique. Contemporary Christianity may wish to view Jesus as unique in being a divine-human, but this perspective forgets the Mediterranean world into which early Christianity was born. Today we may think of these beliefs as distinctively Christian, but second-century Christians did not. They were exceptionally hard pressed to explain to their non-Christian counterparts why their beliefs were so similar to theirs.
Curiously, the problem in the second century is not our problem. We know of no “virgin births.” They knew too many. That was their problem.
Portraying Jesus as a figure well known to Mediterranean audiences represented a convenient way of speaking about him in a manner that involved no references to Judaism or to the Jewish Messiah. It was timely to substitute this divine-human hybrid image of Jesus for the older view of Jesus as a human Messiah. The Messiah concept necessitated a search through Jewish scriptures, themselves already scorned by Christian writers, for proof texts. It also invited difficult questions and lengthy explanations of why the world had not yet dramatically changed as envisaged in the messianic era. The dying-rising savior Christ God-human was a much easier portrait. It offered all the advantages: no need to probe Jewish scriptures for possible messianic references, and a less-complicated “sell” with a Gentile audience. This shift from Messiah to Christ fitted fortuitously into the de-Judaism initiatives of early Christian authors. Marcion made the significance of this shift in perspective extremely apparent.
So who was Marcion?
Marcion was one of the most colorful, engaging, thoughtful, and intriguing figures in early Christianity. His provocative views acted as a prod for forcing Christians to rethink many of the fundamentals of the movement. As Burton Mack puts it,
Marcion of Sinope triggered the explosion.… As he looked around at his fellow Christians, some things did not make sense. Christians were still trying to be loyal to the Jewish God even after they learned that they did not have to keep his law. But the God who gave the Jews their law could not be the same God who sent his son to proclaim mercy.6
Marcion was born around 110 into a Christian family in Sinope, on the northern Black Sea coast of modern Turkey. He became a wealthy businessman, the owner of a fleet of ships, a powerful merchant whose transport vessels helped move goods around the Mediterranean. He was an entrepreneur, not a theologian, and this is important, for he injected a note of reason into the thinking of early Christianity. Like many businesspeople, he cut to the chase. Just prior to 140, he moved to the strategic center of the Roman Empire, the city of Rome itself. During the 130s or 140s, he began to formulate his religious ideas, producing an influential work called Antitheses, which exploded some of the comfortable assumptions second-century Christians were fond of making. This writing has, unfortunately, not survived, but his position can be reconstructed from the views of his later opponents. Some sixty or seventy years after Marcion, for instance, the Proto-Orthodox leader Tertullian took the time to write a five-volume work titled Against Marcion.7 What Marcion said made the Proto-Orthodox extremely uncomfortable, for it had the ring of logic to it.
Marcion forced his contemporaries to confront the stark contradictions between the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of Paul. He was impressed by Paul’s strong contrast between the slavery of Torah observance and the freedom brought about through Christ. That simplified Judaism, as far as he was concerned. It represented a clear, straightforward religion, one that he could grasp … and sell. Being probably the most consistently Pauline thinker who ever lived, he methodically and logically traced the implications of this dichotomy for Christian life. He demonstrated what happens when the abolition of Torah is taken seriously and consistently. His conclusions were astounding. He clearly saw that Paul’s religion was new and grasped that it did not make any pretensions of being a Judaism or related to Judaism in any way. He understood exactly where Paul’s thought was headed, and he had the audacity to say it out loud. Thus he rejected not only the validity of the Old Testament but also the Jewish concept of God and the view that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah.
Marcion’s bold claims were not accepted by other Christian communities, and he was excommunicated by the Proto-Orthodox in Rome around 144. This did not stop him from establishing Christian congregations of his own, and he viewed himself as standing in the succession from Paul. If others wished to shy away from the implications of what Paul said, then Marcion’s attitude was, so be it. Marcionite Christianity survived in many centers within the Roman Empire for several centuries. Had he not advocated celibacy for his followers, consistent with Paul’s ascetic theology, it might have lasted much longer. According to Marcion, marriage was not supported by Paul’s writings.
Marcion began by contrasting two passages—one from the Hebrew Bible and one from the Gospel of Luke. On the one hand, the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament said, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45:6—7). Here God is portrayed as saying that he created not only good, but evil as well. That simplifies the problem of evil. It is not the result of a Satan or a proclivity toward depravity found within human nature (a wicked impulse, for instance). Rather, as this passage views it, bad things happen as the result of divine agency. God alone is responsible for both good and evil. This is not the usual explanation for evil found in the Old Testament, but it is present in this text of Isaiah.
On the other hand, the Gospel of Luke had Jesus say, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:43—44). Marcion interpreted this as affirming that evil can only come from evil, whereas good can only come from good. Thus God cannot be the author of evil, on this view. There must be another source for evil.
Two passages. Two different views. God is both responsible and not responsible for evil. What should be made of these two contradictory positions when lined up side by side in this contrasting fashion? Clearly, Marcion said, there must be two gods.8 There is the real God who is good and who produces good things. In addition, there has to be an evil God as well, one who produces malevolency. Logic as well as biblical revelation demanded it. The God who created evil was a lesser God and had nothing of the status of the real God. This supreme God was the authentic God, the one who was truly good and responsible for producing good things.
Marcion’s next move was interesting, for he squarely tackled the Jewish concept of God—at least as he saw it. He equated the evil God with the Creator God of the Jewish writings. As he read the Jewish scriptures, God was described in harsh, warlike, and highly judgmental terms. This God was strict, stern—a God of law rather than one of love, compassion, and grace. As Tertullian put it, “we know full well that Marcion makes his gods unequal: one judicial, harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, placid, and simply good and excellent.”9 This God arrogantly claimed to be the only God and seemed to lack awareness of a greater divinity. This, of course, ignores the many passages in the Hebrew scriptures that describe God as one of mercy and compassion—for example, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34: 6); and “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15). But Marcion overlooked these in his haste to stereotype—and renounce—the God of the Hebrew Bible.
The supreme God, however, was the one revealed in Christ. This was truly the real God, a God of love, grace, and compassion who only produced good things. The existence of this God beyond the Creator God was not known, Marcion asserted, until Jesus came. That was Jesus’ major role: to reveal to humanity the true nature of the real God. The authentic God was not the one portrayed in the Hebrew Bible, the one Marcion described as full of anger and judgment and causing fear, stress, and anxiety in humans. The real God loves, wants, desires, and embraces all humanity and is in no way responsible for evil or anything vile.
Marcion rejected completely all the writings that Christians would later dub the Old Testament. The Jewish scriptures were false writings, presenting an inadequate portrait of God. They reflected the worship of the lower God. Unlike other early church leaders, he maintained that these scriptures were not to be interpreted away through clever allegory or some other fanciful means. They were just to be discarded as incompatible with Christian revelation. They were not to be used or read within a Christian context.
This forthright position cut through the problem created by Paul’s rejection of Torah. As we have noted, Paul’s views on Torah observance immediately threw into question the validity of the writings of the Hebrew Bible. Now that problem floated to the surface in a dramatic manner. If Torah was not to be observed by Christians and if Torah observance was the central message of these ancient Jewish writings, then why bother to retain and read them at all? That was a good question that perplexed many within the early church. Marcion’s position was innovative: just get rid of them. There was no need to allegorize them, spiritualize them, or explain them away.
Marcion also mentioned absurd depictions of deity, if taken literally, in the Jewish writings. He noted God “walking” in the garden, for instance, God “repenting” of some error, God “asking questions” as if ignorant of the answer, and God “uncertain” of situations as if he did not know human conditions and events. All these portrayed God in an unflattering perspective and reinforced Marcion’s view that this conception of God was inadequate. This critique reveals a very literal interpretive perspective on Marcion’s part. He did not take into account the use of metaphor or other literary devices. Nor did he appear sensitive to the position that all descriptions of God are anthropomorphic by nature, since we are using human language to describe that which is beyond humanity. Even to ascribe goodness to God reflects a human understanding of what “good” means. Later, theologians would tackle the problem of human language used to discuss the divine. Many centuries later, a Christian thinker like Thomas Aquinas would propose that we speak of God only by way of analogy, and even then, based on “proper proportionality,” that is, by preserving the proper distance between us and God.
Rejection of the Jewish writings had immediate consequences. It severed, for instance, Christianity from its Jewish roots. All the background writings vanished from the horizon, so there no longer existed a context in which to make sense of the Torah, dietary laws, Sabbath observances, or the festivals referenced within the gospels. This was not a problem for Marcion, however, for all these Jewish references were to be removed from Christian writings as totally irrelevant. Jesus was also detached from his Jewish roots—there was no context for understanding his life and mission within his cultural setting. Again, for Marcion, there was no problem. Just delete any reference to Jesus as a “fulfillment” of Jewish scripture. Christian living, for Marcion, did not involve history lessons. There was absolutely no need to back up and explain the whole historical tradition of Israel in order to grasp the essential nature of Paul’s Christ. It just wasn’t relevant. In fact, it was very likely that Marcion did not see Jesus as Jewish but as a universal emissary from the one true God speaking to humanity to liberate us from the shackles of ignorance.
On a more practical note, doing away with what became the Old Testament made it easier to attract converts. The required reading list was shorter. Much like Paul, Marcion’s followers did not have to devote any time to studying the scriptures of an alien religion. They benefited from a much shorter collection of sacred texts. Gone was the Hebrew Bible, but also many of the writings from the growing Christian library. According to Marcion, many writings—including some now contained within the New Testament— contained false teachings as well and had to be discarded.
For Marcion, there were only eleven authoritative writings. That was his total Bible. All the useful writings, he maintained, derive from Paul. Tertullian informed us that Marcion had ten letters of Paul. But these were edited to eliminate all Jewish references. In addition, he used the Gospel of Luke, which he attributed to Paul—Luke was, he thought, Paul’s gospel. Even this, too, was edited. In modern terms, he simply suggested hitting the Delete key to rid texts of troublesome references. And, like many other early Christian leaders, he did not think of these writings as unalterable sacred texts. He was not alone in altering texts: Matthew altered Mark, changing and omitting material, as did Luke. Later scribes also amended texts as they copied them, rendering them more useful to their respective constituencies.10 In identifying these specific works as his evidentiary base, his authoritative literature, he was probably the first to develop a canon of Christian writings.
To simplify understanding the Christ, Marcion just eliminated passages he found “too Jewish.” He downplayed, for instance, Jesus’ origins, positioning Jesus instead as an exemplar of all humanity. He removed references to Jesus being in a synagogue or having fulfilled some passage mentioned in the Old Testament. In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, he dropped Abraham as an example of faith. Marcion was consistent: without an Old Testament, there existed no basis for understanding Paul’s reference. So no knowledge of Judaism was presupposed in his portrait of Jesus.
Marcion was clear about his de-Judaising motivation. In addition to wanting to “universalize” Jesus, he provided a fascinating additional and telling rationale. Writers such as those who composed the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John simply had misunderstood Jesus. They were wrong and, as a result, they produced defective documents. That’s why these gospels needed to be discarded. They did not understand the dimensions of Jesus’ radical message about the true nature of God or the role of Jesus in securing liberation for all humanity. For Marcion, they also seemed wedded to the Jewish framework emanating from the Old Testament writings. As Tertullian noted, this criticism was applied by Marcion to the leaders in Jerusalem, including James, Peter, and John.11 None of these early leaders, Marcion thought, understood the message correctly. He gave no credence to the pioneers of the Jesus Movement who knew the Jesus of history and who perpetuated Jesus’ practices.
Having dismissed the Jesus Movement from true understanding, Marcion now defended Paul’s religion. It was precisely because these Jewishly oriented disciples failed to grasp Jesus’ message that Paul was chosen to carry out the task—the new religion of liberation for all humanity. That’s why he had been privileged to have a separate and distinctive revelation. Marcion took Paul at his word: his religion was radically new, having a different origin than the movement in Jerusalem and devoid of any attachments to Judaism. That new and unique revelation is what gave Paul authority. For Marcion, the Christ of experience conveyed through Paul was far more important to salvation than the Jesus of history, who had failed to communicate his message successfully. Marcion was clear: his religion grew out of Paul’s. It was emphatically not from the Jesus Movement, nor from the teachings of the Jesus of history nor biblical Judaism. That, contended Marcion, was its merit.
Marcion’s views confirm how radically different the Jesus and the Christ Movements truly were from each other. In this, he possessed an accurate grasp of the history that had occurred only a century or so before his own times. He discerned the contrast, spoke of it clearly, and grasped the startling innovativeness of Paul’s message. Building solely on Paul, he was able to dismiss the entire Jewish heritage, its writings, as well as the perspective of the Jesus Movement and writers who did not fully share Paul’s perspective. He reduced the clutter within the writings, stripping away everything that would detract from its central message: the revelation of the real God disclosed by Jesus.
It is questionable, however, whether he came down on the right side of authenticity. As he assessed the situation, everyone within the early Christian movement was wrong—except for Paul. It did not occur to him that the reverse might very well be true, that the other leaders such as James and the author of the Gospel of Matthew got it right and Paul didn’t. This latter point represents the stance of the Jesus Cover-Up Thesis, a view Marcion definitely would not have shared. As we have seen, Paul was “the odd man out” when it came to Jesus and Torah observance.
A stripped-down list of authoritative books would have assisted in gaining converts within the Gentile world. Marcion’s churches had no Old Testament to master and interpret. Nor did they have conflicting gospel accounts full of Jewish references that might lead one to suspect that there was a Jewish side to Jesus. With a shortened version of Luke’s gospel alongside Paul’s letters, focus could more easily be placed on the Christ rather than on the Jesus of history. Tertullian saved some of his choicest words for what Marcion did to the Gospel of Luke. He accuses Marcion of “adulterating the Gospel,” favoring a “mutilated edition” of this writing. Such treatment, Tertullian says, was “sacrilegious.”12
According to Marcion, Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah. He faced the objection squarely that Jesus had not accomplished what a Messiah was expected to do, namely, restore Israel and Jerusalem to prominence and assist in bringing about the messianic era characterized by universal peace and the worship of the one God. That person had yet to come and he was of little interest to Marcion. Again, Marcion’s perspective confirmed the way Paul’s Gentile cosmic Christ figure differed from Jesus and the Jewish political Messiah. He grasped the contrast clearly.
Jesus, the liberator of humanity from ignorance—that was Marcion’s grand vision. The supreme God had sent Jesus into the world to rescue people from the clutches of the Creator God. He revealed the true identity of the real God and proclaimed love, compassion, and grace for all humanity. This message offered people a new hope through an insight into the authentic nature of the Supreme Being.
Marcion also contended that Jesus was not human—he only appeared to be human, a view characterized by scholars of early Christianity as “docetic.” Jesus was a divine figure who entered the world to liberate humanity from blindness and error, being the teacher and emissary of the supreme deity. Since Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah, he would not be expected to return to fulfill the mandate of such a figure. He had had his day as an historical apparition and, quite frankly, he failed at that time to communicate his message to his earliest associates, who continued to think of him, in Jewish terms, as a potential Messiah. They just got it wrong. After his death, he communicated his new vision to Paul through a new revelation. Paul was the one who got it right.
This de-Judaising of the portrait of Jesus paved the way for alternate reconstructions of the significance of Jesus. Marcion as well as the rival Gnostics generally were content to view Jesus as a teacher of enlightenment. Others found the removal of the Jewishness of Jesus very convenient for promoting their universalizing views of him as the dying-rising savior God. We find that view reflected later in the second century, in the Proto-Orthodox’s statement of faith, the Apostles’ Creed, with all of the Jewish elements stripped away from this affirmation of belief.
Marcion attracted a considerable following, perhaps because his streamlining position resolved many complex confusions of the 140s. With Marcion, there was no need to read or interpret the Jewish writings, no history lessons, and no necessity to refer to the Old Testament to understand either the Christian faith or Jesus. The Marcionite movement offered hope of liberation for all humanity without a lot of historical baggage. It constituted a thoroughgoing simplification of the Christ Movement, building on and advancing the views of Paul consistently.
Marcion also insisted that members of his churches accept celibacy and refrain from marriage. If Marcion had not insisted on this particular self-limiting discipline, perhaps his churches, in time, would have rivaled other forms of early Christianity in size. As it was, the Marcionite movement died out within several centuries and never reached the strength of the Proto-Orthodox or Gnostic Christian communities.
Marcion’s critics reacted angrily to his depiction of two gods. About sixty years later, early in the third century, Tertullian launched a counterattack against Marcion and Marcionite Christianity. He tried to show the absurdity of there being two Supreme Beings. He did so on logical grounds: by defining “God” as a supreme being: “God is the great Supreme existing in eternity, un-begotten, unmade without beginning, without end”. 13
It would follow from this definition that there cannot be two “supreme” beings. Hence, there cannot be two gods. It is not clear if this charge really meets Marcion’s view of the two Gods, one of which is inferior to the other. This Tertullian himself recognized, noting that Marcion held that the creator God was “unequal” to the supreme God. Marcion’s comeback would probably have been that there really was only one supreme God. The other so-called God—the creator God—was simply a pretender to the title, not a real God at all.
Marcion’s views were partially shared by other communities in the second and third centuries. The concept of a supreme God beyond a creator God played an important role in Gnostic thinking. The Apocryphon or Secret Book of John, for instance, produced probably in the midsecond century—slightly later than the time of Marcion—echoed this thought.14 For the author of this work, the creator God was an ignorant deity who had created the world without any knowledge of a higher divinity. The world was therefore an imperfect creation, which is what one would expect from an imperfect divinity. Since it doesn’t constitute humanity’s true home, the objective of the Christian lay in escaping from this prison. As Ehrman notes, this work, the Apocryphon of John, “contains one of the clearest expositions of the Gnostic myth of creation and redemption, an exposition designed, ultimately, to explain the existence of evil in the world and the path of escape for those who recognize their plight.”15 Gnostic churches sought to liberate people from the bonds of this imperfect world full of evil, disasters, pain, and suffering by focusing on the one true God. In this, it was similar to the Marcionite congregations. Marcion’s single-minded devotion to Paul, however, set these two movements apart.
With Marcion, we see the contours of a radical de-Judaising of Christianity. He forced others to draw back from the logical consequences of Paul’s extreme views and to develop a more “centrist,” less radical, view of faith fundamentals. In time, in the fourth century, especially after Constantine and Theodosius’s favoring of Proto-Orthodox Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, leaders shaped the religion along lines that are more recognizably modern. A canon of authoritative Christian writings, alongside the Septuagint, was developed by the late fourth century. A fuller statement of faith came to light in the Creed of Nicea in the early fourth century. Furthermore, ways of speaking about the divine and human nature of Jesus were thrashed out through the complex formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity.
In short, Marcion served as a major catalyst in shaping subsequent Christianity. He was instrumental in teaching people to view the writings that eventually became the New Testament primarily through the eyes of Paul. This had an enormous impact on the perceptual filter through which the Christian scriptures were interpreted. It helped to obscure the real differences that existed between early Christian leaders—James versus Paul, with the latter as “the odd man out.” Paul was seen as the hero of the early Christian movement, while the others were relegated to obscurity and ignominy. Hence very few people today know and recognize the earliest form of Christianity led by Jesus’ brother, James. In fact, if it were not for the sensationalism around the recent discovery of the burial ossuary of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” even fewer would know about James and his leadership in Jerusalem.16
This “Pauline prism” also serves to eliminate different views about Jesus within the writings of the New Testament. Matthew’s portrait of Jesus, for instance, cannot be reconciled with that of Paul. The Jesus who taught extended Torah observance would hardly be the same Jesus who would authorize Paul to discard Torah completely. These represent two contrasting views of what Jesus stood for and what he wanted his followers to observe. Marcion at least had the merit of recognizing these disparities honestly, but his solution was simplistic. He simply eliminated documents, keeping only Paul’s letters and an abbreviated version of Luke, which he attributed to Paul.
Second, he contrasted law and gospel, disparaging the former. The Old Testament is often stereotyped by Christians—then and now—as containing harsh laws from a stern God full of wrath and condemnation. The New Testament, on the other hand, is stereotyped as well, as presenting a God of love, compassion, and mercy. This oft-repeated dichotomy stems from Marcion’s teachings and it has several effects. It distorts the teaching and examples of the Jewish writings tremendously—which challenge people to choose wisely and pursue a path of righteousness and social justice. It also serves as blanket permission for Christians to ignore or downplay the impact and significance of the Old Testament.
Marcion failed to take the message of the Old Testament seriously, dismissing these texts. While subsequent Christianity did include the Septuagint along with Christian writings as biblical, its use of these texts differed from that of Judaism. Some read these writings as a foreshadowing of Jesus. Others drew upon the prophets with their emphasis on social justice. Still others mined these and other writings for references to the end-time when the messianic era will eventually occur. The Psalms were read for their universal affirmation of faith, hope, and confidence in God in times of stress, anxiety, and trouble. But the message of Torah observance and the Torah itself (the first five books of the bible)—so central to Judaism—tended to be ignored within Christianity. Marcion’s attempt to de-Judaise Christianity largely succeeded, being replaced by a portrait more congenial to a Gentile audience.
In many ways, in practice, Christians since Marcion have been Marcionites, in spite of official church pronouncements to the contrary.
In the long term, Marcion did not succeed in his attempt to promote a “two Gods” approach, and other Christian authors backed away from his attempt to radically disassociate the God of the Old Testament from the God revealed by Jesus. Still, stereotypes persist, with some contending that the God of the Old Testament is a harsh God while the God of the New Testament is one of love. That view, too, divided the unity of God and was a legacy of Marcion’s two Gods. For most Christians other than the Marcionites and Gnostics, there is one and only one God, revealed in both sets of scriptures. How the two testaments relate, however, remains a difficult issue.
From Paul through Ignatius of Antioch, the Epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, and Marcion, major Proto-Orthodox leaders mounted attacks on Judaism. Why? What are we to make of this pattern of vilification?