Marcion and his Critics

Abstract

Marcion of Sinope was active in Rome in the middle of the second century ce. Marcion’s views on Scripture and hermeneutics led to a separation from the Church in Rome and the creation of a concurrent Marcionite community. This chapter examines Marcion’s legacy within subsequent early Christian biblical interpretation, seen most clearly in his role as an early practitioner of philological reading techniques to interpret Scripture. This chapter considers Marcion’s conception of the diversity of two gods—the Creator and the unknown God—in light of contemporary philosophy, and it suggests that Marcion’s literary-critical methods were deployed to confirm this philosophical understanding of deity. After an analysis of Marcion’s philology, seen in both his hermeneutical stance towards the Jewish Scriptures and his editorial work on the New Testament, this chapter concludes by arguing that writers like Tertullian and Epiphanius rejected Marcion’s philosophical conclusions while coming to terms with the validity of the methods of philology for biblical interpretation.