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Marcion affirmed Jesus Christ as the savior sent by God and Paul as his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and Yahweh . Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as Heresy , and written against, notably by Tertullian , in a five-book treatise ''Adversus Marcionem'', written about 208. However, the strictures against Marcionism predate the authority, claimed by the First Council Of Nicaea in 325 , to declare what is heretical against the Church . Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace ) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion. HISTORY See Also: Marcion of Sinope The movement known as Marcionism began with the teachings and Excommunication of Marcion from the Church Of Rome around 144. Marcion was reportedly a wealthy shipowner, the son of a bishop of Sinope of Pontus, Asia Minor . He arrived in Rome circa 140 , soon after Bar Kokhba's Revolt . That revolution, along with other Jewish-Roman Wars (the Great Jewish Revolt and the Kitos War ), provides some of the historical context of the founding of Marcionism. Marcion was excommunicated from the Roman Church because he was threatening to make schisms in the church. Mead 1931, pp.241-249 Marcion used his personal wealth, (particularly a donation returned to him by the Church of Rome after he was excommunicated), to fund an ecclesiastical organization. Marcionism continued in the West for 300 years, although Marcionistic ideas persisted much longer. Berdyaev Online Library The organization continued in the is believed to have been a Mandaean , and Mandaeanism is related to Marcionism in several ways. For example, both Mandaeanism and Marcionism are characterized by a belief in a Demiurge . The Marcionite organization itself is today extinct, although Mandaeanism is not. Mandaean Official Site TEACHINGS Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism. He rejected the entire Hebrew Bible , and declared that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser '' Demiurge '', who had created the earth, but was (''de facto'') the source of evil. The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of on record, which he called the Apostolikon, which reflects his belief the writings reflect the apostle Paul and Jesus. Marcionites hold is not a Jewish Messiah , but a spiritual entity that was sent by the Monad to reveal the truth about existence, and thus allowing humanity to escape the earthly trap of the demiurge. Marcion called God, the Stranger God, or the Alien God, in some translations, as this deity had not had any previous interactions with the world, and was wholly unknown. Marcionism is not identical to, but is related to, the various beliefs together called , the authentic institutes of Christ . The pure gospel, however, Marcion found to be everywhere more or less corrupted and mutilated in the Christian circles of his time. His undertaking thus resolved itself into a reformation of Christendom . This reformation was to deliver Christendom from False Jewish Doctrines by restoring the Pauline Conception Of The Gospel , Paul being, according to Marcion, the only Apostle who had rightly understood the new message of Salvation as delivered by Christ. In Marcion's own view, therefore, the founding of his church—to which he was first driven by opposition—amounts to a reformation of Christendom through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics . A Dualist he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic." Marcionism shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity, and presents a moral critique of the Old Testament from the standpoint of Platonism . According to Harnack, the sect may have led other Christians to introduce a formal statement of beliefs into their liturgy (see Creed ) and to formulate a canon of authoritative Scripture of their own, thus eventually producing the current canon of the New Testament. "As for the main question, however, whether he knew of, or assumes the existence of, a written New Testament of the Church in any sense whatever, in this case an affirmatory answer is most improbable, because if this were so he would have been compelled to make a direct attack upon the New Testament of the Church, and if such an attack had been made we should have heard of it from Tertullian. Marcion, on the contrary, treats the Catholic Church as one that 'follows the Testament of the Creator-God,' and directs the full force of his attack against this Testament and against the falsification of the Gospel and of the Pauline Epistles. His polemic would necessarily have been much less simple if he had been opposed to a Church which, by possessing a New Testament side by side with the Old Testament, had ''ipso facto'' placed the latter under the shelter of the former. In fact Marcion’s position towards the Catholic Church is intelligible, in the full force of its simplicity, only under the supposition that the Church had not yet in her hand any 'litera scripta ''Novi Testamenti''.'"Harnack, ''Origin of the New Testament'', appendix 6, pp. 222-23 RECENT SCHOLARSHIP In , Ehrman, Karen King , and other secular New Testament scholars, Marcion's role in the formation of the New Testament Canon is discussed as pivotal, and the first to explicitly state it. There were early Christian groups, such as the Ebionites, that did not accept Paul as part of their canon. Robert Price, a New Testament scholar, considers the Pauline canon problem ''The Evolution of the Pauline Canon'' by Robert Price : how, when, and who collected Paul's epistles to the various churches as a single collection of epistles. The evidence that the early church fathers, such as Clement, knew of the Pauline epistles is unclear. Price investigates several historical scenarios and comes to the conclusion and identifies Marcion as the first person known in recorded history to collect Paul's writings to various churches together as a canon, the Pauline epistles. Robert Price summarizes, "But the first collector of the Pauline Epistles had been Marcion. No one else we know of would be a good candidate, certainly not the essentially fictive Luke, Timothy, and Onesimus. And Marcion, as Burkitt and Bauer show, fills the bill perfectly."Price If this is correct, than Marcion's role in the formation and development of Christianity is pivotal. CRITICISMS According to a remark by Origen (''Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew'' 15.3), Marcion "prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture". Tertullian disputed this in his treatise against Marcion, as did Henry Wace : The story proceeds to say that he asked the Roman presbyters to explain the texts, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit," and "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment," texts from which he himself deduced that works in which evil is to be found could not proceed from the good God, and that the Christian dispensation could have nothing in common with the Jewish. Rejecting the explanation offered him by the presbyters, he broke off the interview with a threat to make a schism in their church. Wace's article on Marcion Tertullian, along with ''. Hippolytus reported that Marcion's phantasmal (and Docetist) Christ was "revealed as a man, though not a man", and did not really die on the cross. Tertullian ''Adversus Marcionem'' ("Against Marcion") , translated and edited by Ernest Evans However, Ernest Evans, in editing this work, observes: This may not have been Marcion's own belief. It was certainly that of Hermogenes (cf. Tertullian, ''Adversus Hermogenem'') and probably other gnostics and Marcionites, who held that the intractability of this matter explains the world's many imperfections. Because of the rejection of the Old Testament which originates in the Jewish Bible , the Marcionites are believed by some Christian s to be Anti-Semitic . Indeed, the word ''Marcionism'' is sometimes used in modern times to refer to anti- Jewish tendencies in Christian churches, especially when such tendencies are thought to be surviving residues of ancient Marcionism. For example, on its web site, the Tawahedo Church of Ethiopia claims to be the only Christian church that is fully free of Marcionism. On the other hand, Marcion did not claim Christians to be the ''New Israel'' of Supersessionism , and did not try to use the Hebrew scriptures to support his views. Marcion himself does not appear to be anti-Semitic, rather he rejected Jewish scriptures as irrelevant. The Prologues to the Pauline Epistles (which are not a part of the text, but short introductory sentences as one might find in modern study Bibles {Link without Title} ), found in several older Latin and then in numbers of later manuscripts, are Marcionite, and that the Churches had not noticed the cloven hoof.". Conversely, several early Latin codices contain Anti-Marcionite prologues to the Gospels. Marcion is believed to have imposed a severe morality on his followers, some of whom suffered in the persecutions. In particular, he refused to re-admit those who recanted their faith under Roman persecution. Others of his followers, such as Apelles , created their own sects with variant teachings. MODERN MARCIONISM Historic Marcionism, and the church Marcion himself established, appeared to die out around the fifth century. However, Marcion's influence and criticism of the Old Testament are discussed to this very day. Marcionism is discussed in recent textbooks on early Christianity, such as ''Lost Christianities'' by Bart Ehrman. Marcion claimed to find problems in the Old Testament; problems which many modern thinkers cite today (see and Norman Geisler , have dedicated much of their time to the attempt to resolve these perceived difficulties, while others have argued that ''just punishments'' (divine or human), even capital punishments, are not genocide or murder because murder and genocide are ''unjustified'' by definition (see Christian Reconstructionism ). For some, the alleged problems of the Old Testament, and the appeal of Jesus are such that they identify themselves as modern day Marcionites, and follow his solution in keeping the New Testament as sacred scripture, and rejecting the Old Testament canon and practices. movement, historically and in modern times, reject the Old Testament for the reasons Marcion enunciated. It remains unclear whether the 11th century Cathar movement is in continuation of earlier Gnostic and Marcion streams, or represents an independent re-invention. John Lindell , a former Methodist and Unitarian Universalist pastor, advocates Christian Deism , which does not include the Old Testament as part of its theology. The Human Jesus and Christian Deism Recently, biblical scholar Amy Jill-Levine identified Marcion thought in Liberation Theology , and present in the World Council Of Churches in her book, "The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus". As a self-identified orthodox Jew, she regards Marcionism to be an anti-semitic heresy that is alive and present in Christianity today, and a serious obstacle towards a greater Christian-Jewish understanding. SEE ALSO NOTES REFERENCES
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