An Ai rendering of Marcion derived from a medieval wood-cut circa 1550s.

Quick Q+A on Marcionism

What are the core values of a Marcionite?

- Trusting in God as Jesus described him to be: loving and benevolent always.

- Following Jesus through Luke.

- Abandoning the study of the Hebrew Scripture ("Old Testament").

Who was Marcion?

- Marcion was a follower of Jesus who lived from the year 85 CE to about the year 160 CE. At a time when Jesus' epoch on earth was still within living memory for some.

What do Marcionites believe?

- Marcion and his followers held that the vengeful, spiteful, and often aggressive God--commonly known as Yahweh--as described in Hebrew scripture ("Old Testament") could not possibly be the same God of Love that Jesus described during his three-year-long ministry.

- Marcion proposed and expounded a complete clean-break with Judaism as had been indicated by Jesus. For example in Luke 5: "No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. New wine must be put into fresh wineskins."

- Marcion held what became known as a Docetic Christology. Marcion and his followers did not accept that Jesus was "fully divine and yet also fully human" i.e. the hypostatic union that was foundational to Catholicism and then later the Church of England. Marcionites believe that Jesus was always-and-only divine and merely took on a human-like form in order to interact with humans.

What happened to Marcion?

- During his lifetime in the period of the Early Church there were numerous competing nascent formats of Christianity, of which Marcionism was just one. However, in 325 CE the views of Marcionites were definitively declared to be heresy by the dominant Catholic Church.

Do Marcionites study the scripture?

- The Marcionite scripture is a precursor of canonical Luke. Marcionites also study ten of Paul's letters: Galatians, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Romans, I and II Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon.

Key Resources

- Reconstruction of the Gospel of Marcion by Jason BeDuhn, 2013 pdf.

- Reconstruction of the Gospel of Marcion by Dieter Roth, 2015 pdf.

- Ben Smith's English schematized version synthesized from BeDuhn and Roth, 2015 pdf.

- Tertullian: Five Books Against Marcion (Trans: Peter Holmes) facsimile of 1868 edition pdf.

Further Resources

- Marcionite Bible published by the Marcionite Christian Church (USA), 2020 pdf.

- The Complete Writings of Tertullian (ed. Philip Schaff) pdf.

- Biographical article on Marcion by Julian Spriggs link.

- Gospel of Marcion Wikipedia article.

- Priority of the Gospel of Marcion Wikipedia article.

- A Bart Ehrman blogpost from 2021 link.

The author of this website is Dr Henry Bond. For enquiries please use this email.