CHAPTER ELEVEN
the genuine apostleship of those whom Marcion condemned as apos- tates . >
The scriptures acknowledged by the catholic church formed, appro- priately, a catholic collection. They represented a variety of perspectives in the early church. Marcion’s list, on the other hand, was a sectarian one: it represented one viewpoint only-not so much Paul’s as Marcion’s own. As Marcion maintained the exclusive apostleship of Paul, there were other sectarians, at the opposite end of the spectrum, who regarded James of Jerusalem as the apostle par excellence, and deplored Paul as the ‘enemy’ of Jesus’ parable who sowed the tares of error among the good wheat of the gospel (Mt. 13:25, 28).6 But the catholic church, and the catholic scriptures, made room for both Paul and James and for other varieties as well. Ernst K&emann can write of the New Testament canon as bearing witness to the disunity, not to the unity, of the first-century church;’ more properly, it bears witness to the more comprehensive unity which transcends all the diversities and proclaims the one who is simultaneously the Jesus of history and the exalted Lord. There was farseeing wisdom in the decision ‘to accept all that was thought to be truly apostolic, and to see it as mediating through human diversity, the one divine event’.’
In this regard Acts played a crucial part: it is indeed the hinge of the New Testament collection, giving it its ‘organic structure’.9 It is a truly catholic work, the keystone of a truly catholic canon. Peter, Paul and James are all honoured in it, together with such leaders of the Hellenistic advance as Stephen and Philip. Such a work could not have been countenanced by those who rejected all strands of apostolic Christianity but one, but it was admirably suited to the purpose of catholic churchmen.
The same catholic spirit is evident in the fourfold gospel. To begin with, each gospel was doubtless the gospel in the communities in which it circulated, but they were all greatly enriched when to the
6 Clementine Recognitions, 1.70; Epzstle of Peter to Jmm, 2. Those who took this line were Ebionites and other representatives of that Jewish-Christian tradition which finds expression in the third-century Clementine Recognitions and Homilies.
’ ‘The Canon of the New Testament and the Unity of the Church’, E.T. in Essuy~ nn NW Testament Themes (London, 1964), pp.95- 107; see p.272 below.
” C. F. D. Mottle, The Birth o/the New Testament (London, “1981), p.255.
9 A. van Harnack, The Origin ofthe New Testament, E.T. (London, 1925). p.67. See pp. 132f. above.
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witness of their own gospel there was added the witness of the others.
Some scrupulous readers might feel that the inconcinnities of the four called for harmonizing activity, but others rejoiced in the plurality of testimony that was now available, recognizing with the compiler of the Muratorian list (an outstanding document of the catholic response) that the variation among the four writings ‘makes no difference to the faith of believers, since in all of them everything has been declared by one primary Spirit’. ‘O If only one of the four had received canonical status, if Marcion’s precedent (for example) had been generally followed, the path of the gospel critic might have been smoother, but we should all have been gravely impoverished. The four were not originally composed in order that readers might have a fourfold perspective on the ministry of Jesus, but in the event their collocation has provided just that.
It is noteworthy too that Matthew’s contribution, which became pre-eminently the church’s gospel and stood at the head of the fourfold collection, is self-evidently a catholic work. Even if the other synoptic gospels were not available for comparison with it, it would be possible to discern a variety of strands in its record of Jesus’ teaching- the particularist strand, ‘Go nowhere among theGentiles’ (Mt. 10:5), and the more comprehensive strand, ‘many will come from east and west. . . ’ (Mt. 8: 1 l), transcended in the post-resurrection commission to ‘make disciples of all the nations’ (Mt. 28:19). The fact that this catholic work stands at the head of the New Testament points to the catholicity of the canon as a whole and not only of the gospel collection. i
’
In the apostolic generation separate spheres of public ministry were carefully demarcated, as is amply attested from Paul’s letters (see Gal.
2:7-g; Rom. 15:20). But in the post-apostolic age the necessity of recognizing such separate spheres disappeared. While sectarian ten- dencies manifested themselves, the church as a whole paid heed to Paul’s exhortation to recognize that all the apostles and teachers whom the Lord had sent, ‘whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas’ (1 Cor. 3:22), belonged to them all. It would be difficult to envisage, in the apostolic age, one and the same church claiming Peter and Paul together as joint-founders. It was historical/y ludicrous for Dionysius, bishop of
lo See pp. 159, 160.
” CfHarnack, The Date oftheArts and oftbeSynopticGospels, E.T. (London, 191 l), pp. 133-135.
‘53
Corinth about AD 170, to make this claim for his own church’*- Paul might have turned in his grave at the thought of Peter’s sharing in what was SO totally his own foundation (1 Cot. 3: lo-15)-but there was a certain theologiral fitness in the claim, in so far as it expressed a resolve to appropriate the entire apostolic heritage. It is this resolve that is expressed in the New Testament canon, where every document that could reasonably be claimed as apostolic in origin and teaching found its place in due course.
T H E S O - C A L L E D
A N T I - M A R C I O N I T E P R O L O G U E S
One expression of the catholic response to Marcion’s Gospel has been recognized in some gospel prologues which appear in certain Latin codices. At one time it was maintained by leading scholars that these belonged to a set of four gospel prologues drawn up in opposition to Marcionism shortly before Irenaeus began his literary career (c A D
1 SO). I3 The tide has more recently turned against this opinion, I4 but two of the prologues, those to Luke and John, whether they originally belonged together or not, reflect an anti-Marcionite reaction.
The prologue to Luke (which is also extant in its Greek original in two codices of the tenth and eleventh centuries respectively) ends with a note on the authorship of Acts and of the Johannine apocalypse and gospel:
Luke was a native ofSyrian Antioch, a physician by profession, a disciple of the apostles. Later he accompanied Paul until the latter’s martyrdom, serving the Lord without distraction, for he had neither wife nor children. He died in Boeotia” at the age of
‘* In Eusebius, Hist. EccI. 2.25.8. Dionysius also treats the church of Rome as the joint foundation of Peter and Paul-an honour which Paul would have firmly declined.
” E.g. D. de Bruyne, ‘Les plus anciens prologues latins des EGangiles’, Rowe Bh‘dictine 40 (1928), pp. 193-2 14; A. von Harnack, Die iiltesten Evangelien-Prologe und die Bildung L&J Neuen Testaments (Berlin, 1928). On their hypothesis ofa set of four such prologues, that to Matthew was lost, as also was that to Mark apart from the closing words: ‘. . was asserted by Mark, who was named “stump-fingered”
(colobodactyhsl because his fingers were shorter in relation to the rest of his bodily proportions. He was Peter’s interpreter. After Peter’s departure he wrote down this gospel in the parts of Italy.’
I4 Especially in J. Regul, Dieantimarcionitischen EvangeLienprologe(Freiburg, 1969).
” The region of Greece around Thebes.
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eighty-four, full of the Holy Spirit. So then, after two gospels had already been written-Matthew’s in Judaea and Mark’s in Italy-Luke wrote this gospel in the region of Achaia, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. At its outset, he indicated that other gospels had been written before his own, but that the obligation lay on him to set forth for the believers among the Gentiles a complete account in the course of his narrative, and to do so as accurately as possible. The object of this was that they might not be captivated on the one hand by a love for Jewish fables, nor on the other hand be deceived by heretical and vain imaginations and thus wander from the truth. So, right at the beginning, Luke has delivered to us the story of the birth of John [the Baptist], as most essential [to the gospel]; for John marks the beginning of the gospel, since he was our Lord’s forerunner and associate both in the preparation for the gospel and in the administration of baptism and communication of the Spirit. I6 This ministry [of John’s] was foretold by one of the twelve prophets. ” Later on, the same Luke wrote the Acts ofthe Apostles. Later still, the apostle John, one of the twelve, wrote the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, and then the gospel in Asia.
The anti-Marcionite tendency of this prologue appears in the emphasis with which it affirms the integrity of the first chapters of Luke with the gospel as a whole and the essential character of John the Baptist’s ministry in preparing the way for the ministry of Jesus. Marcion’s Gospel lacked the first two chapters of Luke and the account of John’s ministry in Luke 312-22; it refused to recognize any link between Jesus and what went before him, whether the ministry of John or the
predictions of Old Testament prophets.
When the author of the prologue says that Luke’s gospel was written in Achaia, he may have wished to associate one gospel with the churches of the Greek mainland, as Matthew allegedly originated in Judaea, Mark in Italy and John in the province of Asia.
More intriguing is the so-called anti-Marcionite prologue to John, which survives in Latin only, although its original language was plainly Greek. It suffered some textual corruption in the transmission both of the Greek text and of the Latin translation, but the necessary
I6 Gk. pnrwnatos koinanra. The Latin text reads passionb Jociw, ‘a sharer in h i s suffering’, which presupposes a Greek reading parht%afc/J instead ofpneunwfos.
” Mal. 3:1;4:5 @/Mark 1:2;9:11-13).
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CHAPTER TWELVE