1. Summary of the arguments
2. • There is evidence for attestations of Luke in the Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr and other 2nd-century writings prior to Irenaeus, which indicates that Luke must predate Marcion.
   • One user below argues that during Marcion’s life we have no sources that accuse Marcion of redacting the gospel of Luke, but the only source we have about Marcion from that time is Justin Martyr, who doesn’t even mention Marcion’s gospel at all but simply criticizes Marcion for holding Gnostic ideas.
   • Marcion probably never believed that his Gospel came first but only that he was restoring the original message of Paul and Jesus that was later corrupted by Judaizers.
   • Sebastian Moll has provided a detailed argument that the main differences between Luke and Marcion can be explained as stemming from Marcion’s theological idiosyncrasies.
   • As Dieter T. Roth has argued, many of the contemporary authors (which authors are mainly, three) who argue for the Marcionite hypothesis have done so using flimsy methodolgies and unconvincing or dubious reconstructions.
   • The fact that there are agreements between the (reconstructed) Evangelion and Mark or Matthew against Luke is irrelevant, since as Roth has pointed here, “the patristic witnesses have a tendency, among other things, to cite verses in their Matthean forms”.

1. Sources
2. • Hays, Christopher M. (2008-07-01). “Marcion vs. Luke: A Response to the Plädoyer of Matthias Klinghardt”. Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche. 99 (2): 213–232. doi:10.1515/ZNTW.2008.017. ISSN 1613-009X. S2CID 170757217.
   • Moll, Sebastian (2010). The Arch-Heretic Marcion. Mohr Siebeck. pp. 90–102. doi:10.1628/978-3-16-151539-2. ISBN 9783161515392.
   • Guignard, Christophe (2013). “Marcion et les Évangiles canoniques. À propos d’un livre récent”. Études théologiques et religieuses (in French). 88 (3): 347–363. doi:10.3917/etr.0883.0347 – via Cairn.info.
   • Roth, Dieter T. (2017-05-25). “Marcion’s Gospel and the History of Early Christianity: The Devil is in the (Reconstructed) Details”. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity. 99 (21): 25–40. doi:10.1515/zac-2017-0002. ISSN 1613-009X.
   • Roth, Dieter T. (2018-04-05) “Marcion’s Gospel and the Synoptic Problem in Recent Scholarship”. In Müller, Mogens; Omerzu, Heike. Gospel Interpretation and the Q-Hypothesis. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-567-67005-2

https://www.academia.edu/81046131/Marcion_s_Gospel_and_the_History_of_Early_Christianity_The_Devil_is_in_the_Reconstructed_Details

1. Introduction
2. It is noteworthy that despite the respective positions of BeDuhn, Vinzent, Klinghardt, and Lieu varying slightly or even significantly from each other, they all agree in rejecting the view that Marcion created his Gospel simply by editing Luke. Vinzent and Klinghardt have even gone so far as to advocate a fundamental and foundational significance for Marcion’s Gospel with the former contending that Marcion himself created the gospel genre and wrote the very first gospel and the latter viewing the gospel that Marcion utilized as the oldest gospel and the primary source for the four canonical Gospels (“Marcion as the Author of the Very First Gospel (Markus Vinzent)” (pp. 30–33) and “Marcion’s Gospel as the Earliest Gospel (Matthias Klinghardt)” (pp. 33–37).

There are an immense number of issues, almost to the point of being overwhelming, related to Marcion’s Gospel in their discussions of, e. g., the Synoptic Problem, the formation of the New Testament canon, the textual history of Luke, and early patristics. However, no copies of Marcion’s Gospel are extant, appeals to Marcion’s Gospel require the reconstruction of this text based on its attestation in the writings of Marcion’s opponents (Dieter T. Roth, “Marcion’s Gospel: Relevance, Contested Issues, and Reconstruction,” Expository Times 121 (2010): (287–294) 288–289, and idem, Text of Marcion’s Gospel (see note 3), 7).

An English Reconstruction of Marcion’s Gospel

It must also be noted, however, that though BeDuhn’s reconstruction in many instances helpfully indicates unattested elements and passages and also contains a wealth of supportive discussion in his notes, there are some significant drawbacks to presenting Marcion’s Gospel in an English translation. This point is especially evident in two instances. First of all, there are numerous instances in which the question of the relationship between Marcion’s Gospel and Luke simply cannot be argued on the basis of an English text. Second, an issue that BeDuhn views to be of great significance when considering Marcion’s Gospel is the question of the presence of so-called minor agreements in this text.

1. Marcion as the Author of the Very First Gospel (Markus Vinzent)
2. His conclusion that “Marcion, who created the new literary genre of the ‘Gospel’ and also gave his work this title, had no historical precedent in the combination of Christ’s sayings and narratives,” has thus far been met with considerable skepticism (see: the reviews Paul Foster, review of Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66 (2015): 144–145 and Clare Rothschild, review of Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Review of Biblical Literature (2016), online: http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/10107_11206.pdf (last access 28. 02. 2017), along with my own review, Dieter T. Roth, review of Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, JThS 66 (2015): 800–803). In my estimation, in addition to the fundamental problem that Vinzent repeatedly cites from Marcion’s Gospel without indicating the basis for his reconstruction, Vinzent sets forth what seem to me to be quite curious readings of Tertullian as it relates to this church father’s attestation of Marcion’s Gospel.

It seems to me, however, that the critical reader may well be more astonished at Vinzent’s interpretation than at what Tertullian supposedly noted. This, however, is decidedly not what Tertullian does in book four. Rather, Tertullian throughout refutes Marcion’s theology and teaching on the basis of the gospel text that Marcion used. Tertullian in no way indicates that in Marcion’s Gospel “everything, every sentence and its structure, reflects Marcion’s theology.” Quite the contrary, Tertullian’s argument is that Marcion’s Gospel actually reflects Tertullian’s theology and not Marcion’s, in Tertullian’s view, heretical theology. The point can be further underscored on external grounds in that though sententia can certainly mean “sentence” (Cf., e. g., Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1,25,3 (SC 365, 222,16 Braun) or 4,6,2).

Vinzent begins down a misguided path that ultimately leads to unlikely assertions.