Marcion as Textual Critic? Heresiological Rhetoric and the Conventions of Roman Scholarship

Abstract: This article reassesses the characterization of Marcion as an ancient philologist in light of Hellenistic and Roman scholarship. Textual criticism, as it was known to Marcion and his critics, was characteristically conservative. The Alexandrian grammarians developed increasingly elaborate methods for recording text critical judgements without altering the received text. Roman scholars imitated Alexandrian methods and maintained the ethic of conservatism in their own editions, commentaries, and treatises. In all these respects, Hellenistic Jews and Christians were unexceptional. In light of this picture of ancient scholarship, we need to reconsider Tertullian and Origen’s descriptions of Marcion as an emendator /διορθωτής. Marcion’s opponents, I argue, describe him as a philologist not because Marcion’s behavior resembles that of second and third-century textual scholarship, but because it does not. It was Marcion’s perceived violation of widespread scholarly norms that motivated Marcion’s opponents to describe him as a failed or fraudulent corrector of scripture. The modern reimagination of Marcion as a second century philologist is, therefore, an unwitting capitulation to an ancient heresiological polemic. Alternative interpretations of Marcion’s behavior are attested in second and third-century authors. In particular, Irenaeus and Tertullian are anxious that Marcion not be perceived as an evangelist—the author of a new gospel. Other second and third-century gospels, I argue, offer a more plausible set of analogies for understanding the origin of Marcion’s distinctive version of the third gospel.