Authors and Their Caretakers

Tertullian of Carthage routinely depicts Marcion as a bad editor, who both removed passages from the apostolic writings to support his heretical teachings and failed to completely purge the writings of orthodox theology. But as recent scholarship challenges this classic heresiological picture of Marcion, new questions emerge concerning the logic of Tertullians depiction. This article addresses these questions by situating Tertullians philologically oriented heresiology within the antiquarian discourse of the Second Sophistic, showing how Roman intellectuals evaluated the credibility of editors on the basis of their social position. Placing Tertullians evaluation of Marcion as an editor within Roman antiquarian discourse not only contributes to our understanding of Tertullians heresiological argumentation, it helps to fill out our picture of the function of attribution – both authorial and editorial – within Roman antiquarian discourse more broadly.