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Towards a new reconstruction of the text of Marcion's Gospel : history of research, sources, methodology, and the Testimony of Tertullian

This thesis provides the initial and foundational steps for a new reconstruction of the text of Marcion’s Gospel. Though Harnack’s 1924 magisterial work on Marcion remains valuable and important, shortcomings in his reconstructed text of the Marcionite scriptures, as well as advances in critical methodology, text criticism, and patristic studies have led to the recognition that new reconstructions of Marcion’s scriptures are a scholarly desideratum. With the text of Marcion’s Apostolikon examined and reconstructed in a 1995 work by Ulrich Schmid, this thesis provides the most important elements for a new examination and reconstruction of Marcion’s Euangelion. Chapter 1 provides an extensive history of research, not only to provide the context and rationale for the present work, but also to provide the first in-depth scholarly survey of work on Marcion’s Gospel in 150 years. In addition, since several flaws in earlier studies arose out of a lack of an accurate understanding of the status quaestionis at various points in the history of research on Marcion’s Gospel, by considering and engaging with previous scholarship such errors can be avoided. Chapter 2 begins with a consideration of the sources for Marcion’s Gospel and provides a comprehensive listing of verses attested as present in, verses attested as absent from, and unattested verses of this Gospel. The chapter concludes with a methodological discussion, highlighting the particular importance of understanding the citation customs of the witnesses to Marcion’s text and noting the significant citation customs of Tertullian demonstrated by Schmid’s and my own research. Chapter 3 begins the analysis of the data found in Tertullian, the most extensive and important source for Marcion’s Gospel. This chapter examines all of the verses that Tertullian attests for Marcion’s Gospel that are also cited elsewhere in Tertullian’s corpus and focuses particularly on how these multiply-cited passages provide insight into Tertullian’s testimony to readings in Marcion’s text. Chapter 4 continues the analysis of Tertullian’s testimony by examining the remaining verses, i.e., those attested for Marcion’s Gospel but not multiply-cited in Tertullian’s corpus. Chapter 5 provides a reconstruction of the 328 verses in Marcion’s Gospel for which Tertullian is the only witness and offers not only readings for Marcion’s text, but also the relative certainty for those readings. Chapter 6 summarizes and concludes the thesis, along with brief mention of avenues for future research.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:586199
Date January 2009
CreatorsRoth, Dieter Thomas
ContributorsHurtado, Larry; Foster, Paul
PublisherUniversity of Edinburgh
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://hdl.handle.net/1842/7902

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