Early Christianity · Part 3 · Marcion · B1–B2
Marcion and the First Canon: Two Gods, One Gospel and Ten Letters
Part 3 of Early Christianity: a rich shipowner from the Black Sea came to Rome with a radical idea: that the God of Jesus was not the God who made the world. He also made the first known list of Christian scriptures. What did he teach, why did the Church reject him, and did he push it to decide which books belong in the Bible? Contrast: whereas, while, unlike, however, although, despite.
Marcion came from Sinope, a port on the Black Sea in what is now Turkey. According to his critics, he was a wealthy shipowner. Around 140 CE he arrived in Rome, joined the Christian community there and gave it a very large gift of money: 200,000 sesterces.
In the second century, Christians did not yet have a New Testament. They read the Jewish scriptures, which they called the Law and the Prophets, together with various gospels and the letters of Paul, but different churches read different books, and there was no official list. Such a list is called a canon, from a Greek word meaning “measuring rod” or “rule”.
Marcion made the first known canon, and the Church that rejected him made its own.
Marcion read the Jewish scriptures and the letters of Paul side by side, and he came to a startling conclusion. The God of the Jewish scriptures, he argued, was the creator of the world: a just God, who gave the Law and punished those who broke it, but who could be angry and harsh, whereas the Father of Jesus was a different God, completely good and previously unknown, who had come to rescue people from the creator’s world out of…
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