Around 140 AD, a wealthy shipowner named Marcion arrived in Rome. He was originally from Sinope, a city in Asia Minor on the coast of the Black Sea. Although he had been brought up in a Christian home, over time Marcion embraced ideas which were far from orthodox. He apparently made a large contribution to the church in Rome. However, when the church became aware of Marcion’s beliefs, they quickly repudiated his doctrines and returned his money.
Marcion was heavily influenced by Gnosticism, a rival philosophy which threatened the church during the 2nd century. Gnosticism was rooted in material dualism – the belief that the spiritual realm is pure & good while the created order is evil & corrupt. Like Christians, Gnostics affirmed the existence of a supreme deity. They also posited a series of lesser spiritual beings, or emanations. These emanations lacked the moral purity of the supreme god. The Gnostics claimed that the physical world had been created by one of these lesser beings, whom they equated with the God of the Old Testament.
For Gnostics, salvation did not involve rescuing the creation from sin and death. Rather, salvation required escaping from the polluted material world and entering the realm of pure spirit. This could be accomplished by acquiring special knowledge (Greek gnosis = knowledge).
Gnosticism’s influence on Marcion was obvious. Marcion taught that the god of the Old Testament was completely different than the god of the New Testament. The god of the Old Testament was a lower emanation powerful enough to create the world but morally compromised. He was a god of sheer justice, filled with anger & wrath, and only cared for the Jews.
For Marcion, the supreme deity was the god of the New Testament, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This god was completely unknown until revealed by Jesus. He abounded in love and mercy towards all humankind.
Marcion’s convictions had strong implications for his understanding of scripture. He rejected the Old Testament, with its emphasis on the goodness of creation and God’s covenant with Israel. But Marcion’s heresies would also force him to radically alter the New Testament as well. He rejected the orthodox belief that Jesus was a true, physical human being who had been born of a woman. He instead taught that Christ was a purely spiritual being who had descended upon Jesus at his baptism and later withdrew before the crucifixion.
For orthodox Christians, Jesus’ physical suffering on the cross and his bodily resurrection from the dead were absolutely vital. Marcion had no interest in these events; they played no role in his understanding of salvation.
Marcion was obsessed with Paul, who he believed was the only apostle who had been faithful to the teachings of Jesus. He embraced Paul’s emphasis on the grace of God over against the justice of the law. A North African Christian named Tertullian would later wryly comment that Marcion had caused Paul had become the apostle of heretics!
According to F.F. Bruce, “Marcion is the first person known to us who published a fixed collection of what we should call New Testament books.” Rather than the four canonical gospels, Marcion accepted only a heavily edited version of Luke’s gospel. He probably chose Luke because of the doctor’s close ties with the Apostle Paul, as well as the fact that Luke was the only Gentile writer of scripture. Marcion sought to sever Christianity’s connections with Israel and Judaism.
Marcion affirmed 10 of Paul’s letters, excluding the pastoral epistles. He gave Galatians a place of honor, since this book seemed to support his emphasis on the strict dichotomy between the wrath of the law and the mercy of the gospel. Galatians also described a sharp disagreement between his hero Paul and the other apostles who Marcion believed had perverted the true faith.
But Marcion’s convictions forced him to alter even Paul’s letters. He eliminated any passages which presented Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Marcion believed that these ideas did not come from the pen of Paul but were corruptions inserted by Jewish scribes.
In 144 AD, the church in Rome condemned Marcion and his false teachings. They saw that Christianity made no sense without the Old Testament. The church re-affirmed the authority of all four gospels – not just Marcion’s mutilated version of Luke. They also acknowledged all 13 of Paul’s letters.
Marcion posed a severe challenge; he forced the early church to re-examine its convictions regarding the new covenant writings. This chapter in church history demonstrates that by the middle of the 2nd century, the formation of the New Testament was well on its way. The “core” writings of the New Testament – the four gospels & Paul’s epistles – were widely regarded as sacred scripture. This fact allowed the church to soundly reject the heresy of Marcion.
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In 1740, an Italian historian with the delightful name of Ludovico Antonio Muratori published an ancient manuscript now known as the Muratorian Fragment. Muratori discovered this manuscript at the Ambrosian Library in Milan, Italy. The fragment was composed by an anonymous Christian author around 180 AD. It contains a brief discussion regarding the books which the Roman church considered authoritative scripture.
The author of the Muratorian Fragment acknowledged the 4 gospels, Acts, the 13 epistles of Paul, 1&2 John, Jude and The Apocalypse of John (Revelation). Thus, the Muratorian Canon contains 22 of the 27 books which would eventually constitute our New Testament.
The missing books are Hebrews, James, 1&2 Peter and 3 John. The absence of Hebrews is not particularly surprising. Although the book was well-known, the church in the West was slow to accept Hebrews as canonical.
Interestingly, the Muratorian fragment also accords authoritative status to two other books not included in the New Testament. The first was the Wisdom of Solomon, part of the Old Testament Apocrypha. The second was the Apocalypse of Peter – a pseudepigraphal work produced in the early 2nd century. However, the author does note that some Christians had strong reservations about the Apocalypse of Peter and would not allow it to be read in church.
The fragment also discusses the Shepherd of Hermas, a 2nd century work which was widely read and appreciated in the early church: “the Shepherd was written by Hermas in the city of Rome quite recently, in our own times, when his brother Pius occupied the bishop’s chair in the church of the city of Rome.”
Although the writer believes that the Shepherd is edifying, he explicitly excludes it from the canon since it was written “recently, in our own times.” This comment demonstrates that the early church insisted that canonical documents must have a direct apostolic connection. Books written after the time of the apostles would not be considered eligible for admission to the New Testament. (Such would be the case with The Apocalypse of Peter; the church would later recognize that this work was inauthentic.)
The reference to Pius I is helpful, since we know that he served as the bishop of Rome from 140-155 AD. The author of the Muratorian Fragment also vigorously opposed the heresies of Marcion and other Gnostics. Marcion began causing turmoil in the Roman church in 140 AD. We also know that the influence of Gnosticism was strong in the 2nd century. These facts give scholars strong confidence that the Muratorian fragment can be dated to around 180 AD.
The Muratorian fragment is a crucial piece of evidence which helps us to trace the development of the New Testament. It provides additional evidence that the core of the New Testament (the four gospels and the 13 letters of Paul) was widely acknowledged as authoritative by the 2nd century. The Muratorian Canon also included Acts, 1&2 John, Jude and Revelation. This material accounts for 93% of the New Testament!
It is true that it would take another two centuries before the NT canon would be completely solidified. But the Christians of the 2nd century already recognized and revered a body of sacred writings which faithfully transmitted the words and deeds of the Lord Jesus and the teachings of his apostles.
