Was Luke's birth narrative written in response to Marcion's version of the gospel?

Question

This site suggests that Marcion's version of The Gospel of Luke - a version which includes no birth narrative - was written before the version of Luke that includes the birth narrative, and that the birth narrative was probably written in response to Marcion. Others, however, say that Marcion removed the parts of Luke that he didn't agree with.

Was Marcion's gospel a shortening of a version of Luke that included the birth narrative? Or was the birth narrative added in response to Marcion's beliefs?

Answer 1

Marcion's gospel is clearly based on Luke's gospel. That's not important by itself because all of the early Christian writers, including the writers of the books that became cannon, depended on one another.

Matthew and Luke were written in stages in the late first century, around AD 80. The Gospel of the Lord (Marcon's Gospel) was written around AD 140. Secular academics and progressive Christian scholars, who generally dispute the historical accuracy of both birth narratives (the events don't match up with recorded history), believe that the birth narratives were written last but there's no real consensus that they were written late enough to be in response to Marcion. Conservative Christian scholars will insist that Marcion removed the birth narrative and all references to the OT from Luke's gospel.

The problem with determining which came first is that everything we know about Marcion comes from his critics. Probably the most well known is Against Marcion by Tertulian. There are those who believe that Marcion was wrongly excommunicated but, it's clear that his works are very different from the majority view at the time. It's also important to know that the majority in AD 140 included a lot of people who had been taught directly by Jesus or by one of the Apostles.

Since we don't have any original manuscripts of any part of the Bible, we rely on copies that are from centuries after these works were written. We also trust that the scribes were faithful in preserving the original text, much as the Jews trust that the scribes who have copied the Torah for thousands of years have also been faithful. So, if the birth narratives were added after Marcion, it would mean that someone decided to break the faith and it would undermine the accuracy of the entire Bible.

In the end it all comes down to trust. You either trust the word of thousands of bishops and scribes throughout the past 2000 years or you don't. And until someone finds an original manuscript or invents a time machine that's all we've got.

Answer 2

It is very important to keep in mind that we have no manuscripts of Macion's gospel and no translations of it. Furthermore, we have no extant neutral or pro-Marcion commentaries. The two commentaries we have, by Tertullian and Epiphanius, have a strongly anti-Marcion agenda, furthermore they disagree with each other at some key points. This makes saying anything certain about Marcion's gospel very difficult.

Your question really contains several separate questions:

Was Marcion's gospel older and closer to the historical Jesus than all the canonical gospels?

The answer to this is a resounding no. All scholars think that Mark predates Marcion's gospel and that Marcion's gospel was dependent on Mark. Furthermore, all scholars agree that Matthew also predates Marcion. Note that Matthew has a birth narrative, so birth narratives are indisputably older than Marcion. (Of course, Mark does not have a birth narrative, so gospels without birth narratives also indisputably predate Marcion.)

Was the birth narrative a later addition to Luke?

Many critical scholars think it's plausible and perhaps likely that the birth narrative is a later addition (possibly by the same author). The evidence is mostly circumstantial: the location of the genealogy is difficult to explain without this theory, Luke 3:1 reads like the beginning of a book, and many scholars think it makes more sense that the gospel that Marcion received (before he did whatever editing he did) also did not have the first two chapters. The evidence is far from overwhelming, and many scholars disagree, but it is a common opinion.

Was the birth narrative written in response to Marcion?

The vast majority of critical scholars think that Luke was written around 80 CE, and that Marcion's prime was much later (130 CE or later). So even scholars who think that the birth narrative was a later addition, generally don't think that it was a response to Marcion. On the other hand, there's a minority of scholars who think that Luke-Acts was written much later and in response to Marcion. A major book advocating this position is "Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle." This is a small minority opinion, but not a fringe opinion.

(Full disclosure: personally I find the arguments for a late anti-Marcionite Luke-Acts pretty strong. But I'm not an expert, and most experts are strongly in favor of 80ish AD.)

Did Marcion heavily edit his gospel

Sadly we don't really know, since we don't have Marcion's gospel, and we don't know whether his source was canonical Luke or one of canonical Luke's sources. Many scholars think the most plausible situation is that before doing any editing, the gospel used in Marcion's region was somewhat different from canonical Luke, but that Marcion probably did some editing himself as well.

Answer 3

No, this would have been unnecessary. Matthew's Gospel preceded both Luke & Marcion, and Matthew's Gospel contains a birth narrative. If Matthew is the standard by which future Gospels were judged (and it was the standard as early as the writings of Papias--see HE 3.39), then it is Marcion, not Luke, who was reacting to a competing form of Gospel.

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Chronology of Matthew vs. Marcion

Matthew is quoted by Ignatius & Polycarp, writing circa AD 107. Edouard Massaux argued effectively that Matthew is also quoted in 1 Clement (written late 1st century), given exact correspondence in unusual Greek wording. (see pp. 21-24 here) Matthew is also quoted by the Didache, which appears to have been written well before Marcion, and may even date to the mid-first century. A passage from Matthew is found in the Epistle of Barnabas; the date of this epistle is uncertain, but Robinson (Redating the New Testament Ch. 10) makes a compelling argument that it was written in the 1st Century.

Marcion's Gospel doesn't show up until well into the 2nd century--even a very late date for Matthew puts Matthew chronologically ahead of Marcion.

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Chronology of Matthew vs. Luke

All of the currently most popular solutions to the Synoptic Problem and all of the Patristic writers who discussed the subject, agree that Matthew was written prior to Luke.

Additionally, the fact that the early, Gentile-dominated church used Matthew much more than they used Luke becomes very difficult to explain if Luke preceded Matthew. The Jewish Gospel of Matthew (which refers to Gentiles as dogs) had little chance of upstaging the Gentile Gospel of Luke in a Gentile-dominated church (at a time when Christianity & Judaism were bitterly separating) if Luke was in circulation prior to Matthew. The clearest explanation for why the Gentile church treated Matthew as the primary source is that it was the primary source.

I discuss this further in this series on my channel: Who When & Why - the Writing of the Gospels.

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Chronology of Luke vs. Marcion

The Gospel of Luke is quoted by Polycarp (writing circa AD 107). Polycarp of Smyrna was a disciple of the Apostle John and one of the pillars of early Christianity. Although there are many good reasons for dating the Gospel of Luke well before this time, even this extremely cautious estimate puts the composition of Luke (and only one version of one Gospel is attributed by the early historians to Luke) at a time when Marcion was but a very young man.

References to Marcion's work don't show up until a generation later. Polycarp & his pupil Irenaeus vehemently rejected Marcion as a fraud. Marcion's contemporaries were in a position to fact-check Marcion and they rejected him--Justin Martyr is a great example.

If there were multiple versions of Luke circulating, or Luke were based upon the writings of Marcion, Justin was in a position to know. That Justin relied upon Luke as an authentic, apostolic, non-Marcionite source--when his life was on the line presenting apologies to Rome--is very good reason to believe that Luke is neither in whole nor in part a result of the work of Marcion.

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Conclusion

Marcion's Gospel was a response to prior, existing sources, including Matthew & Luke, not the other way around.

Answer 4

Luke's Gospel was written after Marcion's. Most of the scholars assume Jesus was a real person that existed in the beginning of the first century and that the writers of the Gospels interviewed eyewitnesses. The Biblical Jesus could have originated from the life of Yeshu ben Pandera, aka Yeshu Ha-Notzri/Jesus the Nazarene/The Teacher of Righteousness who lived a century before the Biblical Jesus, and the Apostle Paul could have been based on the life of Apollonius of Tyana. The first actual historical reference to the Gospel of Luke wasn't until the late second century, after Marcion's death. The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were both addressed to Most Excellent Theophilus. In the Toledot Yeshu, is was mentioned that after years of turmoil, the followers of Yeshu ben Pandera were ultimately exiled to Antioch. Rather than being written in Aramaic, the Gospel of Luke, as were the rest of the Gospels, written in Greek. Christians claim that the Gospels were translated, and that the word spread like wildfire. Or, possibly the Gospel of Luke was written by Lucian of Samosata and addressed to the Christian patriarch Theophilus of Antioch, who both live in the late second century. That would explain who Theophilus was, why the Gospel of Luke was written in Greek. The reason why there was already a church in Antioch so soon after the supposed death of Jesus, is because the church was in Antioch for a long time.

The primary difference between the Gospel of Luke and Marcion's Gospel of the Lord is the birth narrative. When one closely studies the contradictions in the birth narrative, google "Myths Surrounding the Birth of Jesus", it becomes apparent that the birth stories are fiction. The author of Luke makes great pains to get the birth of Jesus to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy and connect him with the lineage of King David. He creates a bizarre census the contradicts history and would create chaos, plus the heritage doesn't match Mathew's at all. Obviously he's trying to connect Jesus to the Jewish religion and heritage. There is a Bib1 - Bib14 video series on the creation of the Gospels detailing the source of the birth narrative, which is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke don't make sense, but is more complete in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. However the writers objected. The resurrection story was derived from the Gospel of Peter.

Another good source is nazoreans.com which goes into more detail regarding the New Testament creation. In my opinion the natural approach to explaining the Bible fits the best, but ultimately it comes down to whether one prefers a miraculous approach or a more natural approach at explaining the world we live in.