THE MARCION BIBLE

The Marcion Bible, also called Marcion's canon, was the scripture collection created by Marcion of Sinope, a second-century Christian thinker. He stands out in history as one of the very first to define a fixed Christian set of sacred texts—possibly the earliest such effort—long before the twenty-seven-book New Testament took shape centuries later.Marcion completely rejected the Hebrew Bible, what later became the Christian Old Testament. He saw its God, Yahweh, as a lesser, flawed creator—a wrathful demiurge who was jealous, unpredictable, and the source of the material world's pain and imperfection. In his view, the true supreme God was entirely different: a pure, loving, unknown Alien God or Stranger God who had never been revealed before. This God of boundless mercy and goodness was made known only through Jesus Christ, offering salvation from the physical world and its creator.Because of this dualistic theology, Marcion's Bible included no Old Testament at all. It consisted solely of a streamlined New Testament-like section in two parts.First was the Evangelion, or Gospel of the Lord—essentially an edited, shorter version of the Gospel of Luke. Marcion removed anything he considered too Jewish: large portions of the birth narratives, along with any references connecting Jesus to Old Testament prophecies, the Jewish law, or the creator God.The second part was the Apostolikon: ten letters attributed to Paul, carefully edited to eliminate passages that mentioned the Old Testament, Jewish customs, or links between the Christian God and the demiurge. The collection ran in this approximate order: Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, Romans, First and Second Thessalonians, Laodiceans—possibly a variant of Ephesians—Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. He left out the Pastoral Epistles—First and Second Timothy and Titus—as well as Hebrews.In total, Marcion's canon had just eleven books, much briefer than the later New Testament. He also authored a separate work, now lost, called the Antitheses, which contrasted the actions and nature of the two gods.No original copies of Marcion's Bible have survived; they were suppressed and destroyed after his teachings were branded heretical by the emerging orthodox church. What we know today comes from quotations and sharp criticisms preserved in the writings of early opponents, especially Tertullian's Against Marcion, along with Epiphanius and others.Modern scholars have reconstructed Marcion's texts using these sources. Notable efforts include Jason BeDuhn's book, The First New Testament, which offers an English translation, and Dieter Roth's detailed study on the Gospel text. Ongoing academic and community projects continue to refine Greek editions and translations.Though Marcionism was ultimately condemned as heresy, Marcion's bold canon likely pushed the wider church to clarify and formalize its own scriptures, indirectly helping shape the New Testament we know today.