Talk: Marcion of Sinope

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Marcion completely rejected the Old Testament. -- Wesley

Seems to me it depends on what you mean by "reject." Marcion obviously found the Old Testament unedifying. Though I can't accept his position, when I read some passages in the Old Testament I can see where he was coming from. But my impression of his thinking, though, is that he accepted the OT as a genuine revelation from a supernatural being. He imagined instead that his portions of the New Testament were the revelations from another supernatural being, and urged his followers to spurn the one and cleave to the other.

Perhaps there ought to be an article somewhere about various Christian reactions to the Old Testament, from Marcion to Origen to Calvin and on through Christian fundamentalism and dominion theology. I suspect that such an article would be a true minefield to try to write -- IHCOYC 02:50 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

By "rejected", I mean that Marcion thought the Old Testament should not be part of the Christian Bible, any more than sacred writings of Zeus or Isis should be. He thought that it was of no value to Christians; he thought that Christianity was entirely distinct from Judaism and should not follow any of Judaism's teachings, traditions or practices, since he thought they believed in a completely different and evil god. The New Testament itself however freely quotes from the Old Testament, most often from the Septuagint, and treats it as the Word of God. Jesus identified himself with the God of the Old Testament, with the God of the Jews (at least if you accept all four Gospels). And so Christianity as a whole did keep the Old Testament, at first primarily the Septuagint translation of it, and treat it as the Word of God, together with the New Testament. Christianity also kept those parts of the New Testament that Marcion thought were too Jewish. Wesley 18:13 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

It is better now. "Rejecting" could mean that he rejected it as spurious or apocryphal, which Marcion apparently did not do. Instead, he rejected the OT as the morally suspect of a real but evil supernatural being, while generally taking it at its face value and relying on it as part of his argument. The temptation to allegorize away uncomfortable passages of the Old Testament, like Origen often did, still remains; Marcion took an extreme version of this approach. -- IHCOYC 20:34 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)