Are Luke and Acts Anti Marcionite Pre PR

Are Luke and Acts Anti-Marcionite?
1
Isaac W. Oliver
Bradley University
Scholars have debated endlessly about the dating of Luke and Acts. While some posit that both
texts were written before 70 CE, most situate the two works sometime after the First Jewish
Revolt in the last third of the first century.2 Others argue for an even later dating, sometime in the
second century CE. Indeed, a second-century date for Acts has enjoyed recent support by some
prominent scholars who pin Luke and Acts upon a Marcionite frame. They maintain that Luke
redacted both texts to combat the rise of Marcionism. I take it for granted that Luke and Acts
were written sometime after 70 CE. The numerous allusions to Jerusalem’s downfall in the
gospel of Luke, some attested only in the third gospel (e.g., Luke 21:24), as well as the
prominent place granted to the temple in the Lukan narrative, show that Luke-Acts was written
after and in response to this traumatic event. Luke, like so many Jews from his time, mourned the
destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 13:34; 19:41; 23:27–31). Luke deeply reflects on Israel’s destiny
in light of the tragic aftermath of the First Jewish Revolt yet betrays no knowledge of the events
that transpired during the Second Jewish Revolt. Given Luke’s lamentation over the destruction
of Jerusalem and his anticipation of its restoration (Luke 21:24; 22:30; Acts 1:6–8; 3:21), I
suspect, therefore, that Luke-Acts was written sometime after 70 but before 132 CE, the
1
I wish here to express my immense gratitude to my Doktorvater Gabriele Boccaccini. I hope this essay honors his
intellectual genius and earnest endeavors to promote the academic study of Second Temple Judaism in its own right
as well as its sister branches. Far more than a Doktorvater, Boccaccini has been a role model. His gracious
consideration of the diverse opinions his colleagues, his awareness of the social ramifications of the academic study
of religion, and deliberate engagement with representatives of various communities (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.)
both in North America and Europe, particularly in Italy, have inspired and guided me.
2
For a pre-70 dating of Luke and Acts, see in particular Alexander Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker: Zur
Datierung des lukanischen Doppelwerkes, Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 43 (Tübingen:
Francke Verlag, 2006).
beginning of the Bar Kokhba Revolt when the final Jewish attempt to deliver Jerusalem from
Roman occupation ultimately failed.
With this timeframe in mind, I would like to assess some of the recent proposals dating
Luke-Acts in the second-century. Such an examination requires considering how Luke may have
drawn from Paul’s letters and legacy in Acts in order to clarify the relationship between the Jesus
movement with its own Jewish heritage and “mainstream” Judaism. Appreciating Luke’s
interaction with Paul’s own Jewishness in this regard will allow for a critical appraisal of
scholarly expositions of Luke-Acts that view Luke’s construction of Paul instead through the
prism of a Marcionism. Whatever one makes of this possible Marcionite setting, it should not
detract from appreciating the concerted effort in both Luke and Acts to define the early Jesus
movement vis-à-vis Judaism.3 The positive perception of Paul’s Jewishness in Acts suggests that
issues related to Torah observance, particularly how it may have applied differently to Jews and
non-Jews, respectively, continued to be debated after 70 CE and even into the early second
century.
The Second-Century Dating of Acts
The Pauline Epistles and the Reception of Paul’s Jewishness in Acts
Richard Pervo recently argued quite thoroughly for a second-century dating of Acts.4 The
3
I should add that I speak of “Luke” out of convenience and convention to refer to the final redactor of the gospel
now bearing his name as well as the book of Acts without assuming that Luke actually wrote these two works. The
conventional understanding on the unity of Luke-Acts has recently been questioned by Patricia Walters, The
Assumed Authorial Unity of Luke and Acts: A Reassessment of the Evidence, Society for New Testament Studies
145 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Space does not allow for a proper appreciation of Walters’s
work, but, to the best of my knowledge, no one has of yet refuted her careful analysis of the literary seams linking
discrete pericopes in Luke and Acts. Walters’s stylistic assessment of the literary seams suggests different
authorship. In my opinion, her work merits greater attention and should encourage further exploration of other
passages in Luke and Acts (e.g., the “we passages”) using the same kind of methodology. Nevertheless, the thematic
and theological parallels between Luke and Acts are still significant enough, in my opinion, to justify hyphenating
Luke-Acts and to view it as a unity at some redactional level. Nevertheless, we may have to admit a greater
complexity to this unity, as we shall see.
4
Richard I. Pervo, Dating Acts: Between the Evangelists and the Apologists (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press,
external evidence works in Pervo’s favor, as no clear attestation of Acts precedes Irenaeus.5 But
Pervo undergirds his argument primarily on internal grounds. He maintains that Acts drew from
a collection of Pauline letters that probably circulated only by the end of the first century. This
collection included the undisputed letters of Paul as well as the Deutero-Pauline Epistles. Though
Acts never depicts Paul as a letter writer, Pervo notes that some of Paul’s writings would have
proven especially congenial to Luke’s literary enterprise including his treatment of Paul’s
Jewishness and the contested issue of Torah observance among Jewish followers of Jesus. 1
Corinthians, with its emphasis on transcending internal factions (1 Cor 1:11–17), would indeed
have suited the intention in Acts to convey a sense of harmony reigning among the likes of Peter,
Paul, and James over the question of Torah observance. This spirit of concord sharply contrasts
with the tensions on this matter one senses even from a casual reading of Galatians, particularly
the clash in Antioch between Paul and Peter reported in Galatians 2. Many indeed have argued
that Acts 15 retells the Antioch crisis in a more conciliatory tone (cf. Gal 2:14 with the more
appeasing remarks on Peter in 1 Cor 3:22 and 9:5). Instead of opposing Paul against Peter,
Barnabas, or even James,6 Acts stages a conflict between Paul and Barnabas with some mere
“individuals from Judea” (Acts 15:1–2). Paul and Barnabas, moreover, win complete support
from Peter and James—the head of the ekklesia in Jerusalem—in their opposition against these
elliptic instigators of Judea who wish to impose circumcision upon Gentiles.
In fact, Paul’s words in Gal 2:14–16, which were presumably delivered to Peter, if one
views Gal 2:14–16 as a literary unit, may have been significantly reworked in Acts 15:7–10, 28
and 13:38–39 in order to signal harmonious agreement between Peter and Paul. In Gal 2:14, Paul
2006).
5
Ibid., 15. The phrase in Polycarp, λύσας τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ ᾅδου (Pol. Phil. 1:2), is attested in Acts 2:24, but this
datum is too scant to establish dependency with any strong confidence.
6
I assume “those of James” in Gal 2:12 were legitimate representatives of James. They were in any case impressive
enough to convince Peter to cease fellowshipping with Gentile followers of Jesus.
accuses Peter of hypocrisy, claiming that he cannot “demand” (ἀναγκάζεις) Gentiles to become
Jews, since he himself is no longer living in a Jewish way. While Paul shares with Peter a certain
Jewish prejudice against non-Jews (Gal 2:15: “we are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners”),
he nevertheless reminds his Jewish comrade that no human can be justified through the deeds of
the Torah: “we have put our trust (ἐπιστεύσαμεν) in Christ Jesus, in order that we may be
justified (δικαιωθῶμεν) out of Christ’s faithfulness and not out of the deeds of the Law” (Gal
2:16). According to this passage, Jew and Gentile alike stand in need of Christ’s faithfulness to
acquire a proper standing before God. Paul reminds Peter that they have both come to recognize
this fact, knowing well that no human flesh can be justified through works of the Law. The “we”
in Gal 2:16 should be understood as a “Jewish-Christian we,” inclusive of Paul and Peter who
are both Jews by birth. To paraphrase Paul, he states that “we as Jews, that is, you and I, Peter,
have put our trust in what Christ has done for us, something no human could accomplish through
the observance of the Torah.” Presumably this mutual understanding, at least in Paul’s
estimation, lay at the core of the “gospel of uncircumcision” and the “gospel of circumcision,”
entrusted to Paul and Peter, respectively (Gal 2:7). No Jew (or Gentile) could ever find
justification in God’s eyes through the observance of the Torah. It may be that the writer of Acts,
aware of Gal 2:16, has Peter make a concession about the Jewish people in order to affirm
Gentile inclusion. In Acts 15:10–11, Peter advises the Jewish followers gathered in Jerusalem in
response to the Antioch crisis not to impose a “yoke” upon Gentile believers, which they
themselves as Jews have been unable to bear. The wording, admittedly, not to mention the
content, is far from identical to Gal 2:16, which denies any person the ability to be justified
through the works of the Torah, Jew or Greek. In Acts, Peter does not discuss so much the
inability of the Jews to acquire a particular status as much as he acknowledges (in a rather typical
Jewish fashion one might add) the shortcomings of the Jewish people who have historically
failed to fulfill the covenantal obligations outlined in the Torah.7 If the Jewish people as a whole
cannot appeal to their own righteousness, as they have repeatedly strayed from the Torah in the
past, Gentile followers of Jesus should not be sent down the same path of failure. Instead, the
Jerusalem Council prescribes Gentiles the precepts of the Apostolic Decree. Nothing more
should be “imposed” (Acts 15:28: ἐπάναγκες) upon them (cf. ἀναγκάζεις in Gal 2:14).
In Acts, Paul too echoes the statement in Gal 2:16 when he preaches before a Jewish
synagogue in Antiochus of Pisidia: “let it be known to you, fellow (Jewish) brothers, that
through this one (i.e., Jesus) release from sins is proclaimed to you from all the things you were
not able to be justified in the Law of Moses (ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσέως δικαιωθῆναι). Whoever puts
trust (πιστεύων) in this one will be justified (δικαιοῦται)” (13:38–39). Here, many commentators
for various reasons have blamed the author of Acts for failing to comprehend Paul’s teaching on
“justification by faith.” Among other things, Acts may imply that Jesus only supplements the
Law: Jesus provides forgiveness to the Jewish people only for those things they failed to uphold
in the Torah; he does not release them entirely from the Law.8 Regardless, the Paul of Acts, like
7
Pervo, Dating Acts, 59, commenting on Acts 15:10, states: “This is an essentially gentile view of the Torah as an
impossible burden that could not be fulfilled.” Note, however, the Jewish imagery depicting the Torah as a “yoke”
that is to be borne daily in the rabbinic phrase ‫עול תורה‬/ ‫( עול מצוה‬m. Avot 3:5; m. Ber. 2:2, etc.). Recognizing that
Israel has failed to live up to its covenantal duties is quite common in early Jewish literature. It explains Israel’s
exile, particularly in times of acute crisis. Thus Daniel 9, which was written in response to the Maccabean crisis,
repeatedly stresses that Israel as a whole has “sinned, done wrong, rebelled, turning from your commandments and
statutes” (v. 6), emphasizing how all Israel has bypassed the Torah (v. 11). Because of its repeated shortcomings,
Israel cannot point to its own righteousness to request deliverance: “it is not on our righteousness that we cast our
supplications before you but rather on your great mercies” (v. 18). Whenever destruction or exile arise, this theme
prevails. Thus 2 Baruch—a Jewish work contemporaneous with Luke-Acts and written in response to the
destruction of the temple—regrets that many Jews “have cast away the yoke of the Law” (41:3).
8
See Philipp Vielhauer, “On the ‘Paulinism’ of Acts,” in Paul and the Heritage of Israel: Paul’s Claim upon
Israel’s Legacy in Luke and Acts in Light of the Pauline Epistles. Volume Two of Luke the Interpreter of Israel, ed.
David P. Moessner, Daniel Marguerat, Mikeal C. Parsons, and Michael Wolter, LNTS 452 (London: T&T Clark,
2012), 3–17 (10–11). The article was first published in German as “Zum ‘Paulinismus’ der Apostelgeschichte,” EvT
10 (1950–1951): 1–15. Cf. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke the Theologian: Aspects of His Teaching (New York: Paulist
Press, 1989), 187: “The gospel that Paul is preaching is understood once again as a supplement to the law.” Other
passages in Acts may further imply that certain individuals can acquire righteousness. Pervo, Dating Acts, 236–37,
deems that the statement in Acts 10:35, “but in every nation, the one who fears him and works righteousness is
acceptable to him,” could not be less Pauline.
the Paul of Galatians, is underscoring limitations that apply to Jews, using similar vocabulary
(πιστεύω, δικαιόω).9
Perhaps the preceding discussion only illustrates how Acts may have understood Paul’s
teachings independent of whether Luke read Galatians in light of 1 Corinthians. Elsewhere, I
have argued that the Jewish portrait of Paul in Acts—a Jew who obeys the Torah, a Pharisee who
remains a Pharisee, and an Israelite who hopes for Israel’s salvation—aligns well with Paul’s
rather positive appraisal of Judaism and the Jewish people inscribed in his letter to the Romans.10
Pervo discusses other passages that may intimate reliance upon Romans. For example, Acts’
narration about the spread of the gospel across the Roman empire may have been patterned
according to Paul’s motto in Romans: “to the Jew first and then to the Greek” (Rom 1:16; 2:9–
10). Throughout Acts, the good news about the messiah’s forthcoming reign is proclaimed first
to the Jewish people, then to non-Jews. This pattern is attested already at the beginning of Acts,
during the Jewish gathering for Pentecost in Jerusalem (ch. 2), and one chapter later, when Peter
iterates before a Jewish audience that God raised Jesus to be a blessing first of all to the Jewish
people (3:26). Paul himself repeats this assertion in Acts (13:46), and consistently proclaims the
good news first to his Jewish comrades throughout his tour of the Mediterranean world.11
Obviously, this pattern differs with Paul’s preferred designation in his own letters as the “apostle
to the Gentiles.” Yet we must reckon with Luke’s reception of Paul without assuming strict
objectivity from his part. Recalling Gal 2:7, 14–16, the author of Acts may have inferred that
9
Pervo, Dating Acts, 59, further notes that the construction ἐν νόμῳ, where the preposition ἐν is presumably
instrumental, is found in association with the verb δικαιόω (“justify”) in the New Testament only in Acts 13:38–39,
Gal 3:11, and 5:4. I would also point to the phrase in Rom 3:20, ἐξ ἔργων νόμου οὐ δικαιωθήσεται πᾶσα σὰρξ,
which terminologically is not too far from ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσέως δικαιωθῆναι in Acts
13:38.
10
Isaac W. Oliver, “The ‘Historical Paul’ and the Paul of Acts: Which Is More Jewish?” in Paul the Jew: A
Conversation between Pauline and Second Temple Scholars, ed. Gabriele Boccaccini and Carlos A. Segovia
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 51–71.
11
Pervo, Dating Acts, 104–5.
many of the teachings contained in Paul’s letters also concerned Jews even if they were formally
addressed to Gentiles. Assuming that the “gospel of the circumcision” and the “gospel of
uncircumcision” shared a common core, it would not require too much imagination to envisage
Paul as an apostle to Jew and Gentile alike.
Dependency on the letter to the Romans could also be arguably found in the gospel of
Luke. A notable example concerns Paul’s reference to the “times of the Gentiles” in Romans. As
he reaches the apex of his discussion on the salvation of Israel, Paul states that the Jewish people
will not be saved “until the fullness of the Gentiles has entered” (Rom 11:25: ἄχρι οὗ τὸ
πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν εἰσέλθη) whereupon “a deliverer will come out of Zion, he will remove
ungodliness from Jacob,” citing Isa 59:20. The gospel must first be accepted by a sufficient
number of Gentiles. Then all of Israel will be saved when its savior, presumably Jesus as the
returning Christ, will march into Jerusalem, having delivered Israel once and for all. Interestingly
enough, Luke contains a peculiar formulation unattested in any other gospel that resembles the
phrase ἄχρι οὗ τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν εἰσέλθη in Rom 11:25. In Luke 21:24, Jesus prophesies
that Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies (an allusion to the First Jewish Revolt) and
“trampled by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (ἄχρι οὗ πληρωθῶσιν
καιροὶ ἐθνῶν). The terminological overlap (ἄχρι οὗ as well as πλήρωμα τῶν ἐθνῶν εἰσέλθη /
πληρωθῶσιν καιροὶ ἐθνῶν) used mutually in contexts that address the fate of Jerusalem and the
Jewish people suggest Lukan dependency on Romans. This intertextual relationship may also
render explicit what is only implied in Luke 21:24: the restoration of Jerusalem and, by
extension, the Jewish people will follow once the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, a period that
for Luke stretches into the period after 70 CE. Luke, like Paul, holds on to the hope for Israel’s
restoration.12
12
I develop this argument further in Oliver, “The ‘Historical Paul’ and the Paul of Acts,” 63–69. I therefore differ
Galatians, Romans, and 1 Corinthians belong, admittedly, to the undisputed letters of
Paul, reliance on which would not necessarily imply a late dating for Acts. Yet Pervo contends
that Acts evinces reliance on the disputed letters as well as 2 Corinthians in its composite form
whose patches were probably only knit into one cloth toward the end of the first century.13
Noteworthy is the shared vocabulary in 2 Cor 11:32–33 and Acts 9:23–25, which both report
Paul’s escape from Damascus: διὰ τοῦ τείχους (“through the wall”) as well as χαλάσαντες ἐν / ἐν
+ ἐχαλάσθην (“let down in [a basket]”) are attested in Acts 9:23–25 and 2 Cor 11:32–33. What is
more, some of the differences between the two reports can be accounted for on redactional
grounds, particularly the reference in Acts to the plot by “the Jews” of Damascus to apprehend
Paul, an element conspicuously missing from 2 Cor 11:32–33.14 Acts, as it is known, frequently
casts “the Jews” as opponents of the Jesus movement.15 Unfortunately for Pervo’s thesis, Acts
shows little evidence of reliance on other parts of 2 Corinthians. Pervo points to 2 Cor 2:4 and
Acts 20:19 but the meager convergence of one term (δακρύων: “tears”) is hardly suggestive, and
the possibility remains, as Pervo himself acknowledges, that Luke consulted the portion of 2
Corinthians containing only chs. 10–13.16 Pervo also does not identify any point of contact
between Acts and 2 Thessalonians, an issue he leaves unaddressed. As for the parallels he notes
between Acts and Colossians and Ephesians, many of them overlap with terms found in Paul’s
undisputed letters.17 Some of them are, nevertheless, suggestive. For example, before Clement of
Alexandria and Origen, the formulation “the power of darkness” (ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ σκότους)
with Pervo, Dating Acts, 105, who notes the interesting terminological similarities between Luke 21:24 and Rom
11:25 but assumes that Acts has given upon entirely on the salvation of the Jewish people as a whole.
13
Pervo, Dating Acts, 60–62.
14
But cf. 2 Cor 11:24, 26.
15
Nevertheless, the writer Acts often distinguishes various Jews, including those opposed and those in favor of the
Jesus movement, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Jewish followers of Jesus.
16
Pervo, Dating Acts, 62.
17
For example, the reference to God’s impartiality in Acts 10:34 is attested in Col 3:25 and Eph 6:9 as well as in
Rom 2:11 and Gal 2:6. Acts 20:19 overlaps not only with Eph 4:1–2 and 6:7 but also with Rom 12:11 and 2 Cor 2:4.
appears only in Luke 22:53, Acts 26:18 and Colossians 1:13, although it is attested in Hebrew in
the Dead Sea Scrolls.18 Interestingly, μετὰ πάσης ταπεινοφροσύνης (“with all humility”) appears
only in Acts 20:19 and Eph 4:2. Yet we should not forget that the authorship of Colossians and
Ephesians is disputed. Too much cannot be established upon these documents for the purposes of
dating.19
What about the Pastorals and Acts? Do they bear a direct literary relationship? Pervo
maintains that the Pastorals and Acts share a common set of vocabulary and ideas that fit better
with works such as 1 Clement or the Martyrdom of Polycarp, texts belonging to the so-called
“Apostolic Fathers.”20 Pervo highlights some important intersections between Luke-Acts and the
Pastorals, most notably, in my opinion, on the question of widowhood. According to 1 Tim 5:5,
9, a true widow (χήρα) waits upon God, raising “petitions” (δεήσεσιν) “night and day” (νυκτὸς
καὶ ἡμέρας). She must be at least sixty years of age and married only once. Statements about
widows appear in Acts 6:1–6, 9:36–43, and Luke 2:36–37. The latter passage, which depicts
Anna the prophetess who prayed in the temple, is significant. Anna is a widow (χήρα) eighty-
four years of age—and therefore well above the minimum age required to qualify as a true
widow according to 1 Tim 5:9. Anna also fasts and offers “petitions” (δεήσεσιν), worshiping
both “night and day” (νύκτα καὶ ἡμέραν) in temple of Jerusalem. Last but not least, she was only
ever married to one man before becoming a widow (2:36). Whoever wrote 1 Timothy would
have applauded Anna’s celibacy. She meets virtually every requirement for widowhood outlined
in 1 Timothy 5.21 It is tempting, in this instance, to conclude with Pervo that the “perspective of
18
1QH-a XX:6; 4Q427 (4QH-a) 8 ii:12 as ‫ממשלת חושך‬.
19
Ben White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 65, reminds us that the notion of seven undisputed Pauline epistles, what has now virtually
become academic orthodoxy, originates from a particular kind of Protestant reading of Paul from the nineteenth
century.
20
21
1 Tim 5:9, however, states that one should enroll as a widow only sixty years or older. Luke 2:36 states that Anna
was married for seven years after her “virginity” (parthenias), meaning that she was married at an early age and
Acts derives from an era in which widows were an organized, quasi-official group.”22
Alas, some of the other evidence Pervo culls to draw Acts within the realms of the
Pastorals and the Apostolic Fathers proves mixed. For example, Acts does not testify to the kind
of church organization espoused by Ignatius of Antioch who posited that only one leader
supported by deacons and presbyters oversee Christians in each city. Pervo speculates that Luke
held certain reservations regarding the ecclesiological model propounded by Ignatius. 23
Similarly, on the idealization of marriage and family life seen in the Pastorals, Pervo proposes
that “Luke sharply dissents from the post-Pauline world of Early Catholicism.”24 If this is true,
Luke has expressed his reservations rather timidly. It is just as likely that he knew nothing about
these kinds of ecclesial and marital structures.25 Even less convincing is Pervo’s assumption that
Acts follows a principle set up in Titus 1:15 and 1 Tim 4:4 that allegedly abolishes all
distinctions between Jews and Gentiles and any grounds for keeping the Torah.26 Such a position
would run against what is assumed in the Apostolic Decree and throughout Acts: Jews continue
to follow all of the Torah while Gentiles only follow some of its requirements.
Josephus and Luke
We may finally consider the possible literary relationship posited by Pervo between Acts and the
remained a widow for many years before she reached sixty. Her portrait is apparently meant to commend marriage
to only one man.
22
Pervo, Dating Acts, 220. The Jewish portrait of Anna, nevertheless, should not be overlooked. In particular, she
resembles Judith who remained a widow until the age of 105, firmly devoted to the Torah and fasting (Jud 8:1–8;
16:23). Furthermore, if the eighty-four years refer to the length of Anna’s widowhood rather than her age, her
lifespan would approximate Judith’s. See Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the
Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 466–68.
23
24
Ibid., 216.
25
Regarding issues related to spiritual gifts and baptism, Pervo, Dating Acts, 214, maintains that Luke evinces a
certain degree of opposition to developments emerging within “early Catholicism.” Here too, Pervo draws the card
of soft-spoken opposition in another instance where reservation is not clearly demonstrable.
26
Pervo, Dating Acts, 248-49.
writings of Josephus, including his later work, Antiquities, which was finished in the year 93.27
Here, Pervo admits that Lukan dependency on Josephus differs from the type of literary
relationship reflected in the Synoptic Problem, as Luke did not imitate the style of Josephus nor
simply import passages with little modification.28 A number of passages, nonetheless, may hint at
some kind of employment of Josephus’s texts for historical references and other data, including
among others: the census at the time of Quirinius (Luke 2:1–7; Acts 5:37; War 2.117–18; Ant.
18.15); the political disturbances caused by Theudas and Judas (Acts 5:36–37; Ant. 20.97–102)
as well as the “Egyptian” (Acts 21:37–38; War 2.261–263; Ant. 20.169–171); the usage of the
term hairesis to differentiate various Jewish factions (Acts 5:5, 17; 24:5, 14; 28:22); the
depiction of Pharisees as “strict” or “accurate” (e.g., Acts 22:3; 26:5; Ant. 20:199–201);
references to members of the Herodian family (Herodias, Bernice, Drusilla, etc.); and the portrait
of John the Baptist as a “Hellenistic moralist” (Luke 3:10–14; Ant. 18.117).29
Looking more carefully at some of these parallels, one notes that both Josephus and Luke
view the census under Quirinius as a watershed moment and connect it with Judas the Galilean.
Of all the rebels that could have caused uprisings in Judea, Luke lists three that are mentioned in
Josephus’s writings: Judas the Galilean, Theudas, and the Egyptian. As Steve Mason notes: “If
Luke did not know Josephus, we are faced with an astonishing number of coincidences.”30 It
would seem that either Luke knew of Josephus’s writings or had access to sources resembling his
accounts. On the other hand, perplexing discrepancies in these same materials complicate the
hypothesis that Luke simply drew from Josephus’s writings. According to Josephus, Judas led an
uprising during the census under Quirinius in 6 CE (War 2.117–118; Ant. 18.1–5). Later during
27
Pervo builds on Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003; 1st
ed. 1992).
28
29
Ibid., 149–99.
30
Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 282.
the governorship of Cuspius Fadus (44–46 CE), Theudas caused a similar commotion, as he
promised to split the Jordan River and lead his followers into freedom. Strangely enough, in Acts
5:36–37, Gamaliel claims that Judas arose after Theudas. Pervo tries to solve this problem and
other discrepancies by suggesting that Luke misread or loosely reused his Josephan sources. He
notes that Josephus juxtaposes the rebellions of Theudas and Judas in close proximity in Ant.
20.97–102, first briefly reporting Theudas’s failed coup and then mentioning the execution of
Judas’s two sons, James and Simon. The author of Acts would have overlooked the fact that
Josephus was describing the death of Judas’s sons, which happened after Theudas’s rebellion,
rather than Judas’s own clash with the political powers of his time.31 This explanation is not
altogether satisfying, since in the same sentence where Josephus mentions Judas’s two sons,
“James and Simon whom [Tiberius Julius] Alexander ordered to crucify,” he explicitly recalls
“Judas of Galilee who caused the people to revolt against the Romans when Quirinius performed
the census of Judea” (Ant. 20.102). Perhaps Mason’s conjecture that Luke did (or could) not
carefully consult Josephus’s writings might better account for what would otherwise constitute a
very careless read on Luke’s part, 32 even if we must admit that Luke’s account defies human
imagination in other ways, not least his claim that the census required all those living under
Roman rule to return to their hometowns. We must reckon therefore with a writer who used his
sources critically, as exemplified by Luke’s reception of Paul, and deliberately modified them, if
indeed Luke knew Josephus’s writings, to suit his literary aims.
Still, the accumulated evidence produced by Pervo points to a post-70 setting for Luke-
Acts, probably later than earlier in the last quarter of the first century. The two Jewish revolts in
Judea bracket Luke-Acts, providing a historical framework for assessing Luke’s perspective on
31
Pervo, Dating Acts, 158–59: “The error can thus be explored by presuming that the author of Acts overlooked ‘the
sons of’ and wrote, or remembered only ‘Judas.’”
32
Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 208.
Judaism, the Jesus movement, and the Roman Empire. Indeed, Pervo stresses that Acts was
written in the midst of political turmoil at a time when Roman antipathy toward Jews was
widespread. In this tense environment, Vespasian and his sons took advantage of their
suppression of the first Jewish Revolt to establish their new Flavian dynasty, magnifying the
scope of the war and constructing Judaism as a dangerous threat to the very existence of the
Roman Empire. Luke, according to Pervo, would have capitalized on this kind of Roman
resentment by turning the Jews into the primary villains of his story. Working under a scheme of
the “partings of the ways” that some would now call into question, Pervo surmises that from the
crises sparked by the Jewish Revolt arose two “religions”: Judaism and Christianity in the
making. Luke-Acts would stem from this time, rather than a preliminary phase, when the
separation between Judaism and Christianity had materialized.33
I would argue that this generalization would correspond better to the state of early
Jewish-Christian affairs reigning after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (some would argue even later),
once the ranks of Christianity included members who were predominantly of non-Jewish descent
and quite triumphant in asserting their identity over against Judaism and the Jews—now
banished by Hadrian from even entering Jerusalem. Justin Martyr, a Christian of non-Jewish
origin, exemplifies this type of Gentile Christian assertiveness vis-à-vis Judaism even while
limitedly tolerating Jewish followers of Jesus who wish to remain loyal to their traditions (Dial.
47). But now the tables have been turned: whereas Acts discusses whether Gentile Christians
must undergo circumcision, Justin Martyr questions the need for Jewish followers of Jesus to
continue observing the Mosaic Torah. As a Gentile Christian, Justin Martyr will only “allow”
Jewish followers of Jesus to retain their practices if they do not enforce them on Gentiles. And
while Acts approaches the issue of Torah observance from a Jewish standpoint—Jews such as
33
Paul, Peter, and James deliberate on the status of Gentiles and whether they have to live like
them—now a Gentile Christian like Justin Martyr wonders whether fellowship with Torah
observant Jewish Christians should be even tolerated. According to Justin, many Christians from
his time would not even grant such coexistence, demanding Jews to forsake their distinctive
customs altogether. I see no reason to doubt Justin’s testimony. It will become the rule of law for
virtually all Jewish converts to Christianity until modern times when certain Hebrew Christians
and Messianic Jews will opt again to retain their Jewish identity not least through Torah
observance.
I do not wish to downplay Luke’s ambivalence toward other Jews of his time who denied
Jesus’s messianic credentials. But Lukan polemics need to be historically contextualized. They
are, in any case, counterweighted by Luke’s many positive pronouncements concerning Judaism.
I already alluded to Luke’s Jewish depiction of Paul. In addition, we should note the prominent
position Jerusalem and its temple occupy in the narrative of Luke-Acts—quite a feature for a
work completed after 70 CE in the midst of Jewish confrontations with Rome. From the
beginning of Luke to the end of Acts, significant events occur in Jerusalem including Jesus’s
dedication during his infancy as God’s appointed servant (Luke 2:22–52), his crucifixion,
resurrection, and ascension to heaven (Luke 9:31, 51; 24:51–52; Acts 1:9–11), the proclamation
of the good news from Zion to the four corners of the earth (Acts 1:8), the outpouring of the
sacred spirit (Acts 2), and the promulgation of the Apostolic Decree. These key events show that
Jerusalem enjoys a sacred status in Luke’s eschatological and geographical schemes. Luke’s
depiction of Jerusalem rather than Rome as the navel of the world calls into question the
unqualified contention that Luke participates for political gain in a kind of Roman vilification
against Jews. In some ways, Luke’s account contests the worldview cherished by Romans of his
day who heralded Rome as the center of the oikoumenē. Against Flavian propaganda and the
reality on the ground that would seem to confirm Rome’s claims to world supremacy, Luke’s
narrative insinuates that things are the other way around: Jerusalem is overcoming Rome, thanks
to the power of the gospel propagated by Jewish sentinels sent from Jerusalem who infiltrate the
Roman Empire, proclaiming the reign of a Davidic messiah born in David’s hometown (see
Luke 1–2), crucified, though not eliminated, since he has risen and reestablished the “fallen
booth of David,” that is, the Davidic dynasty (Acts 15:16), and will one day return to rule over
Israel and the entire earth presumably from the city where all meaningful eschatological events
always take place in Luke-Acts—Zion.34 In fact, as we reach the end of Acts, this rather
subversive message has pierced the heart of Rome, the Roman capital, when a very Pharisaic-
like Jew named Paul declares before a Jewish delegation of Rome that he is “bound in chains for
the hope of Israel” (Acts 28:20). The ending of Acts does not signal the end of any hope for
Jerusalem’s restoration: it looks back to Jerusalem even as the proclamation of God’s kingdom
overtakes Rome.
I am aware that my interpretation of Luke-Acts contrasts with the more classic
understanding that would see in Luke-Acts a permanent relegation of the Jewish people to the
margins of salvation history with the advent of Christianity. According to this line of
understanding, in Luke’s eyes, any meaningful history for the Jewish people, any hope for
Israel’s restoration, would have collapsed along with the temple in 70 CE. In many Christian
circles, then and now, this transfer becomes a cause for celebration. We already see Justin Martyr
34
In making such a bold statement, by no means do I wish for my work to be co-opted by Christians or Jews to
defend, on theological grounds, current Zionist political endeavors. Here, I approach Luke’s perspective on
Jerusalem and Rome as a historian who is attentive to the long, tortuous history of Jewish-Christian relations. I seek
to provide a corrective to a longstanding Christian denial of Israel’s specificity. We cannot forget that Luke wrote
almost two millennia ago about the restoration of Israel in the context of the Roman Empire. His text cannot be
ripped out of that context to treat the incredibly complex reality that is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which
involves separate historical, social, and political developments completely foreign to Luke.
exploiting the failure of the two Jewish Revolts in Judea to promote Christian supersessionism.35
And while Luke—like many Jews living after 70 CE—mourned the destruction of the temple
(Luke 19:41), Christians such as Eusebius rejoiced over Jerusalem’s demise, seeing in this event
a confirmation of God’s permanent rejection of the Jewish people.36 Many modern studies on
Luke-Acts converge in different ways with these patristic assessments.37 Alas, in many cases,
Jewish sources are overlooked. Little attempt is made to appreciate how Luke’s views on the
temple’s destruction, Torah observance, or Jewish-Gentile relations might fit or compare with
other post-70 Jewish currents. This is unfortunate, given the diverse body of Jewish texts from
around the second century CE try to make sense of the destruction of Jerusalem and its
ramifications for Judaism, not least the writings of Josephus, Jewish apocalyptic texts such as 2
Baruch, 4 Ezra, and the Apocalypse of Abraham, or “rewritten” scriptures such as the Liber
Antiquitatum Biblicarum, or, finally, the Tannaitic strata of early rabbinic literature. Here I am
but amplifying Anthony Saldarini’s call, which was originally applied to the gospel of Matthew,
itself a post-70 Jewish text, to study Luke-Acts “along with other Jewish post-destruction
literature, such as the apocalyptic works 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra and Apocalypse of Abraham, early
strata of the Mishnah, and Josephus.” Saldarini adds that “[a]ll this Jewish literature”—and here
we may add Luke-Acts—“tries to envision Judaism in new circumstances, reorganize its central
35
See Isaac W. Oliver, “Jewish Followers of Jesus and the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Re-examining the Christian
Sources,” in The Psychological Dynamics of Revolution: Religious Revolts, vol. 1 of Winning Revolutions: The
Psychology of Successful Revolts for Freedom, Fairness, and Rights, ed. J. Harold Ellens (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-
CLIO Praeger, 2014), 109–27.
36
See Eusebius, Theophania, IV, 20.
37
This is the case with N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God 2
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), who claims that all three Synoptic Gospels and Jesus himself anticipated the climax
of Israel’s restoration in Jerusalem’s destruction! In some ways, I find Wright’s work more disturbing than that of a
Eusebius or a Justin Martyr, for he wraps his story about Jesus in a shroud he claims is thoroughly Jewish though
radically redefined. “Replaced Israel” has been now become “redefined Israel.” In the end, the theological outcome
is the same for Jewish-Christian relations: ethnic Israel becomes God’s definitive enemy, experiencing divine
vindictive wrath and permanent rejection come year 70. Wright denies that this posture is anti-Jewish. But which
Second Temple Jew ever foresaw Jerusalem’s (I speak of the actual city and its specific ties to the Jewish people)
permanent desertion as part of Israel’s restoration? And what of the ramifications of such thinking for Jewish-
Christian relations?
symbols, determine the precise will of God, and propose a course of action for the faithful
community.”38
To conclude this section, a late first-century or early second-century dating does not
necessitate setting Luke-Acts outside a Jewish framework. It is precisely around this time that we
see other Jewish texts deal with similar issues treated in Luke-Acts. 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra are
often dated around the year 100, and Josephus writes his Antiquities and Against Apion at around
the same period. In the context of Lukan studies, these works should not simply be culled for
historical data or “background” information. It is worthwhile comparing their theological and
literary aims with those of Luke-Acts. A lot of work remains to be done in this regard.39
Luke-Acts and the Marcionite Debate
A second-century dating for Acts has led some to consider whether it was written to combat
Marcion, who may have been active as early as the first quarter of the second century.40 Joseph
Tyson, who accepts Pervo’s arguments for the late dating of Acts and builds on the work of John
Knox, argues “that the struggle of the church with Marion and Marcionite Christianity provides
the most likely context of the writing of Acts” (emphasis added).41 Likewise, Tyson states that
“the challenge of Marcion was one ingredient in the context of the composition of Acts, indeed
38
Anthony J. Saldarini, “The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian Conflict in Galilee,” in The Galilee in Late
Antiquity, ed. L. Levine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 23–38 [24].
39
Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, 283–91, has done some interesting work in this regard, concluding that
both Josephus and Luke write histories from the margins of the Hellenistic world. Just as Josephus seeks to defend
Judaism in the aftermath of 70 CE by portraying it as a virtuous philosophy, Luke casts Christianity as the noblest
form of Judaism.
40
Joseph B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 2006) relies on R. Joseph Hoffman, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the
Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century, American Academy of Religion Academy Series
46 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), for positing Marcion’s activity as early as 110–120 CE. According to Jason
David BeDuhn, The First New Testament: Marcion’s Scriptural Canon (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2013), 323 n. 15,
Hoffman’s dating has not gained wide acceptance.
41
Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 23. Cf. John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early
History of the Canon (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1942).
the primary one.”42
These are no small claims.43 It should be noted right away that an early dating for
Marcion’s activity is crucial for Tyson’s thesis. Otherwise, Acts would have to be dated closer to
or even after the mid-second century CE, the time when Marcion is supposed to have been active
in Rome (ca. 138–144 CE). Dating Acts so late, however, is problematic for reasons discussed in
the previous section, and even if Marcion spread his word beforehand in Asia Minor, one would
have to suppose that he became influential enough rather quickly to warrant a Lukan response in
writing.
But any Marcionite thesis depends on its success in demonstrating on internal grounds
that Acts was written to counter Marcionite aims. Tyson is persuaded that many of the distinctive
features and themes in Acts can be read against a Marcionite backdrop. Thus, the emphasis in
Acts on ecclesiastical harmony can be understood as an attempt to redress a split between Paul
and the Jewish apostles of Jerusalem that Marcion would have exploited. Similarly, the emphasis
in Acts on the fidelity to Jewish customs would have targeted Marcion’s opposition between
Law and Gospel.44 Luke’s report of Paul’s circumcision of Timothy would have particularly
irritated Marcion, as his Paul rejected the God of creation and would certainly not engage in such
a Jewish act inscribed on the very flesh of the human being.45 The same kind of anti-Marcionite
motivation would stand behind the numerous passages from the Jewish scriptures that are related
in Acts to Jesus’s messiahship: “What better way to counter the Marcionite claims than to have
the apostle they revered make repeated attempts to convince Jews that Jesus is the fulfillment of
42
Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 50.
43
They are seasoned at one point, when Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 51, suggests that the Marcionite challenge
formed a “major” (rather than the “primary”) aspect of the context within which Acts was written or that Acts was
composed “at least in part” in reaction to Marcion.
44
45
Ibid., 74–75.
the biblical prophets and that belief in Jesus is harmonious with Jewish theology?”46 Space does
not allow us to rehearse other examples, but Tyson concludes that the writer of Acts has
produced “an engaging narrative that responds, almost point by point, to the Marcionite
challenge.”47
Tyson also sets the final redaction of the gospel of Luke within a Marcionite setting. He
views Marcion’s gospel, also called the Evangelion, as stemming from a proto-Lukan gospel that
the writer of canonical Luke would have also adopted sometime in the early second century.
Two, if not three different versions of the third gospel, therefore, circulated in the second
century.48 The proto-Lukan gospel presumably began at Luke 3:1, which certainly looks like the
opening to a gospel text when one considers how Mark begins his gospel. Luke 3:1 would have
also opened Marcion’s gospel. The first two chapters of canonical Luke, which narrate Jesus’s
birth, are secondary and were added by Luke.49 They show linguistic and thematic differences
with the rest of Luke-Acts. The treatment of Judaism and the Jews is incredibly positive in these
two chapters, highlighting the human birth of Jesus, his Jewish heritage, and commitment to his
own people. They were included out of a motivation to challenge Marcionite Christianity.50
Whoever added these first two chapters may have also redacted other parts of proto-Luke,
including Luke 24 with its emphasis on Jesus’s fulfillment of Jewish prophecies. Tyson,
therefore, conceives of the unity of Luke and Acts differently than the more conventional
understanding that might view Luke and Acts as two volumes authored by the same writer. For
Tyson, the core of Luke—chapters 3–23—was penned prior to Marcion and by someone other
than the author of Acts. Marcion is to be credited for instigating the production of Luke-Acts in
46
Ibid., 69.
47
Ibid., 76.
48
Ibid., 79.
49
Ibid., 92.
50
Ibid., 100.
its canonical form.
Some scholars now include Marcion’s gospel in their treatment of the Synoptic
Problem.51 Accepting Markan priority, Matthias Klinghardt views Marcion’s gospel as a re-
edited version of Mark. Luke’s gospel stems from Marcion’s gospel, which also influenced the
shape of the gospel of Matthew. Luke also consulted Matthew when redacting his gospel. This
proposal seeks, among other things, to solve the infamous problem with the “minor agreements”
between Matthew and Luke against Mark, perhaps the greatest challenge to the existence of Q,
itself a hypothetical document, by ascribing their mutual dependence on Marcion’s gospel.
Although Klinghardt does not think that the Evangelion and canonical Luke both derive from a
proto-Lukan text, he agrees with Tyson and Knox that Luke is anti-Marcionite.52
In his recent book, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Markus Vinzent
takes Marcionite influence on the formation of the gospels to unprecedented levels.53 Marcion’s
gospel did not simply precede the gospel of Luke. It is the mother of all gospels! Marcion was
the inventor of the gospel genre, the first to compose a narrative interwoven with Jesus sayings
and other materials. In Vinzent’s estimation, there is “no indication that Marcion had simply
picked up an already existing text,” be it a proto-Lukan gospel or a Markan text.54 Vinzent even
traces the incremental steps leading to this unprecedented publication. First, Marcion intended
that his gospel be used only among his pupils. Nevertheless, a rough draft of Marcion’s gospel
somehow leaked to the public. This occurred before Marcion had time to edit his gospel to his
51
Matthias Klinghardt, “Markion vs. Lukas: Pladoyer fur die Wiederaufnahme eines alten Falles,” NTS 52 (2006):
484–513; idem, “The Marcionite Gospel and the Synoptic Gospel: A New Suggestion,” NovT 50 (2008): 1–27;
idem, “‘Gesetz’ bei Markion und Lukas,” in Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift
für Christoph zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Dieter Sänger and Matthias Konradt, NTOA 57 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2006), 99–128.
52
Klinghardt, “Markion vs. Lukas,” 508.
53
Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, Studia Patristica Supplement 2 (Leuven:
Peeters, 2014). The book builds on his equally provocative study: Markus Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection in Early
Christianity and the Making of the New Testament (Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2011).
54
Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, 106.
liking. And once this unauthorized version circulated, it was copied and “Judaized” by the
authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who all harmonized the gospel with the Law and the
Prophets. In response to the plagiarizing of his work, Marcion officially published his own
gospel, the Antitheses, and the Apostolikon (Marcion’s collection and edition of Pauline
epistles). This official publication marked the birth of Marcion’s “New Testament,”55 which also
possibly stimulated the composition of the Acts of the Apostles.56
What are we to make of these recent claims that come at a time when studies on Marcion
are very much in vogue?57 First, there is no warrant not to consider Marcion’s gospel in any
examination of the Synoptic Problem. Little trust can be placed in the claims of Tertullian and
Epiphanius that Marcion “mutilated” Luke’s gospel—a charge that Marcion and his followers
would simply throw back at their opponents claiming they had altered Marcion’s gospel. Given
the fluidity of all gospel texts during the first two centuries, it should surely not surprise anyone
to discover some textual emendations in Marcion’s gospel.58 But the available evidence does not
55
Ibid., 97–100. Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 186, notes the anachronism in speaking of a “New Testament”
during Marcion’s time, as Marcion’s adversaries did not “credit Marcion with holding his ‘Gospel’ and
‘Apostolikon’ together in the way that they themselves were doing with their authoritative counterparts, as a single
‘New Testament.’ This contrasts with modern discussion, which often has concentrated on whether Marcion
initiated the idea of a ‘New Testament,’ namely the combination of new authoritative writings of different genres
into a single, separate, corpus; that he did so has routinely been seen as the converse of his supposed ‘rejection of the
Old Testament.’ However such models are too precise and introduce fixed concepts that are anachronistic both for
Marcion and for his opponents. The initial charges against him were that he denigrated the creator or the one
‘spoken about in the Law and the prophets’; the defence by his opponents of the essential harmony between ‘Old
Covenant’ and ‘New Covenant,’ and their complaint that Marcion sought to establish a division between these, go
hand in hand. Hence, the model and the language are theirs, especially as increasingly these ‘covenants’ come to be
conceptualised as documents.”
56
Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, 73, 100, 186, 281–82.
57
It should be noted that various readings of Luke in light of Marcion were proposed in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries by the likes of Johann Salomo Semler, F. C. Albert Schwelger, Albrecht Ritschl, and F. C.
Baur. Useful surveys on the history of research can be found in BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 78–92 and
Dieter T. Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 49 (Leiden: Brill,
2015), 7–45.
58
Luke 16:17 “one tittle of my words” (rather than “one tittle of the law”) would have certainly proved more
congenial to Marcionite theology. The same would be true for Luke 23:2, which in Marcion’s gospel probably
included the phrase, “destroying the Law and the Prophets,” missing from most, but not all, witnesses of Luke. The
wording of Luke 16:17 in Marcion’s gospel is far from certain. See Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 359–40,
while the phrase in Luke 23:2 cannot be confidently ascribed to Marcionite redaction, as it is also attested in certain
suggest that Marcion radically altered the gospel at his disposal according to his liking. Quite to
the contrary, recent studies, which caution against the usage of ideological criteria for
reconstructing Marcion’s gospel, stress that Marcion’s gospel contained numerous “Judaic”
passages that were not omitted even if they did not align neatly with Marcionite theology. For
example, Marcion’s gospel apparently had Jesus implicitly affirm Torah observance in his
exchange with the lawyer on the question of obtaining eternal life (Luke 10:28).59 Like the
gospel of Luke, the Evangelion also presented Jesus defending his approach to the Sabbath in a
Jewish fashion without forthrightly denying its observance.60 Marcion, then, like his “proto-
orthodox” contenders, encountered gospel traditions that presented opportunities and challenges
for promoting various theological agendas.
Likewise, too much cannot be built upon Marcion’s own pronouncements on the
formation of the Gospels—pronouncements that are only partially retrievable from reports
preserved by Marcion’s adversaries. While Marcion and his followers could accuse other
Christians of distorting his gospel, these accusations, like the patristic ones, must be measured
with the same degree of caution. Tertullian casts the controversy as an either-or situation,
claiming that only his or Marcion’s gospel can be authentic (Marc. 4.4.1). But this is a false
witnesses to Luke.
59
Following the reconstruction of Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 421, who aims as best possible to
reconstruct the exact wording of Marcion’s gospel, and BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 75, who only seeks to
recover its basic contents.
60
According to Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 425, Marcion’s gospel very likely included Luke 13:16, “this
daughter of Abraham…whom Satan has bound” (cf. BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 76). Likewise, Marcion’s
text also contained a comparison to David used to defend Jesus’s approach to the Sabbath (Luke 6:3). See Roth, The
Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 414. Cf. BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 75–76. It is intriguing whether Marcion’s
text reported that David entered the sanctuary of Nob on the Sabbath, as suggested by Tertullian, Marc. 4.12.5. If
this is the case, it would constitute the first (Jewish) reference, attested in later rabbinic texts (b. Menah. 95b; Yalqut
§ 130 on 1 Sam 21:5), that David fled from Saul on the Sabbath. BeDuhn accepts Tertullian’s testimony (pp. 135–
36). Roth, without mentioning the Jewish sources, is confident that Marcion’s gospel contained no reference to the
Sabbath in Luke 6:3, ascribing its intrusion instead to Tertullian’s oversight or tendentiousness (p. 195). Credit then
would have to go to Tertullian for being the first we know to note that a Sabbath setting for the Nob incident would
have strengthened Jesus’s halakhic argument. For a discussion on Jesus’s Jewish approach to the Sabbath in Luke
6:3 and 13:16, see Isaac W. Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE: Reading Matthew and Luke-Acts as Jewish Texts,
WUNT 355 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 102–5, 132–38.
premise set up on rhetorical grounds for apologetical purposes. In any case, as BeDuhn points
out, when Tertullian alludes to Marcion’s instigation that others adulterated his gospel, he may
not have had in mind a written text at all. The term “gospel” continued to refer to a religious
message in the second century rather than a written text, and Marcion’s own attempt to codify
the gospel in written form may have originated precisely from a concern to stabilize gospel
traditions circulating during his time.61
Ideally, solutions to the Synoptic Problem should be grounded on textual evidence and
best account for the complex literary relationships between the Synoptics. Alas, the recovery of
the exact wording of the complete, original text of the Evangelion will forever elude us unless
some extraordinary finding will unearth new texts. No original copy of Marcion’s gospel
survives history. And even after diligent care and effort, the only retrievable passages stem not
from the original gospel of Marcion but from Marcionite editions of the Evangelion that
Tertullian and Epiphanius possessed, texts that Marcion’s followers may have further redacted.62
The circulation of multiple versions of Marcion’s gospel, therefore, must be reckoned with.
Interestingly, the versions of the Evangelion attested in Tertullian and Epiphanius contain
passages that show signs of harmonization with Mark and especially Matthew. Tertullian and
Epiphanius’s copies of the Evangelion vary, furthermore, in their harmonization with Mark and
Matthew. BeDuhn takes this variation to mean that Marcion did not produce a single original
edition of the Evangelion with one set of harmonizations. Rather, he adopted a gospel text
existing in multiple copies that included various signs of harmonization persisting in their
transmission up until the release of the first edition of the Evangelion.63 Those who posit that
61
BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 33, 68.
62
This matter is acknowledged by Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 78–79, n. 78.
63
BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 90. Consideration, however, must be given to Tertullian’s and Epiphanius’s
citation habits. As noted by Judith M. Lieu, “Marcion and the Synoptic Problem,” in New Studies in the Synoptic
Problem: Oxford Conference, April 2008: Essays in Honour of Christopher M. Tuckett, ed. Christopher M. Tuckett,
Luke’s gospel derives from Marcion’s gospel must consider the evidence of harmonization, as
Luke occasionally displays more original readings where the Evangelion seems secondary.
Vinzent provides a preliminary textual comparison of the Synoptics and the Evangelion.
He claims:
very often where Marcion is missing, our three Synoptics are at variance, either entirely,
or almost entirely as in the birth stories, but as soon as we know of verses which are
attested for in Marcion, the Synoptics not only start getting closer, but they are often
literally identical—following Marcion word by word, sometimes only with minimal,
theological corrections.64
This rule of thumb does not work consistently, though, as Vinzent himself admits. For example,
greater textual correspondence exists between Luke and the Evangelion in Luke 3:1 where one
would have expected the Synoptics to align closer with one another. Vinzent downplays this
datum by claiming that “we cannot make much of the immediate opening.”65 He notes instead
that right after the opening, all three Synoptics quote identically Exod 23:20 and Mal 3:1, as does
Marcion’s gospel, according to Vinzent’s reconstruction. Initially, this observation would seem
to confirm Vinzent’s proposition that the Synoptics converge when the same material is present
in the Evangelion. Yet the Synoptics also all quote Isa 40:3, which is unattested in Marcion’s
gospel. Here Vinzent acknowledges that a literary relation where Marcion serves as the source is
out of the question. Nevertheless, he contends that following the quotation of Isa 40:3 “our three
Synoptics continue with an extraordinary mixture of parallels and differences, and this remains
true until we hit the next text of Marcion, namely that Jesus ‘began teaching in the
et al., BETL 239 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 731–51 [737], there was a tendency in patristic citation for the text of
Matthew to influence quotations of Luke and Mark. Cf. Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 283–85.
64
Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the Gospels, 263.
65
Ibid., 272.
synagogue.’”66 Yet Mark 1:21 and Luke 4:31 agree with one another that Jesus visited the
synagogue of Capernaum on the Sabbath, against Marcion (following Vinzent’s own
reconstruction of the Evangelion on p. 266).67 For the time being, Synoptic dependency on
Marcion awaits demonstration.68
Could at least the Acts of the Apostles have been drafted to combat Marcionism? Perhaps
a drop of anti-Marcionism can be extracted from Acts 16:7, a verse claiming that the spirit
hindered Paul from preaching in Bithynia. Acts provides no reason for the spirit’s opposition to
Paul’s movement into this area. Interestingly, Marcion is thought to have originated from this
area. He was apparently from the city of Sinope in Pontus, which had been annexed with
Bithynia by the Romans. Tyson speculates that Acts intends here to deny any connection
between Paul and Marcion by insinuating that a Pauline mission never reached Marcion’s
homeland.69 His case for viewing the first two chapters of Luke as secondary additions, perhaps
included by the writer of Acts, also seems strong. As noted earlier, Luke 3:1 certainly does read
like an opening to a gospel. Yet the first two chapters of Luke affirm Jewish hopes for restoration
and contain no tangible allusions to Marcionism. Herein lies the major weakness in any attempt
at reading Acts (or Luke) historically against a Marcionite backdrop. Besides reckoning with the
tentative dating of Acts to the second century, which is far from certain, one wonders how it
66
Ibid., 272.
67
The sequence of events in the Evangelion differs, furthermore, from canonical Luke. According to the
Evangelion, Jesus’s visit to Nazareth (4:16–30) presumably followed his stay in Capernaum (4:31–35). See Roth,
The Test of Marcion’s Gospel, 186–87, 412–13.
68
Michael Wolter, Das Lukasevangelium, HNT 5 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 3 and more recently Roth, The
Text of Marcion’s Gospel, 163–64, 437–38 have pointed out that the formulation, ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ
εὐαγγελίζεται, which is attested only in Luke and Acts, most likely appeared in Marcion’s gospel in 4:43 and 16:16.
Were other Lukan phrases to be found in the Evangelion, Marcionite precedence would be seriously undermined,
although the identification of distinctively Lukan formulations hinges on the assumption of the redactional unity of
Luke-Acts. In light of Walters (see fn. 2 above), BeDuhn, and Tyson’s work, Lukan unity might warrant some
reconsideration that takes into account a more complex development for Luke and Acts.
69
Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 77. But cf. Acts 2:9 (Jews from Pontus and Asia heard the good news on
Pentecost); 18:2 (Aquila, a follower of Jesus, was a native of Pontus). Bithynia is also distinguished from Pontus in
1 Pet 1:1.
would be possible solely from an internal reading of Acts to infer that there once existed
Christians who believed that a demiurge allegedly spoken of in the Jewish scriptures created this
world, that these same Christians evaluated their worldly existence negatively and thought that
the creator god was altogether envious, severe, and cruel, while maintaining, on the other hand,
that a hitherto unknown god, who was essentially good, had sent Christ in order to snatch human
souls away from the shackles of their earthly prison.70 Detections of anti-Marcionism in Luke-
Acts seem obvious only after one learns about the Marcionite phenomenon from external
sources.71
Pan-Marcionite readings of Luke-Acts, like second-century datings of Luke-Acts, also
risk missing the greater points that are explicitly raised in Acts, not least issues concerning
Jewish-Christian relations and Torah observance. With respect to Acts 21:21, Tyson infers that
the author of Acts may have been trying to refute Marcionite Christians who claimed that Paul
did not observe the Torah.72 Perhaps this was the case, although we can imagine Acts responding
to other “radical Paulinists” who made similar claims. In any case, Acts 21:18–26 notes that
Jewish rather than Gentile followers of Jesus questioned Paul’s faithfulness to Judaism. These
Jewish disciples of Jesus, all zealous for the Law according to Acts, heard that Paul allegedly
taught Jews throughout the Diaspora to forsake their ancestral customs. These incriminations are,
furthermore, uttered by Jacob (also known as James), the brother of Jesus—the head of the
70
Cf. BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 86–87: “Since other pseudonymous writings of the period, while avoiding
anachronistically naming Marcion, direct more or less transparent attacks upon him, why would a mid-second-
century redaction of Luke not similarly offer prophetic criticism of future heretics who will deny that God is the
creator or that Christ had a physical resurrection? It is true that adding more quotes from the Old Testament, and
certain elements of the resurrection narrative, may subtly work in this direction, but subtlety was not a hallmark of
most second-century Christian literature.”
71
Cf. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic, 430: “As has been indicated already, that Acts was composed as a
companion to Luke, itself perhaps extended, in opposition to Marcion lacks any certain proof; any polemic is
remarkably muted and requires considerable eisegesis to detect it, although Irenaeus and his successors swiftly
found its benefits for their own polemics.”
72
Jewish ekklesia in Jerusalem and Torah observant Jewish disciple of Jesus par excellence.
Similarly, when Paul entered the temple of Jerusalem accompanied by Jewish followers of Jesus
to demonstrate his fidelity to Judaism, Acts specifies that Jews, this time from Asia Minor,
accused him of desecrating its holy precincts (21:27). If anything, these neglected passages, of
significant import,73 shows how the writer of Acts was not only concerned about the perceptions
on Paul held by Jews and Jewish followers of Jesus but was also sensitive to their concern to
preserve a distinctive Jewish lifestyle. If one can pierce through the world narrated in Acts
21:18–26 to the social world of the narrator, there one might see Jews and Jewish followers of
Jesus living after 70 CE still exerting a certain influence on the Jesus movement sufficient
enough to impress the writer of Acts to rehabilitate Paul in response to their concerns.
This proposal, I would add, fits better within a paradigm that maintains ongoing
exchanges after 70 CE between followers of Jesus and other Jews, a continued reflection the
Jewish heritage of the ekklesia, and a sizeable presence of Jesus followers committed to their
Jewish identity. I take Luke-Acts, besides Matthew and other documents penned after 70 CE, as
evidence supporting my proposal. While the mission to the Gentiles is a theme that is hinted at in
Luke and appears in Acts, its importance has perhaps been exaggerated at the cost of
appreciating the equally, if not more prominent, Lukan interest in the ultimate destiny of the
Jewish people. A rising tide of scholars have signaled various Jewish aspects of Luke-Acts that
have hereto been neglected, suggesting that Luke-Acts not only addressed a Gentile audience but
also took into consideration Jewish concerns.74 In a forthcoming work, Kinzer notes that out of
73
See David Rudolph, “Luke’s Portrait of Paul in Acts 21:17–26,” in The Early Reception of Paul the Second
Temple Jew, ed. Isaac W. Oliver and Gabriele Boccaccini (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, forthcoming).
74
See Kinzer’s piece in this same volume as well as Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE; Matthew Thiessen,
Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jocelyn
McWhirter, Rejected Prophets: Jesus and His Witnesses in Luke-Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014). Ray Pickett,
“Luke and Empire: An Introduction,” in Luke-Acts and Empire: Essays in Honor of Robert L. Brawley, ed. David
Rhoads, David Esterline, Jae Won Lee, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 151 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick,
2011), 1–22.
the twenty-two speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, sixteen are directed primarily to Jewish
audiences, be they outside or within the ekklesia. Only five speeches are directed to Gentile
audiences, and even then, only two of them actually involve proclamations of the gospel message
to Gentiles (4:15–17; 17:22–31). This figure is surprising, as Kinzer notes, “given the traditional
assumption that Acts has as its main concern the ekklesia’s transition from being a Jewish to a
Gentile entity with a mission to Gentiles and not to Jews.”75 The traditional assumption Kinzer
alludes to professes that Jewish followers of Jesus played an inconsequential role in shaping the
Jesus movement in the generations after Peter, Paul, and James, and that Luke-Acts retains no
hope for the salvation of the Jewish people. Yet other writings penned after 70 CE besides Luke-
Acts, such as the gospel of Matthew or even later the Dialogue with Trypho (discussed above),
complicate these assumptions. Many followers of Jesus continued to flesh out their relationship
to Judaism and mainstream Jewry, some affirming the Jewish affiliation of the Jesus movement
while looking forward to the day when other Jews would join their ranks and all Israel would be
saved. Followers of Jesus who were committed to Jewish ancestral traditions remained a vibrant
force in the period between the two major Jewish revolts.
To conclude our discussion on the relationship between Luke-Acts and Marcion, we may
we wonder whether Luke and Marcion were active in different social settings. Marcion may have
originated from a community that was predominantly non-Jewish with only loose connections to
Judaism. 76 It is almost impossible to produce any specific details on Luke’s background, but his
interest in the salvation of Israel and remarkable acquaintance with the Jewish tradition suggest a
certain kind of interaction within a milieu that included Jews or at least took Jewish concerns
75
Mark S. Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the
Land of Promise (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming), 171.
76
Cf. BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 6. Vinzent, “Marcion the Jew,” argues that Marcion was Jewish, based on
his hermeneutical approach to the Jewish scriptures, but, as Judith Lieu notes, this gives too much credit to
Tertullian’s polemical strategies, which seek to create an unholy alliance between Marcion and the Jews for
rhetorical effect.
seriously into consideration. It was primarily Luke’s interaction with Judaism and other Jews,
not the threat of Marcionism, that led him to affirm Jewish hopes and aspirations.77
A Short Epilogue on Jewish-Christian Relations: Would Christianity Have Been Less Anti-
Jewish Had Marcion Prevailed?
Some have wondered what the world would have looked like had Marcionism rather than
Orthodoxy prevailed over the Christian world. More particularly, how would it have impacted
Jewish-Christian relations?78 One possibility Bart Ehrman envisages is heightened hostilities,
since Marcion apparently hated all things Jewish. Just as likely, though, in Ehrman’s opinion is a
scenario where Marcionite Christians would have simply ignored Jews rather than persecute
them. They would not have perceived Judaism as a threat, given Marcion’s antithetical
opposition between his Gospel and the Jewish faith. Simply put, Christianity would have nothing
in common with Judaism and there would therefore be no need to engage or refute it.79 Tyson
nuances Marcion’s attitude toward Judaism. In his opinion, Marcion cannot be simply tagged as
anti-Jewish. He considered the Jewish scriptures to be divinely inspired, albeit by a lesser god,
and did not question their historical or prophetic accuracy, agreeing with the Jews that they
predicted the coming of a messiah other than Jesus. Marcion, therefore, shared with the Jews a
literal understanding of the Jewish scriptures. He may have pitied them because they were under
the power of the demiurge, although it is impossible to know whether this attitude would have
77
BeDuhn, The First New Testament, 91–92, may be right, therefore, in viewing the gospel of Luke and the
Evangelion as alternative versions of a more primitive gospel that were adapted for primarily Jewish and primarily
Gentile readers, respectively. At the very least, Luke anticipated a mixed audience composed of Jewish and Gentile
Christian readers in writing Luke-Acts.
78
On an anecdotal note, I am surprised at how many undergraduate students in my Hebrew Bible and New
Testament courses contrast the God of the “Old Testament,” deemed to be overly harsh and just, with the God of the
New Testament, whom they equate with love, acceptance, and peace. Knowing nothing about Marcion (and,
apparently, the numerous passages in the New Testament welcoming divine wrath and eternal torment), they almost
conceive of two gods separated by the Old and New Testaments.
79
Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 111.
translated into anti-Jewish resentment. In the end, Tyson agrees with Ehrman that “benign
neglect” of Judaism fits better with Marcionite principles.80
Without a travel machine and altering the course of history, it is of course impossible to
determine what kind of outcome would have ensued in Jewish-Christian relations should
Marcionism have won the day. We can, however, look back to a period in modern history when
Marcionite affections reemerged, and consider their impact on Jewish-Christian relations. The
life of Franz Rosenzweig presents an interesting case of one Jew’s initial attraction to and
eventual refutation of Marcion in the context of modern Jewish-Christian relations. In an
intriguing work that takes into account new evidence on the life of the Jewish thinker, Benjamin
Pollock claims that Rosenzweig was drawn to a Marcionite worldview before he eventually
made the lifelong commitment to remain a Jew. Rosenzweig did not convert, as is commonly
believed, from a position of contemporary academic relativism to a position of “faith” after that
formative night-conversation he held with Eugen Rosenstock and his cousins Hans and Rudolf
Ehrenberg on July 7, 1913 (the “Leipziger Nachtgespräch”). Rather, Pollock argues that
Rosenzweig entered that conversation already in a position of faith. But the faith Rosenzweig
held at that point was expressly “Marcionite.”81
Interestingly enough, Pollock points out that “Marcion’s vision of a Christian canon that
could stand free of the Old Testament had gained renewed traction in Rosenzweig’s day, and
precisely among some of those whom Rosenzweig associated with Marcion’s theology.”82
Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern liberal theology, had already questioned the
canonical status of the Old Testament, citing Marcion’s decision to discard the Jewish scriptures
80
Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts, 126–27.
81
Benjamin Pollock. Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2014), 3.
82
Ibid., 111.
as an exemplary precedent.83 But no one did more to uncover and promote the legacy of Marcion
than one of Rosenzweig’s contemporaries, Adolf von Harnack, whose work has influenced
scholarly studies on Marcion up to this day. Harnack did not hide his admiration for Marcion, the
only Christian in his eyes who truly grasped the implications of Paul’s gospel. Like
Schleiermacher, Harnack also called for the removal of the Old Testament from the Christian
Bible. In his opus magnum on Marcion, he states:
[T]he rejection of the Old Testament in the second century was a mistake which the great
church rightly avoided; to maintain it in the sixteenth century was a fate which the
Reformation was not yet able to escape; but still to preserve it in Protestantism as a
canonical document since the nineteenth century is the consequence of a religious and
ecclesiastical crippling.84
Unsurprisingly, Harnack did not hold a very favorable view of Judaism, which he
believed had been rightly superseded by Christianity, although his prejudice toward Judaism and
Jews paled in comparison to the racist anti-Semitism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, another
fan of Marcion.85
After his return to the Jewish fold, Pollock shows how Rosenzweig consciously defined
his vision of Judaism in opposition to Marcionism. The God of revelation is also the God of
creation, contrary to Marcion who would split God into two. Judaism and Christianity find
83
See Paul Capetz, “Friedrich Schleiermacher on the Old Testament,” HTR 102. 3 (2009): 297–325 [300], for a
nuanced perspective on Schleiermacher’s views on the Old Testament and Judaism. He argues that Schleiermacher,
like Marcion, understood that the Jewish scriptures did not foretell the arrival of Christianity. Schleiermacher,
however, was simply acknowledging the initial findings historical-criticism, which appreciated the meaning of the
Hebrew scriptures in their original settings and thereby unveiled the forced Christological applications of Old
Testament passages to the person of Jesus. However, in a certain way, Schleiermacher, like Marcion, exaggerated
the differences between Judaism and Christianity, admitting only an external historical link between the two.
84
Adolf von Harnack, Marcion and the Gospel of the Alien God, trans. John E. Steely and Lyle D. Bierma (Eugene,
OR: Wipft and Stock, 1990); trans. of Marcion: Das Evangelium von fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur
Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig: J.C. Henrichs, 1924).
85
On these two and their views on Jews and Judaism, see Wolfram Kinzig, Harnack, Marcion und das Judentum.
Nebst einer Kommentierten Edition des Briefwechsels Adolf von Harnacks mit Houston Stewart Chamberlain,
Arbeiten zu Kirchenund Theologiegeschichte 13 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2004).
themselves on a path that anticipates and requires the redemption of this world. Jews and
Christians, therefore, cannot escape or negate but must engage this world. Indeed, for
Rosenzweig, Christianity always risks succumbing to the Marcionite enticement that promises
withdrawal from this earth to an otherworldly portal, insisting that salvation has already come
while forgetting that the actual world still stands in need of redemption. Hence the need for Jews
to remain Jews so that they can remind their follow Christians of their redemptive duties. No
wonder then that Rosenzweig denounces in The Star of Redemption “the disguised enemies of
Christianity, from the Gnostics to the present day, who wanted to take from it its ‘Old
Testament,’”86 and expresses gratitude in a letter to his mother that the early church rejected
Marcion’s narrow canon and his world-denying theology.87 Judaism and Marcionism are two
irreconcilable opposites, the former anticipates the redemption of this world, the other abandons
it altogether.88 In Judaism, Rosenzweig found reconciliation with a world in which he initially
felt estranged and even tempted to forsake.
The preceding reflection on the momentary rise of Marcionism in the early twentieth
century was not meant to demonstrate that Marcionism could be more or less anti-Jewish than
Christianity. Although the Church’s refusal to reject the Jewish scriptures has historically
86
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2005), 437; trans. of Der Stern der Erlösung (Kauffmann: Frankfurt am Main, 1921). Cited by Pollock, Franz
Rosenzweig’s Conversions, 112.
87
Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions, 111.
88
Ironically as Pollock, Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions, 122, points out Rosenzweig did conceive of Judaism as
otherworldly, having abandoned the earthly political stage after the year 70. However, Pollock notes the critical
difference for Rosenzweig between Judaism and Marcionism on this point: “Rosenzweig’s Jew may deny the
worldly, and she may set her sights on a life of intimacy with God beyond the world—just like the Marcionist. But
the beyond toward which Rosenzweig’s Jew directs her sights represents the future of the world. As such, the
redemption that Judaism anticipates is not the ‘stiff Überworld’ Rosenzweig attributes to the Gnostic, but rather
precisely a ‘demand on the world’ that it realize the future that the Jewish people anticipates.”
provoked unfortunate controversy between Jews and Christians, it has nonetheless provided a
common bond enabling the two to reflect on their shared heritage and missions in a way that
Marcionism can never offer. At a time when the current climate threatens global existence, it is
hoped that Jews and Christians, indeed all humans, will not choose to escape or deny the world
but engage and repair it before it is too late.

Are Luke and Acts Anti Marcionite Pre PR

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Are Luke and Acts Anti Marcionite Pre PR

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Are Luke and Acts Anti-Marcionite?

Roman occupation ultimately failed.

The Second-Century Dating of Acts

The Pauline Epistles and the Reception of Paul’s Jewishness in Acts

elliptic instigators of Judea who wish to impose circumcision upon Gentiles.

teachings independent of whether Luke read Galatians in light of 1 Corinthians. Elsewhere, I

Paul as an apostle to Jew and Gentile alike.

held certain reservations regarding the ecclesiological model propounded by Ignatius. 23

Josephus and Luke

of John the Baptist as a “Hellenistic moralist” (Luke 3:10–14; Ant. 18.117).29

indeed Luke knew Josephus’s writings, to suit his literary aims.

separation between Judaism and Christianity had materialized.33

I am aware that my interpretation of Luke-Acts contrasts with the more classic

historical data or “background” information. It is worthwhile comparing their theological and

Luke-Acts and the Marcionite Debate

itself a hypothetical document, by ascribing their mutual dependence on Marcion’s gospel.

possibly stimulated the composition of the Acts of the Apostles.56

for promoting various theological agendas.

traditions circulating during his time.61

literally identical—following Marcion word by word, sometimes only with minimal,

synagogue of Capernaum on the Sabbath, against Marcion (following Vinzent’s own

Marcion awaits demonstration.68

Pan-Marcionite readings of Luke-Acts, like second-century datings of Luke-Acts, also

force in the period between the two major Jewish revolts.

Jewish Had Marcion Prevailed?

Jewish-Christian relations?78 One possibility Bart Ehrman envisages is heightened hostilities,

neglect” of Judaism fits better with Marcionite principles.80

eventual refutation of Marcion in the context of modern Jewish-Christian relations. In an

held at that point was expressly “Marcionite.”81

Bible. In his opus magnum on Marcion, he states:

it altogether.88 In Judaism, Rosenzweig found reconciliation with a world in which he initially

felt estranged and even tempted to forsake.

but engage and repair it before it is too late.

You might also like