Tertullian’s Preface to Marcion’s Gospel

Over the past few years, scholarship has taken a new interest in the

study of Marcion and particularly in his Gospel. Most recently several

attempts have been made at reconstructing this Gospel, and its role in

the Synoptic question is being discussed. One of the most detailed and

crucial information that we possess derives from Tertullian’s preface to

Marcion’s Gospel and his Antitheses with which Marcion

himself introduced and defended his Gospel against earlier misuses. The

present monograph first looks at Tertullian’s ways of prefacing his

works to then move to his preface of his antimarcionite writings,

especially Adversus Marcionem, to then give the text, translation

and a close reading and interpretation of his introduction to the Antitheses

and Marcion’s Gospel in the extended preface to book IV of Adversus

Marcionem. As a result, the reader will get a better understanding

of both Tertullian’s literary response to Marcion and Marcion’s Antitheses

and his Gospel, but also gain glimpses of what despite all the rhetoric

historically might have provoked Tertullian’s response, namely more

intellectual proximity between the two interlocutors than the battle on

the surface would intimate.