Modern scholarship has long operated under the assumption that Marcion’s Evangelicon was a shortened redaction of the Gospel of Luke. This assumption, rooted in the polemics of Marcion’s opponents rather than evidence, has increasingly been scrutinized. A closer examination of ancient witnesses and textual fragments reveals that Marcion’s Gospel may have been a “Super Gospel”—a primitive and more expansive Gospel text from which later traditions like Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John drew or diverged.
A key piece of evidence in this reconstruction is a variant reading of Matthew 5:17—a verse that asserts Jesus’ fidelity to the Law in the canonical form. Yet in the Marcionite Gospel, attested by Adamantius and Isidore of Pelusium, the verse appears inverted, proclaiming Christ’s mission to destroy the Law. This reading is central to Marcionite theology and supports the thesis that the Evangelicon contained variant or parallel forms of sayings later scattered and normalized within the fourfold Gospel canon.
The canonical reading of Matthew 5:17 says:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”
But both Adamantius and Isidore of Pelusium report that Marcion’s Gospel preserved a reversed form of this saying:
“Think not that I am come to fulfil the law, or the prophets: I am not come to fulfil, but to destroy.”
This reading is theologically Marcionite and textually distinct, and it does not appear in any known version of canonical Matthew or Luke. Its presence in the Evangelicon shows that Marcion’s Gospel included sayings parallel to Matthew, not drawn from Luke. If Marcion had merely edited Luke, as Tertullian claimed, such verses could not exist in his text.
The Evangelicon as a Source Text, Not a Derivative
This example demonstrates that the Evangelicon was not a derivative of Luke, but a source text or parallel tradition that predated or ran alongside the development of the fourfold Gospel.
- It contained sayings also found in Matthew, but in forms that reflect earlier or rival oral traditions.
- It did not include a nativity or genealogy but began with Jesus’s appearance at Capernaum, suggesting a mission Gospel rather than a biographical one.
- It’s Christ is not a fulfillment of prophecy, but a revealer of a new God—a theological posture completely alien to Jewish-Christian Gospels like Matthew.
Just as early Gospel sources such as Q or L were hypothesized to account for material shared across canonical texts, the Evangelicon may represent a primitive harmonizing Gospel—one that preserved multiple strands of oral or written traditions before the later editorial divisions hardened into the four Gospels known today.
Implications for Gospel Origins
Matthew-like material in Marcion’s Gospel—such as this variant of 5:17—cannot be explained if Marcion merely cut parts out of Luke. Instead, it suggests that Marcion had access to a broader and more fluid Gospel tradition that later fractured into the canonical accounts we now treat as fixed.
This challenges the entire ecclesial narrative that Marcion was a mutilator of the text. Conversely, Marcion may have preserved readings that were older, purer, or more theologically consistent with Christ’s original teachings as Paul remembered.
Conclusion: A Gospel of Authority, Not Abridgment
The Evangelicon was not a redaction—it was a revelation. The variant of Matthew 5:17, preserved in the Marcionite text and attested by early witnesses, is not an anomaly—it is a key to understanding the Evangelicon as a superior, self-contained Gospel, authoritative in its own right and foundational to the true Christian faith.
The Marcionite Church of Christ continues to uphold the Evangelicon as the Gospel of the Lord, not a “synoptic option,” but the singular testimony of Christ, who came not to fulfill the Law, but to destroy it.
