The Five Books - Tertullianus against Marcion

Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. Marcionism, similar to Gnosticism, depicted the God of the Old Testament as a tyrant or demiurge. Marcion's canon rejected the entire Old Testament, along with all other epistles and gospels of the 27 book New Testament canon because they transmitted "Jewish" ideas. Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy, and written against, notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.

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BOOK I. Wherein is described the god of Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting in all the attributes of the true God. BOOK II. Wherein Tertullian shows that the Creator, or Demiurge, whom Marcion calumniated, is the true and good God. BOOK III. Wherein Christ is shown to be the Son of God, who created the world; to have been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own by a real incarnation. BOOK IV. In wich Tertullian pursues his argument that Jesus is the Christ of the Creator. He derives his proofs from St. Luke 's Gospel, that being the only historical portion of the New Testament accepted (and only partially) by Marcion. This book may almost be regarded as a commentary on St. Luke. It gives remarkable proof of Tertullian's grasp of Scripture, and admirably illustrates the position that “the Old Testament is not contrary to the New”. BOOK V.l Wherein Tertullian proves, with respect to St. Paul's Epistles, what he had proved in the preceeding book with respect to St. Luke's Gospel, that, far from being at variance, they were in perfect unison with the writings of the Old Testament, and therefore testified that the Creator was the only God, and that the Lord Jesus was His Christ.

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