Event · AD 144 · Rome
Marcion expelled at Rome, AD 144
Marcion expelled at Rome — founds a rival church and canon
**The archive records this as the event that forced the canon into the open.**
Marcion of Sinope taught that the God of the Hebrew scriptures was a different and inferior being from the Father of Jesus Christ, and drew the conclusion: the Old Testament is not Christian scripture. He then did what no one had done before — **he published a fixed list of the books that were**: a shortened Luke and ten Pauline epistles, edited to remove what he took to be Judaising corruption.
**That is the significant fact, and it is a negative one.** Before Marcion the churches used a body of writings without a formal boundary; after him a boundary was the only possible answer. Every canon list the archive holds afterwards — the Muratorian fragment, Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius’s letter of 367 which the archive holds as its own event — is downstream of the problem he created.
## The witnesses, and one first-hand exchange
**Irenaeus** reports the expulsion and preserves what may be the only recorded meeting: Polycarp, asked by Marcion “Do you know me?”, answered **“I know thee, the first-born of Satan.”** Polycarp had known John; Marcion died in the 160s. **The archive holds both men**, and this is the single sharpest exchange in its records.
**Justin Martyr**, writing about AD 155 while Marcion was alive, reports that he was **“still teaching”** and had followers “among every nation” — a contemporary and hostile witness to the scale of the movement, which is better evidence of it than any later heresiology.
**Tertullian** wrote five books against him fifty years later, and it is largely through the arguments of his opponents that Marcion’s own text is reconstructed — **his works are entirely lost**. The archive states that: everything known of what he wrote comes from men refuting it.
The sources for this event
Every source the record rests on, with what it says and what it cannot carry.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.4
c. AD 180[Irenaeus records the encounter at Rome: Marcion meeting Polycarp and asking “Do you know me?”, and Polycarp answering **“I know thee, the first-born of Satan.”** Both men are held in this archive, and Polycarp had known John. Irenaeus also gives Marcion’s doctrine — two gods, the Hebrew scriptures rejected — and his mutilation of Luke and the Pauline epistles. **Marcion’s own writings are entirely lost**; everything known of them comes from the men refuting them, and the archive says so rather than presenting the reconstruction as his text.]
Irenaeus, *Against Heresies* — held in this library. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers 1, public domain.
Read the source text →Justin Martyr, First Apology 26, 58
c. AD 155[Justin reports that Marcion of Pontus is **“even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples”**, that he has caused many of every nation to blaspheme, and that he teaches a God greater than the Creator. **A contemporary and hostile witness to the movement’s scale** — written while the man was still working, which makes it better evidence of the reach than any later heresiology.]
Justin Martyr, *First Apology* — held in this library. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers 1, public domain. Written c. AD 155, while Marcion was alive.
Read the source text →Figures in this event (4)
Scholarship
- Marcion and the Making of a HereticJudith M. Lieu, 2015On the lost writings and the reconstruction problem.