This is stated clearly by Jason BeDuhn:
The place and significance of Marcion’s Gospel in the formation of New Testament literature has been obscured by the persistence of what I call the Patristic Hypothesis about its origin, namely, the idea first put forward by Irenaeus and Tertullian that Marcion created it by means of ideologically motivated editorial subtractions from Luke. [BeDuhn, Marcion’s Gospel and the New Testament: Catalyst or Consequence, NTS 63 (2015) 324]
Once we break with such assumptions and objectively examine the texts of the two gospels, it becomes immediately clear that Marcion’s Gospel cannot be an ideologically motivated redaction of Luke, for the simple reason that the two gospels are practically identical in ideology. For every position of Marcion cited to explain an omission in the text of his gospel, the latter contains any number of passages sharing the idea of the omitted passage, and in tension with Marcion’s own position. [BeDuhn, Catalyst, 324]
Close analysis of the content of Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, makes it evident that this gospel, in the words of Judith Lieu, ‘is in many ways neutral: It can only have served to inspire and support [Marcion’s] system to the extent that he interpreted it’. [BeDuhn, Catalyst, 324, citing Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic (2015) 209].
Once we break with such assumptions and objectively examine the texts of the two gospels, it becomes immediately clear that Marcion’s Gospel cannot be an ideologically motivated redaction of Luke, for the simple reason that the two gospels are practically identical in ideology. For every position of Marcion cited to explain an omission in the text of his gospel, the latter contains any number of passages sharing the idea of the omitted passage, and in tension with Marcion’s own position. [BeDuhn, Catalyst, 324]
Close analysis of the content of Marcion’s Gospel, therefore, makes it evident that this gospel, in the words of Judith Lieu, ‘is in many ways neutral: It can only have served to inspire and support [Marcion’s] system to the extent that he interpreted it’. [BeDuhn, Catalyst, 324, citing Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic (2015) 209].
It has to be allowed that it is true that for many of the positions Marcion held (or is believed to have held) there are other passages attested to be in the Evangelion that are either in serious tension with them or outright contradict them. It is also true that the Evangelion may appear neutral. This need not surprise us. If Marcion did indeed create the Evangelion primarily by removing material from Luke, it is always possible to read the words in the sense they have in Luke, though the sense they had for Marcion may be different (as Lieu acknowledges). We should also bear in mind that Marcion circulated the Evangelion together with the Antitheses, which may have played a large role in shaping how Marcion intended the Evangelion to be understood.
I intend to show in this post, however, that BeDuhn’s claim is wrong and there is indeed one idea in Luke that Marcion consistently removed and that there is no passage attested to be present in the Evangelion that contradicts it. Further, this idea is found in the Pauline letters as well but Marcion has consistently removed it so that it does not appear in the Apostolikon. The idea is that Jesus was born on earth as a human being and had Jewish ancestors and family.
Tertullians quotes Marcion and understands him as saying otherwise:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (for such is Marcion's proposition) he came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum, of course meaning from the heaven of the Creator, to which he had previously descended from his own. What then had been his course, for him to be described as first descending from his own heaven to the Creator's? (Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.7.1).
For Marcion, Jesus was a heavenly being who descended to the earthly world at Capernaum in Galilee in the fifteenth year of Tiberius. He had no terrestrial existence before that time. He had no earthly ancestors, no earthy relatives, and was not born and did not grow up on earth. There are no passages in the Apostolikon or the Evangelion that say otherwise.
THE APOSTOLIKON
The following passages that assume an earthly lineage or earthly relatives for Jesus are unattested in the Apostolikon [following Jason BeDuhn, The First New Testament (2013) 201-319]:
Gal. 1.19: But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.
Gal. 3.16: Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many; but, referring to one, “And to your offspring,” which is Christ.
Gal. 4.4: But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,
Rom 1.3 the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh
Rom 9.5: They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; 5 to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen.
Rom 15.12: and further Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles hope.”
1 Cor. 9.5 5 Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?
EVANGELION
The Evangelion lacks the first two chapters of Luke describing Jesus’ birth and infancy.
The Evangelion also lacks the material from third chapter of Luke. Luke 3.1-22 contains the John the Baptist material and the account of Jesus’ baptism. This may have been omitted (except for 3.1 a, which is placed immediately before Jesus’ descent to Capernaum in 4.31) both because it is set before the descent into Capernaum and because it is difficult to see why a being who had himself descended from heaven should need the holy spirit to descend from heaven onto him before beginning his mission.
The Evangelion lacks the genealogy in Luke 3.23-28 because Jesus had no terrestrial lineage, though, as has often been pointed out, it’s not made explicit in Luke why the lineage of Joseph would be pertinent to Jesus.
In Luke 4, the Temptation (vv 1-14) and the summary of Jesus initial activity in Galilee (vv 14-15) are both omitted, perhaps simply because they are set before Jesus arrival on earth in 4.31 and had no special interest for Marcion as inaugurations to Jesus’ mission on earth. Jesus descended to earth ready to go.
The Rejection at Nazareth of Nazareth in Luke 4.16-30 is an interesting case. If Marcion wanted to use it at all, he would have to place it after Jesus descended to earth at Capernaum in 4.31-37, so that’s what he did. Notably, the parts of the pericope ‘where he had been brought up’ and “Is not this Joseph’s son?” are not attested to be present in the Evangelion. BeDuhn includes neither in his reconstruction of the Evangelion. Klinghardt retains the latter in his, not because it is attested to be there, but because he thinks the Evangelion was the source for the other gospels which all have questions about Jesus’ family in theri versions of the Rejection at Nazareth.
POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS THAT ARE NOT REALLY EXCEPTIONS
Luke 8.19-21: 19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him for the crowd. 20 And he was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.” 21 But he said to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Epiphanius, Scholion 12: “He did not have, “His mother and his brethren,” but only, “Thy mother and thy brethren.”’ (The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I (Sects 1-46), translated by Frank Williams (2e 2009) p. 304.
Epiphanius attests to the absence of Luke 8.19, in which the narrator refers to Jesus’ mother and brothers, but had the quotation of other people referring to Jesus’ mother and brothers. Jesus’ response ceratinly does not concede that those people were indeed his mother and brothers.
Luke 11.27:As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” 28 But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
Jesus response does not concede that the woman’s assumption that he had a terrestrial mother who gave birth to him and nursed him is true.
Parenthetically, I think Luke 11.27-28 is Lukan redaction (see Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Synoptics (2012) 97-108). It is a substitution for Mark 3.31-35, which Luke has already used in its Markan location at Luke 8.19-21 (quoted above). In Mark, the saying about Jesus’ mother and brothers follows the Beelezebul pericope (Mark 3.22-30), for which Luke chooses to follow the expanded Matthean version (Matt 12.22- 32, 43-45) at Luke 11.14-26. When Luke finds the story about Jesus’ True Kindred in Matt 12.46-50, following the Return of the Unclean Spirit in Matt 12.43-45), Luke gives his own version of the Unclean Spirit in Luke 11.24-26, but then recasts the Markan mother and brothers saying in Luke in different language to avoid repetition in Luke 11.27-28. It is the same message as Mark 3.31-35, but expressed in different language (i.e., a substitution).
Luke 18.38 The blind beggar calls out to Jesus ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’
This is again and outsider’ claim that Jesus is not said to have accepted. Indeed, he later problematizes the term Son of David (as in the synoptics:
Luke 20.41 41 But he said to them, “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? 42 For David himself says in the Book of Psalms,‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, 43 till I make thy enemies a stool for thy feet.’ 44 David thus calls him Lord; so how is he his son?”
Best,
Ken
PS I grant that it is still possible for Marcionite priorists to contend that Marcion’s gospel was originally about a heavenly being who descended to earth and the canonical evangelists (and Paulin editors) subsequently added the material that gave Jesus an earthly lineage and family and existence before his descent to Capernaum. But I think BeDuhn’s claim that there would be no consistent editorial tendency in Marcion’s use of Luke and that the two gospels ‘are practically identical in ideology’ is untenable.
