And I think that what often gets missed in this citation above is that Prepon is the source for the Philosophumena's claim that the Marcionites used a gospel attributed to Mark:
When, therefore, Marcion
or some one of his hounds (= Prepon) barks against the Demiurge, and adduces reasons from a comparison of what is good and bad, we ought to say to them, that neither Paul the apostle nor Mark, he of the maimed finger, announced such (tenets).
For none of these (doctrines) has been written in the Gospel according to Mark. But is Empedocles, son of Meto, a native of Agrigentum.
And despoiled this (philosopher), and imagined that up to the present would pass undetected his transference, under the same expressions, of the arrangement of his entire heresy from Sicily into the evangelical narratives (of Mark). For bear with me, O Marcion: as
you have instituted a comparison of what is good and evil, I also to-day will institute a comparison following up your own tenets,
as you suppose them to be.
Already it would seem Prepon is in the mind of the author of the Philosophumena. He has an idea of what 'is usually' said about the Marcionites but his purpose is to reinforce the traditional notion of Marcion as a strict dualist. Notice that Marcion is said to have despoiled Empedocles so that the claim that he is a strict dualist is upheld. As such Marcion put the new things into Mark - not Prepon - and these 'new things' in Mark demonstrate or prove that he was a strict dualist.
What follows is a series of statement about what the Marcionites are generally acknowledged to believe (taken almost straight from Irenaeus's books):
You affirm that the Demiurge of the world is evil (see opening statement)--why not hide your countenance in shame, (as thus) teaching to the Church the doctrines of Empedocles? (see above)
You say that there is a good Deity who destroys the works of the Demiurge: then do not you plainly preach to your pupils, as the good Deity, the Friendship (Philia) of Empedocles.
You forbid marriage, the procreation of children, (and) the abstaining from meats which God has created for participation by the faithful, and those that know the truth. (Thinkest thou, then,) that thou canst escape detection, (while thus) enjoining the purificatory rites of Empedocles?
For in point of fact you follow in every respect this (philosopher), while you instruct your own disciples to refuse meats, in order not to eat any body (that might be) a remnant of a soul which has been punished by the Demiurge.
You dissolve marriages that have been cemented by the Deity. And here again you conform to the tenets of Empedocles, in order that for you the work of Friendship may be perpetuated as one (and) indivisible.
For, according to Empedocles, matrimony separates unity, and makes (out of it) plurality, as we have proved.
The implication here is that if Marcion himself added Empedoclean doctrines to the Gospel of Mark then Prepon's further claim that Jesus was an adjunct to Philia, the Good God is a misrepresentation of the original system. We learn from other Marcionites that there were three divinities - a Good God, a Just God and the fiery 'mediator' divinity (= Jesus). So the author continues:
The principal heresy of Marcion, and (the one of his) which is most free from admixture, is that which has its system formed out of the theory concerning the good and bad. Now this, it has been manifested by us, belongs to Empedocles. But since at present, in our times, a certain follower of Marcion, (namely) Prepon, an Assyrian, has endeavoured to introduce something more novel, and has given an account of his heresy in a work inscribed to Bardesanes, an Armenian, neither of this will I be silent. In alleging that what is just constitutes a third principle, and that it is placed intermediate between what is good and bad, Prepon of course is not able to avoid (the imputation of inculcating) the opinion of Empedocles. For Empedocles asserts that the world is managed by wicked Discord, and that the other (world) which (is managed) by Friendship, is cognisable by intellect. And (he asserts) that these are the two different principles of good and evil, and that intermediate between these diverse principles is impartial reason, in accordance with which are united the things that have been separated by Discord, (and which,) in accordance with the influence of Friendship, are accommodated to unity. The impartial reason itself, that which is an auxiliary to Friendship, Empedocles denominates "Musa." And he himself likewise entreats her to assist him, and expresses himself somehow thus:- "For if on fleeting mortals, deathless Muse, Thy care it be that thoughts our mind engross, Calliope, again befriend my present prayer, As I disclose a pure account of happy gods."
The point of course is that Prepon's system doesn't look very much like the strict dualism that is necessary to claim that Empedocles is the real author of the heresy. To this end the author goes on and tackles Prepon's arguments from the gospel of Mark:
Marcion, adopting these sentiments, rejected altogether the generation of our Saviour. He (Prepon) considered it to be absurd that under the creature fashioned by destructive Discord should have been the Logos that was an auxiliary to Friendship (i.e. Prepon's position!)--that is, the Good Deity. (His doctrine,) however, was that, independent of birth, (in the gospel of Mark) Himself descended from above in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, and that, as being intermediate between the good and bad Deity, He proceeded to give instruction in the synagogues. For if He is a Mediator (as Prepon holds), He has been, he says, liberated from the entire nature of the Evil Deity. Now, as he affirms, the Demiurge is evil, and his works. For this reason, he affirms, Jesus came down unbegotten, in order that He might be liberated from all (admixture of) evil. And He has, he (Prepon) says, been liberated from the nature of the Good One likewise, in order that He may be a Mediator, as Paul states, and as Himself acknowledges: "Why call ye me good? there is one good,"
All of these arguments clearly suppose Prepon's 'three god' argument as developed from the Gospel of Mark. Yet the author's point is that even though they claim this or that from the gospel, their doctrines still derive from Empedocles:
These, then, are the opinions of Marcion, by means of which he made many his dupes, employing the conclusions of Empedocles. And he transferred the philosophy invented by that (ancient speculator) into his own system of thought, and (out of Empedocles) constructed his (own) impious heresy. But I consider that this has been sufficiently refuted by us, and that I have not omitted any opinion of those who purloin their opinions from the Greeks, and act despitefully towards the disciples of Christ, as if they had become teachers to them of these (tenets).
