The Five Books Against Marcion — Book 4, Chapter 42

Opening the library…

Notes

Onerare cœperunt.

“King Messiah;” λέγοντα ἑαυτὸν Χριστὸν βασιλέα εἶναι, Luke xxiii. 1, 2.

Gravassent.

Proinde.

Luke xxiii. 3.

Constitutus est in judicio. The Septuagint is καταστήσεται εἰς κρίσιν, “shall stand on His trial.”

Isa. iii. 13, 14 (Septuagint).

Ps. ii. 1, 2.

Velut munus. This is a definition, in fact, of the xenium in the verse from Hosea. This ξένιον was the Roman lautia, “a state entertainment to distinguished foreigners in the city.”

Luke xxiii. 7.

Hos. x. 6 (Sept. ξένια τῷ βασιλεῖ).

Isa. l. 4 (Sept.).

Comp. Luke xxiii. 33 with Isa. liii. 12.

This remarkable suppression was made to escape the wonderful minuteness of the prophetic evidence to the details of Christ’s death.

Ps. xxii. 18.

Ps. xxii. 16.

Ps. xxii. 16, 7, 8.

We append the original of these obscure sentences: “Quo jam testimonium vestimentorum? Habe falsi tui prædam; totus psalmus vestimenta sunt Christi.” The general sense is apparent. If Marcion does suppress the details about Christ’s garments at the cross, to escape the inconvenient proof they afford that Christ is the object of prophecies, yet there are so many other points of agreement between this wonderful Psalm and St. Luke’s history of the crucifixion (not expunged, as it would seem, by the heretic), that they quite compensate for the loss of this passage about the garments (Oehler).

Comp. Josh. x. 13.

Argumenta.

Isa. l. 3.

Amos viii. 9.

Here you have the meaning of the sixth hour.

Luke xxiii. 45.

Ezek. xi. 22, 23.

Isa. i. 8.

Comp. Luke xxiii. 46 with Ps. xxxi. 5.

Luke xxiii. 46.

Spiritus: or “breath.”

Expirasse: considered actively, “breathed out,” in reference to the “expiravit” of the verse 46 above.

A sharp rebuke of Marcion’s Docetism here follows.

Autem.

Nusquam comparuit phantasma cum spiritu.

Post expirationem.

See these stages in Luke xxiii. 47–55.

Non nihil: “a something.”

This argument is also used by Epiphanius to prove the reality of Christ’s body, Hæres. xl. Confut. 74. The same writer also employs for the same purpose the incident of the women returning from the sepulchre, which Tertullian is going to adduce in his next chapter, Confut. 75 (Oehler).

Luke xxiii. 51.

Ps. i. 1.

Book 4 · Chapter 42

Notes