The Complete Marcion

Around 144 AD, Marcion of Sinope was expelled from the Roman church. His writings were destroyed, his communities condemned as heretical, and his name became a byword for everything the emerging Catholic Church opposed. Yet Marcionite churches survived for centuries across the Roman Empire, from Syria to Persia. Today, scholars remain deeply divided: Did Marcion corrupt the gospel, or did he preserve an earlier, purer version than the one the church eventually canonized? The Complete Marcion brings together, for the first time in a single accessible volume, everything needed to understand this pivotal and misunderstood figure. Drawing on all seven major hostile ancient sources, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Epiphanius, Adamantius, and Eusebius, plus the best modern scholarship (Lieu, Klinghardt, Vinzent, BeDuhn, Roth), it reconstructs his life, dualistic theology, ascetic communities, and most importantly his lost gospel. With a detailed, verse-by-verse reconstruction of Marcion‘s Gospel and a balanced examination of the explosive priority debate, this book lets you engage the evidence directly and decide for yourself: Was Marcion a dangerous heretic... or the man who forced Christianity to invent its New Testament? Read the sources. Examine the reconstruction. Make up your own mind. About the Author Bryan Manning is an independent scholar who has spent more than twenty years exploring the intersection of religion, history, and power. A lifelong student of ideas, he focuses on the roads not taken in history: the suppressed voices, forgotten movements, and contested texts that institutional narratives often marginalize. His work centers on periods of genuine diversity and open possibility before orthodoxy or dominant traditions closed off alternatives. He is particularly interested in how power, authority, and canon formation shape what survives as "official" history. The Complete Marcion is part of a larger project examining pivotal but underappreciated figures and movements in the development of early Christianity and beyond. Updated May 2026: formatting, layout, and typographical corrections.