Author: Unknown
Date: 2nd–3rd century
Introduction
The anti-Marcionite prologues are three short prefaces to the gospels of Mark, Luke and John. No prologue to Matthew is known. They were originally written in Greek, but only the prologue to Luke survives in the original language. All three were translated into Latin and are preserved in 40 manuscripts of the Vulgate Bible. They are not always found together.
Despite the usual title, only the prologue to John mentions the heretic Marcion of Sinope. All three texts are originally dated to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. If, as seems clear, they are based in part on the writings of Irenaeus and Hippolytus of Rome, then they can be no earlier than the 3rd century. If a 2nd-century date is correct, then the prologue to Luke is the earliest surviving text to name Luke as the author of the Acts of the Apostles (Praxeis Apostolon). It would also be the earliest text to use this title.
The Anti-Marcionite Prologues to the Gospels
Mark
… Mark recorded, who was called Colobodactylus The nickname means “stumpy finger.” because he had fingers that were too small for the height of the rest of his body. He himself was the interpreter of Peter. After the death of Peter himself, the same man wrote this gospel in the parts of Italy.
Luke
Indeed Luke was an Antiochene Syrian, a doctor by profession, a disciple of the apostles: later however he followed Paul until his martyrdom, serving the Lord blamelessly. He never had a wife, he never fathered children, and died at the age of eighty-four, full of the Holy Spirit, in Boetia. Therefore, although gospels had already been written – indeed by Matthew in Judea but by Mark in Italy – moved by the Holy Spirit he wrote down this gospel in the region of Achaia, signifying in the preface that the others were written before his, but also that it was of the greatest importance for him to expound with the greatest diligence the whole series of events in his narration for the Greek believers, so that they would not be led astray by the lure of Jewish fables, or, seduced by the fables of the heretics and stupid solicitations, fall away from the truth. And so at once at the start he took up the extremely necessary account from the birth of John, who is the beginning of the gospel, the forerunner of our Lord Jesus Christ, and was a companion in the perfecting of the people, likewise in the introducing of baptism and a companion in martyrdom. Of this disposition the prophet Malachi, one of the twelve, certainly makes mention. And indeed afterwards the same Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Later the apostle John wrote the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, and then the Gospel in Asia.
John
The Gospel of John was revealed and given to the churches by John while still in the body, just as Papias of Hieropolis, the close disciple of John, related in the exoterics, that is, in the last five books. Indeed he wrote down the gospel, while John was dictating carefully. But the heretic Marcion, after being condemned by him because he was teaching Sentiebat: literally, he was thinking. the opposite to John, was expelled by him. But Marcion had brought writings or letters to John from the brothers which were in Pontus.
Translated by Roger Pearse from the text published by De Bruyne in Revue Bénédictine 40 (1928), p.193ff.