Note 630 — ΠΡΟΣ ΚΟΛΑΣΣΑΕΙΣ. (continued 6)

Canon Murat. p. 47 (ed. Tregelles). The passage stands in the MS, ‘Fertur etiam ad Laudecenses alia ad Alexandrinos Pauli nomine fincte ad heresem Marcionis et alia plura quæ in catholicam eclesiam recepi non potest.’ There is obviously some corruption in the text. One very simple emendation is the repetition of ‘alia’, so that the words would run ‘ad Laudicenses alia, alia ad Alexandrinos’. In this case fincte (= finctæ) might refer to the two epistles first mentioned, and the Latin would construe intelligibly. The writing described as ‘ad Laodicenses alia’ might then be the Epistle to the Ephesians under its Marcionite title, the writer probably not having any personal knowledge of it, but supposing from its name that it was a different and a forged writing. But what can then be the meaning of ‘alia ad Alexandrinos’? Is it, as some have thought, the Epistle to the Hebrews? But this could not under any circumstances be described as ‘fincta ad hæresem Marcionis’, even though we should strain the meaning of the preposition and interpret the words ‘against the heresy of Marcion’. And again our knowledge of Marcion’s Canon is far too full to admit the hypothesis that it included a spurious Epistle to the Alexandrians, of which no notice is elsewhere preserved. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that there is a hiatus here, as in other places of this fragment, probably after ‘Pauli nomine’; and ‘finctæ’ will then refer not to the two epistles named before, but to the mutilated epistles of Marcion’s Canon which he had ‘tampered with to adapt them to his heresy’. In this case the letter ‘ad Laudicenses’ may refer to our apocryphal epistle or to some earlier forgery.