Marcion of Sinope

Marcion of Sinope (c. 85–c. 160 CE) was a wealthy ship-owner from Pontus who traveled to Rome around 140 CE and became one of the most consequential — and controversial — figures in early Christian history. He taught a sharp dualism holding that the creator God of the Hebrew scriptures was a lesser, just deity entirely distinct from the supreme God of love revealed by Jesus, and on this basis he rejected the entire Old Testament as Christian Scripture. He produced what is widely regarded as the first explicit Christian biblical canon: an edited version of the Gospel of Luke and ten Pauline epistles, with passages he judged to be Judaizing additions removed. Excommunicated by the Roman church around 144 CE, he founded a rival Marcionite movement that spread across the Mediterranean and persisted for centuries. Proto-orthodox writers including Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen wrote extensively against him; modern scholars widely credit his challenge as a catalyst that forced the proto-orthodox church to articulate its own doctrine of Scripture, canon, and the unity of the two Testaments.