What was the role of Marcion and Gnosticism in the formation of the New Testament canon?

Answer 1

A:The beginnings of Gnostocism are not well known, but this branch of Christianity seems to have begun by the middle of the first century. In the middle of the second century, Marcion decided that the Gnostic view was closer to the true Christian faith than was the centrist Church he was born into, forming his own breakaway Church movement around 140 CE. Marcion believed that Jesus had not been born, but had sprung fully grown from God, and that all Jewish connections with Christianity had been inspired by the devil and elaborated by sinful men.

Marcion made the earliest known list of Christian books, but his non-Jewish Bible consisted solely of some of Paul's letters plus the Gospel of Luke, abbreviated to exclude all mention of the Jews. The centrist, or proto-Orthodox-Catholic Church realised that it too needed a canon of approved texts if it could be seen as determining what Christianity really meant and what the faithful should believe. Thus began the process of establishing the list of books that would eventually become known as the New Testament. There was no doubt that the epistles of Paul would be part of the canon, but the Church now began to decide which of the gospels and other writings were to be included.

The first Christian writer to include a New Testament author among "the holy scriptures and all the inspired men" was Theophilus of Antioch, about 180 C.E. However, he also regarded the Sybil, a pagan oracle, as inspired. The first to use the term, "New Testament," was Irenaeus, who "flourished" about 180 CE. He is also the first to give the explicit formation of four gospels, and exactly four - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.