Editing Gnosticism (section)

==== Marcion ====
[[Marcion of Sinope|Marcion]] was a Church leader from [[Sinop, Turkey|Sinope]] (a city on the south shore of the Black Sea in present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150&nbsp;AD,{{sfn|Magris|2005|p=3518}} but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul.{{sfn|Perkins|2005|p=3530}} Some scholars do not consider him to be a Gnostic,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://gnosis.org/library/marcion/Harnack.html|title=Adolf Von Harnack: Marcion|website=gnosis.org}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|name="EB"|[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]: "In Marcion's own view, therefore, the founding of his church{{snd}}to which he was first driven by opposition&nbsp;– amounts to a reformation of [[Christendom]] through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics. A [[Dualistic cosmology|dualist]] he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic".}} but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings.{{sfn|Magris|2005|p=3518}} He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the [[Demiurge]], the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law.{{sfn|Magris|2005|p=3518}}{{sfn|Valantasis|2006|p={{page needed|date=January 2024}}}} Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body.<ref name="Harnack">{{Cite book|last=Harnack|first=Adolf|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aL3BSQAACAAJ|title=Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God|date=2007-12-01|publisher=Wipf and Stock Publishers|isbn=978-1-55635-703-9|language=en|translator-last=Steely|translator-first=John E.|translator-last2=Bierma|translator-first2=Lyle D.}}</ref> Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.<ref name="Harnack"/>