The Very First Bible

Official Ecclesiastical Archive of the 144 A.D. Christian Canon

This gospel, the Evangelion, began with a line that stands in direct tension with the later apparatus of covenantal theology: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Jesus descended into Capernaum.” The Greek verb employed here - καταβαίνω (katabainō), rendered in the aorist as κατέβη - does not merely describe an arrival from elsewhere. It denotes the descent of a god from the heavens, a theophanic manifestation entering history from above. No birth in Bethlehem. No genealogy binding Him to David or Abraham. No fulfillment of ancient prophecy. A divine being entered the world during the theophanic descent of 29 A.D., dated to the fifteenth year of Tiberius, revealing a Father previously unknown: distinct from Yahweh, the Bronze Age deity of covenants, laws and retributive violence.

Paul carried this gospel throughout the Roman world, founding the first Christian congregations and writing to them letters that constitute the Apostolikon. And he wrote with urgency: "I marvel that ye are so quickly changed, from him that called you in the grace unto a different gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ." (Galatians 1:4–5) He foresaw the revision that would follow. "But though we or an angel should announce to you a gospel contrary to what ye have received, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:6)

Eighty years later, in 144 A.D., Marcion of Sinope transcribed this gospel into the codex now known as the Evangelion. That same year, he stood before Pope Pius I in Rome. The dispute turned on that first sentence alone. Pius insisted Jesus was born of David's line, fulfilling Hebrew scripture, and that the Father was Yahweh. Marcion held that Jesus descended from heaven in the fifteenth year, bringing a revelation that superseded and nullified the entire apparatus of Jewish law. One narrative required fulfillment. The other announced inauguration. They were mutually exclusive.

It has long been charged that Marcion edited the Gospel of Luke to produce the Evangelion. The chronology suggests the reverse: the Evangelion traces to Paul’s revelation of 34 A.D., decades before the canonical gospels were composed. Marcion was not the author of the text he transcribed - he was its archivist, compiling into a single codex the scrolls already held by the Pauline churches. On the simpler reading, Luke is an expanded version of the Evangelion - longer precisely because material linking Christ to the Hebrew tradition was added, not because Marcion removed it.

When Pius condemned this doctrine and excommunicated him, the Marcionite Church was born - as the custodian of a canon whose first word was not "begat" but "descended." Marcion carried this gospel across the Roman world just as Paul had. His opponents - Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius - testified to its scale: Tertullian described a "large, widespread and well-organized network of Churches and bishops"; Epiphanius listed Marcionite communities from Rome to Persia, still flourishing three centuries later.

What followed was not organic development but a systematic textual revision spanning centuries. The account of divine descent was replaced; a baptism by John substituted for the theophanic descent. Genealogies binding Jesus to David and Abraham were introduced. The phrase "born of a woman, born under the law" was interpolated into Galatians 4:4. The Pastoral Epistles institutionalized hierarchy over Spirit-led freedom. By the fourth century, the original revelation had been buried beneath successive layers of redaction. During the Diocletianic persecution of 303 A.D., copies of the first bible, the Evangelion, were specifically targeted for destruction. Yet the Deir Ali inscription of 318 A.D. proves survival: "The meeting-house of the Marcionites... of the Lord and Saviour Jesus the Good."

For nearly two millennia, that unaltered canon was preserved in the Pontic tradition until its definitive English rendering appeared in 2020 - the Great Return, restoring what centuries of revision had sought to displace.

Contents

The Evangelion - The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (34 A.D.)
The Apostolikon - Ten Epistles of St. Paul with Original Prologues (48–62 A.D.)

Each epistle prefaced by the Argumentum, Marcion's forensic abstracts identifying occasion, purpose, and key themes.

The sacred text, originally written in Koine Greek, was guarded for 1,900 years within the Pontic region - maintaining its complete, unaltered canonical integrity against early regional controversies - even as the local spoken language developed into Pontiaka, from which it was translated by the Marcionite Church in 2020.

Notable Absences

No Old Testament. No Pastoral Epistles. No Epistle to the Hebrews. No harmonizing verses linking Christ to Abrahamic lineage, Mosaic law, or Davidic descent. Everything that ties the new faith to the Hebrew faith is absent, because it had not yet been written in.