"For behold your reward is great in heaven: for after the same manner did their fathers unto the prophets" (vi. 23).(1) As we have seen, Jesus is also allowed to quote an Old Testament prophecy (vii. 27) as fulfilled in the coming of John to prepare the way for himself. The questions which Jesus puts to the Scribes (xx. 41--44) regarding the Christ being David's son, with the quotation from Ps. ex. 1, which Marcion is stated to have retained,(2) equally refute the supposition as to his motive for "omitting" xi. 29 ff. It has been argued with regard to the last passage that Jesus merely uses the words of the Old Testament to meet his own theory,(3) but the dilemma in which Jesus places the Scribes is clearly not the real object of his question: its aim is a suggestion of the true character of the Christ. But amongst his other sins with regard to Luke's Gospel, Marcion is also accused of interpolating it. And in what way? Why the Heresiarch, who is so averse to all references to the Old Testament that he is supposed to erase them, actually, amongst his few interpolations, adds a reference to the Old Testament. Between xvii. 14 and 15 (some critics say in verse 18) Marcion introduced the verse which is found in Luke iv. 27: "And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman, the Syrian."(4) Now is it conceivable that a man who inserts, as it is said, references to the {116} Old Testament into his text so gratuitously, can have been so inconsistent as to have omitted these passages because they contain similar references? We must say that the whole of the reasoning regarding these passages omitted and retained, and the fine distinctions which are drawn between them, are anything but convincing. A general theory being adopted, nothing is more easy than to harmonise everything with it in this way; nothing is more easy than to assign some reason, good or bad, apparently in accordance with the foregone conclusion, why one passage was retained, and why another was omitted, but in almost every case the reasoning might with equal propriety be reversed if the passages were so, and the retention of the omitted passage as well as the omission of that retained be quite as reasonably justified. The critics who have examined Marcion's Gospel do not trouble themselves to inquire if the general connection of the text be improved by the absence of passages supposed to be omitted, but simply try whether the supposed omissions are explainable on the ground of a dogmatic tendency in Marcion. In fact, the argument throughout is based upon foregone conclusions, and rarely upon any solid grounds whatever. The retention of such passages as we have quoted above renders the omission of the other for dogmatic reasons quite purposeless.(1)