Remarques sur le personnage Marcion dans l’interprétation de Justin Martyr : un pseudoprophète (ψευδοπροφήτης) ?

Abstract

The present contribution is part of a wider study of the ways in which the heresiarch Marcion – who lived around the middle of the second century – has been portrayed in the works of the ancient Christian authors who wrote on the subject. Here we examine, in particular, the portrait of the heresiarch provided by Justin in his two surviving works, the Apology and the Dialogue with Trypho. The thesis here proposed is that the Christian apologist presented the figure of Marcion using various topoi (demonic inspiration, the teacher-disciple relationship, geographical origin from the North, the attitude of scorn directed against the people for whom God’s Word was really destined, the metaphor of the wolves and the lambs) proper to the Judaic and Christian narrative model, relative to the figure of the false prophet and his conflictual relationship with the true prophet, in both a historical and eschatological perspective.