Markus Vinzent

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Markus Vinzent (born April 12, 1959 in Saarbrücken ) is a German religious historian , university professor and pastor with a focus on early Christianity , patristicism and the Middle Ages , historiography, religion and economics. Vinzent teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Kings College in London and is a member of the Max Weber College for Social and Cultural Studies in Erfurt .

Live and act

He is the son of the former director of the Saarland university library Otwin Vinzent (1929–1997) and his wife Elisabeth Vinzent.

From 1978 to 1983, Vinzent studied philosophy , theology , Jewish studies , classical studies and archeology at the Universities of Eichstätt and at the Sorbonne in Paris, from which he graduated with a diploma in philosophy and theology. This was followed by his doctorate from 1987 to 1991 at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and a postdoctoral degree with a subsequent habilitation from 1991 to 2005 at the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg . Vinzent also worked as a pastor from 1984 to 1991 and has also worked as an entrepreneur in serial data technology (IT, Internet, personnel, energy, waste, supply and infrastructure) since the 1990s.

As a research assistant, he conducted research from 1991 to 1993 at King's College , Cambridge . He worked there a. a. together with Catherine Hezser (* 1960), Keith Hopkins (1934–2004), Seth Schwartz and Wolfram Kinzig on the project on the origin and development of early Christianity. From 1993 to 1995 he was a research assistant at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences . Vinzent held a C4 professor (non-term of office) for the history of theology on the Reformation and Modern Age at the University of Mainz from 1996 to 1997 and another C4 professor from 1997 to 1999 also for the history of theology (term of office) at the university Cologne , then lectured for a year as HG Wood Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham . In September 2010 he moved to the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at King's College in London. From 2010 to 2015 he was Associate Professor at Korea University in Seoul . Since 2012 he has been a member of the Max Weber Center for Social and Cultural Studies at the University of Erfurt .

Together with others, he initiated and wrote the Birmingham study in 2003 with guidelines on the “Trilogue of Cultures” as the result of an 8-country study financed by Altana on teaching and learning about Islam , Judaism and Christianity in schools ( BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt ) with a large research grant (2000–2002). This resulted in a ten-year foundation initiative in which around 200 German schools took part in a so-called 'trilogue competition' between 2005 and 2015. The aim was to develop creative projects in schools for a better co-cultural life on the basis of the guidelines. The results led to a long list of publications, a course for children's programs on the Hessischer Rundfunk and in various other media.

Together with Professor Allen Brent (* 1940) he led the major research project “Early Christian Iconography and Epigraphy” , a project that was generously funded by the British Academy from 2011 to 2012. As lead investigator, he led the major research project "Meister Eckhart and the Paris University of the Early 14th Century" funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC ) from 2013 to 2016 after rediscovering the new Parisian writings of this famous medieval philosopher. Together with Marie-Anne Vannier ( University of Lorraine , Metz) he leads a large-scale research project financed by the French Agence National on the subject of Meister Eckhart in France and Germany, past and present.

Since 2003 he has been one of the directors of the International Conference on Patristic Studies , editor-in-chief of Studia Patristica, the official publication of the conference, and editor of the series Eckhart: Texte and Studies. Together with the religious scholar for early Christian history and literature Allen Brent, he heads the major research project Early Christian Iconography and Epigraphy , a project funded by the British Academy.

He is married to the art historian Jutta Vinzent ( Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham). The couple have two children.

Markus Vinzent and the importance of Marcion for early Christianity and the creation of the 'Gospel'

Markus Vinzent started his research project “Markions Evangelium - the beginnings of Christianity” at the Max Weber College. Vincent's research group started from the hypothesis that the four gospels of the New Testament had been canonized since the end of the second century AD and were written in the first century. In his project this consensus was called into question, on the one hand with regard to the dating and on the other hand with regard to its editing. So it was the sea merchant and teacher Markion von Sinope who compiled the first known 'Gospel'. In this Bithynian - Pontic , Roman province , the predominant language was Pontic , a Greek language ; whether it can also be deduced from this that Marcion spoke Greek as his mother tongue remains unproven.

Vinzent (2014) argues that the basic scriptures, especially the canonical and non-canonical gospels, all came from the middle of the 2nd century , and even Paul's letters, written around the middle of the 1st century , were repeated several times in the second century has been considerably revised, always when new pseudonymous Paul’s letters have been added to the older letters, first with the letter of Paul to the Ephesians and the letter of Paul to the Colossians , then again with the so-called pastoral letters ( 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and the letter to Titus ) and finally again when the collection of Paul’s letters with the Acts of the Apostles became part of the later canonical New Testament. The Roman teacher and businessman Marcion of Sinope is identified by him as a major thinker and founder of Christianity and would be related to the compilation process of the Gospels. Vincent's views differ from the historical understanding of the prevailing doctrine. Early Christianity initially developed out of a 'Jewish sect' and did not go beyond this framework before Marcion reinterpreted it in the years after 140 AD. For Vincent it is Marcion who, in the middle of the 2nd century, helped to spread the belief in the resurrection of Jesus in Christianity by collecting ten letters from Paul.

In terms of its origins, the 'Maricon Gospel' would thus lie above all four canonical gospels; In his own words, “Marcion, who created the new literary genre of the Gospel” and who gave the work this title, had no historical precedent in combining the words and narratives of Jesus. With this Gospel and the collection of 10 Pauline letters associated with it, which he published as the "New Testament" - the first collection of this name - Marcion gave the previously essentially "Jewish sect" an increasingly Christian profile and thus established its establishment in the institutional framework of the Roman environment by first distinguishing "Christianity" from "Judaism". In the preface to this New Testament, as Tertullian reports, Marcion criticized the four later canonical Gospels as plagiarism. Vincent sees the basis created for the binding of the four later canonized Gospels and the creation of the rest of the New Testament, whereby the Acts of the Apostles found their way into the latter in order to put the Epistles of Paul in a canonical framework. The project is scientifically related to a 'Gospel of Marcion' reconstructed by Theodor Zahn , Adolf von Harnack ,   Dieter T. Roth and Matthias Klinghardt .

Through the Marcionite rediscovery of Paul and the publication of ten Pauline letters, together with his Gospel (which was later regarded by opponents of Marcioin as a 'variant' of the Gospel of Luke ) to a first 'New Testament', according to Vincent, the resurrection became Jesus placed at the center of the creed of the consolidating Christianity. Moreover, in his analysis he stated that it was only in those circles which were significantly influenced by the writings of Paul and the 'Gospel of Marcion' that the resurrection of Christ became a significant element of the confession.

According to Vincent, the 'Evangeliums Marcions' was developed for his own teaching company and was initially not published. Even before its own publication, it was plagiarized by other teachers and writers, revised and published in different versions, each with (pseudo-authors) names of apostles and apostle students.

Vinzent supports the research by David Trobisch and Klinghardt (2011), who describes the emergence of the post-Marcionite Gospels as "canonical editing". According to Klinghardt, the compilation of the 27 individual writings into one unit is not the result of a contingent process of collection and selective selection, but rather the result of a single or multiple publisher (s). Vincent brings these assumptions together to the hypothesis that this redaction took place as a reaction to the 'Marcionite Gospel' and, among other things, possessed an anti-Marcionite tendency, i.e. that it should be understood as an alternative that responds to Marcion and is directed against his Gospel be. Vincent cites the writings of Origen , Irenaeus of Lyons , Tertullians and Justins as evidence . He formulated the following theses:

  • Marcion created the first so called 'Gospel'. He suspects its origin u. a. on oral traditions circulating in Rome. He also created the first "New Testament".
  • Marcion he sees the history of ideas in the middle Platonic world of ideas involved.
  • Marcion's New Testament consisted of the following texts: Marcion Gospel, Galatians , 1st Thessalonians , 2nd Thessalonians , Romans , 1st Corinthians , 2nd Corinthians , Laodiceans , Colossians , Philippians , Philemon .
  • The 'Marcion Gospel', which was initially written for his own teaching company, reached a broader public and was plagiarized , revised, pseudo-epigraphized and published under "incorrect" names, such as those of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Johannes.
  • Marcion therefore felt compelled, on the one hand, to publish his own text, Paul's letters and the Gospel, and to provide this collection with an introductory and commentary foreword, the 'antitheses', Ἀντιθέσεις . In these 'antitheses' he pointed to the incompatibility of his “New (Marcionite) Gospel” with the Judaizing plagiarism and pseudoepigraphic new creations as well as the Old Testament ( Tanach ).
  • In contrast to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke , the Gospel of Mark largely follows the structure of the 'Gospel of Marcion', in that it does without the childhood story of Jesus . The editor of the Gospel of Luke adheres most closely to the wording of the Marcionite scriptures, but at the same time seems to have been influenced by his previous editors, which arose from the 'Marcion Gospel'. At the end the editor put the Ascension story . The Gospel of Matthew adds childhood and youth stories of Jesus, expands them greatly and makes many references to the Torah and the prophets .


Fonts (selection)

  • Open beginning. The emergence of Christianity in the 2nd century. Herder Verlag, Freiburg i.Br. 2019, ISBN 978-3-451-38577-3
  • Writing the History of Early Christianity. From Reception to Retrospection Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019, ISBN 978-1-1086-4705-2
  • together with Kelley McCarthy Spoerl; Eusebius of Caesarea, Against Marcellus and Ecclesiastical Theology. Translation with comments by Kelley McCarthy Spoerl and Markus Vinzent, The Fathers of the Church (Chicago: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017). ISBN 081322991X
  • Tertullian's Preface on Marcion's Gospel (= Studia Patristica Supplements 5). Peeters, Leuven 2016, ISBN 978-90-429-3320-0
  • together with Loris Sturlese ; Index Eckhardianus: Meister Eckhart and his sources I The Bible, Meister Eckhart. Latin and German works. The Latin Works VI, 1. – 6. Delivery, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 3170296760
  • The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder, Freiburg i.Br. 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0
  • Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. (= Studia Patristica Supplements 2). Peeters, Leuven 2014, ISBN 9042930276
  • Meister Eckhart's On the Lord's Prayer: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary. Peeters, Leuven 2012, ISBN 978-9-042925-84-7
  • Christ's Resurrection in Early Christianity and the Making of the New Testament. Ashgate Publishing, Farnham 2011, ISBN 978-1-40941-791-0
  • The Art of Detachment. Peeters, Leuven 2011, ISBN 978-1-40941-792-7
  • The Origin of the Apostolicum in the Judgment of Critical Research. (= Research on Church and Dogma History Volume 89). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-52555-197-4 , digitized on Digi 20, Bavarian State Library
  • Markell von Ankyra, The Fragments; The letter to Julius of Rome. (= Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 39). EJ Brill, Leiden 1997, ISBN 978-9-00410-907-0
  • Pseudo-Athanasius, Contra Arianos IV. A writing against Asterius of Cappadocia, Eusebius of Caesarea, Markell of Ankyra and Photin of Sirmium. (= Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 36). EJ Brill, Leiden 1996, ISBN 978-9-00410-686-4
  • Asterius of Cappadocia, The Theological Fragments. (= Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 20). EJ Brill, Leiden 1993, ISBN 978-9-00409-841-1
  • The Origin of the Roman Creed. [9] at www.academia.edu
  • Marcion's Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity. In: Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi 32/1 (2015), pp. 55–87. [10]
  • Marcion's Gospel and the New Testament Gospels. Pp. 67-78. In: Gerhard May, Katharina Greschat (Hrsg.): Marcion and his church-historical effect / Marcion and His Impact on Church History: Lectures of the International Conference on Marcion, held from August 15 to 18, 2001 in Mainz (= texts and studies on History of early Christian literature, vol. 150). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-1109-0559-5 [11]
  • Marcion the Jew. In: Judaïsme Ancien - Ancient Judaism, International Journal of History and Philology, (2013), 1, pp. 159–201 [12]
  • The conclusion of the Gospel of Luke in Marcion. Pp. 79-94. In: Gerhard May , Katharina Greschat (Hrsg.): Marcion and his church-historical impact / Marcion and His Impact on Church History: Lectures of the international specialist conference on Marcion, held from 15.-18. August 2001 in Mainz. Vol. 150 texts and studies on the history of early Christian literature, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-1109-0559-5 [13]
  • Jesus, the Christ, a Greek-Jewish mystery myth? A contribution to Markion's Gospel. In: KERYX. Journal of Antiquity. Published by the Center for Antiquity of the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Graz 2016, ISBN 978-3-902666-41-3 , pp. 75–86 ( PDF 3.1 MB; 120 pages on static.uni-graz.at)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of Kings College in London [1]
  2. ^ Vincent Otwin. Director of the University Library * January 27, 1929 in Ormesheim † December 4, 1997, Saarland Biografien, www.saarland-biografien.de [2]
  3. ↑ CV of Prof. Dr. Wolfram Kinzig, at www.alte-kirchengeschichte.uni-bonn.de [3]
  4. ↑ Professor Allen Brent MA, DD (Cantab), Professor in Early Christian History and Iconography, University of London, King's College, on allenbrent.co.uk/ [4]
  5. ↑ Dr. Dr. Jutta Vinzent: Fellow, uni-erfurt.de [5]
  6. ↑ Dr Jutta Vinzent MA, DrPhil, PhD, PGCert Photograph of Dr Jutta Vinzent. Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, www.birmingham.ac.uk [6]
  7. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity . Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 138.
  8. ^ Markus Vinzent: Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Studia Patristica Supplements 2, Peeters, Leuven 2014, ISBN 9042930276 , p. 277 f.
  9. ↑ Paul A. Himes, Baptist College of Ministry (WI, USA) A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, 2015, book review Markus Vinzent: Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Studia Patristica Supplement 2, Peeters, Louven 2014, pp. 287-294; 274 ( PDF; 101 KB, 5 pages on jbtc.org)
  10. ^ Markus Vinzent: Marcion's Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity. Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi (ASE) 32/1 (2015) pp. 55–87 at www.academia.edu [7]
  11. ↑ Markus Vinzent: Marcions Gospel and the New Testament Gospels. Pp. 67–78, here pp. 69 f. In: Gerhard May , Katharina Greschat (ed.): Marcion and his church-historical effect / Marcion and His Impact on Church History: Lectures of the international specialist conference on Marcion, held from August 15 to 18, 2001 in Mainz. Vol. 150 texts and studies on the history of early Christian literature, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-1109-0559-5 [8]
  12. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 108
  13. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity . Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 13.
  14. ^ Markus Vinzent: Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels. Studia Patristica Supplements 2, Peeters, Leuven 2014, ISBN 9042930276 , p. 277 f.
  15. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 167.
  16. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder Verlag, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 137.
  17. ^ Matthias Klinghardt : The Apostle Decree as a canonical integration text: Construction and justification of community spirit. In: Markus Öhler (Hrsg.): Apostle Decree and ancient associations. Community and its order WUNT 280, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-16-150363-4 , pp. 91–112
  18. ^ Matthias Klinghardt: Inspiration and forgery. The transcendence constitution of the Christian Bible. In: Hans Vorländer (ed.): Transcendence and the constitution of orders. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030075-8 , pp. 331–355
  19. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 122
  20. ↑ ' Adamantius ': De recta in deum fide
  21. ^ Irenaeus Adversus haereses
  22. ↑ Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem
  23. ↑ Justin Martyr: Apologia major et minor
  24. ↑ There may be deviations in the list. a. in that the letter to the Ephesians is also included under the letter to the Laodiceans in addition to the letter to the Colossians , the letter to the Philippians , and the letter to Philemon ; see Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 115, including footnote 54
  25. ^ Bart D. Ehrman : Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, ISBN 0-19-514183-0 , pp. 213-215 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  26. ^ Matthias Klinghardt: The oldest gospel and the origin of the canonical gospels. Investigation - reconstruction - translation - variants. 2 volumes. Francke, Tübingen 2015, p. 22.
  27. ↑ Markus Vinzent: The resurrection of Christ in early Christianity. Herder, Freiburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-451-31212-0 , p. 138
personal data
SURNAME Vincent, Markus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious scholar and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Saarbrücken