Marcion is now officially a Christian saint, having been beatified in Corinth, Greece on June 8th, 2023. His feast day is July 15th, taken to be the day he published the first Christian Bible in Rome in 144 CE. This, at least, is what is reported online by the modern Marcionite Christian Church. Representatives of this Church assert that Marcion himself collected his Gospel and Pauline letters on a planned journey to cities like Colossae, Antioch, Corinth, and Rome. The Marcionite Church claims that Marcion’s ecclesial network became the largest Christian denomination (with “millions of adherents”) until the emperor Constantine issued a “damnatio memoriae” on the church (332 CE), “intended to erase all history of The Very First Bible.” It further asserts that the catholic counter-Bible (combining 27 New Testament books with the Old Testament) was ratified in a council at Rome in 382 CE. The Church constructs a life of Marcion that is based mainly on the reports of Epiphanius and Tertullian, as filtered through Harnack. Indeed, it is Harnack’s heroic portrait of Marcion, that makes “St. Marcion” with his feast day possible.  

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