It was a response to the Gnostics and the Marcionites. Marcion, whose father was bishop of Sinope in Pontus, knew Christianity from an early age. He developed an understanding of Christianity that was both anti-Jewish and anti-material. He rejected the Old Testament as the document of an alien religion; and he taught that Jesus had come to save humankind from the control of the evil Creator to whom the Old Testament witnesses. These are precisely the two aspects of his work on which patristic condemnations, from Tertullian onwards. But eventually the church at large came to conclusion that his doctrine contradicted several fundamental points in Christian doctrine. His list was the first attempt to put together a New Testament. But Marcion’s