Anti-marcionite Prologues

Many manuscripts of the Vulgate contain prologues to individual books of Scripture. But these early Latin translations of prologues to Mark, Luke (also extant in Greek), and John were dated by De Bruyne within a.d. 160-80 and interpreted as anti-Marcionite, as possible imitations of Marcionite prologues to some Pauline epistles. W.G. Kummell (Introduction to the New Testament, ET 1966) disputes the conclusion by De Bruyne that the four prologues (Matthew is lost) reveal the united expression of an orthodox NT canon in the late second century. Their origin is unknown, their date uncertain, and the opposition to the heretical Marcion* is most explicit in the Johannine prologue. They claim to describe biographical details of the evangelists, the place and order of writing the gospels, and their relationship to their sources.