Marcionism

Similarly, in Work on Myth, Blumenberg once again makes a plea for Marcion being regarded as Gnostic... and makes no attempt to define Marcionism's relation-difference to Valentinianism... It is important to see what is at stake here... For in Marcion the truncation of the biblical text is not based on lack of respect for tradition, but its reification, and the dualistic separation of creation from redemption is not attended by the kind of fascination with the why and wherefore of an evil creation that is typical of Valentinianism and modern myths of Romanticism and Idealism or their precursor and successor discourses.

In the year 144, the church declared Marcion of Sinope, a rich shipping magnate and part-time theologian, a heretic for declaring the God of the Hebrew scriptures to be inferior to the God of the New Testament. But despite this condemnation, popular Marcionism has continued ever since. You hear Christians lapse into it all the time with the lazy argument, "Oh, that's just the Old Testament", when confronted by the claim that the Bible is violent.