Tertullian, the Rule of Faith and Marcion

[Secret Alias]

So now that I am back home after an extended vacation I can get back to the OP. Irenaeus and Tertullian (pretending for a moment they were two people rather than Irenaeus and Irenaeus's Against Marcion and Prescription reworked into Latin by Tertullian) make reference to something called the rule of truth and the rule of faith. In most cases the Greek text is not available. But in the one place it is accessible to us it is ὁ κανὼν τῆς ἀληθείας. This presents a very powerful argument that elsewhere in Adversus Haereses regula veritatis should be read as going back to the Greek concept of 'canon' or 'compendium' - i.e. a collection of writings. The difficulty however is that in many of the instances where Irenaeus (and Tertullian for that matter) are preserved for us only in Latin it is difficult to reconcile κανὼν with the underlying sense of the sentence. This is because the 'rule' is likened to 'scripture' but clearly means something related but ultimately separate from 'canon.'

This is why I have become so fixated on the possibility that originally Irenaeus took over the gnostic or better yet Jewish interest in the concept of ἀρχή. In the same way that the Jewish sources behind Genesis Rabbah understood God to have established the Torah through the six powers that made the universe (i.e. that, as the text says, the Torah was one of the things created 'in the beginning') Christian scripture was understood to have been established by the God 'in the beginning.'

What is so fascinating (to me at least) is the fact that in the earliest Jewish understanding 'Torah' would not have been the five narrative texts (i.e. Genesis, Exodus etc) but 'the Ten (utterances).' In other words, the tradition that only the ten things God uttered to Moses on Sinai = the 'heavenly Torah' or the Torah from heaven. This is clearly understood to be a Christian position or a sectarian position related to what would later be known as Christianity.

While the number 6 is never explicitly or strongly connected with the number 10 we see Philo and other writers note that 4 is emphatically linked with 10 owing to the tetrad or τετρακτύς, a mathematical triangle which was especially significant to Jewish writers influenced by Platonism like Philo. Indeed when Irenaeus does reveal the canon of the four Christian gospels - the quaternion - he does so using arguments that sound like they were stripped from the pages of Philo "For the four elements, out of which this universe was made, flowed from the number four as from a fountain. And in addition to the four elements the seasons of the year are also four, which are the causes of the generation of animals and plants, the year being divided into the quadruple division of winter, and spring, and summer, and autumn."

So the question becomes - how do reconcile the obvious 'solution' to the problem of the rule of truth i.e. that it derived from the 'gnostic' (better yet a 'common origin') origin from Jewish mystical speculation regarding the various numbered 'powers' hidden in the Hebrew terminology of Genesis/

[Secret Alias]

I think lurking in the background of both Jewish and Christian mysticism related to the 'emanations' is Zoroastrianism. The interest in tetrads is Iranian - https://books.google.com/books?id=8Er_8 ... 3A&f=false

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"He [Zoroaster] first recognized four principles like the four elements, Ašoqar, Frašoqar, Zaroqar and Zurvan, and said that Zurvan was the father of Ohrmazd." Theodore bar Konai pp. i38ff. Syrian re-edited by Nyberg, CCM. 1929, 2 CCM. 1931, pp. 47 ff.

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Thus we find the following tetrads attested:
(i) The Tetrad of Being
Time (Zurvan)
Space
Wisdom
Power
(ii) The Tetrad of Becoming
Zurvan (the Infinite)
Ashoqar (the originator)
Frashoqar (he who brings forth)
Zaroqar (he who causes to pass away)
(iii) The Tetrad of Matter
Fire (? the soul of Zurvan)
Air
Water
Earth
(iv) The Tetrad of Time (uncertain)
the Infinite Zurvan
the finite Zurvan
the course of Fate
the Year
(v) the Tetrad of Order (Justice)
the Infinite Zurvan
Mihr
? Srosh - Order (Justice)
? Rashn - Fate
(vi) the Tetrad of Fate
the finite Zurvan
the Decree
the decisive Moment
the fixed Decision

In these tetrads, then, Zurvan appears first as pure being, second as the source of contingent being, third as the source of matter, as finite time, as cosmic order, and as fate. This, in fact, sums up all that can be said about him, as we shall see when we come to study his nature in greater detail.

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More from Zaehner's work on the connection between Zurvan and the Christian concept of resurrection:

Thus we have the three gods corresponding to the three decisive moments in the life of the Cosmos — its conception, its birth, and its passing away. Even so, we are still confronted with the very obvious connexions between Frasoqar and the Fraskart which is the final rehabilitation of the Cosmos corresponding to the Christian resurrection of the Dead and the Muhammadan qiyamat. It would be disingenuous to try to dissociate the two terms, for they are nomen agentis and nomen actionis of the same compound and must have been associated in the minds of the Zoroastrians themselves.3 The order of the words in the Syriac accounts on the one hand and in Yt. 14. 28 on the other, however, seems to indicate a difference in the conception of Frasoqar. In the first case we have Asoqar, Fraioqar, Zaroqar, and in the second arsokarsm marsokaram frasokaram. If, then, the second series was in fact transferred from Zurvan to VaraOrayna, fraso- karam, appearing at the end, must be the god who produces ihefraskart. This series would then represent (i) the god who engenders the Cosmos, (ii) the god who withers it away, and (iii) the god who reconstitutes it or makes it 'excellent.' the series Asoqar, Frasoqar, Zaroqar, Zurvan: or again hand, would represent (i) the god who engenders the Cosmos, (ii) the god who brings about its birth, and (iii) the god who brings about its decline and death. In any case they are the three gods presiding over the γένεσις, φθορά and παλιγγενεσία of the Cosmos which is the Infinite Zurvan.

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Iranian influence in Sethian gnosticism:

Schenke argues in his original article that the four illuminators or aeons represent the heavenly resting places for respectively Adam, Seth, the primal Sethians ('ur Sethianer') and the historical Sethians. The enigmatic references of the Apocryphon are solved for Schenke by synoptic comparison with the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Apocalypse of Adam, and the Hypostasis oftheArchons. This suggests that the four aeons correspond to four different world periods, originally the four stars or planets of the (Iranian) world year, ranked alongside rather than beneath one another, as he thinks the 'Sethian' speculation presents it ... Tardieu in a joint article with P. H. Poirier, criticizes Schenke's method but echoes his conclusion about the illuminators with appeal to Colpe's attempt to demonstrate Zoroastrian influence: the four illuminators undoubtedly represent an angelization of the Zervanite tetrad articulating the days of the month. Thus Harmozel derives from Ohrmazd-el (= first day) ; Oroiael from Xwar (= light/eleventh day) ; Daueithe from Day (= creator/ twenty-third day) , Eleleth from the Aramaic 'illith, corresponding to the female Zervanite Den, Xrad, Wisdom personified.

[Secret Alias]

L'arrière-plan iranien ne peut être mis en doute. Au Congrès de Yale sur le gnosticisme en 1978, C. Colpe 21 mit en avant la tripartition ou quadripartition du temps mythique et historique des conceptions mazdéennes, dont aurait hérité le séthianisme. Cette thèse, fondée sur une analyse de parallèles structurels, n'est peut-être pas fausse mais déborde largement le cadre littéraire de nos textes et ne dit pas comment le quaternion a été fabriqué. Une hypothèse plus précise pourrait être avancée. Le quaternion a été fabriqué par récupération de la tétrade zurvaniste qui articule le mois zoroastrien:
1 er jour: Ohrmazd
9C jour: Adur
16e jour: Mihr
24e jour: Dën
i.e. trois entités masculines, plus une entité féminine, la Religion personnifiée, Dën 22. Il en est de même dans le quaternion gnostique: Harmozel « Ohrmazd-el), Oroiael, Daveithe plus Éleleth, 1'« altière" « araméen 'lIîth), en grec Hypsiphronè, associée à Noréa par l'Hypostase des Archontes (II, 93,6-13) 23 et à Iôèl par l'Évangile égyptien (II, 65,23).
Oroiael est l'angélologisation de Xwar, la <dumière », le Ile jour du mois zoroastrien; et Daveithe, celle de Day, le « créateur", qui représente le 23e jour, mais aussi le Ise et le 8<, i.e. l'élément qui termine chaque section du mois et celui par lequel on passe d'une section à l'autre de la tétrade. Quant à la Dën, la Religion personnifiée, appelée, par ailleurs «fille de Dieu» (Bëdukh, dans les Actes syriaques des Martyrs perses, i.e. en moyen perse Bayduxt 24 ), son décalque gnostique est Éleleth/Hypsiphrone qui, selon l'exégèse exacte de l'Hypostase des Archontes (II, 93,8-9), représente la Sagesse personnifiée: la Dën est Xrad, i.e. la oo<pw.l.pPOVl7ate::du tableau des abstractions dans l'Apocryphon de Jean (II,
8,20) et dans l'Évangile égyptien (III, 52,13).
Le quaternion gnostique exprime donc bien une conception, d'inspiration zurvaniste, de l'Aiôn et du temps non plus illimité ( )(porne:: lhrELpoe:: ), mais marqué en ses deux bouts par l'argument prophétologique: révélations à Adam, à Seth et aux
Séthites d'un côté, révélations aux gnostiques de l'autre. L'application du catalogue des abstractions au quaternion zurvaniste angélologisé est secondaire par rapport à l'exégèse des catégories temporelles de l'histoire du salut et apparaît tributaire des
spéculations hellénistiques sur la tétractys.
Enfin, ce quaternion non seulement juxtapose des catégories du temps, mais il les hiérarchise dans l'espace eschatologique puisque chaque éon est un lieu de repos pour les justes à la façon des quatre dignitaires du trône impérial, qui ne sont pas
juxtaposés mais l'un au-dessous de l'autre, dans la salle des audiences du cérémonial sassanide. https://www.erudit.org/revue/ltp/1981/v ... 5827ar.pdf

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This description of Marcus in Irenaeus sounds vaguely Iranian:

They maintain, then, that first of all the four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, were produced after the image of the primary Tetrad above, and that then, we add their operations, viz., heat, cold, dryness, and humidity, an exact likeness of the Ogdoad is presented.

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Unger on the use of aeon in gnosticism and its relationship with Zurvan:

We meet here (i.e. Against Heresies) for the first time the word Aeon, which plays such a large role in the Gnostic systems. Its etymology is disputed, whether it comes from aeion ("ever-existing") or from some other root. Actually, among the Greek philosophers from Heraclitus and Empedocles on, it meant "time" in relation to being. Plato restricted its use to endless time in itself, that is, to absolute eternity. Aristotle went back to the original meaning and reserved it to created being; but since for him the world was eternal, the "aeon" of the world was really indefinite in time. During the Hellenistic era "aeon" took on a religious meaning, being used, already about 200 B.C., to designate the deities of the mystery religions at Alexandria, where the Aeon was identified with Osiris and Serapis. (Cf. J. P. Steffes, "Aon" LTK 1.527). It should be noted that Endless Time (Zrvan Akarana) was used in Persian theology for the highest principle. This personified aeon also held an important position in the later Persian, particularly in the Mithraic, cult. "Aeon" was used very frequently in the Old and the New Testament, but never in a personified sense, except perhaps in Eph. 2.2 of demons. So the Gnostics simply borrowed this term, as other elements, from the pagan mystery religions to designate the various divine beings in their Fullness. On all this see H. Sasse, "aion," TDNT 1.197-209.

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The Iranian background for Daniel and root of 'mystery' or 'secret' in the Avestan word razan (= rule):

The connection of each of the four aeons with a metal is so similar to the division of kingdoms in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (2.31–3) that much discussion has centered on which text was prior.58 Opinions remain divided as to connections between these Zoroastrian and Biblical apocalypses. For some, the common reference to 'mixed iron' indicates a Greek precedent for Daniel, which perhaps influenced the Iranian fourfold schema.59 The Zandi Wahman Yasn could also have been impacted by the Greek concept, and adapted it prior to its appearance in Daniel.60 Daniel's own end-time dream includes four animals, the last of which is a terrifying horned beast, whose rule ends with the arrival of the 'son of man' (7.1–28). The fourth beast has been paralleled with Azi Dahaka, the dragon of ancient Iranian myth, who becomes Zahak in whom Thraetaona kills, with a weapon that is later carried by the saoshyant Astvatereta.62 The epithet verethrajan ('victorious'), which is given to the saoshyant, corresponds to the Vedic vritrahan that is used of Indra after he too has slain a dragon. The theme of a beneficial being, defeating a beastly manifestation of evil and bringing in a new world order, is an integral part of Avestan eschatology that predates the existing form of the Book of Daniel. A fifthcentury Achaemenid setting for the initial composition of the story of Daniel is indicated by its Ancient Persian backdrop and the fact that it uses many Iranian loanwords in the imperial Aramaic parts of the text. The story was then further further developed during the Seleucid and early Parthian periods.63 One significant Aramaic loanword, from an Old Avestan word razar meaning 'rule' (as in an architectural instrument), appears in the context of Daniel's dream interpretation. There, raz is used to convey the notion of the 'mystery' revealed by God about what will be. This same word is used in the Dead Sea Scrolls in reference to the secret knowledge of the eschaton, and occurs frequently in Middle Persian texts in in the sense of a 'secret' relating to both the end-time, or to combating evil.64