Is Irenaeus citing from a Marcionite canonical text?

[Stephan Huller]

p. 5

Indeed there are as noted earlier no shortage of ‘source criticism’ theories with respect to Book Four. Bousset, Loofs, Quispell and many others have for instance argued that the section 4.36 – 41 derives from the writings of Theophilus of Antioch. Yet the CEF (4.26 – 31) certainly belong with Adversus Haereses 3.3.1 – 3.4.1. Indeed, as noted above, it was Hill who first notes that:

the string of presbyterial references in book 4 with which we are concerned occurs where Irenaeus is stressing the importance of obeying 'the presbyters who are in the church … who ... possess the succession from the apostles” who "have received the certain gift of truth" (4.26.2). Very probably he already expected his reader to make the connection with the men he had described in this way, and named, back in 3.3-4, “have in mind men he had described in this way, and named, back in 3.3, that is, Linus, Anacletus, and Clement in Rome, and Polycarp in Smyrna.”[15]

Behr merely repeats Hill’s original suggestion but Hartog adds the important observation that Irenaeus used the phrases 'as I have shown' (4.26.2) and 'as I have pointed out' (4.32.1) to point the reader back to the discussions in Book Three concerning the presbyters and apostles (see also the back—referencing in 4.32.2).[16]

The point here is that Hill ultimately uses the connection between the two sections of text to further his thesis that Polycarp should be identified as the elder. Nevertheless a careful consideration of the context for the section at the beginning of Book Three will ultimately make a better case for John – especially considering the fact that Irenaeus is drawing from Papias' elder and his statement regarding the relationship between the gospel of Mark and the logia of Matthew. Irenaeus expands the reference to make it seem that Matthew’s gospel was written at the time ‘Peter and Paul preaching in Rome.’[17] Yet as Watson notes “Irenaeus constructs a fourfold gospel out of passages in Papias which intend no such thing.”[18]

The underlying question then necessarily comes down to whether we should understand the CEF to be connected to the beginning of Book Three by way of John or Polycarp? The fact that the entire discussion of ‘apostolic tradition’ that follows is grounded in a statement of Papias’s ‘elder’ should settle the issue once and for all. In other words, Irenaeus uses Papias, the hearer of John the elder, disciple of the Lord as a witness to the existence of a set of apostolic gospels. Included in this set is the gospel attributed to John. But Papias is unlike to have used anything resembling a narrative gospel. This

15. C E Hill p. 23
16. J Behr Irenaeus of Lyons Identifying Christianity (Oxford University Press 2013) p. 62; P Hartog Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp (Oxford University 2013) p. 19
17. Adversus Haereses 3.3.1.
18. F Watson Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013) p. 258

[Stephan Huller]

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apparent difficulty, i.e. not only Irenaeus’s use of Papias to support the superiority of written over traditions but also the very testimony of the ‘elder’ is at the heart of the insoluble riddle which is the CEF.

Papias provided Irenaeus with the building blocks used to justify his fourfold gospel. The testimony comes out of the mouth of the very ‘elder’ who later is directly cited by Irenaeus to convince the Marcionites to come over to the ‘great Church.’ But Irenaeus was clearly ‘creative’ with his source material. Of the four gospels, Papias only seems to have known ‘according to Mark’ and his reference hardly vouches for the canonical status for that text. Moreover even though Papias apparently identifies ‘the elder’ with John, the CEF come from a source which make reference to him only as ‘the elder.’ In other words, there may well have been an apparent disconnect at the core of the document which contained the CEF - an original document we will henceforth refer to as ‘the Prescriptions Against the Sects’ (or simply ‘the Prescriptions’ ) via the testimony of Cyril of Jerusalem (cf. Εἰρηναῖος ὁ ἐξηγητὴς ἐν τοῖς προστάγμασι τοῖς πρὸς τὰς αἱρέσεις Catech. 16.6).[20] In other words, there may have been two different elders or two traditions from two separate communities related to the same elder which Irenaeus was attempting to fuse into one ‘apostolic tradition.’

Indeed if Irenaeus could transform an original reference to the ‘logia of Matthew’ into a witness for the canonical gospel of Matthew we should not be surprised that ‘the elder John’ is similarly transformed into ‘the apostle John’ in the same section of text. For Irenaeus tells us that after Luke “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.”[21] In spite of the apparent difficulties Bauckham's expands on Martin Hengel's theory that the figure known as “John the Elder” was indeed the author of the Fourth Gospel.[22] Our interest is much more limited in scope. Irenaeus clearly developed this idea from the tradition that there was a gospel traditionally associated with the elder – not from Papias community but the community that produced the CEF which Irenaeus developed into the ‘gospel according to John.’[23]

We should begin to see now that the Prescriptions – the document now split between the beginning of Book Three and Book Four (the latter which contained the CEF) – brought together two distinct traditions about ‘the elder.’ On the one hand, he clearly draws from the oral tradition of Papias regarding the relative value of at least two collection of written sayings about Jesus. The other a written text called ‘the Elder’ which spoke on behalf of the value of ‘scriptures’ to keep the elders from falling into sin and made reference to a narrative gospel. It should be apparent that Papias’s community was not the source of the written text associated with the elder as the community saw little value in scripture and preserved no narrative gospel. Who then produced the ‘the Elder’ text used in the latter portion of the Prescriptions? All that we can say for certain about its provenance at this moment is that it was adapted in Book Four as part the general appeal to the Marcionites.

Why choose John become the spokesperson for the fourfold gospel? The building blocks are almost all in place in Papias’s reference. Aside from being the last of the gospels, John could be construed to have

20 The reasons for identifying the text as a ‘praescriptionem’ and thus in the same genre as Tertullian’s text of the same name will be demonstrated below.
21 Adversus Haereses 3.1.1
22 M Hengel The Johannine Question, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989)
23 Given the obvious misrepresentations in the section – it is of little historical value in and of itself to anything Irenaeus says about the gospel other than to trace the development of creativity.

[Stephan Huller]

p. 7

mentioned at least the other two of an original three volume set. Luke may indeed have come as a later edition to the collection.[24] It is enough to say that Irenaeus wanted above all else to use ‘the elder’ in his Prescriptions to the existence of a ‘tradition of the apostles’ in order to found a new type of ecclesiastical order grounded in the authority of elders. He necessarily ran up against two important stumbling blocks however. The first was clearly that John was not an apostle and the second Jesus was not an elder – that is, at least in the synoptic tradition he died in his thirtieth year.[25] Both these difficulties were addressed in subsequent editorial manipulations of the written record – not only the gospels but other inherited written testimonies from various communities.

Let us stop for a moment and address the central question of how we can be certain that the text we have called the Prescriptions was the original context for the CEF – that is that that the section now identified as 4.26.1 – 4.32.2 immediately followed 3.1.1 – 3.4.1? If we go back to our original argument we began by noting Hill and other’s recognition of similar language between the two sections. Hartog made reference to the latter repeating ‘signaling’ – both implicitly and explicitly – ideas contained in the former. The we moved on to mention the familiar observation that the fourfold gospel at the beginning of Book Three necessarily depends on a gross misrepresentation of the testimony anonymous elder - the same anonymous elder who seems to be at the center of the material also found in Book Four.

Indeed there is also a clear sense in the closing words of the CEF (4.32.1 – 2) that this elder knew of contemporary ‘elders’ who were redeemed by adhering to scripture after falling into sin. Irenaeus uses this apparently written testimony as part of an appeal to contemporaries living in his own age as proof of the rule of following scripture as such. The inference he wishes to draw is that the collection of never before seen writings he introduced to the world in the Prescriptions was not only known to the elder but that he himself highly valued scripture – the latter point was meant to ‘instruct’ the community of Papias (who valued the elder as a ‘living voice’ but did not associate him with any fixed set of writings, the former more than likely was directed against the Marcionites who had a fixed collection of scriptures but a different one from that ‘discovered’ by Irenaeus.

This original historical situation can finally be sort out by restoring the original ‘fault line’ from which first part of the Prescriptions (3.1.1 – 3.4.1) was severed from the other (4.26.1 – 4.32.2). The end of the first half is found in 3.4.1 which reads:

since we have such (written) proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth [emphasis mine]: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them, but to

24 Careful attention should be noted to Adversus Haereses 3.9.1’s addition of ‘so also Luke’ to a section dealing with Matthew but which cites highlights the uniqueness of each gospel from one another. The reference may be identified as a gloss to correct the original reference to a formerly unique passage in Matthew now that Luke was accepted into the canon. Similarly Luke is forced into an unnatural position after Matthew and before Mark owing to both texts containing a birth narrative. The original text likely dealt with only Matthew, Mark and John in that order. Indeed Irenaeus has just finished saying that Mark developed from Matthew at the beginning of the book (3.1.1) and the ending of the section on Matthew necessarily flows naturally into the beginning of the section dealing with Mark - “Wherefore also Mark, the interpreter and follower of Peter, does thus commence his Gospel narrative”
25 Cf Adversus Haereses 2.22 for a full discussion. Notice that the heretics “while affirming that they have found out the mysteries of God, they have not examined the Gospels …”

[Stephan Huller]

p. 8

make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

This reference to ‘depositing money in a bank’ is clearly linked to Irenaeus’s allusion to “the written account of Christ … hidden in the field” that ‘is this world’ (Matt 13:44) at the beginning of the 4.26.1 which represents the other ‘severed half’ of his original Prescriptions:

If anyone, therefore, reads the writings with attention, he will find in them an account of Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new invitation (vocationis). For Christ is the treasure which was hid in the field, that is, in this world (for "the field is the world") … but when it is read by the Christians, it is a treasure, hid indeed in a field [emphasis mine], but brought to light by the cross of Christ, and explained, both enriching the understanding of men, and showing forth the wisdom of God and declaring His dispensations with regard to man, and forming the kingdom of Christ beforehand, and preaching by anticipation the inheritance of the holy Jerusalem, and proclaiming beforehand that the man who loves God shall arrive at such excellency as even to see God, and hear His word, and from the hearing of His discourse be glorified to such an extent, that others cannot behold the glory of his countenance, as was said by Daniel: "Those who do understand, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and many of the righteous as the stars for ever and ever.'' Thus, then, I have shown it to be, if any one read the writings.

Given the parallels cited by others before us we will argue that the two cited sections likely followed one another in the lost original treatise we have identified as the Prescriptions written c. 177 CE. This text – rather than the present material in Books Three and Four of Adversus Haereses - introduced to the world Irenaeus’s apostolic succession list, the fourfold gospel and Christian writings in general.

The restored Prescriptions Against the Sects confirm that Irenaeus’s very much had in mind Papias and his original testimony about the elder. Irenaeus was trying to overcome this community’s tradition distaste for written testimonies in order to control the kind of doctrines that were being promulgated in the name of ‘Christianity.’ Yet before we go down that road let us make one more observation about the ‘cutting up’ and ‘redistributing’ of original material in the writings of Irenaeus. A great irony appears in the parallel situation we noted with respect to Tertullian’s Adversus Valentinianos and Book One of Adversus Haereses a little earlier. As we already noted, the Latin text of Tertullian necessarily copied a lost original Greek lecture that Irenaeus gave ‘against the Valentinians’ but chapters 8 – 10 were unknown to Tertullian’s source and do not appear in his meticulous recopying of Irenaeus.

Why is this significant? Within this section of ‘new’ material now associated with Irenaeus we find the famous but ultimately puzzling reference to homerocentones to explain a strange pattern which manifested itself whenever the heretical gospels and their orthodox equivalent were placed side by side. The author notes that the heretics were in the habit of collecting “a set of expressions and names scattered here and there” in other sources for the purpose of “twisting them, as we have already said, from a natural to a non-natural sense.” In other words, this phenomenon was widespread of taking sections from an existing text and dividing it and scrambling the contents in order to get a new ‘desired’ outcome was commonplace in the second century. It was so prevalent that the author (the editor?

[Stephan Huller]

p. 9

Irenaeus?) associates this activity with every sort of testimony – written or oral – in the contemporary age.

Irenaeus immediately goes on to say that his enemies “in so doing, act like those who bring forward any kind of hypothesis they fancy, and then endeavour to support them out of the poems of Homer, so that the ignorant imagine that Homer actually composed the verses bearing upon that hypothesis, which has, in fact, been but newly constructed.” But then something strange happens. The author then strangely goes on to demonstrate how easy it is to bring new meaning to original passages through chopping them up and switching them out with others in a completely new arrangement – exposing him to the very charge he levels against his enemies, the heretics! Like a magician proudly demonstrating a marvelous trick, the editor takes a few verses out of Homer to demonstrate his skill at transforming passages.

His point, he says, is to demonstrate that “many” are misled by “the regularly-formed sequence of the verses, as to doubt whether Homer may not have composed them” and after showing how easy it is done he declares “now, what simple-minded man, I ask, would not be led away by such verses as these to think that Homer actually framed them so with reference to the subject indicated?” One can almost envision this whole routing coming out of a bad movie where the confident criminal boasts to the investigating offer how easy it would be to carry out a crime and in the process throw suspicion on himself. He continues again saying:

But he who is acquainted with the Homeric writings will recognise the verses indeed, but not the subject to which they are applied, as knowing that some of them were spoken of Ulysses, others of Hercules himself, others still of Priam, and others again of Menelaus and Agamemnon. But if he takes them and restores each of them to its proper position, he at once destroys the narrative in question. In like manner he also who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism, will doubtless recognise the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures, but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them. For, though he will acknowledge the gems, he will certainly not receive the fox instead of the likeness of the king. But when he has restored every one of the expressions quoted to its proper position, and has fitted it to the body of the truth, he will lay bare, and prove to be without any foundation, the figment of these heretics.

Yet we should immediately see that it is not as simple ‘blaming the heretics.’ The situation he describes here is strangely reminiscent of that described by the elder in the story told by Papias and that of Celsus with respect to the ‘remoulded’ gospel divided threefold and fourfold.[26]

There are now clearly ‘shadow texts’ to every ‘orthodox’ document where the individual passages have now been shifted around into a different order.[27] As the author puts it “they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed

26 Contra Celsum 2.27 “that certain of the Christian believers, like persons who in a fit of drunkenness lay violent hands upon themselves, have corrupted the Gospel from its original integrity, to a threefold, and fourfold, and many-fold degree, and have remodelled it (μεταπλάττειν), so that they might be able to answer objections.” Metaplasm necessarily implies a change of shape.
27 We should consider also here Adversus Marcionem’s comment in the preface of many different versions of the text some being held in the hands of heretics.

[Stephan Huller]

p. 10

in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions.” He likens the situation to a beautiful mosaic made of jewels depicting a king should be rearranged by someone “and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king.”

The author goes on to conclude that “in like manner do these persons patch together old wives' fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions.” Yet we can’t allow ourselves to simply take his word that when the gospels of the heretics and the orthodox take the appearance of ‘being out of order’ that it is attributable to the wicked men outside of the Church. After all the author has already demonstrated himself to be adept at this insertion technique. What’s more the writings of the early Church Fathers are filled with such transpositions of chapters and paragraphs – even the very writings of Irenaeus which make this bold accusation against the heretics demonstrates the very same pattern. The more likely scenario is that the ‘centonizing’ of literary material was widespread in early Church and certainly included the very testimony which now makes this bold accusation ‘against the heresies.’

If we go back to our original discussion regarding the ‘connecting link’ between 3.4.1 and 4.27.1 after this lengthy digression, the restored Prescriptions now demonstrates Irenaeus to have discovered not only the apostolic succession list but also gospels supposedly mentioned in Papias’s original testimony about ‘the elder.’ Irenaeus’s reference in 4.26.1 - that when the ‘writings’ are “read by the Christians, it is a treasure, hid indeed in a field” - makes reference to the unusual Latinized Greek term Χριστιανοί which had very specific implications at the time he was writing. Celsus identifies this as the correct identification for the followers of Jesus.[28] But the origin of this terminology – as well as many of those describing the ‘bad’ sectarian communities in Latin is strange. Certainly not all identified themselves as ‘Christians.’[29] But when Irenaeus uses this terminology he clearly certainly means members of ‘the great Church’– that is, those who assemble in a voluntary association sanctioned by the government of Commodus and read the authorized scriptures of the new covenant.[30]

The underlying implication of this reconstituted section of text is that Irenaeus must have claimed that the scriptures associated with the apostles were formerly kept hidden by the heretical assemblies and only brought to light by Irenaeus’s recent actions.[31] Hengel speaks in terms of a discovery in a vault and

28 Cf. Contra Celsum 1.26
29 Moreover if we consider for a moment the early use of the term ‘Christians’ which follows, we should not ignore the obvious sectarian implications of this term. Epiphanius specifically identifies the earlier texts of Acts making reference to members of the Jesus community as Eeshim.
30 Contra Celsum 1.1; 5:59
31 This original emphasis on the significance of written testimonies is now flatly rejected in the material which appears after 3.4.1 in Book Three. This was deliberately developed by the editor to fill the hole left by the departure of the CEF. What now immediately follows this section interestingly takes the exact opposite point of view. In other words, the editor writing long after the written material ‘discovered’ by Irenaeus had been reincorporated into the Church contradicts his original emphasis on written sources and points instead to certain barbarians “who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition.” (3.4.2) This allusion was clearly a reaction against the implications of Irenaeus’s original efforts to define Christianity by written testimonials. It now speaks in terms of those who “in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed.” (ibid) Clearly the contradiction with the original material is obvious. It was deliberately inserted after the break in the discussion because Irenaeus’s original assertion was highly controversial at the time. At the time Irenaeus was writing Papias’s emphasis on the ‘living voice’ of Christ was earlier developed into a danger sign of heresy. This wasn’t restricted to the fact that he wanted to get in touch with eyewitnesses. He describes Aristion and John the elder as ‘disciples of the Lord’ which apparently put them on equal footing with the actual eyewitnesses. In short it would stand to reason that Papias’s attitude was connected with the broader belief in the community of Christians that Jesus was still speaking through chosen disciples. The Montanists were only the most famous – and longest lasting -manifestation of this original paradigm. The Marcosians maintain a prophetic interest as did the Marcionites and Valentinians. Irenaeus’s emphasis on written records could be construed as an anti-spiritualist tendency and so the barbarian reference was inserted immediately following the break. Once Irenaeus’s newly discovered documents were accepted into the community and established as the abiding testimonies of the apostles in all the churches a new set of concerns could be addressed – even the problem of being too literal or literate!

[Stephan Huller]

They like the paper apparently as is so unless there is a clamor here for me to continue (or some discussion) I will stop posting.

[DCHindley]

They like the paper apparently as is so unless there is a clamor here for me to continue (or some discussion) I will stop posting.

Well, maybe you're going 5,000 miles/kilometers per hour.

It looks like what you want to contribute to the discussion is that Irenaeus "discovered" a set of writing by the "elder(s)" from an earlier age which he wanted to "re-introduce" to the early Christian community.

However, you are talking about the matter as if something already explained (pg 7) even before you "explained" it (pg 10). I realize it is a first draft but it is sometimes hard to follow your logical structure (hmmm, maybe as bad as the logical structure of Irenaeus that Loofs complained about).

DCH

[Stephan Huller]

Thanks DCH

I really appreciate that sort of comment. I am in Canada. The paper has been reworked so many times I can believe I made a mistake like that. I just need to go to a wedding tomorrow and then take a look at that page. I really appreciate that. To be honest I would like to get rid of most of the Marcion references. I think the paper has more value as an argument that 3.1.1 to 3.4.1 and 4.26.1 to 4.32.1 belong together. That's enough I think. But I never know when to quit . . .

[DCHindley]

Thanks DCH

I really appreciate that sort of comment. I am in Canada. The paper has been reworked so many times I can believe I made a mistake like that. I just need to go to a wedding tomorrow and then take a look at that page. I really appreciate that. To be honest I would like to get rid of most of the Marcion references. I think the paper has more value as an argument that 3.1.1 to 3.4.1 and 4.26.1 to 4.32.1 belong together. That's enough I think. But I never know when to quit . . .

Good idea, keep it focused, don't muddy the waters. If the paper is about use of 'the elder(s) as sources, and what these sources had to say, keep other sources, such as Marcionite stuff, out of it, unless it is clearly related.

DCH