PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

Eusebius demonstrates that orthodoxy precedes heterodoxy. However, his proof is flimsy at best, and especially depends on Irenaeus writing between 170-200 when he claims that Irenaeus wrote. If Irenaeus is an invention of Eusebius or if his writings were post 200, Eusebius' already flimsy case falls apart.

Once we accept this, we have to wonder if there is another way of reconstructing early Christian History. Getting rid of Eusebius simply clears the way for the digging to start.

One possible alternative to Eusebius is that heterodoxy preceded orthodoxy. If this is true we should/might be able to assign texts to heretics based on an examination of their ideology. An example of this is the book of Acts.

Consider for example the fact that Jesus is with the Apostles for forty days. One would expect that the author would use this to promote his own favorite political position/s. For example, if he favored celebrating Easter on Passover rather than Sunday, he could have the Jesus remind the Apostles to celebrate Easter on Passover. If he favored the idea that Jesus was the son of a different God from the Jewish God, he could have Jesus teach the Apostles not to listen to the Jews and their inferior God.

What does the resurrected Jesus teach the apostles in his forty days with them? Basically only one thing:

7... for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now."
8. but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth."

This may be seen as an important clue. The primary ideology that the author wants to stress is that Jesus only taught the apostles to depend on the "Holy Spirit/Ghost".

Acts mentions the Holy Spirit about 50 times. Here are some samples:

In short, the primary ideology of Acts is that the only thing that distinguishes the true believers in Jesus Christ from all others is having the Holy Spirit.

There is only one known heretic with this Holy Spirit ideology - Montanus. It seems reasonable to surmise that Montanus would have used Acts to support his claims of inspiration by the Holy Spirit. However, there is no indication of this. Therefore, we must suppose that a follower of Montanus wrote Acts afterwards, in order to support the Montanist claim regarding the primary importance of the Holy Spirit to Christians.

If we disregard Irenaeus, for the reasons noted above, the Montanist Tertullian is the first person to show awareness of the existence of the book of Acts. One may suppose that either he wrote it, or someone from the Montanist community wrote it and gave it to him.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

the_cave

Short answer: yes I've suspected this for a while. (Though it might be anachronistic to say that a Montanist wrote it. Let's just say someone from what you could call a "Holy Spirit community" wrote it, someone who also supported prophesying women. It's the same person who wrote the Lukan birth narrative. And I'm guessing they lived in Anatolia. Hence the connections of Luke with the Marcionites, one way or another. Whether this situation amounted to full-blown Montanism at the time Luke-Acts was written is debatable.)

Note that Montanism is often dated to about mid-century, predating Irenaeus, and perhaps dates to even earlier. So Acts could still have been written long before Tertullian, and still be a Montaist work.

aa5874

Eusebius did not really demostrate that orthodoxy preceeded heterodoxy. His Church History hangs on a forgery that Jesus did exist as found in the TF. Once Paganism did exist before the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, then it was likely or almost certain that there were a multiplicity of beliefs before the Jesus stories were written.

It is extremely difficult to envisage orthodoxy without a central powerful authority and belief in the Jesus stories must have been a trickle when first introduced and would have been diversified with time.

Justin Martyr clearly demonstated that even the meaning of the word "christian", who was a "christian" and what christians believed was not yet properly established up to the middle of the 2nd century.

According to Justin even magicians were called christians.

But, there is no reason for any other person or group to write Acts of the Apostles when Acts is the history of the post-ascension activities of the disciples of Jesus including Paul as fabricated by the Church.

I don't think any Montanist even saw Acts of the Apostles in the 2nd century, they probably did not know that such a book exist or its author.

This is John Chrysostom in Homilies of Acts 1

PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

Good catch with John Chysostom,

Here is the beginning of his Homilies

Notice that he immediately singles out "what is said concerning the Holy Ghost" in Acts as being significant for Christians.

If written before Montanus and Montanus was not aware of it, we would still have to explain why it fits his ideology so fully. Rather than an amazing coincidence, it is more reasonable to suppose the ideology of Acts was fashioned to support Montanist claims regarding the primacy of the Holy Ghost to Christians.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi the_cave,

Good points.

Doug Shaver

He would have to. You can't claim that your sect is orthodox if you admit that any competing sect came ahead of you.

RParvus

Jay,

I think you are right in identifying the role of the Holy Spirit as a major emphasis of Acts, but there is also at least one other emphasis that rivals it and that needs to be taken into account in determining the origin of the book. Joseph Tyson has made a good case that Acts has Marcionism in view. Tyson contends that Acts’ portrayal of Paul “appears to have been formed by the author to counter the Marcionite understanding of Paul as rejecting both the Torah and the God of Israel. Tyson points to stories that involve Peter and the Jerusalem apostles in Acts as arguments against the Marcionite claim that Paul was the only true apostle” (From the inside cover blurb of Tyson’s “Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle”).

Harnack, in his book “Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God,” points out that Marcion never claimed prophetic gifts, did not encourage such among his followers, and did not welcome private revelations into his system. It is known, however, that his rebellious, one-time disciple Apelles felt otherwise: “He (Apelles) has, besides, private but extraordinary lections of his own, which he calls ‘Manifestations,’ of one Philumena, a girl whom he follows as a prophetess” (pseudo-Tertullian’s “Against All Heresies” 6). Tertullian and others claimed that Philumena greatly influenced Apelles. It may have been she who led him to break so decisively with Marcion. He abandoned Marcion’s two-principle ditheism for monotheism, rejected Marcion’s doceticism in favor of a “real-flesh” Christology, repudiated Marcion’s sexual rigorism, and even acknowledged that at least some parts of the Old Testament were divinely inspired (Apelles “did not entirely deny that the law and prophets were of God” [“Non omnibus modis Dei esse deneget legem vel prophetas”] – Origen’s commentary on Titus).

In my self-published book “A New Look at the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and other Apellean Writings” I argue that shortly after its appearance (perhaps, around 140 CE), the “Manifestations” of Apelles’ was adopted by the proto-orthodox church of Rome and transformed by them into the Gospel according to John (see * below). And I argue that the Acts of the Apostles was written as a kind of kind of compromise document (as was claimed by F. C. Baur) but that the parties to the compromise were the proto-orthodox Roman church and a group of reuniting Apelleans. It was perhaps written shortly after the visit of Polycarp to Rome around 150 CE for, according to Irenaeus, Polycarp “converted many Valentinians and Marcionites” on that occasion. The proto-orthodox, I suspect, would never stoop to using the word ‘compromise’ for the arrangement. In their eyes the ex-Marcionites (Apelleans) were ‘converted.’ But if, as I contend, the agreement entailed acceptance with suitable modification of the ‘Manifestataions’ of Apelles, it is clear that it was in fact a compromise. Discretion was maintained regarding the agreement , for not all the faithful would have been edified by its particulars. I think Apelles himself was involved in the arrangement for, when Acts was composed, an appropriate first-century prefiguration for him was created: the learned Apollos of Acts 18: 24-28 who comes from Alexandria “fervent in spirit,” and is said to know the way of the Lord accurately, but not accurately enough! He gets a letter of recommendation from the brethren of Ephesus after he receives more accurate instruction from two of them. Some manuscripts of Acts, in fact, have the name ‘Apelles’ instead of ‘Apollos’ in Acts 18. In any case, the word was put out to the faithful to “Welcome Apelles, who is approved in Christ” (Rom. 16:10). This explains why neither Justin nor Irenaeus ever condemn Apelles or his followers by name even though Apelles, according to Tertullian, was one of the three “more prominent and better known corruptors of truth” (the other two being Marcion and Valentinus – see “On the Prescription of Heretics,” 30) and he devoted a special treatise (no longer extant) to refuting Apelles’ errors. Thus the proto-orthodox waited until after Apelles death, around 180 CE, before they started condemning him.

So, without dragging this out much more, I submit that the emphasis on the Holy Spirit in Acts reflects an agreement worked out between the proto-orthodox and the Spirit-enthusiast followers of the ex-Marcionite Apelles. Unfortunately, Philumena, the prophetess associate of Apelles, finished badly. It seems she was caught in adultery (Tertullian amplifies the crime somewhat, calling her a “monstrous prostitute.”). It may well be that her fall from grace, by causing disillusionment among the Apelleans, had some part to play in their decision to reunite with Rome. I think, too, that the story of the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel was inserted as a symbolic acknowledgement of Philumena whose revelations make up that gospel. The earliest appearance of the story in John’s Gospel is in the Old Latin (pre-Vulgate) versions dating to the second century CE. And in those versions the story is located right before Jesus’ claim to be “the light of the world” which, in Latin is “LUMEN saeculi” (Jn. 8:12). The Latin translator chose that location because Phi-LUMEN-a’s name, though originally of Greek origin, contains the Latin word for light,” LUMEN. And, as another hint, the adulterous woman’s connection with the writing of that gospel is reflected in the fact that Jesus WRITES with his finger in the dirt.


Best regards,

Roger Parvus


* There are many indications in John’s Gospel that it started life as a Marcionite-like gospel. The Johannine Jesus disassociates himself from the Jewish Scriptures, calling the Torah “your” Law. He denies that anyone before him had seen or known God (contradicting the Jewish belief that Moses spoke with God “face to face). He likewise denies that anyone previous to him had ascended into heaven (contradicting Jewish beliefs regarding Enoch and Elijah). He denies God ever rested on the seventh day (“My father works until now and I work”). He disassociates himself from the Jewish people, referring to earlier generations of Jews as “your” (not “our”) ancestors and labeling all those who shepherded them “thieves and robbers” (“I am the good shepherd… ALL who came before me were thieves and robbers”).

The original author of the fourth Gospel, however, was not a strict Marcionite: His Jesus, for example, turns water into wine; Marcionites did not drink wine. And whereas the last supper of his Jesus was not a Passover meal, the last supper of Marcion’s Jesus was such a meal: Marcion retained in his gospel the words “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you,” and Tertullian was only too happy to point out the inconsistency. The Johannine Marcionism (if we can call it that) is more consistent with doctrine of the ex-Marcionite Apelles. Whereas Marcion rejected the Old Testament because he viewed it as the record of a god unrelated to Jesus, Apelles taught that Old Testament contained outright fables and falsehoods. For Marcion, the Old Testament was basically a trustworthy account but it concerned a Jewish warrior Messiah who was yet to come. For Apelles, on the other hand, much of the Law and the Prophets contained contradictions.. It is known he wrote a work (“Syllogisms”) consisting of at least forty-six volumes exposing contradictions and falsehoods in the Old Testament. The Old Testament criticism we see in the fourth gospel reflects the criticism of Apelles, not Marcion.

There are other indications in the fourth gospel that point to Apellean authorship of it. For example, the story of the healing of the man born blind implies, as Robert Price notes in his “Pre-Nicene New Testament,” belief in reincarnation or pre-incarnation (Was the blindness due to some fault the man committed before being born?) It is known that Apelles taught at least pre-incarnation. He taught that the fiery angel (the Jewish god) lured souls down from heaven to earth with food and then locked them into bodies. Another example: The fourth gospel appears to have once contained an account of a visible, observable ascension by Jesus, for he tells his disciples “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before.” This issue is left hanging, for the (obviously edited) current text of John does not contain an Ascension scene. Apellean authorship of the original text would explain the deletion. Apelles taught a unique version of the Ascension that was unacceptable to the proto-orthodox (See Epiphanius’ “Panarion” for proto-orthodox refutation of Apelles’ teaching on the Ascension).

Apelles’ prophetess associate Philumena (her name means “Beloved”) claimed to receive revealed discourses of Jesus and Paul through a boy who appeared to her: “The same phantom (“phantasmata”) appeared to Philumena dressed as a boy (“puer”) and sometimes stated he was Christ, sometimes Paul, and she would tell the audience what the phantom said.” (Patrologia Latina, 42, 30, n.1). These revealed discourses appear to have been viewed as a gospel, for Tertullian scolds Philumena and dismisses her revelations by quoting Paul’s warning that “if we or an angel from heaven should preach a GOSPEL other than the one we preached to you, let him be anathema.” Apelles called the gospel that he wrote based on Philumena’s revelations “Manifestations.” This title fits well with the contents of the fourth gospel. Many scholars, in fact, concede that the current text of John betrays an earlier version that they like to refer to as the “Signs Source” or “Signs Gospel.” Now the “signs” in the fourth Gospel serve to manifest Jesus: “This, the first of his SIGNS, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and he MANIFESTED (Greek: ePHANEROSEN) his glory.” As just noted, Apelles’ called his gospel “Manifestations” (Greek: PHANEROSEIS).

Philumena claimed to receive her revelations from a phantom “boy” (Latin: puer). With this in mind, note what pseudo-Hilary wrote:

“John the most holy evangelist was the youngest among all the apostles. Him the Lord held in his arms when the apostles discussed who among them was the greatest and when he said: ‘He who is not converted as this boy (“puer”) will not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ It is he who reclined against the Lord’s breast. It is he whom Jesus loved more than the others and to whom he gave his mother Mary, and whom he gave as son to Mary.”

Ambrose too claims to have read in a gospel “dictated by the voice of John himself” that the evangelist was a youth (“adolescens”). And Jerome says he read in certain ecclesiastical histories that the evangelist John was a mere boy (“puer”), the youngest of all the apostles. (On the evangelist John as a boy see chapter 12 of Robert Eisler’s “The Enigma of the Fourth Gospel”).

These then are a few of the reasons that lead me to suspect that the John’s Gospel started life as the work Philumena and Apelles. Some time around 140 CE Apelles converted Philumena's revelations into a gospel. This scenario not only accounts for the new material in the gospel, it also explains the philosophic presentation of it. Peter Lampe, from a study of the extant literary fragments of Apelles, is of the opinion that "Apelles was better philosophically trained than his teacher, Marcion." And he concurs with Harnack's assessment that Apelles was "highly educated." ("From Paul to Valentinus," appendix 1). This Apellean scenario can also account for the Alexandrian influence that some scholars (Randel Helms, for instance) detect in the fourth gospel, for, when Apelles deserted Marcion, he fled from Rome to Alexandria and spent some time there. I would also note that the private nature of Apelles’ book [“privatas… lectiones” – pseudo-Tert. 6] would undoubtedly have made it easier for the proto-orthodox to pull off such an adoption and adaptation.

Finally, many scholars have wondered why Marcion adopted Luke's Gospel rather than John's when--by all accounts--the doctrine of the fourth gospel would have suited Marcion's purposes much better My proposed scenario for the origin of the fourth Gospel provides a plausible solution to this problem. As already mentioned, Marcion showed no enthusiasm for prophecy and prophetic gifts. He must have known, I believe, the prophetic origin of the new gospel and he didn't believe it. In addition, the split between Marcion and Apelles was likely a bitter one, causing splits within a number of Marcionite communities. Apelles accused Marcion of lying and largely rejected Marcion's teachings. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that Marcion made no use of Apelles' gospel.

PhilosopherJay

Hi RParvus,

This sounds like a reasonable hyposthesis.

It is unfortunate that we do not have the writings of the heretics themselves to compare to the gospels. That way we could determine more precisely their relationship to its construction. We may suspect that one reason for their deliberate destruction is that their works would clarify various origins of techniques and issues in the gospels.

Also, the dating of the heretics is problematical. I still hold to a later dating of Marcion, circa 150-160, so Apelles I take to be post 150's-160's, if we can take his disciple relationship to Marcion as being accurately described.

Since Celsus (circa 180) does not know of the canonical gospels, I take it that they did not reach their current form until between 180-205 (when Tertullian knows of them). Early Clement of Alexandria (post 200) doesn't seem to know of them, but later Clement does.

The variety of gospels around in the second half of the Second century makes it difficult to see precise influences. However, In examining popular works, we often see that they have been constructed using materials and ideas from earlier less popular works. We may suggest that this was the case with the canonical gospels.

For example, the famous opening title sequence of James Bond is of Bond seen through a gun barrel. In Sam Fuller's 1957 film, "Forty Guns," a female gun salesmen, (Eve Brent), hands one of the heroes (Gene Barry) a gun. We get the familiar gun point of view shot, but it is Brent that is in the center of the frame. The meaning of the shot is a bit ambiguous. It seems to suggest that he is falling in love with her, but why is he pointing the gun at her? Does it symbolize aggressive male sexual desire with the gun representing the penis? In any case, the effect is jarring and striking.

Since the designer of the James Bond sequence, Maurice Binder, was an unmarried young man in his 30's, working as a designer in cinema, in 1957, it is highly probable, but not certain, that he saw the gun barrel point of view shot in Sam Fuller's film. It is also noteworthy that the barrel point of view shot makes sense in the Sam Fuller film, as Gene Barry might be looking through it to determine if he should buy the gun or not. On the other hand, it makes no sense in the James Bond opening, as an assassin would be looking through the gun sight and not the gun barrel. One can suggest that Binder saw how striking the shot was in the Sam Fuller film and used it despite its lack of sense in the Bond title sequence

In the same way, it seems that many pieces of the canonical gospels make no sense, but they may have made sense in their position in original gospels.
However, without the original gospels, it is hard to reconstruct why they were used in the ways they were used.

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

DCHindley

Jay,

I am not so sure on what basis you think Celsus and later Clement of Alexandria did not know of the 4 canonical gospels.

Celsus is said to complain that Christians have "corrupted the first text of the Gospel in a threefold, fourfold, or manifold fashion, and modified it to enable [them] to meet all forms of objections." If the gospels were composed to serve as apologies for the kinds of Christianity practiced by the authors (as I have occasionally asserted ever so wrongly), then they would of course have been composed to "answer objections" as Celsus asserted.

If the canonical Gospels were written as apologies directed to pagans, as Celsus seems to have understood them, then there is no reason to think (as is usually assumed) that Christians used them from the very start to edify the faithful.

That then brings us to Clement. He writes to pagans (Exhortation to the Heathen) as well as to fellow Christians (Instructor & Miscellanies), but as far as I can tell, he does seem to quote from or allude to all of the canonical Gospels, even if only mentioning the Gospels of Mark and John by name. When you say "early Clement of Alexandria" are you actually thinking of the "first" letter of Clement of Rome?

DCH

PhilosopherJay

Hi DCHindley,

The "threefold, fourfold, multifold" quote by Celsus does not suggest he knows of the canonical gospels, only that he knows of a multitude of rapidly changing gospels.


In To the Newly Baptized, Clement does not mention the Gospel.

In Exhortation to the Heathen, Clement uses the term gospel twice:
He seems to be unaware of the gospel in its canonical forms.

In The Instructor, he uses the phrases "in the Gospel" about ten times and the phrase, "in the Gospel according to John" twice. It apears that he is aware of two Gospels, the Gospel according to John and a book that he refers to as "The Gospel".

In Stromata, he is aware of the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel According to the Egyptians, and seemingly other gospels. Most of the time the term "gospel" is just used to mean the teachings of the Christ.

In "The Rich Man" he writes:

Actually it is not in Mark, but only the Gospel of Luke, where we get: 18.29 And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 18.30 who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life."

So, in the only case where he quotes and names the Gospel of Mark, he actually quotes the Gospel of Luke.

This suggests that a multitude of gospels in different forms with different names were floating around in Clement's time (post 200). We may presume that most, if not all were quite recent, otherwise, he would have done a better job of distinguishing between them.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay