RParvus

The purpose of this thread is to open for discussion the possibility that the original version of the Fourth Gospel (proto-John) was written by Apelles, the one-time disciple of Marcion. I realize this kind of specific identification has long been considered an impossible task. Already more than a hundred years ago Renan opined: “To pierce the mystery of this school (Johannine) or to know how the document in question (the Fourth Gospel) issued from it, is impossible.” Schweitzer agreed: “The literary problem of this book remains an insoluble enigma. Never shall we know who was its author, nor how it occurred to him to present John, the disciple of the Lord, as the witness for the truth of his story.” And W.F. Howard: “We shall never know who wrote this Gospel.” This defeatist refrain has continued up to the present.

However, of the four canonical gospels, surely the authorship of the fourth should be the easiest to figure out. There is general consensus that it is the latest of four. Likewise, it is generally acknowledged that it first found acceptance among second-century heretical groups. And for this reason it has long been suspected that the community itself that gave birth to it was a sect, although, in the opinion of the Johannine scholar Raymond Brown, despite all their “tendencies toward sectarianism, I would contend that the Johannine attitude toward the Apostolic Christians …proves that the Johannine community, as reflected in the Fourth Gospel, had not really become a sect.” (The Community of the Beloved Disciple, New York: Paulist Press, 1979. p. 90). Finally, there is no shortage of clues in the Fourth Gospel, no shortage of puzzling passages. One would think it should not be an impossible task to match up these puzzling passages with the teaching of some second-century sect or quasi-sect.

The candidate that I propose is Apelles. This one-time disciple of Marcion broke with his teacher and founded his own sect. It is not known whether this break occurred before or after Marcion’s own separation from the Roman church in 144 CE. By repudiating Marcion, Apelles moved noticeably closer to the proto-orthodox church on a number of significant doctrinal issues. He rejected Marcion’s ditheism and returned to belief in one God. He rejected Marcion’s docetism, replacing it with the belief that Jesus possessed a real human body (albeit not one that originated from any human conception and birth, virginal or otherwise). He also jettisoned Marcion’s strict sexual asceticism.

It might be objected that Apelles came up with several new doctrines of his own, and that these were not acceptable to the proto-orthodox. This is true. As mentioned above, Apelles rejected docetism but he replaced it with a teaching that Jesus, in the course of his descent to this world, formed to himself a real human body made of elements he borrowed from the starry regions. And Apelles held that Jesus, at his Ascension, restored the elements of his body to the starry regions and returned to heaven in spirit only. For Apelles, this setting aside of the flesh by Jesus at his Ascension was definitive. Jesus will not return for a Last Judgement. And there will be no General Resurrection on the last day. The resurrection to new life occurs here and now. At death the body is left behind and the soul alone ascends to God. Needless to say, Apelles’ version of the Ascension and its consequences were unacceptable to the proto-orthodox.

What was arguably Apelles most distinctive new doctrine, however, was that the Law and Prophets were nothing more than fables and falsehoods. They were the invention of a fiery angel who deceived the Jews into thinking that he was God. Note that this teaching of Apelles was different from Marcion’s teaching with which it is sometimes confused. Marcion held that the Law and Prophets were a true and trustworthy account of the demiurge’s dealings with the Jews. For Marcion, the Old Testament was religiously irrelevant; it had nothing to do with the good God who revealed himself in Jesus. But, as Harnack noted, “It is highly remarkable that Marcion acknowledged the Old Testament as a self-contained whole, assumed it had no adulterations, interpolations, or such, and did not even regard the book as false; instead he believed it to be trustworthy throughout” (Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Labyrinth Press, 1999. p. 58). Because of this, Marcion agreed with the Jews in denying that Jesus was predicted by the Old Testament prophets. And since he did not question the accuracy of the prophetic books, Marcion taught that the prophecies either had already been fulfilled by historical figures, or will be fulfilled when the Jewish warrior Messiah comes. Tertullian reproached Marcion for this stance vis-�*-vis the Jewish Scriptures, and accused him of abetting the Jews (See, for example, Against Marcion. II,21:2; III,5:4 and III,12:1.)

Apelles, on the other hand, “composed his treatises against the Law and the Prophets and attempts to abolish them as if they had spoken falsehoods.” (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 10:16); “He (Apelles) has his own books, which he has entitled Syllogisms, in which he seeks to prove that whatever Moses has written about God is not true, but is false.” (Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, 6). Thus, Apelles rejection of the Old Testament was more radical than Marcion’s.

Now, what is interesting is that, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is very much an Apellean. Consider, for example, that the Johannine Jesus

1. Refers to the Law as “your Law”(e.g. Jn. 8:17). This hardly seems a respectful way to refer to it.

2. He rejects as fictitious the divine rest on which Sabbath observance was based: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (Jn. 5:17). These words deny that God ever rested — on the seventh day of creation or otherwise.

3. He rejects the idea that God appeared and spoke to the Jews, through Moses or otherwise: “You have never heard his voice (the Father’s) nor seen his form” (Jn. 5:37),

4. He rejects as fictitious all Jewish claims regarding ascensions whether of Enoch, Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven” (Jn. 3:13). It should be noted that Origen specifically attributes this teaching to Apelles: “Apelles, Marcion’s disciple, who became the founder of a certain sect, and treated the writings of the Jews as fables, says that Jesus is the only one who has visited the human race” (Against Celsus, 5:54)

5. The Johannine Jesus rejects any witness to himself as the Messiah by John the Baptist: “I do not receive witness from man” (Jn. 5:34).

6. In fact, he rejects all the Old Testament heroes: “All who came before me were thieves and brigands” (Jn. 10:8). Moses should be numbered among the thieves. According to
Apelles it was a deceptive fiery angel who appeared to Moses and deceived him. Moses, at the bidding of the fiery angel, “plundered” the Egyptians (Exodus 3:21– 22 and 12:35 – 36). Abraham too should be numbered among the thieves and brigands for, according to Jesus, these do not just steal, they also “kill and destroy” (Jn. 10:10). In chapter 8 Jesus acknowledges that his hearers are the descendants of Abraham. The proof, he tells them, is “you are doing the works of your father” (Jn. 8:41). The only father mentioned up to that point in the passage is Abraham. And Jesus specifies the works he is referring to: “You seek to kill me because my word has no place in you” (Jn. 8:37). That is to say, just as Abraham was willing to kill his own son at the behest of the “god” of the Old Testament, so the hearers of Jesus, to carry out the wishes of the same deceiver, sought to kill Jesus.

7. In contrast to the Synoptics, the last supper that the Johannine Jesus eats with his disciples is not a Passover meal. This again is understandable if an Apellean was the author of the Fourth Gospel. Apelles would not have used what he considered a fable (i.e the Passover) as a foreshadowing of the eucharist; and he certainly would not have portrayed Jesus as presiding over a Passover meal.

8. Apelles doctrine regarding the flesh of Jesus also makes an appearance in the Fourth Gospel. We have seen that Jesus, according to Apelles, did not derive his flesh from Mary in any way. The gospel author makes this clear when he has Jesus at Cana say to his putative mother: “What is there (in common) between us?” This also explains why the Johannine Jesus does not consider himself to be Jewish. He tells the Jews “your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died” (Jn. 6:49). Notice he does not say “our” ancestors.

9. Even the omissions in the Fourth Gospel point to Apelles. The original version must have had an Ascension scene for Jesus very clearly intimates this by saying to his disbelieving disciples: “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” (Jn. 6:62). But Apelles’ version of the Ascension was unacceptable to the proto-orthodox church. Apelles, as we have seen, held that Jesus, while ascending, restored the elements of his body to the starry regions. The proto-orthodox editor of the Fourth Gospel appears to have suppressed this unacceptable scene and transferred the pre-Ascension discourses (ch. 14-17) to the last supper. This transferral is the reason for the inconsistencies that have always been noticed in those discourses.

Thus far I have provided a few indications that point to authorship of proto-John by an Apellean. I would now like to be more specific and propose that Apelles and his associate, the prophetess Philumena, were the authors. First, regarding Philumena: the early record attests that she was the source of some, at least, of Apelles’ distinctive teachings. Thus, Tertullian writes: “That woman Philumena persuaded Apelles and the other deserters of Marcion to believe instead that Christ was clothed in true flesh, though it was not derived from a human birth, but was borrowed from the elements” (Against Marcion, 3:11): and “already at that time had the Holy Spirit perceived that there would be an angel of deceit in a certain virgin Philumena, transforming himself into an angel of light, by whose signs and deceptions Apelles, being led away, introduced a new heresy” (On the Prescription of Heretics, 6 & 30).

Now, many biblical scholars have suspected that the creative source behind the Fourth Gospel was not an eyewitness but a mystic prophet. B.H. Streeter, for example, long ago wrote: “To ignore the phenomenon of prophecy is to study the Fourth Gospel apart from its environment. And, for myself, I must say that the more often I read the discourses of the Fourth Gospel the more it is borne in upon me that its author was regarded, by himself, and by the Church for which he wrote, as an inspired prophet” (The Four Gospels, Macmillan, 1925. p. 368). The fact that the Johannine discourses are based on prophetic revelations has left many traces in the text. Note, for example, how Jesus refers to his Ascension as something that happened in the past when he says to Nicodemus: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven” (Jn. 3:13) It was missteps like this that led Alfred Loisy to observe that “Without intending to do so the author has given away the secret that the speaker has long quitted this world and that, while seemingly addressing his first disciples, he is really speaking to the Church of the second century” (The Origins of the New Testament. Allen and Unwin, 1950. p. 223). I propose that Apellean prophetess Philumena is the creative prophetic source behind the Fourth Gospel.

As for Apelles, I believe that his contribution to proto-John was to put Philumena’s revelations into a gospel format. His book entitled “Manifestations” (Greek: Phaneroseis) should be considered the book that biblical scholars usually refer to as the Signs-Source. The book is no longer extant, so how much of it should be attributed to Apelles and how much to Philumena is hard to say. Pseudo-Tertullian mentions them both in connection with the book: “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” (Against All Heresies 6). “Manifestations/Phaneroseis” is, of course, a fitting title for the Signs-Source for, according to Jn. 2:11, “This, the first of his
signs, Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and he manifested (Greek: phaneroo) his glory.”

Now if the above Apellean scenario for the Fourth Gospel is correct, an obvious question is: Why did the proto-orthodox church adopt and revise this gospel? One answer—that provided by Loisy—is that its adoption was part of a reaction to an even greater threat: Marcionism. To use Loisy’s words: “Towards 150–160, the Marcionite heresy having broken out, this Asiatic book was amended, completed and more or less worked over, not only by the addition of chapter 21, but by other retouches and additions in the main body; it was then boldly presented as the work of an apostle.” This was a time “when Asiatic Christianity was uniting with that of other churches to make common front against the flood of gnosticism and especially against Marcion.” (Origins, p. 237 & 193).

That both the proto-orthodox and the Apelleans felt more threatened by Marcion than by each other is, I believe, part of the answer. However, I do not think that this reason alone can adequately explain why some Apelleans would have allowed the proto-orthodox to lay their hands on the gospel of their beloved prophetess Philumena. To allow that, something more is needed. And that “something more” is, I suspect, a fall from grace by Philumena. According to Tertullian, Philumena was at first a virgin, and "afterwards became a monstrous prostitute" (On the Prescription of Heretics. 30). Her “prostitution” may have reference to a sexual sin that she was apprehended in. It is also possible that it refers to some more spiritual crime, like apostasy. In any case, it is reasonable to think that if the co-founder of the Apelleans was caught in some serious sin, the Apellean communities would have been seriously shaken. And in such a situation,
I can see some disillusioned Apelleans seeking refuge in the proto-orthodox church and allowing their new brethren to review/revise their gospel.

Support is lent to this scenario by the pericope in the Fourth Gospel about the woman caught in adultery. It is generally held that this passage entered the Fourth Gospel by way of the Old Latin versions. It is not present in the earliest Greek texts. But why would an Old Latin translator have placed it directly in front of John 8:12, a verse in which Jesus declares himself the Light of the world? The Old Latin versions give us the answer. In several of them (e.g. the Codex Palatinus) the John 8:12 declaration of Jesus reads: "Ego sum LUMEN (my emphasis) saeculi" ( = "I am the LIGHT of the world"). Now Phi-LUMEN-a's name is from the Greek but those of Latin background could not help but notice that her name contains the Latin word for light. Thus, if this pericope was intended to be a symbolic acknowledgement of her contribution to the Fourth Gospel, a fitting but discreet place to insert it was right before John 8:12. If proto-John was written sometime in the 140s CE, and sanitized by the proto-orthodox around 155 CE (perhaps in connection with Polycarp’s visit to Rome), the Old Latin translator’s insertion could have been made as early as the latter part of the second-century.

One last observation: It might be thought that the proto-orthodox church would never adopt and adapt a “heretical” gospel. The Apelleans were heretics, were they not? Certainly to Tertullian and later proto-orthodox writers they were. Tertullian wrote a treatise “Against the Apelleans”(unfortunately no longer extant) to refute their errors. In fact, for Tertullian, Apelles was one of the “big three.” He names Marcion, Valentinus, and Apelles as “the more remarkable and assiduous corruptors of the truth” (On the Prescription of Heretics, 30). This makes it all the more surprising that there is no clear proof that Apelles was considered a heretic in his own day. Justin and Irenaeus—never ones to be shy about naming names when it comes to condemning heretics—never mention the name of Apelles or his followers. Very curious silences, to say the least!.

The case for Apellean authorship of the Fourth Gospel is laid out much more fully in the last chapter of my book “A New Look at the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch and other Apellean Writings.” The summary I am presenting here is intended to open a discussion of the theory on this board with any who care to take part in it.

Roger Parvus

andrewcriddle

One obvious issue is that it seems to date the Gospel of John rather later than is likely and the activity of Apelles rather earlier than is likely.

(Apelles seems to have lived until the very late 2nd century. The absence of any mention of his views in Justin may IMO indicate that his period of activity was well after the middle of the 2nd century. It would seem plausible to regard him as becoming mportant only after Marcion's death. )

On a technical point. The woman taken in adultery is unlikely to have been part of the original form of the Old Latin of John. Although it seems to have become widespread in the Old Latin sometime in the 3rd century.

Andrew Criddle

RParvus

That is where the Ignatian Letters come into the picture. Most of my book is devoted to showing that these letters too were written by an Apellean and that they can dated pretty precisely to around 150 CE. It would take some time to present the case sufficiently here on the board, and I don’t have the time for it this afternoon. However, I will try to put together a summary soon. Here’s one hint: In his letter to the Magnesians, Ignatius writes: “Do not be deceived by false doctrines or by old fables that are worthless. For if we still live according to Judaism we admit that we have not received God’s grace.” Does that teaching remind you of any one?

Obviously, if it can be demonstrated that the Ignatian letters were written around 150 by an Apellean, this would mean that Apelles was already active by that time.

Roger Parvus

RParvus

Andrew,

I have started a separate thread on the identification of the author of the Ignatians as Peregrinus and as an Apellean. See thread: Ignatius of Antioch and Peregrinus.

Regarding the timeframe of Apelles: He was not the successor of Marcion, but rather a one-time pupil of his who broke with him, repudiated many of his doctrines (e.g. ditheism. docetism, the Marcionite canon), and started his own sect. Thus he was a contemporary of Marcion's. Apelles apparently lived a long life as Rhodon, around the year 180 CE, spoke with him and referred to him as aged. The date of Marcion's death is unknown.

Best regards,

Roger Parvus

RParvus

This is a postscript to the summarized theory I provided at the head of this thread that the Apellean prophetess Philumena was the source of much of the material in proto-John. In this post I would like to show how her authorship can be maintained even in the face of the early tradition connecting John the elder (sometimes translated ‘John the presbyter’) with the Fourth Gospel.

As noted in my previous post, the early record contains indications that Philumena experienced a fall from grace, i.e. was caught in some serious infraction. Although she eventually received a sort of cryptic tribute by the insertion of the pericope de adultera in the Fourth Gospel, it is clear that her disgrace precluded any chance that the proto-orthodox church would acknowledge her as the author of that gospel. And so if the proto-orthodox came to recognize that gospel as authoritative, they must have come up with some way to suitably disguise its provenance. Now it just so happens that the circumstances in which Philumena supposedly received her revelations left open a very easy way to attribute them to someone else. In a fragment—apparently from Tertullian's "Against the Apelleans"—lodged by accident in a ninth-century manuscript of one of Augustine's writings we read:

"The same phantom (Latin: phantasmata) appeared to Philumena dressed as a boy and sometimes stated he was Christ, sometimes Paul, and she would tell the audience what the phantom said." (Patrologia Latina 42:30, note 1)

Now, could it not be plausibly claimed that this boy, this phantom who supposedly appeared to Philumena should be considered the real author of the book that contained her revelations (the Fourth Gospel)? At some point this phantom boy must have either revealed his name or was given a name by the church. His name, I propose, was John.

The earliest mention of John the elder was by Papias, who paired him together with someone named Aristion:

"If ever any one came who had been a follower of the elders, I would inquire as to the discourses of the elders, what was said by Andrew, or what by Peter, or what by Philip, or what by Thomas or James, or what by John or Matthew or any other of the disciples of the Lord; and the things which Aristion and John the elder, the disciples of the Lord were saying. For I did not think that I could get so much profit from the contents of books as from the utterances of a living and abiding voice." (related by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, 3:39).

In regard to this passage, note first that Papias is interested in what the elders Andrew, Peter, etc SAID (past tense) and what Aristion and John the elder WERE SAYING. By speaking of Aristion and John the elder in this way, it is clear that these two were the only ones of those mentioned who were contemporary with Papias. Second, "elder" is a term ordinarily used for men of a former generation. This meaning certainly seems to fit the first group (i.e. Andrew, Peter, etc). But if John the elder is contemporary with Papias how can he be considered an elder (i.e. a disciple of a former generation)? How can he be both a contemporary of Papias and at the same time part of the group of elders Andrew, Peter, etc? The answer is that John the elder is the boy who belonged to the former generation of disciples but was now appearing as a phantom from beyond to Philumena and revealing to her the discourses of Jesus and Paul. Third, if, as I will argue in a moment, Aristion is a cipher for Apelles, this would also explain why the title "elder" is apparently refused to him by Papias. Apelles was a disciple of the Lord, but since he did not belong to the former generation of disciples, he was not entitled to be called an ‘elder’ in the sense that Papias used that word.

If this scenario is correct, it seems quite likely that the phantom boy is the paraclete promised by the Johannine Jesus. Some have suggested that the promised paraclete was Paul, or Marcion. But since, according to the Johannine Jesus, the paraclete was to remain with the church "always" (Jn. 14:16), it is clear that these two should be eliminated as candidates. Philumena's phantom boy, however, makes a nice fit. Apelles and Philumena probably thought that his regular visits would continue indefinitely and that he would continue to teach them everything and remind them of everything that Jesus said (Jn. 14:26). So when Papias says he prefers "the utterances of a living and abiding voice" to the contents of any books, he is not referring to oral traditions (as is usually thought), but to the living and abiding voice of the phantom paraclete as transmitted by people like Philumena. (I say "by people like Philumena" because there is nothing in the early record to indicate that Philumena claimed to be the exclusive channel of the type of revelations she was receiving).

Now, regarding the shadowy Aristion: There is nothing else about him in the surviving early record. There is, however, someone with a similar name —Aristo—who, according to the Apostolic Constitutions, was the first bishop of Smyrna. What makes this interesting is that both the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions honor an Apelles as the first bishop of Smyrna. Beyond identifying him with the Apelles who, according to Romans 16:10, is "approved in Christ," they have little information about him. My own suspicion is that this Apelles honored by the traditions of both churches has some connection with our Apelles, the associate of
Philumena.

In summary, I propose that John the elder is the phantom boy who supposedly provided Philumena with her revelations about what Jesus said. This phantom boy was the paraclete promised by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. Aristion (Aristo, Apelles the first bishop of Smyrna) is Apelles, the associate of Philumena.


Roger Parvus

winthrop

I find your characterization of these verses to be troubling. One must understand context in order to understand text.

The context is the Jews trying to condemn an adulterous woman, and trying to trick Jesus into doing something that would condemn Himself. Because they were using the Law in this way Jesus uses the words "your Law" to show them that the very law "they" are seeking to use bears witness against them. If they are going to own the Law they must own all of it.

He doesn't reject the Sabbath. No Jew of that day thought that God stopped working after the 6th day of creation, He simply stopped working to create, He still worked in providentially preserving. And Jesus was also correcting the Pharisees' misconception of what the Sabbath (and Law for that matter) was all about.

This statement comes from a misunderstanding of the distinction between the term "Father" and "God." The Father is a person in the Godhead, one of three. The voices heard in the OT would have been the voice of the Son, not of the Father. But that would still be the voice of God.

No one (not even Enoch or Elijah) did ascend to Heaven of their own power...only Christ did.

The verse right before this says that John bore record to the truth, so Jesus isn't rejecting the witness, rather He calls it true. What He is saying is that He does not rely on man's witness.

As He calls Himself the "Door," He is calling those who take upon themselves this title as being thieves and robbers. Moses and the others pointed to the Door, they didn't claim to be the Door.

This just takes a bit of historical knowledge. The calendar of Galilee was a day apart from the calendar of Judah. The one calculated a day from sunrise to sunrise, and the other to sunset to sunset.

This should be translated "what does that have to do with us (or me)?"...not "what is there in common between us.