Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity (Christianity in the Making, Volume 3)

Preface

With this volume (volume 3) I come to the end of my attempt to sketch out Christianity in the Making. 70 ce was an appropriate place to stop volume 2, since the first generation of Christianity (30-­70) was so crucial to determining how the impact of Jesus had spread beyond the immediate disciples of Jesus and the borders of ancient Israel. The destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman legions certainly marked a transition point of the greatest significance — both for the founding community of Christianity (Jerusalem) and for Christianity’s mother religion, Judaism. But the majority of the New Testament writings probably emerged in the period following that epochal event. And 70 in effect marked the transition from the first-­generation leaders, James, Peter and Paul, into a second generation of still significant leaders, like Clement and Ignatius, but where the issues and influences were beginning to shift towards the more diverse and more developed questions and challenges which shaped the early churches. Here the last of the first-generation apostles (John) comes into play in unexpected ways. But with Justin Martyr, the challenges posed by Valentinus and Marcion, and the consolidation provided by Irenaeus in particular, it becomes evident what Christianity was becoming, and what the principal features were which would be consolidated and shaped in the decades ahead. Much as it would have been attractive to go further into Tertullian and Origen, or still further into Cyprian and beyond, the die had been cast in the first 150 years, and what followed was, in an important sense, only a further working out of what had been established in that initial or initiating period.

I wrestled long in deciding what title to give to this volume. Initially I wanted it to be ‘tertium genus’, a phrase drawn from Tertullian, ad Nationes 1.8, though more widely used.¹ It well represents the sense, shared by both Christians and their opponents at the beginning of the third century, that in the course of the hundred or so years covered by this volume Christianity had emerged as a force with its own distinctive character, indeed a ‘third race’, distinct not only from the principal Graeco-­Roman religious polity of the time but also from the Judaism which had given it birth. But in the event I settled for the less obscure ‘neither Jew nor Greek’, drawn from Paul (Gal. 3.28) and well representing both the transcending of old distinctions and boundaries and the ‘new creation’ which Paul had already sensed in the first generation of the new movement (2 Cor. 5.17) and which became more of a reality through the second century. The cover art, the second-­century paleo-Christian fresco of the eucharist from the catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, catches at least something of the atmosphere in which Christianity came of age.

Volumes 1 (Jesus Remembered) and 2 (Beginning from Jerusalem) had been published at a stately six-­year interval (2003 and 2009). Completing the trilogy has been the principal writing concern of the second phase of my retirement, when in the wake of a significant health crisis on my part, it became evident that my wife (Meta) and I should leave Durham to be closer to two of our children in the south of England — hence our home now in Chichester, on England’s south coast — quite a hard thing for Scots to be so far furth of bonnie Scotland! In having to downsize my personal library, from 7,000 to 3,000 volumes, I was at least able to keep to hand the volumes I needed for this final lap. Unfortunately, when I had run through my own library, it was to find that library resources on the south coast were much less adequate for my needs. Fortunately King’s College, London, came to my aid and kindly granted me a Visiting Professorship, thanks to Richard Burridge. This allowed me much valued access to the Maughan Library, as well as good relations with the King’s faculty; the support of Eddie Adams was particularly appreciated (not least when the London underground went on strike!), as also the chairing and critique of Joan Taylor. Also much appreciated were links with Oxford (Cambridge was just too far away), with the support particularly of Markus Bockmuehl and David Lincicum, the splendid hospitality of Bishop John Pritchard and his wife Wendy, and the benefit of the great Bodleian Library. Volunteers at both Keble College (Oxford) and King’s kindly participated in a series of seminars where my draft chapters provided the principal topic of debate — to the immense benefit of the second draft. Matthew Thomas was particularly helpful in a series of comments, as also Anna Grojinowski, Piotr Ashwin-­Siejkowski and Graham Stevenson.

As usual, a round of lectures and commissions gave me opportunity to try out my developing ideas, and to gain from responses and critiques. I should mention particularly

‘John’s Gospel and the Oral Gospel Tradition’

‘How Did Matthew Go About Composing His Gospel?’

‘The Earliest Interpreters of the Jesus Tradition: A Study in Early Hermeneutics’

‘The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries C.E.: Why and How Did Embryonic Christianity Expand beyond the Jewish People?’

‘Tertullian and Paul on the Spirit of Prophecy’

Full details are in the bibliography at the end of this volume.

The first draft of the present volume also benefited hugely from the comments and critique of various friends and colleagues who responded to my request for a critical read of initial draft chapters. Chris Tuckett, Simon Gathercole, Helen Bond, Bruce Longenecker and Graham Stevenson all contributed much encouragement. Several chapters were critiqued by Bob Morgan and William Baird. Several more by Karl-­Wilhelm Niebuhr, Jens Schröter and Michael Wolter. Uli Luz sent several lengthy letters full of sharp comments, and Paul Trebilco read and critiqued every chapter — a real work of supererogation on his part. They all engaged helpfully with what they read, asking probing questions, pointing out weaknesses (and some strengths!) in the draft material, and recommending further reading. The resulting volume is stronger than I could have achieved with my own resources and I am grateful to all who have contributed to it.

The sense that I had more or less completed the task that I had set myself, and the realization that I could go on searching out relevant articles and books for many more months, pushed me to the conclusion that I should run the risk of leaving out of account some really important items that would sway my conclusions one way or another. So, with an eye to having the manuscript off my desk in time for a good summer holiday, and a sigh at having at least brought this fifteen-­year project to (what I hope is) a successful conclusion, I will bid farewell to the large undertakings of my writing career — and devote myself more to husbandly, fatherly and grandfatherly responsibilities and pleasures, not forgetting the joys of friendship and the opportunities/challenges of some preaching, lecturing, Festschriften contributions — oh yes, and housework and gardening. And there’s all these novels which we’ve been collecting for some years, which I have still to read!

I am most grateful to those who assisted in the final phase of the process, when time was pressing. Ellen Steinke and Ronald Charlie Hurlocker, graduates of the School of Theology and Ministry at Indiana Wesleyan University, did the main work in creating the Author and Ancient Sources indexes, spurred on by Ken Schenk, one of my own postgrads from past years. And thank you to John Simpson and all at Eerdmans who saw the book through the process toward publication.

But I cannot end without expressing my gratitude to the good Lord for the grace which has sustained me throughout my career, and to my beloved wife Meta, whose encouragement and critique have been such a wonderful counterpoise for more than 50 years (we celebrated our golden wedding in a golden way in 2013). Since volume 1 was dedicated to Meta and volume 2 to our much loved children (Catrina, David and Fiona), volume 3 is naturally dedicated to our wonderful grandchildren — Hannah, Tijs, Julia, Barney, Sam, Megan and Alfie. So there really was no need or occasion for a fourth volume!

James D. G. Dunn

July 2014

P. S. Of the publications which have come out since I completed the manuscript for volume 3, I am particularly sorry that I have been unable to take account of Tobias Nicklas’s Jews and Christians? (Mohr Siebeck, 2014) and Judith Lieu’s Marcion and the Making of a Heretic (Cambridge University, 2015).

1. See particularly A. von Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (ET 1908; New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962) Book II ch. 7, with Excursus, ‘Christians as a third race, in the judgment of their opponents’ (266-­78). See further A. McGowan, ‘ A Third Race or Not: The Rhetoric of Self-­Definition in Tertullian’, Patristica Bostoniensa (2001-­02) available on-­line.

Part Ten

A New Beginning

Chapter 38

Christianity in the Making

38.1 Introduction

The executions of the three great leaders of first-generation Christianity in the early 60s (James, Paul and Peter), and the destruction of the mother church in Jerusalem, as of Jerusalem itself, in 70, were almost as disastrous for emerging Christianity as had been the execution of Jesus himself. Certainly the initial form of the movement, the messianic renewal sect of Second Temple Judaism, represented by James and the Judaean believers, suffered a devastating blow from which it never fully recovered. But the developing movement, already well established in Syria and spreading through the northeast quadrant of the Mediterranean cities of the Roman empire, was sufficiently well rooted and sufficiently remote from the catastrophe in Israel/Palestine to maintain its appeal for seekers after spiritual truth and salvation and to continue its expansion. Moreover, the Jesus tradition and the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection were still sufficiently fresh, and there were still a goodly number of the first-generation disciples active in the churches, for the character stamped on the movement by Jesus, by the events commemorated today as the first Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost, and by the first-generation disciples (Paul especially), to remain firm at the heart of the movement and to provide a continuing motivating force of considerable effect.

In fact, however, this was the period, following the disaster of 70, and running well through the second century, when the new Jesus movement firmed up its distinctive identity markers and the structures on which it would establish its distinctive and growing appeal in the following decades and centuries. Prior to 70, and despite its expansion among non-­Jews within the Roman empire, the Jesus movement had still remained within the matrix of Second Temple Judaism. During the forty years from Jesus to the temple’s destruction, the movement focusing on Messiah/Christ Jesus was still essentially, legally and in the self-­understanding of its leaders a sect of the national religion of the Jews. It was not yet ‘Christianity’. As already noted, ‘Christianity’ as a distinctive entity was not so named until the second decade of the second century.¹ So the period between the two Jewish revolts (66-­73 and 132-­135) and beyond was critical both for the redefinition of Judaism which these calamities made necessary and for the first attempts to define ‘Christianity’, particularly because the redefinition of Judaism also made necessary the definition of ‘Christianity’ in relation to the Judaism which had been its birth mother. Other religious developments, in part stimulated by emerging Christianity itself, notably all that falls traditionally under the heading of ‘Gnosticism’, also required a careful charting of Christianity’s distinctives. Nor should we assume that emerging Christianity itself was a single, uniformly coherent movement. Consequently, the questions, What is Christianity? and What are the distinctive and defining features of Christianity?, were forced upon the theologians and leaders of this still adolescent religion both from without and from within.

The task confronting us in this volume is much more difficult to manage than in the previous two volumes. It is not simply that the time periods are so different — only some three years for Jesus Remembered and about forty years for Beginning from Jerusalem, but now more than one hundred years for this crucial phase for Christianity in the making. More challenging is the fact that we have no clear guideline or template to follow through that hundred years. With Jesus Remembered, the Gospels, particularly the Synoptic Gospels, provided a coherent and relatively limited body of material to work with, and offered a structure and a sequence for ordering the analysis and discussion of the material. With Beginning from Jerusalem, the narrative history provided by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles and the collection of letters preserved from Paul served in the same way, however awkward it was at times to fit the two testimonies into a single story or picture.² But now we have no Luke to guide us, no Acts at least to start from. The account provided by the fourth-­century Eusebius, valuable as it is, is too remote and (as we shall see) too patchy and anachronistic to provide a role equivalent to that of Luke’s Acts. The other NT writings are usually hard to pin down as to both their origin and the testimony they provide for a rounded picture of the Christianity to which they testify, and hard to relate each to the other, quite unlike the different NT Gospels in their testimony to Jesus or the relation of Acts to the Pauline letters. The Christian writings which have been preserved give us only episodic pictures of the period, and the contribution of rabbinic tradition, other Jewish and Jewish-­Christian writings, and Gnostic documents is at best contested at almost every point of relevance.

So how to go about the task? In some ways it is fortunate that there have been far fewer attempts to write a detailed history of Christianity in the making through this period (less secondary literature to confuse and to debate with!). NT specialists have usually been content to confine themselves to the NT itself and its immediate context. Similarly specialists in ‘the early church’ have usually in effect begun at the end of the NT period and focused on the second century and thereafter. One problem with such an approach is that some of the early church writings may be earlier than some of the NT writings.³ The period of overlap should be examined more closely. But in addition, a NT specialist can hardly be uninterested in the effect the NT writings had, and in the influence they exercised which resulted in due course in their being recognized as ‘canonical’, that is, in a word now much used, in their ‘reception’. Similarly, the reasons why they and not others became designated as the NT canon tell us much both about the documents themselves and about the way they were read in these early decades. It is, assuredly, no longer acceptable to assume that ‘the apostolic age’ was an ideal and a pure period, from which the subsequent period fell away (the ‘sub-­apostolic’ age, in its double entendre sense).⁴ But how did the successors of the first disciples shape Christianity, not least in the way they handled the traditions stemming from the first generation and the writings of the first disciples?

A similar line of reflection points to the most logical end-­point for this analysis. For, as we shall see, Irenaeus marks a decisive watershed in early Christianity. It was with Irenaeus that the four-­Gospel canon was effectively established. It was Irenaeus who ensured that the two most influential contributors to the NT, Paul and John, were not commandeered by Gnostic sects but were recognized to be determinative for the mainstream of Christianity which Irenaeus represented. With Irenaeus the internal and external conflicts with the Gnostic and Judaeo-­Christian sects reached a decisive point, and it was Irenaeus who re-­secured the character of Christianity that endured beyond these conflicts. As the first genuinely ‘biblical theologian’, Irenaeus⁵ provides a natural stopping place. So our story will reach its conclusion or climax with Irenaeus.

But how to get from the end of the first generation to Irenaeus, from 70 to, say, 180?⁶ Previous attempts to trace the path, or diversity of paths, have usually found that one or more of the following perspectives have provided the way to be pursued, characterized by:

the emergence of the Christian distinctives, that is, of NT canon, creed, ritual and episcopacy; alternatively expressed, the emergence of the old Catholic Church,⁷ the phenomenon of ‘early Catholicism’ (Frühkatholizismus);⁸

the growing separation of Christianity from Judaism and the divergence or apostasy of Judaeo-­Christian sects;⁹

the Hellenisation of Christianity and the divergence or apostasy of Gnostic Christianity;¹⁰

a focus on the great centres of Christianity in turn — Antioch, Ephesus, Rome, etc.¹¹

A brief review of these different perspectives will help clarify the conflicted character of the material we have to deal with, may give some pointers on how the material is best handled, and should provide plenty of items for our agenda in what follows.

38.2 The Emergence of the Great Church

¹²

The publication of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius (roughly 311-­325)¹³ coincided more or less with the development of the Constantinian settlement which established Christianity as the favoured religion of the empire.¹⁴ As such it effectively established the pattern for telling the story of Christianity’s establishment; that is, a story told from the perspective of the winners after several generations of conflict and persecution. Its account is of a church whose structures, according to Eusebius, were already clear from the first, structures which had enabled it to endure and succeed. Eusebius’s main aim, indeed, was to establish the principle of apostolic succession, the successors of the apostles and the succession of bishops in the principal sees. It was this succession which had been the key to the church’s success.

Eusebius thus inaugurated the triumphalist view of Christianity’s beginnings, where the historian saw his task as to tell the story of what became the principal features of the victorious church, and by implication, the reasons for its success. The early mists are dispersed and the clear outlines of the subsequent established church are traced to the very beginnings of Christianity. So, for example, James, the brother of Jesus, had been ‘the first elected to the throne of the bishopric of the church in Jerusalem’ (HE 2.1.2). The apostolic succession was established from the beginning in the bishopric of the church in Rome, with Linus (of 2 Tim. 4.21) as the first successor to Peter, and Clement the third bishop of Rome. And the first bishop of the church in Athens could simply be identified as the Dionysius of Acts 17.34 (HE 3.4.8-­10). Whether the title ‘bishop’ had already emerged in these church plantings of the first century and whether the title was appropriate for the first generation Christian groups and for the way church leadership was initially conceived and practised are questions not even considered.¹⁵ And as for the competitors for the heritage from Jesus and of the first generation Christians, these are only to be dismissed as never really part of the emerging great church; he who disagrees with us was never one of us.

This has proved to be the dominant view of Christianity’s beginnings for most of Christianity’s history. The assumption has been: What is (now) has always been. In particular, following the lead given by Eusebius, it was assumed that there has always been the threefold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop. At the heart of Christian ministry has always been the concept and practice of priesthood. The eucharist has always been as it is. Such historical concern as there has been is a concern to trace the emergence of the monarchical bishop. The evidence that the first generation of Christians recognized no special order of priests among their number, and that the letter to the Hebrews regarded such an order as passé, belonging to the old covenant now superseded (Heb. 9-­10), was somewhat embarrassing but could be largely ignored.¹⁶ The likelihood that the re-­emergence of sacrificing priests within Christianity was an instinctive or social conformity to what everyone took for granted to be characteristic and defining of religion and religious practice could likewise be ignored. Notably, and surprisingly, the views of J. B. Lightfoot, that when an order of priesthood was reintroduced in the second century, the priests initially were seen to represent the priesthood of the believing congregation rather than the priesthood of Christ, seem to have been lightly passed over, despite the towering reputation of Lightfoot.¹⁷ So too the possibilities both that the beginnings of the eucharist had more to do with the shared meals of Jesus and the first Christians,¹⁸ and that the narrowing of the subsequent ritual to the reception of a wafer and a sipping of wine has lost something integral to the Lord’s Supper/evening meal, are hardly even worthy of consideration. What is has always been.

Similar assumptions have been characteristic of the traditional inquiries into Christianity’s beginnings. Apostolicity became the determinative factor in according canonical authority to certain writings and not to others.¹⁹ That is, the authorship of the apostles or their near companions (Mark and Luke) was what settled the issue of canonical status. And if a case could be made even for writings like Hebrews or 2 Peter, that they had been written by an apostle (Paul or Peter), that proved in the event to be decisive. Whereas a Clement and an Ignatius failed the test. The apostolic age had a hagiography all to itself.²⁰ So even if the scope and contents of the canon were not definitively resolved for three centuries, it was the link back to the sacred time of beginnings, the initial voice still sounding, still determinative, which really mattered. All this despite the evidence within these documents themselves that their writers had not seen eye to eye on quite a number of controverted issues. All this despite the fact that an undeclared hermeneutical reading of these texts (a canonical perspective) ensured that they could be heard to speak with a common voice and in accord with the presuppositions and priorities of third- and fourth-­century ecclesiastics. Still today, Orthodox Christianity lives in the world of the (Greek) Fathers and knows no other way to read the NT scriptures than through and in tune with the Fathers.

The same point could be made with regard to the creedal confessions. Of course it is fully recognized that these were formulated by the ecumenical councils, from Nicaea (325) onwards. But the implicit claim in them all is that they only spell out ‘the rule of faith’ which had been accepted and lived by more or less from the first.²¹ Here again there is little or no concern to confront the possibility that the first Christians had functioned with differing rules of faith, a shared faith in (most of) its key beliefs about Jesus, but understood and lived out differently. Here again the fact that various biblical texts could be taken most naturally to support divergent views, for example, regarding the creation of Sophia and the Logos, or the resurrection of the flesh, was too uncomfortable to be taken seriously, and the texts could be simply explained away or ignored apart from occasional liturgical mention.²²

In Western Christianity the Reformation posed some sharp questions to a mediaeval church which in effect had simply read its key tradition back into the canonical texts. But by and large the Reformers were in fact concerned to do the same with the history of Christianity’s beginnings, that is, to read them from their own perspective, to find in them the support they needed for their reforms. It was not until the Enlightenment brought a more critical approach to historical sources that the questions long suppressed or ignored could come into play. Even so, as represented by Albrecht Ritschl, the goal was to trace ‘the origin of the ancient Catholic Church’,²³ and the search for the beginnings of the great church continued to be the dominant concern, determinative of the mode of inquiry for more popular presentations of Christianity in the making.²⁴

The Reformation and the Enlightenment, however, had begun the process by which was steadily loosened the firm hand of tradition that had controlled how the beginnings of Christianity were perceived. The early History of Religions pioneers carried forward the process by loosening the controlling focus on doctrine and dogma, and William Wrede by loosening the controlling hand of the NT canon.²⁵ The historian should give as much attention to other documents outside the NT as to the NT writings, if indeed not more attention, since the NT itself had hitherto exercised a monopolistic role in determining the data and facts to be considered in talking about the beginnings of Christianity.

In fact, as noted in the opening pages of Jesus Remembered, it was not until well into the twentieth century, until Walter Bauer’s inquiry into Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,²⁶ that the traditional way of looking at the data was decisively challenged and the presuppositions from Eusebius onwards called into question. For it was precisely the assumption that ‘orthodoxy’ had always been first and that ‘heresy’ had always entered later that Bauer questioned, the assumption that false teaching was a corruption of and a falling away from the original purity of faith which, of course, had originally characterized the churches established in the apostolic age. But Bauer asked, What were the original forms of Christianity, particularly in the centres on which the Acts of the Apostles had not focused attention — in Edessa (eastern Syria) and in Alexandria, for example? Were the earliest forms of Christianity much more a ‘mixed bag’ than had previously been thought? Was there ever a ‘pure’ form of Christianity?! Was the victory of the great church which emerged not so much a victory over outside pressures (persecuting authorities, competing religious systems) as a victory of one faction over other rivals within the early churches? Is that why the voices still to be heard speaking for themselves are only the Ignatiuses, the Justins and the Irenaeuses? The rest had been silenced. The victors had destroyed the writings of the losers. However, the discovery of the Nag Hammadi writings in the mid 1940s²⁷ jerked historians of Christianity’s beginnings into a fresh awareness of the voices from the second and third centuries which had long been silenced, into a fresh recognition that so many writings of the first few centuries of the Christian era had been lost, and into the startling thought that with a more representative body of writings to draw on, the historians’ reconstructions of the beginnings of Christianity might have been very different.

Bauer’s thesis focused on the second century and so falls directly on to the agenda for the present volume. The questions which we will have to bear in mind are the ones Bauer posed and those which follow from the Nag Hammadi codices. Were the beginnings of Christianity in various Mediterranean centres a good deal more ‘mixed’ than the traditional accounts have allowed? Was there a straight line from Paul, or Peter, into the great church, or did the line follow a much more twisting course, or were there several lines pushing in different directions, even pushing against each other? Were the Clements and the Igna­tiuses and Justins as representative of the second to fourth generations of Christians as those who maintain the more traditional reconstruction of Christianity’s earliest history would like to think? What was the ‘Christianity’ which emerged into the second century, how diverse, how different from the Christianity which Constantine elevated into the established religion of the empire?²⁸

38.3 Christianity and Judaism

The relation of Christianity to Judaism is at the heart of Christianity. Both terms, of course, need to be carefully defined; otherwise the assertion becomes unhelpfully controversial. If by ‘Christianity’ we mean the movement that began in Jerusalem in 30 ce, then all that has been said in the first two volumes of Christianity in the Making underlines and reinforces the fact that the movement began within first-­century Judaism and drew heavily on the heritage of Judaism, as illustrated not least by the fact that the scriptures of the new movement were the scriptures of Israel and of first-­century Judaism.²⁹ And if by ‘Judaism’ we mean Second Temple Judaism, then it is sufficiently clear that Second Temple Judaism embraced a diverse set of sects and emphases,³⁰ which included the sect of the Nazarenes. If, however, by ‘Christianity’ we mean the Christianity that gained its distinctive shape in the patristic period, and if by ‘Judaism’ we mean the rabbinic Judaism which began to gain its distinctive shape in the post-­70 period, then the opening assertion becomes much more problematic. One of the key questions which will lie behind what follows is the extent to which the post-­70 situation and context differ from the pre-­70 situation and context for both Judaism and Christianity.

For a start, we need to recall what was previously noted, that ‘Christianity’ only emerged, linguistically speaking, early in the second century. That is, the term ‘Christianity’ was first coined (so far as we can now tell), or at least first used in writing that has endured, by Ignatius in the 110s.³¹ More significant here is the fact that in its first usage ‘Christianity’ was understood as defined in contrast to ‘Judaism’.³² Ironically, the pattern set by the first formulation of the term ‘Judaism’ was followed in the earliest talk of ‘Christianity’. For as ‘Judaism’ was defined as other than and as opposed to ‘Hellenism’,³³ so ‘Christianity’ was already being defined as other than ‘Judaism’. If ‘Judaism’ was defined by the Maccabean rebellion as in effect ‘not-­Hellenism’, so ‘Christianity’ was defined by Ignatius as in effect ‘not-­Judaism’.³⁴ As we shall see, this attempt to distance Christianity grew steadily stronger through the patristic period and readers will not need reminding that it became entrenched in the anti-­Jewish and anti-­semitic traditions of Christianity.

Our starting point here, however, is the impact made by F. C. Baur on the modern study of Christianity’s origins.³⁵ Baur focused attention once again on the fact that Christianity emerged from a Jewish matrix, or perhaps better, from its matrix within Second Temple Judaism. And Baur’s focus on this fact ensured that the question of how Christianity did in fact so emerge had to be of primary interest to historians. The reasons are obvious. The fact that Jesus was hailed as Messiah, that is, the Messiah expected by the Jews, the fact that all the first believers in Messiah Jesus were Jews, and the fact that their scriptures were the scriptures of Second Temple Judaism, in any case made inevitable and unavoidable the task of defining emerging Christianity as distinct from and in its distinctiveness from Judaism. Baur’s own characterization of Christianity’s distinctiveness from Judaism was rather crass.³⁶ The whole issue was for a long time skewed by the traditional Christian distaste for Judaism. And the fascination with the issue of pre-­Christian Gnosticism for a long time diverted attention from the challenge which Baur had left to his successors.³⁷ But since the Second World War and the catastrophe of the Holocaust/Shoah, Christian scholarship and leadership have resolutely decried the previous anti-­Judaism and lamented its gross outworkings.³⁸ As a consequence the question of Christianity’s emergence from its Second Temple Jewish matrix can be reopened.

The question has re-­emerged in different ways and for our inquiry has three aspects:

when did the ways finally part between emerging Christianity and (rabbinic) Judaism?

the status of Judaeo-­Christianity within the spectrum of Christianity;

the issue of anti-­semitism in the NT documents.

a. The Partings of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism

³⁹

If it is hardly to be denied that Christianity and rabbinic Judaism emerged from the same matrix of Second Temple Judaism,⁴⁰ it is even more obvious that Christianity and Judaism are now two distinct religions, and that they have been so for many centuries. So an important issue is, How soon and under what circumstances did they become so distinct? If the two movements emerging from the catastrophe of 70 had the same broad starting place, when did the ways they followed separate? When did their ways part?

In the first edition of Partings, I used the plural form (Partings not Parting) in order to make the point that the separation of Christianity from rabbinic Judaism cannot neatly be identified as taking place at a particular point in time or place, as though there was only one ‘parting of the ways’.⁴¹ The separation from each other of what are now two quite independent religions was much more of a process, and took much longer to become clear-­cut and final than most people realise.⁴² To be sure, there were various points at which the tear(s), or pulling apart, was more evident than at others; there were various events and confrontations in particular locations which markedly accelerated the process. But how decisive, how final, how universal were they?⁴³

In the first edition of Partings I made bold to draw the conclusion that a final ‘parting’ can be discerned in the second century — with the second Jewish revolt against Rome (132-­135), and certainly by the end of the second century.⁴⁴ The opinion is shared by several scholars.⁴⁵ However, the imagery of two ways may itself be far too simple; it can too easily imply two embryonic religions as two homogeneous (or even monolithic) entities each pursuing a single path, with developments in each case marching forward uniformly across the diverse contexts of the Mediterranean and Middle East;⁴⁶ whereas the sociological reality might be better depicted as ‘a criss-­crossing of muddy tracks’.⁴⁷ ‘The partings of the ways’ should certainly not be taken to imply that there were only two ways in view, as though both rabbinic Judaism and Christianity each travelled a single well-­defined path which diverged into two similarly single and well-­defined paths.⁴⁸ To change the metaphor, there were various currents within the broader streams which became rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. But I still prefer the imagery of ‘ways’ or ‘paths’. The alternative of ‘trajectories’ which became popular in the 1970s⁴⁹ implies pre-­determined ‘flight-­paths’ for the entities in view. And ‘stream’ suffers somewhat from the same defect, as implying an irresistable force carving out its own channel. Whereas the imagery of ‘ways’ or ‘paths’ need not imply directness and can include a landscape of moor or hillside criss-­crossed by several or many paths, whose directions are not always clear and which ramblers or fell-­walkers may follow without a clear sense of where they are headed; the path actually travelled is always clearer looking back!⁵⁰

More important, however, are three further factors which have been given inadequate emphasis in discussion of ‘the parting of the ways’. One is that rabbinic Judaism cannot be assumed to be the only form of Judaism with which or against which emerging Christianity interacted. In contrast to the older, simplistic and anachronistic view that Judaism became rabbinic Judaism when it was reconstituted at Yavneh following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, the growing consensus today is that the rabbis did not succeed in winning over or imposing their interpretation of Israel’s heritage until much later⁵¹— probably, indeed, at about the same period, in the latter half of the fourth century, when Christianity’s state recognition presumably hastened the final parting. The corollary to this is that the great mass of Jews in the western diaspora during the first two or three centuries of the common era should not in the strict sense be regarded as part of rabbinic Judaism.⁵² In other words, the lack of clear boundaries between Jew, Messiah-­Jesus-­believing Jew and Christian in these early centuries becomes still more evident, and we gain a further reminder that the partings of the ways took a lot longer to become clear and effective than has usually been thought.⁵³ This will require fuller attention in the pages that follow.

A second important aspect of post-­70 interaction between Christianity and Judaism which should be noted is that it was Christians, and not the rabbis, who preserved much of the Jewish literature of the late Second Temple period and beyond.⁵⁴ Christians obviously valued and worked with documents like the Ascension of Isaiah and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. But should they be regarded as ‘Christian’ redactions of originally ‘Jewish’ documents? Or should they be seen more appropriately as Jewish-­Christian writings, manifesting a Jesus-­devotion within a Jewish self-­definition?⁵⁵ That is, do they attest a period when the ways certainly had not yet parted, at least for those who valued these documents, a period when the definitions of ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ were still taking shape and firm boundary lines separating the one from the other, as though they were already clearly distinctive entities, had still to be drawn for those who used these documents? The evidence and issues here will require closer attention.

The third striking fact to be noted is one which has been well documented by James Parkes and Marcel Simon,⁵⁶ but which has been too little taken into account in discussions of early Christianity’s relations with Judaism. This is the fact that Christian leaders, as late as the fourth century, had to continually rebuke and warn their congregations against attending synagogues and observing Jewish feasts and customs. For example, Ignatius found it necessary to warn his Christian Jewish readers against living ‘according to Judaism’ and keeping the Sabbath (Magn. 8-­10). Origen in his homilies frequently attacked Christians who observed the Jewish fasts and feasts, and warned Christians listening to him on a Sunday not to refer back to what they had learnt the day before in the synagogue.⁵⁷ Aphrahat in his first homily (about 345) likewise warned his readers against observing Sabbaths, new moons and festivals of the Jews. And the Council of Antioch (341) had to pass legislation (Canon 1) prohibiting Christians from dining at Passover with Jews.⁵⁸ Similarly the Council of Laodicea (c. 363) prohibited Christians from practising their religion with Jews, in particular, ‘celebrating festivals with them’, ‘keeping the sabbath’, and ‘eating unleavened bread’ during the Passover; Christians should work on the Sabbath and read the Gospels as well as the Jewish scriptures on Saturday (Canons 16, 29, 37, 38).⁵⁹ From about the same time the Apostolic Constitutions found it necessary to prohibit Christians (including bishops and clergy?) from entering Jewish synagogues, keeping feasts with the Jews, and following Jewish customs, though it still sanctioned observance of the Passover and keeping Saturday as well as Sunday as days of rest.⁶⁰ A few decades later, correspondence between Augustine and Jerome instances the converted Jew who circumcises his son, observes the Sabbath, abstains from (unclean) foods and keeps the Passover.⁶¹ And it is equally clear from Chrysostom’s polemic that many members of his congregation observed the Sabbath, joined in the Jewish feasts and fully respected the synagogue.⁶² Such Christians were evidently commonly described as nostri judaizantes,⁶³ the ‘our’ (nostri) indicating continuing willingness to ‘own’ such ‘judaizers’.⁶⁴ As Simon notes, ‘What we are faced with is an uninterrupted tradition of Judaizing, reaching down from the time when the epistles to the Galatians and the Colossians were written’.⁶⁵

This clearly indicates that throughout the first three to four centuries what we might call ‘ordinary Christians’ did not see Christianity and Judaism as two separate far less opposed religions.⁶⁶ Rather the position was more like what is common in the days of denominational Christianity; that is, where ‘ordinary Christians’ feel free to attend the services of different denominations without thinking that they are being untrue to their more specific Christian heritage. The two ways were evidently seen by very many as (still) overlapping, so that participation in the synagogue could be seen as entirely consistent with their ecclesial commitment. The fact that such rebukes and warnings are to be found so frequently through this period tells us two things. One is that such a perception of the continuing overlap of Judaism and Christianity was widespread among Christians of the period. The other is that it was the Christian leadership which considered it necessary to press for a much clearer and sharper divide between the ways of Christianity and Judaism.⁶⁷ An appropriate question, however, is whether it was the Christian leadership or the ‘ordinary Christians’ who were being truer to the heritage of first-­century Christianity.

At this point special mention should be made of the most recent contribution of Daniel Boyarin, one of the most stimulating of contributors to the debate on the partings of the ways.⁶⁸ His basic thesis elaborates the above perception that ‘Judaism and Christianity were not separate entities until very late in late antiquity’.⁶⁹ His particular argument is that both Christian writers and the rabbis developed the model of orthodoxy/heresy precisely as a means of establishing their respective self-­identities, that in both cases there was a major transition from a sectarian structure to one of orthodoxy and heresy which began to take place in the first half of the second century, ‘the transformation of both nascent Christianity and nascent Judaism from groups of sects . . . into orthodox churches with their heretical others’.⁷⁰ The observation is salutary, partly because the categories of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ have usually been reckoned as Christian terms. More important, however, is the fact that since Walter Bauer’s epochal study they have been somewhat controversial and contested terms of Christian self-­definition — Bauer’s claim being that ‘orthodoxy’ was the creed of the winners of a contested identity, and ‘heresy’ the creed of the losers, the categorisation, of course, being the language of the ‘winners’. The point being made by Boyarin, however, is that very similar processes were taking place within emergent Judaism as well as within emergent Christianity. In terms of the imagery used here, both Christianity and Judaism defined themselves as narrower paths within the broader ways which emerged from the first century, a process which included the ‘orthodox’ designation of the overlap areas between the two ways as ‘heresy’.⁷¹ There are crucially important issues here as we attempt to trace out the course(s) of Christianity’s emerging christology.

The issues raised by Boyarin’s argument are considerable for our inquiry. For the challenge he poses is whether a properly historical study of the period can be satisfied with the straightforward tracing back (or reading back) of the distinctives of Christianity (or of Judaism) into the second century (or earlier). Was the Christianity of the period much less clearly defined, its boundaries less clearly drawn, its identity less clearly perceived and expressed, than the Christianity of the later centuries would recognize, or indeed than the voices which have been preserved from that period would suggest? In my earlier Unity and Diversity in the New Testament I tentatively posed a question which still stands: given that other responses to Jesus and the gospel were recognized to produce too extreme expressions, would it not be wise to recognize that orthodoxy too could have its too extreme aspects?⁷² Is the failure of overscrupulous restrictiveness any worse than the failure of overgenerous hospitality to diverging ideas and practices?

In short, then, in response to the question, When did the ways part?, the answer has to be, Over a lengthy period, at different times and places, and as judged by different people differently, depending on what was regarded as a non-­negotiable boundary marker and by whom. So, early for some, or demanded by a leadership seeking clarity of self-­definition, but for many ordinary believers and practitioners there was a long lingering embrace which was broken finally(?) only after the Constantinian settlement.⁷³

The issues raised by such factors for our study of Christianity in the Making are obviously immense and will dominate much of what follows. Without forgetting about christology, two in particular deserve special notice.

b. Judaeo-­Christianity

‘Jewish Christianity’ has had a ‘bad press’ in both Christianity and Judaism, as a heresy unacceptable to both sides.⁷⁴ That is unfortunate, since it could well be argued that Judaeo-­Christianity is an appropriate fuller way of characterizing Christianity itself.⁷⁵ If such an argument simply obscures the issue, however, it is at least as important to recognize that Jewish Christianity largely filled the middle-­ground which was opening up between the two diverging ways.⁷⁶ And if what has already been observed and argued above is valid, then the two emerging religions themselves overlapped for several centuries, so that the ‘middle-­ground’ is best seen as the area of overlap rather than as disjoint segments cut off from the two main movements. In other words, Jewish Christians, as defined by Origen, ‘Christians (who) still want to live according to the law of the Jews like the multitude of the Jews’ (contra Celsum 5.61), may constitute a very large and significant overlapping body which deserves close attention in the following pages.

I have already drawn attention to the substantial literature which can be fittingly described as ‘Jewish Christian’, writings which cannot be described simply as either Jewish or Christian, as though the two categories were clearly distinct. This literature needs to be borne in mind when we consider the descriptions and references to the ‘heretical’ Jewish-­Christian sects, and the pseudo-­Clementines.⁷⁷ In addition, as we shall see, just as early Christian leaders had enduring problems with church members who regarded the synagogue as also a natural reference point or even as a second spiritual home, so the rabbis seem to have had a rather similar problem with Jews who believed in Jesus as Messiah but who wished nevertheless to continue practising as Jews.⁷⁸ Furthermore, the parting of the ways discussion has tended to focus too narrowly on the west (up to the Constantinian settlement) and has failed to examine the relationship between Jews and Christians not living under a Roman empire which became Christian. Indeed, in Arabia, Mesopotamia and Syria the Christians initially encountered by burgeoning Islam may fairly (and most accurately) be described as Jewish-­Christians.⁷⁹ The agenda here becomes much larger than is usually allowed for in tracing the beginnings of Christianity.

It is no surprise, then, that the disappearance of ‘Jewish Christianity’ more or less coincides with a final ‘parting’ between Christianity and Judaism in the latter half of the fourth century,⁸⁰ as, presumably, the remnants of Jewish-­Christian groups were absorbed into the now two quite distinct religions.⁸¹ A salutary reminder of the poignancy of that disappearance and of the possibilities which ‘Jewish Christianity’ represented is the reappearance of Messianic Jews (‘Jews for Jesus’) in the last thirty or so years. It should occasion no surprise, either, that such Messianic Jews seem to be disowned equally by Christian and Jewish leadership today.⁸² Evidently the challenge posed by such a movement to identities which were formed by contrast (or antithesis) is as sensitive today as it was in the early centuries of the common era. Such sensitivities and the reasons for them will have to be kept in mind in the following chapters.

c. Anti-­Judaism in the New Testament?

As already implied, the partings of the ways between Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, and the irritation occasioned by the substantial overlap of Judaeo-­Christianity, resulted in a good deal of mutual hostility and vituperation born not least of exasperation. The point has already been alluded to in reference to the Birkat-­ha-­minim, and we shall soon enough see the same dismissive antagonism in the pseudo-­Clementines. But where the issue bites most deeply for Christianity-­in-­the-­making is on the question whether the anti-­Judaism (and anti-­semitism) which is certainly to be acknowledged at least in some influential Christian voices from the second century onwards, was already evident in the NT writings themselves.

Some NT specialists are convinced that the only clear answer that can be given is Yes: there is anti-­Judaism in the NT; anti-­semitism is rooted in the NT.⁸³ Several (or all) of the Gospels and Acts are cited as clear-­cut examples. In Matthew we need only give two obvious examples. First, the sustained polemic against the Pharisees in Matthew 23. This has been the principal basis for the traditional Christian denigration of the Pharisees which has given the word ‘Pharisee’ such negative connotations in English usage.⁸⁴ Second, the words of the Jerusalem crowd in Jesus’ trial scene in Matt. 27.25: ‘All the people answered, His blood be on us and on our children! ’ This in turn has provided one of the most virulent roots of (or excuses for) the centuries of the anti-­Judaism and anti-­semitism which have so besmirched Christianity’s history, providing as it has a scriptural warrant for countless denunciations of Jews of later centuries as ‘Christ killers’.⁸⁵ In such Christian hatred of the Jews, it was perhaps inevitable that the hate figure of Judas (Ioudas), the betrayer of Jesus in the Gospel story, was taken as typically characteristic of the Jew (Ioudaios), that is, of all Jews.⁸⁶

In John’s Gospel ‘the Jews’ are represented as typically hostile to Jesus and to all that he stands for.⁸⁷ Most striking of all is John 8.44 and the depth of hostility expressed there: ‘Jesus said to them [the Jews] . . . You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires ’. Here we find another tap-­root of Christian anti-­semitism, giving scriptural ground for later identification of Jews with all that is evil.⁸⁸ Not surprisingly, then, John is regarded by some as ‘either the most anti-­Semitic or at least the most overtly anti-­Semitic of the Gospels’.⁸⁹

Somewhat more unexpected is the fact that in the latter half of the twentieth century Luke-­Acts, particularly Luke’s second volume, has been held out as anti-­Jewish. At the beginning of the century Adolf Harnack had called Acts ‘the first stage of developing early Christian anti-­semitism’.⁹⁰ But at the latter end of the century J. T. Sanders had no hesitation in describing Acts as itself ‘antisemitic’ without qualification.⁹¹ And Norman Beck has described Acts as the most anti-­Jewish document in the NT.⁹² Somewhat as in John’s Gospel, ‘the Jews’ regularly appear, dogging Paul’s footsteps, causing nothing but trouble and implacably opposed to the gospel.⁹³ Paul’s turn from the Jews to the Gentiles is emphasized, repeated three times.⁹⁴ And the final note of Acts (28.26-­28) seems to be dismissive of all Jews; salvation is (only) for the Gentiles. According to Ernst Haenchen, ‘Luke has written the Jews off’.⁹⁵

Of other NT writings, frequently cited would be Paul’s angry language in 1 Thess. 2.14-­16,⁹⁶ the seer of Revelation’s reference to a ‘synagogue of Satan’ (Rev. 2.9), and particularly Hebrews’ dismissal of the old covenant as incapable of meeting the needs of penitent worshippers (Heb. 10.1-­4), and as ‘obsolete’ and soon to disappear (8.13).

What are we to make of such material? Does it signify that anti-­Judaism, or even anti-­semitism, is integral to and endemic in Christianity? Rosemary Ruether posed the issue starkly: ‘Is it possible to say Jesus is Messiah, without, implicitly or explicitly, saying at the same time and the Jews be damned?’⁹⁷ The question is shocking, but it brings home the seriousness of the issue. And it reflects on the other questions raised in this section (§38.3). How can we correlate such attitudes and material within the NT writings with the evidence of a long overlap between Christianity and Judaism? How were such passages read and heard in the second century? Does a setting of these passages within a historical context (a historical critical reading) or within the NT canon (a canonical reading) reduce the sharpness and severity of the issue? Nor should we forget the broader question for continuing Christian usage of such passages. Should they be effectively expunged from the NT by never being included in Christian liturgy?⁹⁸ Should sermons on such texts ignore or skirt round the problem? Or should translations soften the offensiveness of such passages by, for example, translating references to hoi Ioudaioi not as ‘the Jews’, but as ‘the Jewish authorities’ or some similar euphemistic rendering?⁹⁹ Even to pose these as potentially desirable, or at least as possibly acceptable options, simply underlines the need to take such material seriously and the imperative necessity of clarifying its role within the historical, sociological and theological process which we describe as Christianity in the making.

38.4 The Hellenization of Christianity

A natural, perhaps inevitable counter to the interest in Christianity’s disentanglement from Judaism was the interest in the why and how of Christianity’s expansion into the larger Greco-­Roman world. What Christianity became proved to be the more enduring question than what Christianity had been or began as.

a. Gnosticism

As already indicated,¹⁰⁰ the Hellenization of early Christianity became a subject of great fascination towards the end of the nineteenth century. It had always been recognized that during the patristic period Christian thought drew progressively on the language and ideas of Greek philosophy to express what were emerging as its distinctive theological claims, particularly in reference to Christ. In this, of course, they were following a course already opened up by the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, an older contemporary of Paul’s. In his expositions of the Torah, Philo of Alexandria had adapted Platonic and Stoic ideas and language and had demonstrated that by penetrating below the surface of the biblical text, including its problem passages, and by use of allegorical interpretation, more profound claims about God and insights into divine revelation could be sustained.¹⁰¹ Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Alexandrian school of Christian theology, as represented particularly by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, was greatly influenced by Philo. And Philo’s Logos theology provided such an effective precedent for Christianity’s Logos christology that he could be regarded as an honorary Church Father.¹⁰²

The Liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century, in focusing on the moralistic message of Jesus and posing a sharp contrast between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, had regarded the drift into dogma as a somewhat unfortunate inevitability. Harnack regarded ‘the influx of Hellenism, of the Greek spirit, and the union of the Gospel with it, (as forming) the greatest fact in the history of the Church in the second century’,¹⁰³ but also as a grave corruption of Jesus’ own gospel.¹⁰⁴ The rise of Gnosticism he saw as marking a still steeper decline — the acute Hellenization (or secularization) of Christianity.¹⁰⁵

Gnosticism was well known as the greatest competitor with and threat to Christianity in the second and third centuries. From the Christian heresiologists it is fairly easy to draw a clear picture of Gnosticism as they perceived it.¹⁰⁶ W. Foerster summarizes ‘the main points of Gnosis’ thus:¹⁰⁷

Between this world and the God incomprehensible to our thought, the ‘primal cause’, there is an irreconcilable antagonism.

The ‘self’, the ‘I’ of the Gnostic, his ‘spirit’ or soul, is unalterably divine.

This ‘I’, however, has fallen into this world, has been imprisoned and anaesthetized by it, and cannot free itself from it.

Only the divine ‘call’ from the world of light looses the bonds of captivity.

But only at the end of the world does the divine element in man return again to its home.

We also know from the Christian heresiologists that there were several leading teachers associated with the Gnostic phenomenon. A brief survey of the most prominent fills out the picture of second-­century Gnosticism through the eyes of the heresiologists, including the diversity of the different systems attributed to the teachers. I draw chiefly from the principal Christian spokesman writing within our period, Irenaeus, although the Nag Hammadi findings (n.125 below) have called in question some of Irenaeus’s descriptions.¹⁰⁸

Simon Magus is the same Simon of Samaria referred to in Acts 8. Justin Martyr, himself from Samaria, reports that Simon was a native of a Samaritan village named Gitto and came to Rome during the reign of Claudius (41-­54) (1 Apol. 26.2). He is regarded in patristic texts as the originator of the Gnostic heresy,¹⁰⁹ no doubt in part at least influenced by the story in Acts 8, where Simon is said to have been hailed by the Samaritans as ‘the power of God that is called Great’ (Acts 8.10).¹¹⁰ According to Irenaeus, Simon went about with a woman called Helena, and between them they represented an early Gnostic formulation: she, representing the first emanation (Ennoia, Thought) from the divine mind which was Simon, had descended to the lower regions, where she was detained by the powers and angels which she had generated and by which the world was formed, and was shut up in a human body, at last becoming a common prostitute; he as the redeemer who came to free her from slavery, and thus also, when the world was dissolved, to free those who followed him from the rule of them that made the world; the ‘mystery priests [of this cult] live licentiously and perform sorceries’ (adv. haer. 1.23.2-­4).

Menander, also from Samaria, is remembered as a disciple and successor of Simon, who, like Simon, claimed to have been sent as a saviour for the salvation of men, and to have conquered the angels who created the world. ‘His disciples received resurrection through baptism into him, and can no longer die’ (adv. haer. 1.23.5). If Simon was indeed a contemporary of Peter, then he must have flourished in the middle of the first century, and Menander somewhat later.

Cerinthus, probably late first century, likewise taught that the world was not created by the first God, but by a power remote and separated from the supreme power, which did not know the God who is over all. He is forever remembered as teaching that Jesus was the ordinary son of Joseph and Mary, upon whom, after his baptism, Christ descended in the form of a dove; ‘but at the end Christ separated again from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and was raised again, but Christ remained impassible’ (adv. haer. 1.26.1).¹¹¹

Carpocrates, said to have lived under Hadrian (117-­38),¹¹² claimed that the world had been made by angels, much inferior to the unbegotten Father. An intriguing facet of Carpocratian teaching was their interpretation of Matt. 5.25-­26: the prison, from which no deliverance is possible until the last farthing has been paid, is the body (Irenaeus, adv. haer. 1.25.4). According to Clement of Alexandria (some of) the Carpocratians’ ‘love-­feasts’ were dissolute and licentious (Strom. 3.2).

Basilides was active in Alexandria before 150, and was thought by some to be the first of the Gnostics.¹¹³ He gives the first elaborate sequence of aeons, powers and angels which descend from the unoriginate Father, from which 365 heavens are created. The last angels created the world and apportioned the nations; their chief, the Jewish God, wanted his nation to subjugate the others. Into this situation the Most High God sent his first-­born Nous, that is Christ, ‘to liberate those who believe in him from the power of those who made the world’. He could not suffer, but made Simon of Cyrene assume his appearance, while he, in the form of Simon, stood laughing at them.¹¹⁴ Belief, then, should not be in the crucified, but in him who came in the form of a man and was only supposed to have been crucified. ‘If anyone confesses the crucified, he is still a slave, and under the power of those who made the bodies; he who denies [the crucified] has been set free from them, and he knows the [saving] dispensation made by the unoriginate Father. Salvation is for their soul alone; the body is by nature corruptible’ (Irenaeus, adv. haer. 1.24.3-­5).¹¹⁵

Valentinus was the most prominent and probably most influential of the Gnostic teachers.¹¹⁶ He came from Egypt to Rome about 136 and was active as a teacher there, having several pupils who themselves became very influential, including Ptolemy/Ptolemaeus, Heracleon and Marcus. Although a plausible candidate to become bishop of Rome, he was passed over and withdrew from the church, went to the East, but later returned to Rome where he died about 165.¹¹⁷ The different schools of Valentinianism also promulgated an elaborate process of decline from the heavenly Pleroma (Irenaeus, adv. haer. 1.1-­5), the fundamental disjointedness beginning when Sophia misbegets a formless substance without her consort.¹¹⁸ But a distinctive feature was the introduction of an intermediate class of people, the psychics, between the spiritual people (pneumatics) and the earthly people (choics). According to Irenaeus on the system of Ptolemaeus, the Gnostics regarded those ‘of the Church’ as psychics who could be