Why I Believe Our Canonical Epistle to the Corinthians was Originally Identified as 'to the Alexandrians' Before the Reforms of Irenaeus

This might not make sense to most people but let me give it a whirl. The Marcionites had different names for familiar texts in our canon. For instance the canonical Letter to the Ephesians was called 'to the Laodiceans.' Which Laodicea the Apostle was addressing is anyone's guess. I suspect that it was modern Latakia, a city which held a large Jewish community in the first century. It eventually became the home to the Alawite sect.

In any event two interesting things should be mentioned. The Muratorian Canon not only mentions a Marcionite Letter to the Alexandrans but also interestingly thinks that the Letter to the Corinthians should be placed first among the Pauline Epistles.

I can't help get over the idea that these two bits 'go together.' Let me explain my suspicions. I have always believed that Christianity got its start in Alexandria. The Roman Church claims of course to be the true home of the religion. Be that as it may it is curious that the Muratorian Canon which is certainly a Roman document likely from the late second century DOES NOT place the Roman Epistle in first place in its canon.

The fact that what is called the Letter to the Corinthians is placed first might well be thought to argue for an important role for Corinth in the early Church. After all, when you really think of it there aren't just TWO canonical Pauline Epistles to the Corinthians but also at least TWO important and early epistles from Clement (Clement of Alexandria calls him 'Apostle Clement') to this same community.

In spite of all this evidence, I see a stronger case for the 'Corinth' being developed as a deliberate distraction from the original importance of Alexandria. In other words, the Roman Church took over an Alexandrian canon which identified the 'Letter to the Corinthians' as the 'Letter to the Alexandrians' AND WHICH was placed first in the Alexandrian New Testament canon and which later re-baptized as 'to the Corinthians' while retaining its original pre-eminent place.

There are a number of reasons for this assumption. Little bits and pieces really. But let's look at one small portion of that argument - namely the rest of the 'Corinthian letters' ascribed to a certain 'Clement of Rome.'

That Clement supposedly wrote from Rome of course serves to bolster the case for Roman primacy. The legend of a first century convert named Clement undoubtedly developed from the story of senator Titus Flavius Clemens, a cousin of Domitian who was put to death for his conversion to Judaism.

The fact that this Roman proselyte share a name with the second century Alexandrian Church Father has always struck me as strange. Yet even more unusual is the fact that the first century Titus Flavius Clemens is identified as a saint in the Orthodox tradition and specifically the 'Clement' at the heart of the Pseudo-Clementine tradition which is now universally acknowledged by scholarship to have originated in Egypt and undoubtedly Alexandria.

The point then is that there is this strange nexus of coincidences which at least raises the possibility that at least some of the earliest New Testament epistles connected with 'Corinth' might well have actually been associated with Alexandria.

What really piqued my curiosity was Petrement's fascinating guesses (A Separate God): that there is some connection between "Corinthians" and "Cerinthians." She thinks that "Cerinthus" was like "Ebion," an unhistorical eponymous founder, posited by heresiologists, in this case, of a gnosis originally associated with the Corinthians. As Price notes we can turn it around, rehabilitate Cerinthus, and ask if the antiheretical "Corinthian" epistles are punningly referring to Cerinthian Jewish Gnostics.

Indeed the earliest report on 'Cerinthus' connects him with Egypt and Alexandria by implication.

The point then is that if we go beyond merely thinking in terms of two Pauline letters directed to 'Corinthians' and instead connect these two texts with the two attributed to Titus Flavius Clemens - and more interesting still, the Treatise on Virginity by this same author - I think we can start to see the Alexandrian connection much more clearly.

What I suggest is a large number of letters and correspondences with Alexandria as the center of the Christian universe 'taken over' by the Roman Church at the end of the second century and then - not immediately but over the next two generations - reshaped in terms of the familiar arrangement we all take for granted.

The texts now identified as being written at Rome and directed to a Christian community at Corinth at a very early date must have needed a mythical figure as its original author. As the orthodox Roman Church had no real history dating back to the late first century, the legendary details regarding a proselyte TO JUDAISM named Titus Flavius Clemens was taken over to explain the circumstances of the letters composition.

Even more important now for Irenaeus, a precedent for the Roman Church instructing other communities is established too.

Yet the clear implications of our investigation are that the Alexandrian community must have known that Titus Flavius Clemens was really one of their leaders instructing some other community on the rule of orthodoxy. Of course the Alexandrian Titus Flavius Clemens repeatedly mentions the material and in specific its attribution to 'the Apostle Clement.' Why doesn't he tell us who the real author was? Why, if I am correct, does he go along with the Roman appropriation of a native Alexandrian head of the Church?

I have already outlined my theory regarding the role that the Imperial government of Rome had during the Commodian period in reshaping the Church. I would argue that it would have been dangerous for Clement to challenge the official understanding established by Irenaeus with Imperial backing so as a result the Alexandrian Church hypocritically employed the official canon while secretly maintaining its 'hidden' or apocryphal canon.

Irenaeus mentions this state of affairs when addressing the heretical group associated with Mark saying that "they adduce an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious scriptures, which they themselves have forged, to bewilder the minds of foolish men, and of such as are ignorant of the Scriptures of truth." [AH i.21.1] Of course the 'true Scriptures' represent the Roman collection with all the names and identities we take for granted.

We should pay special attention to Irenaeus' identification of a large number of these apocryphal scriptures. I take these to be the same that Athanasius references over a century and a half later in Alexandria when writing in his Thirty Ninth Festal Letter deliberately imitating the language of Luke:

Forasmuch as some have taken in hand to reduce into order for themselves the books termed apocryphal, and to mix them up with the divinely inspired Scripture, concerning which we have been fully persuaded, as they who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word, delivered to the fathers; it seemed good to me also, having been urged thereto by true brethren, and having learned from the beginning, to set before you the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine; to the end that any one who has fallen into error may condemn those who have led him astray; and that he who has continued stedfast in purity may again rejoice, having these things brought to his remembrance.

The familiar list of scriptures is cited by Athanasius but we should again pay careful notice of his conclusion which immediately follows the conclusion of this list:

The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being [merely] read; nor is there in any place a mention of apocryphal writings. But they are an invention of heretics, who write them when they choose, bestowing upon them their approbation, and assigning to them a date, that so, using them as ancient writings, they may find occasion to lead astray the simple.

How do scholars explain that as late as the fourth century someone like Athanasius has to come along and 'clean house' in the Alexandrian Church? The clear implication is that what Irenaeus began in the late second century - viz. the purging of 'heresy' in the Church and the establishment of the fourfold canon - only actually took place in Alexandria with any real seriousness after the reign of Constantine.

Now if we at least entertain the possibility that the Alexandrians not only had a different gospel canon (Clement, To Theodore) but a separate attribution for many of the early writings of the Church, we can begin the process of looking at a text like those (falsely) ascribed to the senator Titus Flavius Clemens and see if an Alexandrian origin helps reintegrate other bits of the original New Testament canon.

When looking at the 'Second Letter' of Pseudo-Clement I am immediately struck by the very Alexandrian opening words:

Brethren, it is fitting that you should think of IC XC as of God ...[2 Clement 1]

More significant however are the parallels between Pseudo-Clement's gospel reading and those of his second century Alexandrian namesake. While I want to go to bed right now, I would like to gloss over all the work that has been done connecting these two sources and the Diatessaron and move to one of the closest links to Secret Mark.

In the Second Letter of Pseudo-Clement a well known reference to an apocryphal saying emerges which I will cite in its entirety:

Let us expect, therefore, hour by hour, the kingdom of God in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of the appearing of God. For the Lord Himself, being asked by one when His kingdom would come, replied, When two shall be one, that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female, neither male nor female. Now, two are one when we speak the truth one to another, and there is unfeignedly one soul in two bodies. And that which is without as that which is within means this: He calls the soul that which is within, and the body that which is without. As, then, your body is visible to sight, so also let your soul be manifest by good works. And the male, with the female, neither male nor female, this He says, that brother seeing sister may have no thought concerning her as female, and that she may have no thought concerning him as male. If you do these things, says He, the kingdom of my Father shall come. [2 Clement 12]

As has been noted elsewhere, this citation sounds remarkably similar to what Clement of Alexandria says was in Book Three of the Stromata:

Such are the arguments of Julius Casinos, the originator of deceits. At any rate in his book Concerning Continence and Celibacy he says these words: "And let no one say that because we have these parts, that the female body is shaped this way and the male that way, the one to receive, the other to give seed, sexual intercourse is allowed by God. For if this arrangement had been made by God, to whom we seek to attain, he would not have pronounced eunuchs blessed; nor would the prophet have said that they are 'not an unfruitful tree,' using the tree as an illustration of the man who chooses to emasculate himself of any such notion."

And striving still further to support his godless opinion he adds: "Could not one rightly find fault with the Saviour if he was responsible for our formation and then delivered us from error and from this use of the generative organs?" In this respect his teaching is the same as Tatian’s. But he departed from the school of Valentine. On this account he says: "When Salome ' asked when she would know the answer to her questions, the Lord said, When you trample on the robe of shame, and when the two shall be one, and the male with the female, and there is neither male nor female."

In the first place we have not got the saying in the four Gospels that have been handed down to us, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians. Secondly Cassia seems to me not to know that it refers to wrath in speaking of and to desire in speaking of the female. When these operate, there follow repentance and shame. But when a man gives in neither to wrath nor to desire, both of which increase in consequence of evil habit and upbringing so as to cloud and obscure rational thought, but puts off from him the darkness they cause with penitence and shame, uniting spirit and soul in obedience to the Word, then, as Paul also says, "there is among you neither male nor female." For the soul leaves this physical form in which male and female are distinguished, and being neither the one nor the other changes to unity. But this worthy fellow thinks in Platonic fashion that the soul is of divine origin and, having become female by desire, has come down here from above to birth and corruption. [Stromata III.91 - 93]

The first thing that we should note is that where pseudo-Clement does not mention the name of the disciple, Clement of Alexandria preserves for us that it was Salome - a good indicator that the gospel was related to Mark given that Salome only makes an appearance in that text.

At the same time it is pseudo-Clement who preserves what the original question asked by Salome was - i.e. when his kingdom would come. It is also worth noting that both sources integrate the contents of the gospel with statements from the Apostle. In Pseudo-Clement's case most scholars see the closing words of Jesus as being related to 1 Cor 7:29. In the case of Clement of Alexandria's citation the passage is connected with Gal 3:28.

As I have to go to bed, let me just note when the two sources are here integrated it is impossible for me at least not to see an obvious connection with the first addition to Secret Mark as cited in the Mar Saba letter if we accept (against Scott Brown's interpretation) that it is indeed a baptism reference. We read:

And after six days Jesus told him what to do, and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God.

The obvious implications here are that we have two 'Egyptian gospels' known to Clement of Alexandria which say effectively that Jesus introduced a form of water immersion which united his angel body with those of his initiates which also happened to reflect 'the coming of the kingdom of God.'

I don't see how ALL of this doesn't argue for the authenticity of Secret Mark. Yet I am beginning to suspect that when my other arguments for a connection with the baptism rituals of the Marcosians are taken into account we start to see the emergence of something more important than whether Morton Smith really did discover that text.

I see the emergence of a parallel Alexandrian New Testament from which the Roman collection established by Irenaeus was ultimately developed in the late second century. I have noted this many times before. The textual variants that Cleemnt and Origen know aren't just connected with known heretical groups but often are coupled with the citation of heretical doctrines especially those associated with the Marcionites.

Of course the very idea of a church within the Church blows the minds of most traditional scholars. Yet I have pointed out that THIS IS EXACTLY what Irenaeus tells was going on in his day. These people should LEARN TO READ IRENAEUS BETTER. He's not saying that there were these communities of heretics OUTSIDE of the Church but rather providing a kind of 'in the field kit' for bishops to spot signs of heresy WITHIN the Church especially with the original parts of Book One of Against the Heresies (i.e. everything up to chapter 21 and the conclusion).

I don't know what these people do when they read the Church Fathers. Are they following a baseball game at the same time? These things are plainly spelled out and no one wants to integrate them beyond the existing context in Irenaeus' writings.

It's as if no one wants to try and figure out what Irenaeus is talking about because - well - it might make us 'interested' in the beliefs and practices of the bad heresies. But isn't that the whole point of being a scholar?

Well, but then again, what do I know? I am just a jackass I guess ...