A Brief Comparison of the Reports of 'Cerinthus' and 'Carpocrates' in the Catholic Encyclopedia

First the summary of Theodoret ("Haer. Fab.", II, 3) of Cerinthus:

Cerinthus was an Egyptian, and if not by race a Jew, at least he was circumcised. The exact date of his birth and his death are unknown. In Asia he founded a school and gathered disciples. No writings of any kind have come down to us. Cerinthus's doctrines were a strange mixture of Gnosticism, Judaism, Chiliasm, and Ebionitism. He admitted one Supreme Being; but the world was produced by a distinct and far inferior power. He does not identify this Creator or Demiurgos with the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Not Jehovah but the angels have both made the world and given the law. These creator-angels were ignorant of the existence of the Supreme God.

It should be readily seen that this is almost identical with any summary of Carpocrates and his sect in the writings of the Fathers.

This similarity has caused a number of scholars to argue that the two 'heretics' were actually one and the same phenomenon identified in different ways. As Eskola notes, both 'Cerinthus' and 'Carpocrates' are introduced in the place where we would expect to find the Ebionites. Irenaeus "does not refer to Jewish Christianity. He does not describe Ebionite teaching or mention their name but takes up two names. Irenaeus actually presents the thoughts of Cerinthus and Carpocrates." [p. 301]

This connection of both Cerinthus and Carpocrates with the Ebionites is continued not surprisingly with Irenaeus' student Hippolytus. As Pritz notes, Hippolytus tells us that all:

believed that Jesus was a righteous man who kept the Law, and we will obtain righteousness only by keeping it. For their beliefs about Christ we must unite the statement "just like Cerinthus and Carpocrates, they [the Ebionites] relate only myths" with the christological beliefs of Cerinthus given immediately before "and he held that Jesus was not born of a virgin but rather of Joseph and Mary, a son born like all other men, and more righteous and wiser."

As Pritz adds "the christology given for Carpocrates in chapter 32 is almost identical, "Jesus was generated of Joseph, and that, having been born similar to (other) men, He was more just than the rest (of the human race). And (Carpocrates asserts) that the soul (of Jesus), inasmuch as it was made vigorous and undefiled." [p. 25]

Indeed in my mind the accounts begin so similarly that what we are really looking at is two different reports about the same historical phenomenon - viz. Polycarp.