If Polycarp cited from a gospel it would have to be a single, long gospel which in form at least resembled the Diatessaron. This understanding effectively ties up the old argument. Do any of us even consider the significance of what such a Diatesseron could represent? The truth is that I hate the word “diatesseron” because it literally means a “composite gospel” made up of four source texts. The Syriac tern 'gospel of the mixed' is probably preferable and may go back to the use of the term 'mixed' in Clement's Letter to Theodore.
Indeed I think it is high time that the world sees the four gospels of our canon for what they really are – artificial constructs “invented” by Irenaeus in the Commodian period. To be sure there undoubtedly was a gospel in some sense "according to Mark” which dated back to the first century. Nevertheless it wasn’t our surviving canonical text. It was liikely Clement’s “secret” or "hidden" Gospel of Mark and/or the Alexandrian 'Diatesseron' associated with Ammonius (Saccas?).
At the end of the day it would simply be madness to assume that Polycarp didn’t possess a “Gospel of John.” There is no other “real live person” in the Catholic canon who could have been closer to this imaginary figure. If there was a gospel in his name by the middle of the second century as tradition suggests, Polycarp quite simply had to have something to do with it.
I believe the reason why no one before me has been able to solve the mystery of why Polycarp can’t be seen citing the Johannine gospel is because everyone else was assuming it would have looked like our surviving text. What I am about to suggest is that up until the Commodian period the tradition of Polycarp actually only adhered to this one text which was a Gospel of John. The quaternion had nothing to do with Polycarp; rather it had everything to do with Irenaeus’ “peacemaking efforts” within the Church.
If I can put it to you another way – if you think in terms of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you are reflecting orthodoxy from the end of the second century. If you hear a Christian referencing only a gospel, or 'the gospel' they are reflecting early to late second century orthodoxy.
The “super Gospel of John” then came as the last word in a sea of competing “one gospel” traditions. The Markan tradition had one gospel (I take the word 'Marcionite' to be the equivalent of 'Markan' because it is so in Aramaic). So did the adherents of the Justus/Tatian “encratite” school. There were various others too. Polycarp’s gospel came to settle the issue of what truths should be in the “one true gospel” and what heresy should not be present.
In order to understand Polycarp’s apostolic claims you have to have to come to terms with his relationship to the figure later called “John the apostle” of Ephesus. It is among the incredible claims in the history of religion (save only for the parallel beliefs of the Mormons) but Polycarp claimed that “John” the last of the apostles moved from Palestine to Asia Minor at the end of the first century. It was really a case of the mountain coming to Mohammed, or in this case - Polycarp.
Polycarp not only positioned himself as the ultimate spokesman for John but his most prominent adherents and their descendants similarly became identified as “defenders” of the Johannine tradition. This was a tradition which was so silly that it needed “defenders” throughout the ages to argue on behalf of its authenticity.
What “John” would represent within the Catholic Church would of course change over time. It’s one of the advantages of being a wholly made up person; everything about your legacy is fluid and subject to revision. Whereas for Polycarp John represented the last word on the gospel this wasn’t the last word on the true beliefs of the apostolic community. By the time of Irenaeus, John was just simply last.
In the beginning “John” represented the rejection of Markan authority over the Church. In the end “Luke” would be developed to assist that struggle even more. So it is that I put it before my readers that the only way we will ever make sense of Polycarp and John we must separate them from the inventions of Irenaeus. They say that too many cooks spoil the broth. With the gospels to many editors makes everything murky and impenetrable.
So it is that the place we should begin our efforts to reconstruct the original Polycarpian apostolic chain is to look at statements made by Irenaeus about his master’s relationship with Ephesus. Ephesus was very close to Polycarp’s home see of Smyrna. The distance was about forty miles; a day’s journey at most.
The first statement which Irenaeus makes appears in Book 2 Chapter 22 of Irenaeus’ Against the Heresies where holds up his master’s witness at Ephesus proudly displaying that:
even the Gospel and all the elders [so] testify, those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [also affirm] that John conveyed to them this information. And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan.
As Hill notes this “elder” is certainly Polycarp. Yet notice also the use of the single “gospel” in association with his gospel tradition coming out of Ephesus. Is this an accident? Scholars always argue that we shouldn’t read too much into these references. But then again, they are “quaternionists” aren’t they?
The very same idea appears with a twist in the parallel reference a little later in the Book Three. Irenaeus makes the point that:
all the things [to which] the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time … [in] the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan.
Now Polycarp is explicitly referenced as the witness for the Johannine tradition. There is no specific reference to the gospel at Ephesus but notice now the elusive figure of Paul is brought into the mix.
Now because most of us think we “know” that Paul’s gospel is that according to Luke we let this curious scenario slide with regards to the apostle's relationship with Ephesus. Paul somehow founds the community in this “city of John” but somehow “forgets” to bring his gospel? Or maybe the John thought he could make improvements on Luke? It all somehow doesn’t seem to fit.
The idea of a Johannine gospel must have been the cornerstone of Polycarp’s revelation. He must have said not only “I know what John believed” but specifically “I have his gospel.” As I said earlier there is no plausible means by which Polycarp, who must have visited Ephesus hundreds if not thousands of times between the years 140 – 165 A.D., could have somehow “missed” the gospel which John supposedly deposited to its presbytery.
I am a firm believer that the beliefs of any ancient community somehow had to make intuitive sense for its practioners. It would have been impossible to be a member of the Catholic congregation of Ephesus and be told on the one hand that Paul founded your community and John gave it a gospel and somehow find that your presbyters didn’t work out the finer points of that understanding.
The two traditions of “Paul” and “John” must necessarily have been understood to have been originally connected to one another in ways that were down played by Irenaeus in later times. I have already said that Polycarp did not have any knowledge of a disciple named “Luke.” I demonstrate in the Appendix that “Luke” was a phenomenon wholly rooted in the Commodian period.
As such we must begin to investigate the possibility that when Polycarp witnesses that Paul established the Ephesian community upon whom John would bestow his gospel that this was the extent of the original Asian orthodoxy. In other words that the Ephesian tradition argued that John was Paul’s gospel writer.
Without Luke it can only be John who is the evangelist who gave Paul “his gospel.” The idea becomes all the more intriguing when we introduce the concept of the “gospel of John” as a Diatesseron into the mix. Already the Marcionites assumed that their apostle composed such a “super gospel.” The followers of Justin and Tatian reflected the very same dynamic in their canon too. As such, we must now imagine that Polycarp’s effort to combat the Marcionite heresy was based on the idea of Paul preaching John’s gospel.
The idea isn’t as crazy as you might think. I would argue that the Gospel of John as Paul’s gospel is present in the early Latin Muratorian canon where we see the two men still seem strangely connected to one another. We read there that “the blessed apostle Paul himself, following the example of his predecessor John, writes by name to only seven churches.”
The reasons why “John” is described as “Paul’s” predecessor is obvious enough. It reinforces the understanding that John was the last living apostolic witness to the living Jesus. To this end I wonder whether the idea of “Paul” imitating “John” in his writing to seven churches would also tend be connected with an acceptance of John’s original gospel.
Is the concept of Paul using John really that strange? The Valentinians for one must have developed a similar understanding. At the same time I have always been struck by the apparent citation of what we would call “the gospel of John” in 2 Corinthians 4:6. We have no idea what the original Marcionite text appeared like but something about the section seems to open the door to a whole new paradigm for understanding the apostle.
I ask my readers to pay close attention when he announces the words:
if our gospel is hidden, it is hidden in those who are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the Gospel should shine in them. For the God that said “out of darkness light shines” hath shined in our hearts to illuminate an understanding of the person of Christ.
I can’t get into the specific ritual significance of the passage but its underlying meaning has everything to do with the mysticism of martyrdom. Instead I would like to concentrate on the apparent citation of “scripture” from the very words of the god of the community.
Tertullian and other Catholic scholars argue who that “god” is in the passage they make the case that he is the Creator and what is being cited is the opening lines of Genesis. Yet the whole idea is ridiculous. If the reader looks closely the wording hardly even matches - Genesis 1:3 actually reads “And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.” Tatian for one understood the Creator to have “borrowed” the light from the higher God.
Thus if you think matters through the apostle could not have been citing the words of the God who “separated” light from darkness. The apostle makes clear that he is citing the words of the god who sees the light as inherently distinct from the “darkness” of matter. The Christian god is declaring a mystery of how light will shine forth from the darkness of material beings. This is all about the “word becoming flesh” which is part of the secret revelation of the god Jesus in humanity.
It is clear that the Marcionites certainly couldn’t have held this god the apostle references to have been Creator. It is doubtful also that Tatian would have supported the Catholic reading either. Ancient commentators make clear that the “heretics” understood that the apostle spoke of “the god of this world” in the previous line. Now he is speaking of “their god” – i.e. Jesus, the god of Marcion – who is the voice for their gospel which was properly called “the Gospel of Jesus.”
Scholars should have laughed off Irenaeus and Tertullian’s emphasis that the Creator is “the god” alluded to here. If you read 2 Cor 4:6 in the context of what appears before in chapter three there can be no doubt that this reading does not fit in the context of the passage. The section is all about the inherent superiority of the revelation of the gospel over that of the Mosaic Law and moreover the witness of Christ being better than Moses’ testimony.
To this end the only possible understanding of the passage is that the apostle is himself citing the opening lines of his gospel – viz. “and that the light in the darkness shines.” [John 1:5]. The specific words of our surviving texts of 2 Corinthians and John almost match perfectly .
“out of darkness light shines” [2 Cor 4:6]
Greek ἐκ σκότους φῶς λάμψει
Syriac - khshoka nuhra ndnkh ho
“the light in darkness shines” [John 1:5] –
Greek τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει
Syriac - oho nuhra bkhshoka mnhr.
Yet the surviving readings may well have been deliberately changed to stamp out the original paradigm.
I believe that Irenaeus quite literally “assisted” our acceptance of his quaternion paradigm. We are trained to see “Luke” as Paul’s gospel rather than the “gospel of John.” What was Irenaeus’ motivation here? Interestingly enough it was to counter the prevalent Valentinian reading of the passage which was interestingly identical with that of his master.
As I will demonstrate later Polycarp and his Valentinian followers (i.e. Florinus) knew nothing of “the gospel of Luke.” The only paradigm which makes sense for them was that glimmer of light we get from a “synoptic reading” of the Johannine witness from Ephesus we saw earlier. It was argued there that “even the Gospel and all the elders testify who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time in the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan.”
Now we come face to face with something which scholars will cause Catholic scholars to be shaking in their boots. We begin to see how Irenaeus is the worst possible witness for the true beliefs of his master. The better testimony for what Polycarp actually taught undoubtedly came from Irenaeus’ rival Florinus who openly declared to anyone that listened that Polycarp was the source for his Valentinian wisdom.
You see it is absolutely incredible to see the manner in which the original Polycarpian gospel paradigm begins to look very similar to that of the parallel Valentinian tradition. We would be led to believe by Irenaeus that “Polycarp” and “Valentinus” would be at each other’s throats. Why is it then that we start to get the sense that the two traditions are somehow related?
The bottom line that in each case we get the sense that the apostle Paul was understood to have used a “gospel of John.” It sounds all very sketchy but sometimes these vague “impressions” are enough to get us to start gathering small bits of evidence for larger proofs.
The beginning of this logic again is that Polycarpian and Valentinian traditions’ original “gospel according to John” could not have been the canonical text witnessed by Irenaeus and which has come down to us in the official canon. That text is too short and deliberately has all the synoptic stories removed from its contents.
Indeed with this truncated Johannine gospel text those who traditionally learned to witness “John” for this or that familiar scripture suddenly find themselves in need of familiarizing themselves with “the rest” of the evangelists of the Catholic canon. This is how Irenaeus intended his “peacemaking” masterpiece. Instead of four separate communities under one Church we have one canon of four separated gospels.
Of course it wasn’t always like this. The original believers in Polycarp in generations previous to Irenaeus had only one gospel of John, just as the followers of Mark had their “fuller gospel of Mark” and so on. I believe that if scholars hadn’t been pre-conditioned from the beginning into assuming that Polycarp “must have” shared Irenaeus’ quaternion faith they would have long been aware of what I am about to witness to you today.
For when you begin to look at the actual reality of “what the Church Fathers” believed before Irenaeus there are only a series of one gospel traditions. The same was true for the followers of Justin and Tatian as it was for followers of Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides and Polycarp of Smyrna too.
It is the most incredible revelation for any New Testament scholar. I put it forward that generations of scholars simply “assumed” that the ancient Church was “like us” when such an assumption was warrantless. For we can see indisputable evidence from Polycarp’s own letter to the Philippians that he used a Diatesseron-like gospel rather than our surviving Catholic canonical texts. With Polycarp moved over to the ranks of the “one gospel” traditions, who is left to witness the legitimacy of any of our “separated texts”?
So it is that I think we should demonstrate how misguided most scholars have been when they attempted to identify the gospel Polycarp used from the internal evidence of the epistle to the Philippians. Sadler begins one of the saddest chapters in New Testament scholarship when he makes the point that Polycarp’s letter “used the gospel of Matthew.” The same point is made almost a century later by Tenney who declares with equal naiveté that Polycarp was “familiar with the Pauline epistles and [used] the Gospel of Matthew.”
Why is it that people keep seeing Matthew being witnessed in Polycarp? What has so bewitched these otherwise intelligent men? It isn’t the evidence from to the Philippians which confounds them. It is their brainwashing into the “cult of the quaternion” which trains them to ignore the historical existence of the so-called Diatesseron in the contemporary world, even though he lived in an age where at least one Church Father was identified to have also employed such a text.
