Liberating Mark from the Surviving Copies of Irenaeus [Part Two]

This is a much shorter post in the series. I am utterly convinced that the heretic Marcus mentioned in the writings of Irenaeus is St. Mark. I have written about this in my book the Real Messiah and Birger Pearson dismissed my arguments. It is only in a forum like this that I can actually develop the proofs for my original assertion.

At bottom I see a connection between Clement's citation of the beliefs ascribed to the Marcosians in Irenaeus' writings - often word for word - and the traditional identification of St. Mark as the head of Clement's Alexandrian See. I have put forward fifty arguments to support this assertion. The idea would be that Irenaeus wasn't just attacking the arguments of To Theodore in Book Three of the Refutation and Destruction of Knowledge Falsely So Called but specifically that he references a caricature of the contemporary practices of the Alexandrian tradition in Book One in his description of the so-called 'Marcosians.'

We have just argued in our last post that Irenaeus' original testimony about where he saw the Marcosians has been misunderstood. Irenaeus was originally saying that they were present in the Po Valley, near modern Venice 'the republic of St. Mark' rather than Lyons in the Rhone Valley.

I have made the case that Irenaeus's original reference to the river called Eridanos or Rhodanus misplaced the actual geographical location of the community.  Now I would like to overturn another common assumption about the Marcosians - viz. that they were a 'sect of the Valentinians.'

It is because of the CURRENT arrangement of the writings of Irenaeus that people just ASSUME that the Marcosians were a Valentinian sect.  Yet this has never made sense to me.  The first problem is - as Grant notes - Mark is never actually identified by Irenaeus as being present in the community at Erodanus.  But there is a more fundamental problem which rarely gets referenced  which is - why aren't the Marcosians included in Tertullian's Against the Valentinians?

I have noted that much of the material from the first twelve chapters of Book One of Irenaeus's Against All Heresies is included in Tertullian's adaptation.  The reason is simple.  Tertullian is writing against all the Valentinians.  As such it seems pretty clear that in the original text of Irenaeus which Tertullian used, the Marcosians weren't portrayed as an offshoot of the Valentinians.

Why do scholars still lump Mark with the Valentinians?  It is the corrupt phrasing of the surviving copies of Irenaeus again.

In the words which immediately follow the end of the material on 'the Valentinians' cited by Tertullian in Chapter Twelve, we see Chapter Thirteen begin by connecting 'Mark' to the Valentinians by beginning the account of his sect with the words:

But there is another among these heretics  who boasts himself as having improved upon his master. [AH i.13.1]

The critical edition puts the words which follow in the English translation - 'Marcus by name' - in brackets because it was evidently by a later hand.  It is usually assumed that Valentinus is being identified as Mark's master.  But it is worth noting that Epiphanius begins his account with the line which immediately follows:

He is a perfect adept in magical impostures, and by this means drawing away a great number of men, and not a few women, he has induced them to join themselves to him. [ibid]

Yet what confirms the possibility that this line was never originally there to 'connect' Mark to the Valentinians is that Hippolytus adds a completely different connecting sentence:


A certain other teacher among them, Marcus, an adept in sorcery, carrying on operations partly by sleight of hand and partly by demons, deceived many from time to time. [Hippolytus Ref. Haer vi.34]

The point is that while there is obviously SOME SORT of connection between the Valentinians and the Marcosians it seems to be left to all the early writers to invent some way that Mark developed his tradition from the preexisting school of Valentinus.

The bottom line is that the original texts of Irenaeus couldn't have had a description of the Valentinians which ends with the Marcosians.  This is the way ALL of our existing manuscripts of Irenaeus appear.  It is the way Hippolytus arranged his Refutation of All Heresies ALBEIT needing to invent the connecting phrase 'a certain other teacher among them (i.e. the Valentinians)."

So where the surviving copies of Irenaeus conclude the account of the Valentinians by listing the beliefs of various unnamed sects:

For some maintain that he was formed out of all; wherefore also he was called Eudocetos, because the whole Pleroma was well pleased through him to glorify the Father. But others assert that he was produced from those ten AEons alone who sprung from Logos and Zoe, and that on this account he was called Logos and Zoe, thus preserving the ancestral names.  Others, again, affirm that he had his being from those twelve AEons who were the offspring of Anthropos and Ecclesia; and on this account he acknowledges himself the Son of man, as being a descendant of Anthropos. Others still, assert that he was produced by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who were brought forth for the security of the Pleroma; and that on this account he was called Christ, thus preserving the appellation of the Father, by whom he was produced.  And there are yet others among them who declare that the Propator of the whole, Proarche, and Proanennoetos is called Anthropos; and that this is the great and abstruse mystery, namely, that the Power which is above all others, and contains all in his embrace, is termed Anthropos; hence does the Saviour style himself the "Son of man."  

The sect of the Marcosians is introduced

But there is another among these heretics, who boasts himself as having improved upon his master ...

The account thus strangely develops from the last line in the original conclusion to account of the Valentinians - i.e. the Marcosians are introduced as, in effect, just another of these unnamed Valentinian groups before the 'full account' of the sect is referenced.

So when I look at ALL three versions of the material here, I find it impossible to believe that 'those of Mark' (i.e. the Marcosians) were originally identified as a Valentinian offshoot.  I look at Tertullian's report and I see a reproduction of what he or his source believed was ALL the information about 'the Valentinians' from Irenaeus .That original account ends WITHOUT including the Marcosians within the fold of Valentinian sects.   Tertullian stops reproducing information from Irenaeus's report about the Valentinians with AH i.12.4:

Now, concerning even the Lord Jesus, into how great a diversity of opinion are they divided! One party form Him of the blossoms of all the Æons. Another party will have it that He is made up only of those ten whom the Word and the Life produced; from which circumstance the titles of the Word and the Life were suitably transferred to Him. Others, again, that He rather sprang from the twelve, the offspring of Man and the Church, and therefore, they say, He was designated Son of man. Others, moreover, maintain that He was formed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who have to provide for the establishment of the universe, and that He inherits by right His Father's appellation. Some there are who have imagined that another origin must be found for the title Son of man; for they have had the presumption to call the Father Himself Man, by reason of the profound mystery of this title [Against the Valentinians 39]

The surviving texts of Irenaeus reproduce this same material:

They have much contention also among themselves respecting the Saviour. For some maintain that he was formed out of all; wherefore also he was called Eudocetos, because the whole Pleroma was well pleased through him to glorify the Father. But others assert that he was produced from those ten AEons alone who sprung from Logos and Zoe, and that on this account he was called Logos and Zoe, thus preserving the ancestral names. Others, again, affirm that he had his being from those twelve AEons who were the offspring of Anthropos and Ecclesia; and on this account he acknowledges himself the Son of man, as being a descendant of Anthropos. Others still, assert that he was produced by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who were brought forth for the security of the Pleroma; and that on this account he was called Christ, thus preserving the appellation of the Father, by whom he was produced. And there are yet others among them who declare that the Propator of the whole, Proarche, and Proanennoetos is called Anthropos; and that this is the great and abstruse mystery, namely, that the Power which is above all others, and contains all in his embrace, is termed Anthropos; hence does the Saviour style himself the "Son of man." [AH i.12.4]

But as I just noted the Marcosians are lumped together with the other Valentinians with the addition of the connecting sentence "but there is another among these heretics, Marcus by name, who boasts himself as having improved upon his master." [AH i.13.1]

Now I believe the report of Hippolytus is decisive in proving that the Marcosian information appeared originally in a separate report from Irenaeus' original treatise 'against the Valentinians' which was later developed by Tertullian and possibly a subsequent orthodox editor. For Hippolytus DOES NOT reproduce any of this information which concludes BOTH Tertullian's and the surviving work attributed to Irenaeus but rather ends it with:

But the followers of Ptolemaeus assert that (Bythus) has two spouses, which they call likewise dispositions, viz., Ennoia and Thelesis (conception and volition). For first the notion was conceived of projecting anything; next followed, as they say, the will to do so. Wherefore also these two dispositions and powers--namely, Ennoia and Thelesis--being, as it were, mingled one with the other, there ensued a projection of Monogenes and Aletheia by means of a conjugal union. And the consequence was, that visible types and images of those two dispositions of the Father came forth from the invisible (Aeons), viz., from Thelema, Nous, and from Ennoia, Aletheia. And on this account the image of the subsequently generated Thelema is (that of a) male; but (the image) of the unbegotten Ennoia is (that of a) female, since volition is, as it were, a power of conception. For conception always cherished the idea of a projection, yet was not of itself at least able to project itself, but cherished the idea (of doing so). When, however, the power of volition (would be present), then it projects the idea which had been conceived. [Hippolytus Ref. Her. vi.33]

This material is found in Chapter Twelve Book One of Irenaeus's work and underlines in my opinion that Tertullian is closest to the original work. More on this later.

The point now is that it simply doesn't make any sense to me the way Patristic scholars act as if 'everything is just right' with the surviving text of Irenaeus's Against All Heresies. There were differing versions of the same work, the variation being attributed - I think - to the fact that the work was artificially created by Hippolytus as a collection of treatises of various lengths by the original author.