Scholars Have Underestimated the Corruption Inherent in Surviving Copies of Irenaeus's Against All Heresies

I have written about this before, but I wanted to illustrate the point with regards to the question of whether the familiar baptism narrative involving a 'dove' descending into Jesus is a deliberate corruption of the idea that Jesus descended into John the neaniskos. The surviving manuscripts of Irenaeus are hopelessly corrupt in parts. I tend to rely on the evidence from Tertullian's Against the Valentinians to gain a better sense of the original material. Take this passage in the original Latin (thanks to Roger Pearse again!):

nunc reddo de Christo in quem tanta licentia Iesum inserunt quidem quanta spiritale semen animali cum inflatu infulciunt, fartilia nescio quae commenti et Hominum et deorum suorum: esse etiam Demiurgo suum Christum filium naturalem denique animalem, prolatum ab ipso, promulgatum prophetis, in praepositionum quaestionibus positum, id est per virginem non ex virgine editum quia delatus in virginem transmeatoria potius quam generatorio more processerit per ipsam non ex ipsa, non matrem eam sed viam passus. super hunc itaque Christum devolasse tunc in baptismatis sacramento Iesum per effigiem columbae. fuisse autem et in Christo etiam ex Achamoth spiritalis seminis condimentum ne marceresceret scilicet reliqua farsura. nam in figuram principalis tetradis quattuor eum substantiis stipant: spiritali Achamothiana, animali Demiurgina, corporali inenarrativa, et illa Sotericiana, id est columbina. et Soter quidem permansit in Christo impassibilis inlaesibilis inapprehensibilis. denique cum ad prehensiones venitur, discessit ab illo in cognitione Pilati; proinde nec matris semen admisit iniurias aeque insubditivum et ne ipsi quidem Demiurgo compertum.

Which is translated into English as follows:

I now adduce (what they say) concerning Christ, upon whom some of them engraft Jesus so licentiously, that they foist into Him a spiritual seed together with an animal inflatus. Indeed, I will not undertake to describe these incongruous crammings, which they have contrived in relation both to their men and their gods. The Demiurge also has his own Christ, his natural son (consequently soul-like), produced from himself, preached by the prophets. His nature must be decided by prepositions: specifically, he was produced through a virgin, not from a virgin, because he came into existence carried in a virgin in a transportational, not a generational, sense. He came through her, not from her; he experienced her not as a mother but as a conveyance. Upon this Christ, then, in the sacrament of baptism, Jesus descended in the form of a dove. Apart from this, there was even in this Christ spice from the spirit-like seed of Achamoth- to keep the rest of the stuffing from spoiling, I presume. Following the analogy of the first Tetrad, they crowd him with four substances: the spirit-like from Achamoth, the soul-like from the Demiurge, the bodily which is indescribable, and the substance from Saviour, namely dove-like. Saviour at any rate remained in Christ untouched, unhurt, unknown. Finally, when captured, he left him during Pilate's questioning. Likewise, the seed from his mother did not receive injury, being equally, immune and unknown even to the Demiurge.

This is developed into the following narrative in our surviving texts of Irenaeus:

There are also some who maintain that he also produced Christ as his own proper son, but of an animal nature, and that mention was made of him by the prophets. This Christ passed through Mary just as water flows through a tube; and there descended upon him in the form of a dove it the time of his baptism, that Saviour who belonged to the Pleroma, and was formed by the combined efforts of all its inhabitants. In him there existed also that spiritual seed which proceeded from Achamoth. They hold, accordingly, that our Lord, while preserving the type of the first-begotten and primary tetrad, was compounded of these four substances,--of that which is spiritual, in so far as He was from Achamoth; of that which is animal, as being from the Demiurge by a special dispensation, inasmuch as He was formed with unspeakable skill; and of the Saviour, as respects that dove which descended upon Him. He also continued free from all suffering, since indeed it was not possible that He should suffer who was at once incomprehensible and invisible. And for this reason the Spirit of Christ, who had been placed within Him, was taken away when He was brought before Pilate.

Now it is almost second nature for scholars to take the Five Books of Irenaeus Against All Heresies as 'Irenaeus.' However I have noted how uncritical this really is. I encourage my readers to get a critical edition of this text and see just how corrupt the material is universally acknowledged to be.

Now if we start with the idea however that the material in Tertullian is closer to the original we have a very easy time seeing how the so-called LGM 1 narrative of the Letter to Theodore (the one which claims that the Alexandrian Gospel of Mark had an 'additional' baptism narrative unknown to our canonical gospel of the same name).

Theodore - according to my reading of the material - makes clear that someone has been saying something very similar to what was noted first in Irenaeus that again:

concerning Christ, upon whom some of them engraft Jesus so licentiously

While the specific context is acknowledged that the heretics "foist into [Christ] a spiritual semen together with an animal inflatus" what follows:

he was produced through a virgin, not from a virgin, because he came into existence carried in a virgin in a transportational, not a generational, sense. He came through her, not from her; he experienced her not as a mother but as a conveyance.

As noted before, ALL OF THIS is more original than its development in Five Books Against All Heretics which reads:

There are also some who maintain that he also produced Christ as his own proper son, but of an animal nature, and that mention was made of him by the prophets. This Christ passed through Mary just as water flows through a tube; and there descended upon him in the form of a dove it the time of his baptism, that Saviour who belonged to the Pleroma, and was formed by the combined efforts of all its inhabitants. In him there existed also that spiritual seed which proceeded from Achamoth.

The proper reading is in fact that Jesus came into Christ AND THAT JESUS WAS THE VIRGIN POWER who created here.

Yet who was this 'Christ' who was being 'created' through this 'virgin baptism'? The next line makes it absolutely certain. We read in Tertullian again that:

following the analogy of the first Tetrad, they crowd him with four substances: the spirit-like from Achamoth, the soul-like from the Demiurge, the bodily which is indescribable, and the substance from Saviour, namely dove-like.

The Five Books Against All Heresies only specifies further that:

our Lord, while preserving the type of the first-begotten and primary tetrad, was compounded of these four substances,--of that which is spiritual, in so far as He was from Achamoth; of that which is animal, as being from the Demiurge by a special dispensation, inasmuch as He was formed with unspeakable skill; and of the Saviour, as respects that dove which descended upon Him

It seems obvious to me at least that Mark originally acknowledged to have been the one baptized by Jesus as we read a little later in the same book:

This Mark then, declaring that he alone was the matrix and receptacle of the stillness of all four, inasmuch as he was only-begotten, has brought to the birth in some such way as follows ... the infinitely exalted Tetrad descended upon him from the invisible and indescribable places ... and expounded to him alone its own nature, and the origin of all things, which it had never before revealed to any one either of gods or men [AH i.14.1]

Indeed the first report says that Jesus descended on someone else who was the Christ in the form of 'all four.' This 'Christ' who received Jesus became the only-begotten [cf. John 1:18]. In the narrative which follows outlining the belief of the Marcosians, Mark is said to be the same only-begotten owing to this power of 'all four' descending upon him. There is no explicit mention that this occurred at a baptism in the section but it is obvious given the parallels with what precedes it - and moreover - the fact that Marcosians are said to have had another baptism, the apolutrosis, involving Jesus descending into Christ which is referenced EXACTLY where LGM 1 is now located (i.e. just before Mark 10:35 - 45).

Now the objection to my theory of course is that scholars have learned to interpret 'Mark' as a Valentinian owing to the structure of the surviving texts of Book One of Against All the Heresies. Yet I have shown over the last few posts that this is just sloppy scholarship on their part. All the evidence points to THREE reports - two 'lectures' as Photius calls them written by Irenaeus (a) Against the Valentinians and 'Against the Marcosians' and Justin's Syntagma - being collated together by a third century Roman Church Father and likely Hippolytus himself.

The point is that Mark was not a follower of Valentinus nor is there evidence to suggest that his followers were 'Valentinians.' All that we have is a third century Church Father attempting to use Irenaeus's original lectures to argue that the Marcosians were Valentinians which in itself might be argued to be a deliberate attempt to disprove their claims to be 'of St. Mark.' Clement of Alexandria for instance has been demonstrated by Schaff and others to have been affiliated with the Marcosians. Not only were the Marcosians of Egypt but the Letter to Theodore demonstrates the 'secrecy' surrounding Clement's original affiliation with St. Mark.

In any event once this is accepted there is something even more significant at the end of the report. We should pay careful attention to the closing reference in Tertullian that:

the Saviour at any rate remained in Christ untouched, unhurt, unknown. Finally, when captured, he left him during Pilate's questioning. Likewise, the seed from his mother did not receive injury, being equally, immune and unknown even to the Demiurge.

This sounds remarkably similar to the report in Irenaeus regarding a sect which prefers the Gospel of Mark to the familiar canonical gospel texts. We read:

Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified. [AH iii.11.7]

In the account of Tertullian it is not clear which of Christ or Jesus was taken away and who was punished. Irenaeus makes clear that the gospel that this idea was developed in was the Gospel of Mark - albeit a very different form of our familiar narrative - and moreover that Christ ends up being enthroned at the end of the gospel. It is also clear that the sect in question IS NOT THE VALENTINIANS as they appear in the very next line i.e. "those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John."

Clearly then with the text ruling out that Irenaeus is speaking about the Valentinians using a text of variant gospel of Mark, the only possibility which remains is that the so-called 'Marcosians' were the ones using this text, that their 'Mark' claimed to have underwent a baptism upon which Jesus 'descended' or penetrated him leaving his divine seed in his person long after the crucifixion.

I would say it is a very reasonable assumption now to suppose that 'Mark' is St. Mark and his 'secret' Gospel was ultimately witnessed by Irenaeus, don't you?