I just want to wrap things up on the discussion of the origins of the relationship between the Marcionites and the Marcellians. It is always important to note that Jerome somehow knows or remembers some connection between the two sects when he says that Marcellina was the first Marcionite to visit Rome (Ep. 130, ad Ctes. vol. ip 102). What is so odd about this of course is that Jerome would have known that Origen in his mid-third century response to the mid-second century anti-Christian polemic of Celsus (i.e. the so-called 'True Word'), Marcellina is identified as the leader of the Marcellians who, along with another sect called 'the Harpocratians' date back to a certain 'Salome' (presumably the mother of the beloved disciple). Jerome would also have known that Irenaeus identified Marcellina only as a prominent member of a sect called 'the Carpocratians.'
At first glance we only have slightly different reports about the name of the 'Harpocratian' sect, there seems to have been some slopiness on the part of connecting these imperfectly remembered Christian sectarians and a certain 'Marcellina.' However Jerome's testimony opens up another possibility too. The preservation of the name 'Marcellians' might have suffered from the same misunderstanding. For, as we noted in our last post - Origen, rather than Celsus, makes the connection between 'the Marcellians' and this 'Marcellina.' Celsus's True Word certainly never referenced a Marcellina whatsoever. Rather, I believe that it was the Hypomnemata of Josephus (= 'Hegesippus') which introduced the 'contagion' - i.e. the supposed existence of a 'Marcellina.'
I want to emphasize once again that Origen's citation of Celsus's report from 177 CE only says that 'the Marcellians and the Harpocratians' derived their origins from a certain Salome. Celsus never gives any sort of etymology or explanation for the terms 'Marcellian' or 'Harpocratian' (as is the case also with his introduction in what follows of the 'Simonians'). It was the Hypomnemata of Josephus (= 'Hegesippus'), published in its first edition in 147 CE but developed in an 'expanded edition' by a Christian editor living under the reign of the Roman Pope Eleutherius, (whose reign is usually dated to the period 174 - 189 CE) which introduced the obvious reworking of Celsus's original statement cited above.
What was formerly a reference to two sects who arose from a common source (i.e. Salome) has been totally transformed to a statement about a woman - i.e. 'Marcellina' - who was allegedly the head of a sect now renamed the 'Carpocratians.' The transformation is stunning and if it were not for the fact that both original sources (i.e. Celsus's 'True Word' and Josephus's 'Hypomnemata') are now lost to save for a few precious fragments, the historical relationship between the two texts would have been disentangled much earlier.
I also happen to believe that because of the fact that Irenaeus is our earliest surviving witness to this historical situation and he happens to come down on the side of the authenticity of Josephus's Hypomnemata that Patristic scholars can't help but fall under his 'gravitational pull.' After all Irenaeus is our sole witness for a great number of important details with respect to the early Church (i.e. the four-faced gospel, Polycarp's relationship with John etc.). He is also a Church Father and some of the historical residue of his presumed 'participation in the Holy Spirit' certainly has an unconscious influence (if only indirectly through those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were still under the sway of this belief).
I tend to suspect that Irenaeus was in fact that 'final editor' (to use Trobisch's terminology) of a great number of important documents central to earliest Christianity, the Hypomnemata of Josephus (= 'Hegesippus') being only the most obscure. The point of course now is that Irenaeus is the prime candidate for the original addition of a 'longer ending' to the Hypomnemata (which originally terminated with an account of the blood-relatives of Jesus becoming the line of bishops of the Jerusalem Church down to the year 147 CE). As such, Irenaeus must have read the original reference in Celsus's True Word to the 'Marcellians and Harpocratians' having a common origin in Salome and invented the person of 'Marcellina' (as the presumed head of the sect of the same name).
The principle reason for suspecting this, aside from Irenaeus's consistent association with 'disputed' literature (i.e. most - if not all - of the books of the contemporary New Testament canon which were deemed to be 'spurious' by the Marcionites among others) is the fact that 'Carpocratians' is unlikely to have been the actual name of the sect. Celsus's 'Harpocratians' seems to be the preferable reading. So we are left wondering how such an early 'misreading' could possible have taken place given the fact that Irenaeus and Celsus were contemporaries and would have likely have been traveling in the same circles (cf. Irenaeus AH 3.30.1,2).
The only reasonable explanation for how so many 'mistakes' (i.e. 'Carpocratians' for 'Hapocratians,' the connecting of 'Marcellina' to the aforementioned group) could have emerged in the transfer of information which couldn't have taken place more than five years since the original publication of the True Word, is to assume that Irenaeus was taking liberties with the original material. In other words, he was not reporting the information accurately and by the time the material behind Book One of Irenaeus's Against the Heresies was published (c. 180 CE by most accounts) the Christian world had its first introduction to 'the Carpocratians.'
So it is then that Celsus's original identification of a group of Christians who apparently developed some or all of their ideas from the cult of Serapis (where 'Harpocrates' was a prominent figure) becomes transformed into something else. Now the Carpocratians emerge from Irenaeus's reworking as a group of Platonizing sexual deviants. What is the ultimate reason for this transformation? Clearly Irenaeus is taking aim at the Alexandrian Church. Let's take a second look at this.
'Salome' is a figure who is only preserved in the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to the Egyptians and the Diatessaron - all texts which have some connection with Alexandria. In other words, Celsus is clearly knew the 'Harpocratians' as somehow connected with Alexandrian Christianity. Yet because Irenaeus is literally extending the original ending of the Hypomnemata to include his new account of 'Marcellina the Carpocratian' it would not be surprising to find that the job of condemning the 'Carpocratians' was left to a leading figure of the rival Jerusalem Church.
There can be little doubt that the Letter to Jude was written with a sect like the Carpocratians in mind. The text makes reference to hedonistic heretics who have corrupted the sacraments of the Holy Church and must be condemned for the actions. Jude is almost always identified with one of the very same bishops of the Jerusalem Church that 'Josephus' (= Hegesippus) spent so much time referencing in the conclusion to the original Hypomnemata.
The 'longer ending' written by Irenaeus recounts the arrival of Josephus (= 'Hegesippus') in Rome from Corinth (where he allegedly comes into contact with another of Irenaeus's reworked texts - 1 Clement) which in turn serves serves to (a) identify the original author as 'Josephus' (= 'Hegeippus') (b) make manifest that he lived into the age of Eleutherius and decided to include a list of the bishops of Rome (a 'companion' to the original chronological narrative developed for the (mythical) Jerusalem Church in 147 CE and (c) promote the See of Peter and Paul (i.e. Rome) at the expense of that of Mark (i.e. Alexandria). Yet it is important to note that it does so by pretending that the original spokesman for the greatness of the Jerusalem Church (i.e. Josephus) had embraced the Roman tradition.
This is a very important thing to see at the bottom of all of this - both the chronology of the Jerusalem Church and that of Rome are little more than literary fictions. Nevertheless, the fantasy of a line of descendants of Jesus in seaed in Jerusalem up until near contemporary times (the list clearly assumes that the line 'died out' before Josephus completed his narrative) becomes a useful fiction for Irenaeus as 'the last of the mohicans' so to speak - Josephus himself - is alleged to have come over to the sanctity of the Roman apostolic succession. In other words, as we see in Irenaeus Against Heresies Book 1 and the beginning of Book Three, the idea of two 'authoritative' lines coming together is a very powerful argument for authenticity. Yet what we have to see is that the Hypomnemata did so by effectively having 'Jerusalem' (i.e. Josephus himself) condemn Alexandria (i.e. 'the Carpocratians').
There can be no doubt that it was owing to this historical 'framing' of the anti-Carpocratian argument (i.e. through Josephus the last living 'witness' to the Jerusalem line) that we see Clement always cites the Letter to Jude against members of the tradition. This cannot be coincidental. Clement clearly had a copy of the Hypomnemata by Josephus and explicitly references the author's name. With his consistent citation of Jude against the Carpocratians, Clement is witnessing that the original lost argument of the Hypomnemata was done on the authority of the Jerusalem Church.
While Clement certainly read both the True Word of Celsus and the edited Hypomnemata of Irenaeus he does not attempt to reconcile 'the Marcellians and Harpocratians of Salome' with 'Marcellina the Carpocratian.' The closest we get to this is Origen's aforementioned effort to explain that the 'Marcellians' are derived from a certain 'Marcellina' (whom he had certainly first encountered in the Hypomnemata). Origen also tries to push under the carpet the relationship between the 'Marcellians' and the Marcionites at the end of Contra Celsum 6.51. Nevertheless Jerome, undoubtedly being aware of the whole - or at least most - of the prehistory to the tradition, attempts a new explanation of the conflicting material - viz. 'Marcellina' was the first Marcionite in Rome.
What cannot help but come to the surface here, despite the efforts of the Church Fathers to the opposite purpose, is the fact that Celsus's original reference to the 'Marcellians' associated that they were the same as the tradition we learned to call 'Marcionite.' In other words, both happen to be a gentilic collective plural of the name 'little Mark' in Latin and Greek respectively. They both ultimately go back to the Church of St. Mark in Alexandria. The gentilic collective plural meaning 'those of Mark' in Aramaic is of course, Marqiyônê (
Why then were the 'Marcionites' developed by the Church Fathers as a radically 'chaste' heretical assembly and the 'Carpocratians' and 'Marcosians' as a depraved bunch of fornicators if they ultimately derived from a common - Alexandrian - source? Well, my friends, the truth then, as it does now, inevitably lies between the two poles of inflamed, propagandist rhetoric.
