On the Flesh of Christ is indeed an important example of Tertullian’s reuse of earlier argument. Other particularly useful cases are On the Resurrection of the Flesh, On the Soul, and The Prescription against Heretics. They show several different practices: compression of an earlier narrative, rearrangement of scriptural examples, adaptation of an interpretive argument, and incorporation of material whose author Tertullian names.
The evidence should be assessed passage by passage. A demonstrated relationship between particular sections does not make a whole treatise a translation. A resemblance in doctrine is also weaker than a shared unusual narrative, a matching set of examples, or an explicit source notice.
1. The strongest candidates
| Tertullian | Earlier material | Observable treatment | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| De carne Christi 16.5; 17.3–5 On the Flesh of Christ | Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.21.10–22.1; III.22.4; compare V.19.1. Justin, Dialogue 100, is an earlier witness to the Eve–Mary argument. | Adam without male seed, virgin earth, the second Adam’s virgin birth, and the reversal of Eve through Mary are incorporated into the defense of Christ’s real human flesh. | Strong selective reuse. Evans explicitly identifies Irenaean borrowing in his commentary, pp. 154–159, while allowing that some material had become standard exposition. |
| De resurrectione carnis 48–50; 58.6–10 On the Resurrection of the Flesh | Irenaeus V.9–11 on 1 Corinthians 15:50; V.5.1–2 on bodies preserved or translated. | Earlier biblical arguments are condensed, reordered, and fitted to Tertullian’s exposition. The furnace/Jonah/Enoch/Elijah cluster is particularly instructive. | Strong argumentative dependence. Evans’s introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiv, supplies an explicit scholarly comparison. |
| De anima 34.2–5; 50 On the Soul | Irenaeus I.23.2–5: Simon, Helen, and Menander. | A highly specific heresiological narrative is reused within a discussion of transmigration and death, with Tertullian’s own jokes and challenges added. | Very strong narrative correspondence. Direct use of Irenaeus is a well-established explanation; a common or intermediary dossier is the alternative to distinguish. |
| De praescriptione haereticorum 17; 20–21; 32; 39 The Prescription against Heretics | Irenaeus III.2–4 on Scripture, public tradition, and succession; I.9.4 on Homeric centos. | The earlier framework becomes a forceful challenge to heretics’ right to use Scripture. The Homeric analogy is supplemented by Latin literary examples. | Substantial adaptation. Greenslade identifies Irenaeus as the chief source, while the primary comparison shows significant recasting. |
| De anima 6.6–7; 8.3 | Soranus’s four-book treatment of the soul. | Tertullian names the author, uses his arguments for the soul’s corporeality, and rejects the denial of immortality. | Explicit use of an earlier argumentative source. Its complete original is lost, so the full extent of dependence cannot be checked continuously. |
| Ad nationes II.1.8–10 To the Nations | Varro’s treatment of divine antiquities. | Varro’s classifications are selected as a framework and turned into an attack on pagan theology. | Explicitly acknowledged sourcing. Tertullian directly identifies his selection of Varro’s works. |
| De spectaculis 5.8 On the Shows | Suetonius and the earlier authorities from whom Suetonius obtained his information. | Historical material about the foundation and dedications of games becomes evidence of their idolatrous origin. | Explicit reference to a source tradition. The sentence itself leaves the immediate route through that tradition open. |
| Adversus Hermogenem Against Hermogenes | Theophilus’s lost work against Hermogenes, attested by Eusebius IV.24. | Scholars have proposed reuse of an earlier Greek refutation in Tertullian’s attack on eternal matter. | A source hypothesis with substantial scholarly history. Because the proposed source is lost, it is not comparable in demonstrability to the surviving Irenaean parallels. |
Against the Valentinians remains the benchmark for extensive adaptation with a surviving comparator. The following cases show that Tertullian’s reuse is not confined to that one work.
2. On the Flesh of Christ: the recollection is correct
In his notes on chapters 16–17, Ernest Evans identifies material apparently borrowed from Irenaeus and specifically treats the Eve–Mary comparison as an abbreviation. His caution matters: by Tertullian’s time, some earlier interpretations could circulate as established teaching. The comparisons below therefore distinguish recognizable inheritance from certainty about a single immediate exemplar.
| Earlier argument | Tertullian’s version | What is preserved or changed? |
|---|---|---|
| Irenaeus III.21.10: Si igitur primus Adam habuit patrem hominem, et ex semine viri natus est; merito dicerent, et secundum Adam ex Joseph esse generatum. “If the first Adam had a human father and was born from a man’s seed, they would rightly say that the second Adam was generated from Joseph.” | Carne 16.5: Recordentur Adam ipsum in hanc carnem non ex semine viri factum. “Let them remember that Adam himself was made into this flesh without a man’s seed.” | The same counterexample defeats the inference that flesh without male generation cannot be ordinary human flesh. Tertullian makes the response compact and directly polemical. |
| Irenaeus III.21.10: Adam de rudi terra, et de adhuc virgine… “Adam from untilled earth, still virgin…” | Carne 17.3: Virgo erat adhuc terra, nondum opere compressa, nondum sementi subacta. “The earth was still virgin, not yet pressed by cultivation, not yet subjected to sowing.” | The virgin earth/virgin mother analogy supplies the same explanation for the correspondence of Adam and Christ. Tertullian elaborates its agricultural language. |
| Irenaeus III.22.4: Quod enim alligavit virgo Eva per incredulitatem, hoc virgo Maria solvit per fidem. “What the virgin Eve bound through unbelief, the virgin Mary loosened through faith.” | Carne 17.5: Crediderat Eva serpenti, credidit Maria Gabrieli: quod illa credendo deliquit haec credendo delevit. “Eve had believed the serpent; Mary believed Gabriel: what the former did wrong by believing, the latter erased by believing.” | A developed typological correspondence becomes a compact antithesis. Tertullian continues with Cain as the murderous brother and Christ as the saving brother. |
The combination is stronger evidence than the single idea that Mary reverses Eve. Justin’s Dialogue 100 already contrasts the virgin Eve’s reception of the serpent’s word with Mary’s faithful reception of Gabriel’s announcement. That earlier witness prevents exclusive attribution of the entire motif to Irenaeus. Nevertheless, Irenaeus offers a close surviving comparison for the combined Adamic and Marian argument.
References to Irenaeus in older editions can use different chapter divisions. The references here use the familiar modern divisions, rather than reproducing Evans’s older numbering unchanged.
3. On the Resurrection of the Flesh: compression and rearrangement
Irenaeus V.5.1–2 first adduces Enoch and Elijah, then answers doubts about the survival of their flesh through Jonah and the three men in the furnace. Tertullian, Resurrection 58.6–10, groups the examples differently:
- Israel’s clothing and shoes preserved in the wilderness;
- the furnace failing to harm the three men’s clothing;
- Jonah emerging unharmed;
- Enoch and Elijah preserved after their translation.
The examples answer the same difficulty: material bodies need not undergo destruction when God wills their preservation. Tertullian has not merely repeated a general belief in resurrection. He retains a distinctive cluster of supporting cases, abbreviates it, adds another scriptural example, and changes its arrangement.
His exposition of 1 Corinthians 15:50 likewise belongs beside Irenaeus V.9–11. In Resurrection 49.11 he distinguishes the substance of flesh from its sinful works:
Non substantiam sed opera substantiae alienantis a dei regno.
“Excluding from God’s kingdom the substance’s works, not the substance.”
At 50.4 he adds:
Merito sola et per semetipsa, ut ostenderet adhuc spiritum in illis necessarium.
“Rightly so, alone and by themselves: to show that the Spirit is still necessary in them.”
Irenaeus V.9.3 similarly concludes that flesh and blood alone, without God’s Spirit, cannot possess the kingdom. The parallel lies in the interpretive move applied to Paul, rather than simply in the wording of a Pauline quotation. This is particularly relevant when assessing the independence of Tertullian’s biblical argument elsewhere.
Evans’s 1960 introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiv, explicitly argues for dependence on Irenaeus’s fifth book and discusses both compression and differences of emphasis. Neither the differences nor the reordering make the shared argumentative material disappear.
4. On the Soul: a narrative dossier becomes a new argument
The correspondence between Irenaeus I.23.2 and Tertullian, De anima 34.2–4, is unusually specific:
| Common narrative element | Irenaeus | Tertullian |
|---|---|---|
| Helen acquired at Tyre | Simon redeems a prostitute from Tyre. | Simon buys a Tyrian woman from a brothel; the money is fitted into a joke about his attempted purchase of the Spirit. |
| First conception or thought | Helen is Simon’s first Ennoia, associated with the production of angels. | Helen is his first iniectio; the account again proceeds to angels and archangels. |
| Confinement by the powers | The generated powers detain her and imprison her in a human body. | The same powers restrain her, with the body serving as her bonds. |
| Migration through women’s bodies | Her successive embodiments include Helen of Troy. | The repeated female embodiments again include the Helen disastrous for Priam. |
| Stesichorus | He loses his sight after attacking Helen and recovers it through his recantation. | The same unusual literary episode remains in the same narrative position. |
| Return to prostitution | The wandering Helen finally appears in the brothel. | The same endpoint supplies Tertullian with further sexual ridicule. |
The detailed sequence provides much better evidence than agreement on the proposition that Simon was a heretic. Tertullian places it inside a discussion of transmigration. He retains the narrative’s evidential substance while changing its function and surrounding it with satire.
At De anima 50 the account of Menander’s baptism promising immunity from death corresponds to Irenaeus I.23.5. Tertullian turns the report into a challenge: where are the supposedly deathless recipients? R. E. Roberts, The Theology of Tertullian (1924), pp. 58–59, explicitly identifies the Simon/Helen and Menander passages as deriving from Irenaeus.
Direct literary use is the economical explanation of the Simon/Helen correspondence, particularly given Tertullian’s demonstrable acquaintance with Irenaeus. The surviving texts establish the relationship more readily than they exclude every possibility of a shared intermediate source.
5. The Prescription against Heretics: reworking the frame of the controversy
Irenaeus III.2–4 answers claims to superior interpretation or secret tradition through the public teaching and succession of apostolic churches. Tertullian’s chapters 17–21 and 32 develop a related framework into a challenge to the heretics’ authority to conduct the scriptural dispute at all. Greenslade identifies Irenaeus as the chief source of the work in his 1956 introduction.
Chapter 32 uses the paired examples of Smyrna/Polycarp and Rome/Clement. Irenaeus III.3 supplies both churches and figures, but the accounts are not identical. Tertullian says Polycarp was installed by John and Clement ordained by Peter; Irenaeus says Polycarp was appointed by apostles and places Linus and Anacletus before Clement in the Roman succession. The differences must remain visible: they are evidence against treating Tertullian as an unchanged transcript.
The literary analogy in chapter 39 gives another useful comparison. Irenaeus I.9.4 illustrates distorted scriptural interpretation with a poem assembled from displaced Homeric lines. Tertullian preserves the Homeric-cento analogy but adds examples from Latin literature:
Denique Hosidius Geta Medeam tragoediam ex Virgilio plenissime exsuxit.
“Indeed, Hosidius Geta drew an entire tragedy, Medea, out of Virgil.”
Tertullian also mentions a relative’s composition from Virgil. The comparison shows how an earlier argumentative device can acquire contemporary Latin illustrations and a personal authorial voice. That voice is compatible with substantial inherited content.
6. Explicitly named earlier writers
Soranus, De anima 6.6–7 and 8.3. Tertullian names Soranus’s four-volume discussion, adopts arguments for the soul’s corporeality, and rejects his denial of immortality. At 8.3 he attributes the ship analogy to Soranus: a ship’s becoming heavy and motionless out of water does not prove that the water is incorporeal; likewise, the body’s condition without its soul does not prove the soul incorporeal. He can take an argument while correcting its author’s broader conclusions.
Varro, Ad nationes II.1.8. The source selection is explicit:
Elegi ad compendium Varronis opera.
“For a concise treatment I selected Varro’s works.”
Tertullian proceeds through the classifications associated with philosophers, poets, and peoples, turning an inherited organization of pagan religion into a Christian attack. This is a clear instance of selecting an existing framework for a new polemical purpose.
Suetonius, De spectaculis 5.8. Tertullian locates the history of the games’ founders and dedications:
Positum est apud Suetonium Tranquillum vel a quibus Tranquillus accepit.
“It is recorded in Suetonius Tranquillus, or in those from whom Tranquillus received it.”
The explicit alternative is valuable. Tertullian acknowledges an antecedent literary tradition without identifying an exclusive immediate exemplar. He then makes that historical material support his conclusion that the shows originate in idolatry.
7. A significant hypothesis: Theophilus behind Against Hermogenes
Eusebius IV.24 independently attests Theophilus’s work against Hermogenes. Its use behind Tertullian has a substantial scholarly history: the editorial note on Eusebius IV.24 in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, note 193, summarizes Harnack’s argument for a common Theophilan source behind Tertullian and other witnesses.
This is relevant to the proposed use of lost Greek refutations elsewhere. Its evidential category remains different from the Simon/Helen narrative or the surviving resurrection comparisons: the alleged source itself cannot be placed beside Tertullian line by line. The existence of an earlier work and the plausibility of its use should not be confused with complete reconstruction of its contents.
8. Relevance to Against Marcion
The claim that Tertullian could substantially reuse earlier writers is well grounded. The comparisons establish several mechanisms: preserve a narrative while changing its purpose; abbreviate and reorder a cluster of scriptural examples; retain an exegetical solution; add local illustrations; and accept a source’s argument while disputing other conclusions.
These mechanisms make source analysis of Against Marcion necessary. Its vigorous first-person voice, invective, and Latin idiom cannot establish independence from Greek predecessors. At the same time, parallels elsewhere cannot identify the source of every sentence in that work. A proposed lost Irenaean exemplar still needs its own evidence, using shared sequences, unusual interpretations, distinctive details, and changes of argumentative setting.
For a focused next comparison, the most productive passages are De carne Christi 16–17; De resurrectione carnis 48–50 and 58; De anima 34; and De praescriptione 32 and 39. They provide several observable models of the process being proposed.
Sources and verification
- Ernest Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation (London: SPCK, 1956), commentary, especially pp. 154–159. Relevant notes were examined, not merely the general introduction.
- Ernest Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise on the Resurrection (London: SPCK, 1960), introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiv.
- R. E. Roberts, The Theology of Tertullian (London: Epworth, 1924), chapter 3, pp. 58–59. Some broader similarities listed there are weaker than the specific narrative comparisons highlighted here.
- S. L. Greenslade, ed. and trans., Early Latin Theology, Library of Christian Classics 5 (1956), introduction and translation of The Prescription against Heretics. The online introduction identifies Irenaeus as the chief source and points to its comparative appendix.
- Tertullian, Latin texts: De carne Christi; De resurrectione carnis; De anima; De praescriptione; Ad nationes II; De spectaculis.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies: I.9; I.23; III.3; III.21; III.22; V.5; V.9. These links provide the public-domain English translation. Latin excerpts were checked against the ancient Latin version in the Harvey edition and normalized typographically. Their similarity does not determine the language of Tertullian’s immediate exemplar.
- Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 100, on Eve and Mary.
- Theophilus’s lost Against Hermogenes: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV.24; editorial note 193 in the NPNF translation, reporting Harnack’s source hypothesis.
Research checked 7 November 2026. Modern scholarly judgments are distinguished from the surviving primary correspondences.
